How Mercedes-Benz S-Class became Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s biggest regret

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has opened up about his biggest financial regret, tracing back to the company’s early days when its market value was only a tiny fraction of what it has become today.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Huang recalled wanting to make his parents happy and selling a portion of his Nvidia shares shortly after the company’s IPO to buy them a luxury Mercedes-Benz S-Class. At the time, Nvidia’s market capitalisation sat at around US$300 million, a far cry from its current valuation, which has surged into the trillions amid the global AI boom.

The ‘most expensive car in the world’

Add Zee Business as a Preferred Source

“My only regret was after the IPO, I wanted to buy my parents something nice,” Huang said. “So I sold Nvidia stock when the company was valued at US$300 million and bought them a Mercedes S-Class. It is the most expensive car in the world. They regret it. They still have it.”

Nvidia listed in 1999, the same year Mercedes-Benz launched a new generation of the S-Class, with prices starting at about US$78,000. While the exact number of shares Huang sold isn’t known, estimates suggest that if he offloaded around US$70,000 worth of Nvidia stock back then, that holding would now be worth roughly US$1 billion.

Nvidia shares have risen more than 450,000 per cent since the company listed and currently trade at around US$183. Meanwhile, a used Mercedes-Benz S-Class from the same era can now be picked up for as little as US$4,000. Despite the eye-watering missed opportunity, Huang appeared unfazed, laughing off the mistake. He pointed out that Nvidia now sits at the centre of what he describes as a global technological revolution.

Also Read: What did Jensen Huang say about China H200 chip demand and Mercedes AI car plans?

The company not only supplies the hardware powering artificial intelligence but also the software frameworks behind it, including CUDA, open-source large language models like Nemotron, and a growing suite of AI technologies. Huang said this ecosystem has driven the company’s explosive valuation and dismissed fears of an AI bubble.

Huang on AI: ‘A five-layer cake’

At a packed Davos session, Huang described artificial intelligence as the foundation of “the largest infrastructure buildout in human history,” creating jobs across the global economy.

He explained AI is not a single technology but a “five-layer cake” including energy, chips and computing infrastructure, cloud data centres, AI models, and the application layer. Every layer, he said, must be built and operated, driving demand for skilled labor across sectors from energy and construction to cloud operations and advanced manufacturing. "This layer on top, ultimately, is where economic benefit will happen,” Huang said, highlighting AI’s potential to reshape industries and job markets worldwide.

Also Read: Embrace AI, Don't Fight It: 5 things Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang wants Gen Z to know..

Huang also emphasised the role of cloud computing and advancements in specific AI models in Nvidia’s rapid growth. He pointed to the progress made by Anthropic in developing Claude as a major milestone for the industry and noted that Nvidia uses the tool internally for coding and reasoning tasks. Huang described Claude as “incredible” and praised its coding and reasoning capabilities, saying that the company relies on it extensively across its operations.