Jensen Huang is not a CEO. Or at least it is not in the conventional sense. He doesn’t dress like one, he doesn’t talk like one, and he doesn’t act like one. He doesn’t need to appear serious, technical or sober to be taken seriously: just being him is enough. His figure is far from the calculated discretion of Tim Cook, the precision of Sundar Pichai, the nerdy style of Sam Altman or the false spontaneity of Mark Zuckerberg. Huang is not an engineer in a management position: he is a salesman on top of the world. And in that role he is more like Donald Trump than any other character in the corporate universe.
He is not rude nor does he share political ideas or speeches. It is similar in structure: both built their power from performance. Do you sell. And they both understand that promoting is not just about placing a product, but about creating a narrative, capturing attention, designing a scene where the focus is always on them.
Trump sold towers, universities, reality shows, candidacies and, finally, a presidency. Huang sells chips, but not chips as technical components, but rather chips as a national destiny, as a symbol of sovereignty, as a promise for the future. His strategy is to travel the world proclaiming that each country must have its own artificial intelligence, while offering them the key components to build it. He tells them that they must be autonomous while he sells them dependency. It tells them that they must stop being AI takers and become doers, but all paths to doing pass through Nvidia. It is a game of mirrors where freedom is offered wrapped in monopoly.
The style is unmistakable. Huang distributes investments like someone who distributes prizes on a television show. In London he announced, one by one and live, millions of pounds for British startups, in an event that crossed the border between marketing, diplomacy and entertainment. Public thanks, fake or real emotion, scheduled applause. Like Trump, Huang understands that perception is everything. That it’s not about what you say, but about what people feel when you say it. That the value is not in the figure, but in the act of delivering it in public, with emphasis, with first and last name, in front of the cameras.
The key to both is the theatricalization of abundance. It does not matter if the investments were already planned, if the projects will take years or if they are half-finished. What matters is the impression: the moment in which the seller looks at you and makes you feel that he is betting on you, that he chose you and that you are part of something big. That is the essence of the total sale: not the product, but the effect.
Huang, like Trump, also does not submit to the dress codes of power. He doesn’t wear a suit and tie or try to look like a banker or an academic. He moves around in a leather jacket, with black t-shirts, like someone who doesn’t have to ask permission. His authority does not come from protocol, but from magnetism. He is the leader who does not need to justify his leadership because he is already on center stage. And that scenario is not Silicon Valley: it is the entire world. In Dubai, London, Paris or Beijing. Huang is a symbol more than an executive.
Both appeal to the epic. Trump promises restoration of America’s greatness; Huang heralds giving power to countries so as not to be left out of the future. Both build urgencies: the fear of decline, of backwardness, of not getting on the train of progress in time. And both appear as the only possible answer.
Even their detractors validate them, because the more they are criticized, the more they are talked about. You can’t talk about the subject without talking about the character, and everything revolves around his figure. They themselves shape the discourse: with provocative phrases, with bold positions, with statements that are impossible to ignore. When Huang said China is “nanoseconds” away from catching up with the US in chips, it didn’t matter if it was true: what mattered was that it was being talked about.
Nvidia’s story is unique, yes. But what is truly unique is how Huang transformed a technical product into an emotional product. Nobody buys a GPU. What governments buy when they sign with Nvidia is the idea of being in the race. What they buy is the fear of being left behind and the hope of doing something to avoid it. Huang sells them relief and action, with a narrative where they also matter; just like Trump.
Trump sold the idea that ordinary people were back in control. Huang sells the idea that medium-sized countries once again have technological agency. Both capitalize on resentment against the technical or geopolitical elites that monopolize access, and offer access—with conditions, of course.
It’s not that Huang copies Trump with his rude style or his ideas. What they share is something else: a way of inhabiting power from the spectacle, from personalization and the absolute centrality of the “I.” And that way, in a world where attention is the scarcest currency, can be more effective than any strategic plan.
Huang does not need to be Trump: it is enough for him to occupy that symbolic place in the corporate world. That of the salesman who convinces, who bursts in and transforms each operation into a story, each meeting into a scene, with an announcement wrapped in epic. And he does it with a smile, with a black jacket and with a chip that says he is the future.
Things as they are
Mookie Tenembaum addresses international issues like this every week with Horacio Cabak on his podcast El Observador Internacional, available on Spotify, Apple, YouTube and all platforms.
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