Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says future enterprises will employ a ‘combination of humans and digital humans’ – but do people really want to work alongside agents? The answer is complicated.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang thinks future workforces will be made up of human and AI employees working in tandem, but this hybrid workforce could create challenges for enterprises.

Speaking during a recent interview at Citadel Securities’ 2025 Future of Global Markets conference, Huang pointed to recent advances in agentic AI – whereby autonomous agents conduct work on behalf of humans – as an indication that workforces will be fundamentally transformed.

This isn’t a case of firms building an array of autonomous workers, per se. Instead, these agents will essentially be akin to temps or agency staff that are brought in depending on their specific areas of “expertise”.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you license some and you hire some, depending on the quality and depending on the deep expertise,” he said. “So future workforces in enterprise(s) will be a combination of humans and digital humans.”

Naturally, these agents will be provided by some of the leading companies operating in the space, such as OpenAI, and also spanning a range of areas.

The Nvidia chief specifically highlighted providers such as Replit, Cursor, and Lovable – all of which offer AI tools for use in software development.

The rise of AI workforces

Huang is by no means the first big tech exec to predict a shift toward AI-augmented workforces in recent months.

Indeed, since the advent of the generative AI ‘boom’, industry stakeholders have touted the potential for enterprises to cut down on human staff and replace them with AI.

While warnings over a complete disintegration of human workforces in place of AI were widespread in late 2022 and early 2023, the prevailing sentiment among some tech execs now points toward Huang’s prediction – somewhat of a hybrid setup.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, for example, has been a highly vocal proponent of this idea. During an interview with Axios at the 2025 World Economic Forum, Benioff said current CEOs could be the last industry leaders to manage an all-human workforce as a result of AI agents.

“We are really moving into a world now of managing humans and agents together,” he told the publication.

Prepare to work alongside agents, but not for them

Predictions of a more collaborative human-machine workforce are gaining traction, with Microsoft’s Work Trend Index suggesting that workers will eventually be leading entire teams of agents.

Exactly how this relationship will work is still a point of contention, however. A recent survey from Workday found employees are warming to the use of AI agents at work – providing there are strict boundaries.

Three-quarters (75%) of respondents told Workday they’re comfortable working alongside agents, however, only 30% said they’d be comfortable being managed by one. The company noted that 12% were “not at all comfortable” at the prospect of being managed by an agent.

Huang pointed to the looming management-related quandaries facing enterprise leaders with this new workforce, suggesting the “hiring” process should still be viewed as the same as with humans.

“I tell my CIO, our company’s IT department [that] they’re going to be the HR department of agentic AI in the future,” he said. “They’re going to be the HR department of digital employees of the future”

“Those digital employees are going to work with our biological ones, and that’s going to be the shape of our company in the future.”

Nvidia appears to be putting its money where its mouth is on this front so far, with Huang revealing that in specific areas – such as cybersecurity – the company has more agents keeping watch than human staff.

"We home grow a lot of our AI's because we have a lot of proprietary knowledge and data that we want to protect, and we have skills in developing those AI's," he said.

In other domains such as software engineering and chip design, the company is also “augmenting” staff with AI, he added.

“At Nvidia today, 100% of our software engineers, 100% of our chip designers, every single engineer is augmented by Cursor,” Huang said.

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