Jensen Huang tells CEOs 'don't leave' California — Nvidia CEO says he's fine paying the ‘highest taxes in the world'

• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang tells tech CEOs to stay in California
• Recent legislation could tax high earners 5%
• Huang also reassures on fears AI will take human jobs

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has called on his fellow company leaders to stay in California, despite recent proposals to raise taxes on the state’s wealthiest residents.

Speaking at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Huang explained why the state was such a great place to live, noting, “I say to everybody, ‘Move to California, don’t leave.’ It’s the highest taxes in the world, but it’s okay.”

This is despite recent legislation being proposed in the state which would heavily tax billionaires as part of widely called-for laws to even the wealth gap in the US.

Pay up, Huang tells CEOs

Huang was speaking to Democratic California Congressman Ro Khanna, who along with Senator Bernie Sanders, recently introduced the “Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act.”

This bill looks to establish a 5% annual wealth tax on the more than 1,000 US-based billionaires, including several tech CEOs, leading to an exodus in California. Among those leaving were Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who relocated to Nevada, and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, to Florida.

Huang was recently named the eighth wealthiest person in the world, with Bloomberg estimating his net worth around $167 billion. This means the new bill would cost him around $8 billion, but for now at least, it's a price Huang seems willing to pay.

In January 2026, he told Bloomberg he was “perfectly fine” paying a tax on billionaires, noting, “I haven’t thought about it even once...We work in Silicon Valley because that’s where the talent pool is. We have offices all over the world. Wherever there’s talent, we have an office.”

“We chose to live in Silicon Valley, and whatever taxes they would like to apply, so be it.”

Huang and Khanna also spoke about the role of AI taking jobs from humans, a theme the CEO has covered extensively in recent years.

“I think the narratives of AI destroying jobs is not going to help America,” Huang said. “First of all, it’s just false. Of course, with every technology, and every single day that goes by, jobs of the past are changed.”

“The purpose of your job and the tasks that you do in your job are related but not the same,” he added. “Using myself as an example, if they were the same, then somebody would observe that what Jensen does really for a living is typing and talking. And typing and talking have both been automated to a superhuman level by AI. And yet I’m busier than ever."

Via Fortune

U.S. Leadership in AI with Jensen Huang, Founder and CEO of NVIDIA, and Congressman Ro Khanna - YouTube

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