Vibe coding is becoming more and more mainstream, and it’s being actively encouraged in the most valuable company in the world.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang recently shared a perspective that challenges conventional thinking about software engineering. In remarks that underscore a fundamental shift happening across the tech industry, Huang articulated a vision where coding becomes secondary to problem-solving—where engineers spend less time writing code and more time discovering and solving challenges that drive innovation.
Speaking about NVIDIA’s adoption of AI-powered development tools, Huang revealed the company’s philosophy on what software engineering should actually be about. “We use Cursor pervasively here. Every engineer uses it,” Huang said. “The number of people we’re hiring today is just incredible. This is now the purpose and the task. The purpose of a software engineer is to solve known problems and to find new problems to solve. Coding is one of the tasks. And so if the purpose is not coding, if your purpose literally is coding, somebody tells you what to do, you code it, alright, maybe you’re gonna get replaced by the AI,” he added.
Huang went on to emphasize the abundance of challenges at NVIDIA that remain untapped. “But most of our software engineers and all of our software, their goal is to solve problems. And it turns out we have so many problems in the company and we have so many undiscovered problems. And so the more time they have to go explore undiscovered problems, the better off we are as a company. Nothing would give me more joy than if none of them are coding at all. They’re just solving problems. You see what I’m saying? And so I think that this framework of purpose versus task is really good for everybody to apply.” he said.
The implications of Huang’s comments extend far beyond NVIDIA. His distinction between “purpose” and “task” reframes the ongoing debate about AI’s role in software development. Rather than viewing AI coding assistants as a threat to engineering jobs, Huang positions them as tools that liberate engineers to focus on higher-value work—identifying problems worth solving and architecting solutions.
This perspective aligns with a broader trend across the industry. Linux creator Linus Torvalds has embraced AI-assisted coding with Google’s tools. Meanwhile, vibe coding startup Lovable became a unicorn just eight months after its founding, signaling strong market validation for this approach. Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis has stated that we are entering a new era of coding with natural language, while Google’s Logan Kilpatrick predicted that everyone will be able to vibe code video games by the end of 2025.
For NVIDIA, a company at the forefront of AI infrastructure powering this very revolution, Huang’s embrace of AI-assisted development isn’t just philosophical—it’s strategic. By removing coding as a bottleneck, NVIDIA can accelerate its pace of innovation in an industry where speed and creativity are paramount. The real question for other organizations may not be whether to adopt this approach, but how quickly they can make the transition.