Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang stated on Lex Fridman’s podcast on Monday, March 23, 2026, that he believes “we have achieved AGI”, asserting that Artificial General Intelligence has been reached. He based this claim on a specific interpretation of AGI, an AI system capable of starting, growing, and running a successful tech company worth over $1 billion, without needing to sustain it indefinitely. Meanwhile, NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA) closed at $175.64, up $2.71 (+1.57%) at 4:00 PM GMT-4.
AI-Run Companies: A Possibility?
AGI, or artificial general intelligence, typically denotes AI that is equal to or surpasses human intelligence. It is a vaguely defined term that has appeared a lot in discussions of tech CEOs, tech workers, and the general public in recent years. As the sector’s leading firms burn up to meet energy costs and investor expectations that grow harder to meet by the quarter, human-level machine intelligence will become handy.
Jensen Huang stated that fully fledged companies can be run by AI. While Huang affirmed the milestone, he quickly added a significant caveat (Source: Podcast transcript).
“The odds of 100,000 of those agents building Nvidia is zero percent”
He cited the viral success of the open-source AI agent platform OpenClaw as evidence, suggesting that AI can create short-lived, high-impact apps that go viral, which is similar to dot-com era startups.
Huang pointed out that it is not likely to maintain long-term success or scale to build complex, enduring organizations. He also said that a lot of people have been using it for a couple of months and have witnessed it pass away.
However, Nvidia has launched its own version of the OpenClaw, which is named the NemoClaw. It is developed in coordination with OpenClaw’s creator, Peter Steinberger, who recently joined OpenAI.
Differing Views Among Tech Leaders
The timing of Huang’s statement can not be more significant, as Nvidia has become the indispensable backbone of the AI boom, with its GPUs that power everything from OpenAI’s ChatGPT to Google’s Gemini. Though the broader AGI goal of the industry remains unfinished so far, last month, Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, pointed out that the current AI models lack the crucial abilities like continual learning and long-term planning. He also suggested that AGI could be on the horizon within five to eight years, but it will require a breakthrough.
In the meantime, these opinions contrast with those of other tech leaders like Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO of Microsoft, who have been more cautious or dismissive of the current AGI claims. The remark has sparked debate, highlighting the vague and contested definition of AGI, and underscores how Nvidia’s leadership is framing AI progress around practical deployment and agent autonomy rather than a theoretical benchmark.
The reason for the mixed opinion, difficulty in pinning down a timeline for its creation and widespread use, is indeed the vague definition of AGI itself. As the high-level AGI is expected to be able to do things that humans do, like run organizations or make strategic decisions, this has led critics to raise concerns over the benchmark’s possible harms to public health, human jobs, and more.
A Voice That Matters
Despite the dilemma, the tech billionaire Elon Musk, who runs xAI, has set a more specific target for achieving AGI. It is reported recently that Musk told the staff in his company that they could reach AGI within two years, or potentially as early as this year. However, Huang’s statements have sparked the broader AI community, and in the coming days, the sector will be decoding what exactly Huang meant. The immediate impact is that the discussion surrounding AGI is not going away, no matter how many companies try to rebrand it. Furthermore, with Nvidia controlling the hardware that makes modern AI possible, Huang’s perspective carries significant weight that can not be easily erased.
