Nvidia's Jensen Huang reveals the 3 traits that make Elon Musk unstoppable — and says everyone else is full of 'excuses'

Colossus resides inside a 785,000 square foot facility in Memphis, Tenn. and was reportedly built in only 122 days in 2024, which the host called “record time” before adding “it’s now at 200,000 GPUs and growing very quickly” (2, 3).

When asked about what other data center creators could learn from his approach, Huang identified three traits that he believes propel Musk to unparalleled success.

The three things that set Elon Musk apart

Huang pointed to three specific traits, spanning how Musk thinks, operates and leads, that he says give him an edge in building massive AI systems.

A minimalist approach to complex problems

In answering Fridman’s question, Huang began by saying Musk was "a really good systems thinker" across multiple disciplines, who questions everything “to the point where everything's down to its minimal amount that's necessary.” Huang called Musk “as minimalist as you could possibly imagine” while ensuring that “the necessary capabilities of the product retains” (4).

A culture of urgency that forces speed

He also praised Musk for his sense of urgency when working with partners, noting “it causes everybody else to act with urgency … and he makes it his business that he's the top priority of everybody else's projects.”

Hands-on leadership at critical moments

And third, Huang commended Musk for being “present at the point of action,” saying that he shows up to inquire about problems in person.

“You know, when you do all of this in combination, you overcome a lot of previous, ‘This is just the way we do it. Um, you know, ‘I'm waiting for them,’” Huang added. “I mean, it’s just, everybody has a lot of excuses.”

This, of course, isn’t the first time that Huang has given Musk his laurels. In 2024 he called him “superhuman” for getting the Colossus supercomputer built so fast, estimating that it “would take normally three years to plan, and then they deliver the equipment and it takes one year to get it all working.” As such, he declared Musk was the only person in the world who could pull off the feat (5).

Musk himself noted that his team was able to build the Colossus supercomputer so fast because xAI purchased an abandoned former Electrolux building to house it rather than constructing a new home for it from the ground up (6).

In January, another Musk supercomputer, Colossus 2, also housed in Memphis and dubbed “the first gigawatt-scale AI training cluster in the world,” went live. It reportedly contains around $18 billion worth of Nvidia GPUs.