Nvidia added only 6,400 new employees to its workforce last year
The company grew its revenues by 114% last year, while adding only 20% to its headcount.
Whether AI brings about the golden era of productivity that many tech leaders endlessly talk about — enabling all of us to do more with less — is still worth arguing about. But the main character of the AI boom itself, Nvidia, is certainly finding ways to squeeze a little more juice out of its employees, with the company’s Q4 earnings revealing not only blockbuster revenues and profits but a remarkable fact: the world’s hottest company employs only 36,000 people, about 20% more than it did last year.
Considering that Nvidia more than doubled its revenue in 2024, from ~$61 billion to an eye-watering ~$130 billion, the fact that the responsibilities of its HR department have grown only 20% is nothing short of remarkable. But, when you look back at the last few years, the divergence between employees and revenue is even more stark.
Clearly, the kind of highly specialized work that Nvidia chip designers spend their days on isn’t one of those problems that’s aided by simply throwing more cooks into the AI mixer. Indeed, the company reports that 75% of its employees work on “Research & Development,” while less than a quarter are in more generic corporate functions like sales, marketing, or operations.
Last year, Bloomberg reported some employees claimed to be working seven days week in a pressure cooker environment, and CEO Jensen Huang has said previously that he doesn’t fire people — he would rather “torture employees to greatness” than fire them. (He did also add that he was being “tongue in cheek” about the torturing.) But, when looking solely at financial metrics, it’s hard to argue that Huang’s approach isn’t working.
But just how remarkable is Nvidia’s employee efficiency compared to its Big Tech peers?
Nvidia makes $3.6 million of revenue per employee — more than any of its Big Tech rivals
Among the $17 trillion BATMMAAN tech giants (Big Tech’s version of the Avengers), Nvidia is squeezing the most out of every employee.
After reporting blowout earnings, which the market found reasons to dislike anyway as Nvidia tumbled 8% in trading on Thursday, we can now calculate that last year Nvidia pulled in $3.6 million in revenue for each one of its employees.
That’s more than 1.5x that of Apple and Meta, and nearly double that of Alphabet. The gap is even wider when it comes to profit: Nvidia’s net income per employee sits at $2 million, surpassing Apple, Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon.
Of course, this isn’t entirely surprising given that Nvidia had the lowest number of employees among the BATMMAAN group, with its workforce heavy on research and development.
Contrast that with Amazon and Tesla — the least tech-y of the eight behemoths — which rank at the bottom in revenue and profit per employee, and it makes sense. After all, Amazon is the world’s second-largest retailer behind Walmart, relying on a massive workforce to keep its logistics engine running — hence its 1.6 million employees, nearly twice as many as the rest combined. Meanwhile, Tesla, despite its software-heavy ambitions, is still a capital-intensive car company.
Golden handcuffs
Keeping those employees motivated to work long hours, and be tortured into greatness, could be a problem for Nvidia, but it’s one that’s been solved predominantly by the company’s astonishing stock surge. Nvidia leaping more than 1,800% over the last five years has been great news to say the least for its leather-jacket-loving CEO Jensen Huang, its suppliers, institutional shareholders, independent individual investors like Nancy Pelosi, and, of course, Nvidia employees.
With equity grants and employee stock purchase programs par for the course in Silicon Valley, it’s not hard to conclude that many of the workers that joined the high-flying chipmaker five or more years ago are probably millionaires today — assuming that they held on long enough to see the share price soar.
Last year, unsubstantiated reports that 76% of Nvidia employees were millionaires flooded social media. The true number is hard to guess, but the impact of Nvidia’s golden handcuffs are clear to see in its official turnover statistics. And while some employees may not enjoy the intense environment, the company’s low turnover suggests a workforce that’s more than happy to show up every day. The company’s 2024 Sustainability Report reveals that the company’s overall turnover rate was just 2.7% last year — a fraction of the semiconductor industry average of 17.7%.
Put another way:
Chances are that the low turnover rate won’t hold up forever. Some employees will presumably eventually decide that they have enough money to retire, and of course the stock could drop if the insatiable Big Tech capex orgy ever slows down or rivals build GPUs able to compete with Nvidia. But, for now, if you’re an Nvidia employee working seven days a week with a bunch of stock waiting to vest over the next few years, those golden handcuffs are still looking pretty tight.
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