What happens when you tell Jensen Huang you're quitting Nvidia

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

Chris Jung/NurPhoto via Getty Images CEO Jensen Huang doesn't sugarcoat advice to Nvidia employees who quit.

He critiqued one startup's name and told another founder his biggest weakness could hold him back.

Founders said the tough love stuck — and they acted on his advice.

As they were preparing to leave Nvidia, David Hoeller and Nikita Rudin anxiously hopped on a late-night call with their CEO.

The two had spent years working on robotics at the chip giant, pushing the boundaries of simulation and helping pull off a demo in which CEO Jensen Huang took the stage with a coterie of humanoids.

The pair wanted more freedom to bring that technology into the real world and left in 2024 to found Flexion Robotics, a startup building robot intelligence .

As they dialed in from a conference in Munich, Huang didn't try to talk them out of leaving, though he did have one problem with their startup: its intended name, Checkpoint.

"He told us that the name was bad, and that we had to change it," Rudin said, adding that they'd heard from others that the name sounded like it belonged in a different industry.

"I don't want to give him all the credit, but we probably changed it because of his comment." Huang also warned them about the long road ahead.

"His message was, 'We don't realize how tough a journey it's going to be,'" Rudin said.

Flexion's experience offers a glimpse into how Huang counsels some departing founders: with encouragement and little sugarcoating.

That directness extends through Nvidia's culture, where Huang is known for cutting through management layers and personally weighing in on everything from employee output to customer complaints .

Flexion Robotics' David Hoeller and Nikita Rudin.