The chipmaker fueling the AI boom, led by CEO Jensen Huang, is the most valuable company in the world by market cap, towering above other tech giants like Google, Apple, and Amazon. But that doesn’t mean the company is giving away free lunch.

Gergely Orosz, a software engineer and author of The Pragmatic Engineer newsletter, highlighted Nvidia’s food policies in a June thread on X after a visit to the company’s Santa Clara, Calif., headquarters.

“Snacks and coffee are not free: You have to pay for them. This would be unusual at Big Tech, but no big deal for devs here,” Orosz wrote in a post. 

Former employees who spoke to Business Insider clarified the company’s cafeteria meals are subsidized, not free. While coffee is generally free, employees must pay for some bottled drinks and drinks from on-site cafés. 

The company’s food policies have reportedly been around for more than a decade. A blog by a former intern who worked at Nvidia in 2014 shows even then the food at Nvidia was subsidized, not free, and averaged about $6, or about $8.50 today. Some food options in 2014 included chicken and pasta, chicken and rice, fish and chips, and sandwiches.

Nvidia did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

It’s unclear exactly what’s on the menu today, but posts on Instagram and TikTok show items like bagels, sushi, açai bowls, sandwiches, and omelettes. Other options include butter chicken, ramen, pizza, and a full salad bar.

@nguyen_we_eatin Ever wondered what meals at a tech HQ look like? @nvidia doesn’t have free, buffet style dining like other companies, but I am really happy with the subsidized food services they provide. I have also found that taking home a second meal for dinner saves me time and money – so I can go eat some more on the weekends! The salad bar 🥗 is absolutely stand out in my opinion; the ingredients and quality you receive for the cost is nothing short of incredible. Some of my other favorite meals so far have been a weekly special Chicken Tikka pizza 🍕 , the brisket platter 🍖 , and the cheesy garlic bread steak sandwich 🧀 🍞 . Which meal would you choose? #tech #cafeteria #cafeteriafood #bayareafood #nvidia #engineer #lunch #officefood #siliconvalley ♬ Taste It – TELL YOUR STORY music by Ikson™

A job posting shared by Nvidia’s head of culinary operations Jacob Anaya read: “you won’t find our managers referring to a corporate recipe book or our chefs microwaving the lunch special. We do not have standardized recipes or central commissaries, instead, our chefs and managers are expected to stay abreast of current culinary trends and bring cutting edge food into their cafes.”

No free lunch

Nvidia’s food policy stands apart from other tech companies of its size. The most notable among them is Google, which helped kick off the trend of lavish employee perks that for years have defined tech workplaces. Unlike Nvidia, Google provides free breakfast, lunch, and dinner at cafeterias across its offices. Its Googleplex headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., reportedly has about 30 locations for employees to grab a bite to eat. 

Yet at Google, the food is secondary to the connections that come from communion, according to Ruth Porat, the chief investment officer of Google and parent company Alphabet. She said its stocked “micro-kitchens” filled with treats and snacks are located throughout the office to help connect employees from different departments who wouldn’t otherwise speak regularly.

“Serendipity is really valuable, and so having people come for meals is one way you get people from all around the company working on different things, all of a sudden comparing ideas,” Porat said during an interview from June.

Nvidia, for its part, is more focused on giving employees better work-life balance through a hybrid work program and no return-to-office mandate than it is on giving them free food, HR director Febe Punsalan previously told Fortune.

The company’s approach also reflects its founder’s philosophy.

Huang cofounded Nvidia in 1993 and has transformed it from a fledgling video game chipmaker to the engine behind the AI revolution. The CEO works seven days a week and has previously said he is fueled to work so hard by the fear Nvidia could go out of business, even after it has become the most valuable company on the planet.

“You know the phrase ‘30 days from going out of business,’ I’ve used for 33 years,” Huang said in an interview with podcast host Joe Rogan last year. “But the feeling doesn’t change. The sense of vulnerability, the sense of uncertainty, the sense of insecurity—it doesn’t leave you.”

Huang’s dedication to the grind also reflects his advice to young people. In an address to Stanford students in 2024, he said: “I wish upon you ample doses of pain and suffering.” He argued being uncomfortable often leads to the best results.

The era of unlimited free food in Silicon Valley may be nearing its end. In 2024 Meta fired two dozen employees it said were abusing the vouchers. Twitter, now X, was once famous for its gourmet cafeteria with a new menu every day, but many food options were cut back after Elon Musk bought the company in 2022.

Still, it’s hard to argue with Nvidia’s approach.

While other companies have spent millions to keep employees fed, Nvidia has offered its employees a different, but lucrative, perk: the chance to buy company stock at discounted prices.

With the stock rising more than 1,000% in the past five years, its safe to say employees who have held on to their stock have secured much more value from Nvidia than a free lunch.

A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on July 1, 2026.

“There are basically two ways to know you have a future,” the 59-year-old billionaire said on TBPN in March. “One, you have some vocational training. Or two, you’re neurodivergent.”

Karp’s first category reflects a growing consensus: Skilled trades professionals—from electricians to plumbers—are difficult to automate and are increasingly in demand as Big Tech companies build out massive data centers and the U.S. faces existing labor shortages.

The second category is more personal. Karp has long spoken about living with dyslexia, the learning disability that can affect reading, writing, and information processing. More broadly, neurodivergence can include conditions such as ADHD and autism. 

For Karp, that cognitive difference can be an advantage in an AI-driven world—less because of the diagnosis itself and more because of the mindset it can foster. Success, he argued, will favor people who think differently and take risks, or in his words, be “more of an artist, look at things from a different direction, be able to build something unique.”

One-fifth of sales organizations within Fortune 500 companies are expected to actively recruit neurodivergent talent to improve business performance by 2027, according to a Gartner study.

As Alex Karp warns AI will wipe out jobs, Palantir is betting on neurodivergent talent and high school grads

While being neurodivergent is not a requirement to land a job at Palantir, the company has made it clear it sees such candidates as a strategic advantage. 

It offers a dedicated “Neurodivergent Fellowship,” aimed at recruiting talent that may think differently from traditional hires.

“Neurodivergent individuals will play a disproportionate role in shaping the future of America and the West,” the job posting stated. “They see past performative ideologies and perceive beauty in the world that still exists—which technology and art can expose.”

The emphasis reflects Karp’s broader skepticism of traditional career pathways. Despite holding three degrees to his name—including a JD from Stanford and a PhD in philosophy from Goethe University in Germany—Karp has been blunt about the limits of higher education in an AI-driven economy. 

“[AI] will destroy humanities jobs,” Karp said at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland in early 2026. “You went to an elite school, and you studied philosophy—I’ll use myself as an example—hopefully, you have some other skill, that one is going to be hard to market.”

Palantir has also launched a separate program—the Meritocracy Fellowship—designed specifically for high school graduates not enrolled in college. The program’s first cohort required Ivy League-level test scores to qualify, and attracted over 500 applicants. The 22 admitted students were a mix of those who felt attending college wasn’t compelling, or didn’t get into their dream schools, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The fellowship’s fall 2026 cohort offered participants $5,400 a month as a stipend and pitched itself with a clear message: “Skip the debt. Reclaim years of your life. Earn the Palantir degree.” Top performers can even receive full-time offers at the company.

Entry-level roles for Gen Z are drying—but not everyone has given up on college

As traditional entry-level roles dry up for Gen Z graduates, many young people are coming to a similar conclusion as Karp: a college degree alone is no longer a guaranteed path to success.

Still, some tech leaders argue that higher education is far from obsolete—and that liberal arts in particular may become more valuable in the age of AI. Jaime Teevan, Microsoft’s chief scientist, believes the next generation will benefit from studying disciplines that emphasize how to think, not just what to do.

“Metacognitive skills will be very important—flexibility, adaptability, experimentation, thinking critically, being able to challenge things. Developing critical-thinking skills requires friction, doing things that are hard, doing deep thinking,” she told the Wall Street Journal. “For that, a traditional liberal-arts education is really important.”

In direct contrast to Karp, Daniela Amodei, cofounder of AI firm Anthropic, said studying the humanities will be “more important than ever.”

“The things that make us human will become much more important instead of much less important,” she told ABC News in February. “And what I mean by that is when we look to hire people at Anthropic today, we look for people who are great communicators, who have excellent EQ and people skills, who are kind and compassionate and curious and want to help other people.”

A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on March 24, 2026.

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