Jensen Huang enters the Samsung salary controversy: "Workers should earn as much as possible"

Jensen Huang, in addition to being one of the most charismatic CEOs in the AI ​​industry, always clad in his black leather jacket, is also a great strategist in terms of human resources, applying that phrase attributed to Richard Branson, CEO of Virgin: "Take care of your employees and they will take care of your business."

According to Bloomberg, during his recent visit to the Computex fair in Taipei, Huang assured that "workers should be paid as much as possible. I pay my employees as much as I can." The NVIDIA CEO's statement comes in a context in which large semiconductor manufacturers, including those that make NVIDIA chips, are under enormous union pressure to share the benefits that the AI ​​boom is bringing them.

Samsung and the threat of strike that changed everything. The spark that ignited the debate was ignited in Samsung's memory division in South Korea. More than 40,000 workers gathered in front of its Pyeongtaek factory and threatened to stop Samsung's memory production if the company did not improve their salaries and add a bonus linked to the division's profits.

Samsung manufactures part of the HBM memory that powers AI servers around the world, so a stoppage in production would put the already critical situation of the memory market in serious trouble. The agreement came at the last minute and the company will distribute a bonus worth an average of 513 million won (about $340,000) among the 78,000 employees of its chip division.

The pressure came from the competition. Although union conflicts are not something new for Samsung, it is no coincidence that the manufacturer has just now given in to the workers' demands. Its direct rival in the manufacturing of memory semiconductors, SK Hynix, has been setting the salary pace in the sector for some time.

Last September, SK Hynix agreed with its employees to allocate 10% of annual operating profit to employee bonuses. With a record profit of 47.2 trillion won in 2025, the result was an average bonus of 2,964% of the monthly base salary. For an employee with a salary of 100 million won a year, that means collecting a bonus of more than 148 million extra won at a time.

The reaction was immediate, more than 200 Samsung engineers left for SK Hynix in the following four months. Turning the making of memories into a fight to retain your best talent.

TSMC is also moving. The battle for talent on memory chip production lines did not stop in Korea. The contagion reached Taiwan, where TSMC, which manufactures practically all the advanced chips on the planet, has not stood still either. As reported by Bloomberg, as soon as rumors began to circulate in internal forums about the possible reduction of bonuses, the CEO of TSMC called a meeting in which he announced that his profit bonuses were going to increase by more than 30% this year.

The semiconductor industry is at a time of such high demand for AI chips that companies that depend on scarce skilled talent cannot afford to lose them. TSMC has already allocated about 103 billion Taiwan dollars to its incentive program in 2025, 46.6% more than the previous year. This year they have no choice but to dig deep into their pockets again to pay their employees' bonuses if they want to retain them.

NVIDIA employees are already millionaires. Of course, if there is anyone in the AI ​​industry who can make such statements about employee compensation, it is Huang. Nvidia has been doing what its CEO preaches for years.

After NVIDIA's stock plummeted 80% in 2008, Huang launched an employee stock purchase plan at a 15% discount. Whoever participated when the stock was low and maintained it, is now simply a millionaire.

Nearly 50% of NVIDIA employees today have a net worth of more than $25 million. "I review the compensation of all employees to this day. I review the 42,000 and 100% of the time I increase the expense," Huang said in an All-In Podcast. "If you take care of people, the rest takes care of itself."

Image | NVIDIA