Ranked: America’s Smartest CEOs According to Linguistic Analysis

America’s Smartest CEOs According to Linguistic Analysis

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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.

1. 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.
2. Startup at Denny’s: Nvidia was founded in 1993 during a breakfast meeting at a Denny’s in San Jose.
3. Intense Work Ethic: Huang works 14-hour days, manages 60+ direct reports, and prefers fast-paced, transparent group meetings.
4. Family in Tech: He’s related to Lisa Su, the CEO of AMD—making them rivals and relatives in the chip world.
5. 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.