The CEO behind 'Grand Theft Auto' doesn't drink, smoke, or play video games

Strauss Zelnick avoids vice. His company makes billions selling it.

The longtime CEO and chairman of Take-Two Interactive Software is the straight-laced leader behind one of the bestselling and most violent entertainment properties of all time, "Grand Theft Auto."

In the gritty crime-drama series, which is set to reemerge this fall with its first new installment in 13 years, players engage in gun fights, bank heists, drug trafficking, and sex with prostitutes. Zelnick, who's in charge of ensuring "GTA VI" lives up to its world-historic hype, is a family man, philanthropist, and workout buff. He says he doesn't drink, smoke, or own a gun, and he's never gotten so much as a speeding ticket.

"I train most days, sometimes twice a day," the 68-year-old tells me in a wide-ranging interview at Take-Two's Manhattan headquarters. "I'm as much into fitness as I've ever been."

The head of one of the world's largest video-game makers doesn't even play video games, a point he sometimes mentions during his frequent appearances on CNBC programs like "Squawk Box" and "Closing Bell."

"I don't think being consumer-in-chief really helps a CEO be effective in this business," he tells me. He does watch others play. "I see the whole thing. I'm just not the one holding the controller."

The stakes for "GTA VI" are among the highest for any product release this decade. Cinematic, narrative games of its size and caliber cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make, far more than most Hollywood movies, and sell for around $70 to $80 a pop.

Zelnick won't say how much Take-Two has spent on "GTA VI" other than that "it was expensive." Several industry analysts told me the tab is likely in the $1 billion to $1.5 billion range. They also expect the game to surpass the current price ceiling for a Triple-A title, with one predicting it could reach three digits.

The fifth edition of the GTA franchise, which has sold more than 225 million copies worldwide, surpassed $1 billion in sales within the first three days of its release in 2013. It was a record by a long shot at the time and still is today, says veteran game-industry analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities.

In the years since, global consumer spending on video-game software and hardware has more than tripled to $250 billion, according to analytics firm Aldora Intelligence. But the world has also changed, raising questions about whether the GTA franchise can capture a new generation of players and lure back older fans who've drifted away. Consumers are now facing higher prices for gas, healthcare, and game consoles. Sony even raised the price of its nearly six-year-old PlayStation 5 by about $100 last month.

The tension surrounding "GTA VI" isn't just economic. It's also technological.

Take-Two's nearly 13,000 employees are encouraged to use AI tools such as Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini. Zelnick says AI is already taking on some low-value, time-consuming tasks, freeing staff to focus on more meaningful work.

"AI will vastly increase efficiency and productivity and give us an opportunity to enhance quality," he says.

Still, Zelnick is skeptical that those gains will translate into cheaper or faster-made blockbuster games. The new tools tend to fuel bigger ambitions rather than reduce production demands, he says.

"Everyone understands this creates more work, not less work," he says. "When you make certain things easier, your appetite gets greater."

Not every video-game player or employee has as rosy an outlook on AI as the CEO. A 2025 survey by gaming analytics firm Quantic Foundry found that 85% of players held a negative view of generative AI, especially when it's used for creative elements such as art and storytelling. Among industry professionals, more than half now say generative AI is having a negative impact on the sector, a sharp shift from just a few years ago, according to a January study jointly conducted by the GDC Festival of Gaming, research firm Omdia, and the media outlet Game Developer.

Zelnick says Take-Two's employees largely don't share that skepticism, and that they haven't pushed back against AI at the company's townhall-style meetings. While the company hasn't formally polled staff, he says an employee in Europe recently asked why the technology isn't more accessible, as it wasn't initially deployed across all of Take-Two's several dozen offices worldwide.

"We're a forward-thinking company," he says. "Most people think technology is a good thing in the video-game business."

Investors, however, have been skittish. After Google released its AI game-making tool Genie 3 to the public in January, shares of Take-Two and several other video-game companies tumbled. In a recent research note, Morgan Stanley analyst Matthew Cost wrote that Genie 3 highlights how AI tools could lower barriers to game creation "and potentially compete with current video game producers." Take-Two's stock is down roughly 11% year to date.

Zelnick dismisses those concerns.

"Tools that enable us to make great assets have always been available to our competitors," he says. "Why is it that we're making hits and others are not?"

Zelnick also notes that players have been able to make their own version of "Grand Theft Auto" and other professionally made games for decades by engaging in what's known as modding. While some of these so-called mods draw thousands of players, they don't pose a threat to Take-Two, as it has a financial stake in that ecosystem. The company acquired one of the largest GTA modding platforms, FiveM, in 2023 for an undisclosed sum.

"The way we looked at it is, wow, there are hundreds of thousands of people out there who like to engage with GTA in this way," Zelnick says. "How about if instead of trying to beat them, we join them?"

While the company has released "GTA V" expansion packs and fans have produced mods of the game over the years, some employees in the company's Rockstar Games studio have been working for more than a decade on "GTA VI." Amid that sprawling production cycle, Zelnick says morale has remained healthy.

"It's Rockstar leadership that engages people in this extraordinary mission to create something perfect," he says. "I think people are bought into that."

Delaying a game's launch is sometimes necessary, since so-called crunch — a legacy industry term for an intense, overtime-heavy push to finish a product to meet a deadline — isn't part of how Take-Two operates today, says Zelnick. "GTA VI" was originally due out in the fall of 2025, then May 2026, and now it's slated for release on November 19.

"It's sort of like when I was in college. I never pulled an all-nighter because I was good about doing my homework," Zelnick says. "You do your homework, you don't pull an all-nighter."

A Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School graduate, Zelnick has been entrepreneurial since he was a teenager. His first gigs included babysitting, teaching guitar, and being a birthday-party clown.

He came to Take-Two in 2007 after serving as president and CEO of BMG Entertainment, and before that as CEO of video-game company Crystal Dynamics, and president and operating chief of Twentieth Century Fox. He rallied shareholders to take over Take-Two's board and rebuild the company, which at the time traded around $14 a share. He says he was drawn to it by his long-standing belief in the growth potential of interactive entertainment. Today, Take-Two trades at more than $225 a share, has a nearly $40 billion market cap, and generates around $6.5 billion in annual net bookings.

Zelnick, who also helms ZMC, a private-equity firm he founded in 2001, says he doesn't ever want to retire. He has no plans, though, to take part in the longevity drug trend that some of his tech-industry peers have embraced in recent years.

"I pay a lot of attention to it because I find it interesting, but I'm really allergic to bro science," he says. "I'm really allergic to putting things into your body that are not double-blind tested, proven safe and effective, and approved by the FDA."

Even with Take-Two's record of hit franchises beyond "Grand Theft Auto" — including "NBA2K," "Red Dead Redemption," and "Borderlands" for consoles and PCs, and mobile games like "Words With Friends" and "Monster Legends" — Zelnick doesn't take past wins for granted. The focus, he says, is always forward.

"Arrogance is the enemy of continued success."

Sarah E. Needleman is Business Insider's leadership & workplace correspondent.