Jensen Huang Spent 2 Hours Trying to Keep Bing Xu at Nvidia Before INT21 Exit

Q: Why did Nvidia's CEO brutally critique a departing founder's startup name only to invest millions in the company later?

Huang’s harsh critique and Nvidia’s later investment are not contradictory. They reflect his management style: blunt on weak details, supportive of strong businesses. When David Hoeller and Nikita Rudin told Jensen Huang they were leaving Nvidia to launch a robotics startup called Checkpoint, he did not try to stop them. He simply thought the name was poor and said so. The founders later changed it to Flexion Robotics, and by their own account, Huang’s comment helped push that decision. The criticism was about branding, not the underlying company or team. Nvidia later invested because Flexion’s business fit closely with Nvidia’s robotics agenda. The startup is building software to train robots in simulation and transfer those skills into real-world deployment, using Nvidia tools such as Isaac Sim and Isaac Lab. That aligns directly with Nvidia’s broader push into “physical AI,” digital twins, robot learning, and humanoid systems. The founders were also former Nvidia robotics developers with deep technical credibility. Flexion went on to raise more than $57 million, expand from Zurich into San Francisco, and demonstrate progress in sim-to-real robotics, an area Nvidia sees as strategically important. So Huang’s response was consistent: he gave unfiltered feedback on something he viewed as weak, while still backing a company he believed had strong technology, capable founders, and strategic value to Nvidia’s ecosystem.

3 articles · Updated · The News International · Sep 13

Bing Xu resigned from Nvidia this year to launch INT21, an AI chip software startup, despite a two-hour effort by Jensen Huang and other executives to persuade him to stay.
Huang used the meeting to give Xu unusually direct feedback, telling him his biggest weakness was communication because he assumed others already knew the background.
Xu was also dealing with high blood pressure, and Huang urged him to take time off and rest instead of rushing straight into a new venture.
The account contrasts with other Nvidia founder exits: Flexion Robotics' founders said Huang accepted their departure in 2024 but pushed them to drop the original name Checkpoint; Nvidia later invested in the startup, which has raised more than $57 million.