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America’s Smartest CEOs According to Linguistic Analysis
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Key Takeaways
- Preply analyzed dialogue from over 100 American CEOs to score their intelligence
- NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang scored the highest in this ranking, followed by Lockheed Martin’s Jim Taiclet and DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis
How smart are America’s top CEOs?
A recent study published in Frontiers in Psychology found that individuals who use more complex sentence structures tend to perform better in uncertain decision-making scenarios—suggesting a link between linguistic sophistication and cognitive ability.
In this infographic, we rank the 15 smartest CEOs in the U.S., based on linguistic analysis conducted by Preply.
Data & Methodology
Preply’s ranking of America’s smartest CEOs is based on a linguistic analysis of executive speeches and interviews. They started with the CEOs of the 100 largest companies by market capitalization, and included an additional 26 executives (e.g. OpenAI’s Sam Altman). An average of 2.25 hours of speech was analyzed per executive.
The researchers assessed several cognitive and communication traits, including verbal ability, abstract and conceptual thinking, creativity, memory and recall, and logical reasoning.
Using these criteria, they scored each CEO on how effectively and intelligently they express complex ideas. The study aimed to capture not just intellect, but the clarity and depth of thought behind each leader’s words.
| Rank | Name | Company | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jensen Huang | NVIDIA | 81.3 |
| 2 | Jim Taiclet | Lockheed Martin | 80.9 |
| 3 | Demis Hassabis | DeepMind | 80.8 |
| 4 | Vincent Roche | Analog Devices | 80.6 |
| 5 | Matt Murphy | Marvell Technology Group | 78.4 |
| 6 | Reed Hastings | Netflix | 77.3 |
| 7 | Joseph Dominguez | Constellation Energy | 76.7 |
| 8 | Stephen Schwarzman | Blackstone Group | 76.4 |
| 9 | Robert Ford | Abbott Laboratories | 76.1 |
| 10 | Marc Andreessen | Andreessen Horowitz | 75.5 |
| 11 | Patrick Collison | Stripe | 75.4 |
| 12 | Sam Altman | OpenAI | 75.2 |
| 12 | Shantanu Narayen | Adobe | 75.2 |
| 14 | Robert Bradway | Amgen | 74.4 |
| 15 | Jamie Dimon | JPMorgan Chase | 74.3 |
Five Facts About Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia
Here are five interesting facts about Jensen Huang, the smartest CEO in America according to Preply.
- Immigrant Roots: Born in Taiwan and raised in Thailand, Huang moved to the U.S. at age 9 and attended a Kentucky reform school by mistake. He went on to earn degrees from Oregon State and Stanford.
- Startup at Denny’s: Nvidia was founded in 1993 during a breakfast meeting at a Denny’s in San Jose.
- Intense Work Ethic: Huang works 14-hour days, manages 60+ direct reports, and prefers fast-paced, transparent group meetings.
- Family in Tech: He’s related to Lisa Su, the CEO of AMD—making them rivals and relatives in the chip world.
- Education Philanthropy: Huang has donated millions to Stanford and Oregon State to fund engineering and AI research.
Learn More on the Voronoi App
If you want to learn more about Nvidia, check out this graphic breaking down its revenues by product segment.