Sid Pardeshi, a 32-year-old former Nvidia engineer, made the bold decision to leave the tech giant in 2022 to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams, a choice that cost him double-digit millions in unvested stock as Nvidia’s value skyrocketed during the AI boom. Working under CEO Jensen Huang for over six years profoundly shaped Pardeshi’s approach to building his own company.
Pardeshi joined Nvidia as an intern in 2016 through his university in India, where he studied electrical and electronics engineering. By 2018, he had risen to senior system software engineer at Nvidia’s Pune office. During quarterly all-hands meetings, Huang’s forward-thinking discussions about AI and virtual worlds captivated Pardeshi. When he had the opportunity to ask Huang for career advice, the CEO suggested focusing deeply on one area of expertise rather than spreading efforts across multiple interests. Pardeshi took this guidance seriously and specialized in AI as it related to gaming.
In 2022, at age 28, Pardeshi resigned from Nvidia and moved to Massachusetts with his family to pursue an MSc and MBA at Harvard. While studying, he worked as a Nvidia intern from May 2023 to April 2024, but declined a full-time offer to focus on his startup ambitions. In 2023, he co-founded Blitzy, a generative AI software platform that uses AI to significantly automate software development work for enterprises. The company has raised $4.4 million in funding.
Pardeshi’s resignation came just months before ChatGPT’s release in November 2022, which triggered an explosion in AI investment and Nvidia’s stock price. His unvested stock would now be worth millions, but he doesn’t regret the decision. “If my family has what they needs, working on cutting-edge stuff is more important to me than money,” he explained.
From Huang, Pardeshi learned crucial leadership lessons he now applies as Blitzy’s CTO. He observed how Huang valued all employees equally, once telling important clients to wait while he met with interns, calling them “the future of Nvidia.” Pardeshi now dedicates two hours daily to listening to team members and solving problems. He also learned to follow his convictions, even when investors doubted that AI was advanced enough to autonomously build software. Like Huang, who bet on CUDA in the 2000s when few saw its potential, Pardeshi trusted his deep AI knowledge gained from reading research papers weekly for years.
Pardeshi’s mission is ambitious: he wants Blitzy to follow Nvidia’s trajectory and become a trillion-dollar company. His wife put her career on hold to support his dreams, moving to the US on a dependent visa. Despite the financial sacrifice, Pardeshi believes the timing was crucial—if he hadn’t acted when he did, the opportunity would have passed.
Key Quotes
Let them wait. I’m talking to the future of Nvidia.
Jensen Huang said this when his assistant told him important clients were calling during a meeting with interns. This quote exemplifies Huang’s philosophy of valuing all employees regardless of rank, a leadership principle that Pardeshi now applies at his own startup by dedicating two hours daily to listening to team members.
I resigned months before ChatGPT was released, and I believe that choice cost me double-digit millions worth of unvested company stock.
Pardeshi reflects on the financial sacrifice of leaving Nvidia in 2022, just before the AI boom triggered by ChatGPT’s November 2022 launch sent Nvidia’s stock soaring. This illustrates the enormous opportunity cost some AI entrepreneurs are accepting to pursue their visions.
If my family has what they need, working on cutting-edge stuff is more important to me than money.
Pardeshi explains his priorities despite leaving millions on the table. This statement captures the passion driving many AI entrepreneurs who prioritize innovation and impact over financial security, even when the financial stakes are extraordinarily high.
When we first pitched to investors that we intended to use AI to build software autonomously, many didn’t believe AI was advanced enough yet.
Pardeshi describes the initial skepticism Blitzy faced when pitching their vision of AI-automated software development. His conviction, informed by years of reading AI research papers, mirrors Huang’s early bet on CUDA and demonstrates how deep technical knowledge enables entrepreneurs to see opportunities others miss.
Our Take
Pardeshi’s journey represents a fascinating case study in AI talent migration from established tech giants to startups. His willingness to sacrifice double-digit millions in Nvidia stock reveals the powerful pull of entrepreneurship in the AI era, where the potential to build transformative companies seems worth almost any financial risk.
What’s particularly noteworthy is the timing paradox: Pardeshi left just before ChatGPT catalyzed the AI boom, yet his early departure and Harvard education positioned him perfectly to capitalize on the moment with deep expertise already in place. This suggests that preparation and conviction matter more than perfect timing in the AI space.
The leadership lessons from Huang—especially around employee value, conviction-following, and healthy paranoia—are now being distributed throughout the AI ecosystem by former Nvidia employees. This cultural DNA transfer may prove as valuable as Nvidia’s technical contributions to AI. Blitzy’s focus on autonomous software development also signals where AI is heading: not just assisting developers, but potentially replacing significant portions of coding work, which will have profound implications for the tech workforce.
Why This Matters
This story illustrates the profound impact of AI leadership on the next generation of entrepreneurs and highlights the personal sacrifices being made in pursuit of AI innovation. Pardeshi’s decision to leave Nvidia just before the ChatGPT-driven AI boom demonstrates the risk-reward calculus facing tech professionals in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.
The article underscores how Jensen Huang’s leadership philosophy—valuing employees, following convictions, and maintaining paranoia about survival—is being replicated by former Nvidia talent now building the next wave of AI companies. This knowledge transfer from established AI giants to startups is crucial for understanding how the AI ecosystem is evolving.
Blitzy’s focus on using AI to automate software development represents a significant trend in the industry: AI tools that enhance or replace traditional coding work. This has major implications for the future of software engineering jobs and enterprise productivity. The fact that Blitzy raised $4.4 million despite initial investor skepticism shows growing confidence in autonomous AI coding capabilities.
Pardeshi’s story also reveals the human cost of the AI gold rush—talented engineers leaving secure, lucrative positions at companies like Nvidia, sacrificing millions in potential earnings, and uprooting families to chase entrepreneurial dreams in an uncertain market.
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Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/nvidia-employee-jensen-huang-leadership-lessons-2026-1