Born toTaiwanese American immigrants, Huang spent his childhood in Taiwan and Thailand before moving to the United States, where he was a student inKentucky andOregon. After earning his master's degree fromStanford University, Huang launched Nvidia in 1993 from a localDenny's restaurant at age 30 and has remained president and CEO since its founding. He led the company out of near-bankruptcy during the 1990s and oversaw its expansion intoGPU production,high-performance computing, andartificial intelligence (AI).
Under Huang, Nvidia experienced rapid growth during theAI boom, becoming the first company to reach amarket capitalization of over $5 trillion in October 2025.[4] In 2021 and 2024,Time magazine included Huang in theirTime 100 list of the most influential people. In 2025, he was named as one of the "Architects of AI" forTime'sPerson of the Year.
Huang was born inTaipei,Taiwan, on February 17, 1963,[5] and moved to the southern city ofTainan as a child.[6] He is the younger of two sons of Huang Hsing-tai, achemical engineer at anoil refinery, and Lo Tsai-hsiu, a schoolteacher.[7] They were a middle-class Taiwanese family that relocated often,[8] and were native speakers ofTaiwanese Hokkien.[9] Each day, Jensen's mother randomly selected 10 words from the dictionary to teach her sons English.[10] When he was five years old, Huang's family moved to Thailand to support his father's refinery career and remained there for approximately four years.[6][11] He attendedRuamrudee International School while in Bangkok.[12]
In the late 1960s, Hsing-tai traveled from Taiwan to New York City to train under anair conditioning company and, after returning home, resolved to send his sons to the United States.[13] At age nine, Jensen, despite not being able to speak English, was sent by his parents to live in the United States.[14] He and his older brother moved in 1973 to live with an uncle inTacoma, Washington, escaping widespreadsocial unrest in Thailand.[15] Both Huang's aunt and uncle were recent immigrants to Washington state; they accidentally enrolled him and his brother in theOneida Baptist Institute, a religious reform academy inKentucky for troubled youth,[15] mistakenly believing it to be a prestigious boarding school.[16] In order to afford the academy's tuition, Jensen's parents sold nearly all their possessions.[17]
When he was 10 years old, Huang lived with his older brother in the Oneida boys' dormitory.[16] Each student was expected to work every day, and his brother was assigned to perform manual labor on a nearbytobacco farm.[17] Because he was too young to attend classes at the reform academy, Huang was educated at a separate public school—the Oneida Elementary school inOneida, Kentucky—arriving as "an undersized Asian immigrant with long hair and heavily accented English"[16] and was frequently bullied and beaten.[18] In Oneida, Huang cleaned toilets every day, learned to playtable-tennis,[b] joined the swimming team,[20] and appeared inSports Illustrated at age 14.[21] He taught his illiterate roommate, a "17-year-old covered in tattoos and knife scars,"[21] how to read in exchange for being taught how tobench press.[16] In 2002, Huang recalled that he remembered his life in Kentucky "more vividly than just about any other".[21]
Two years after Huang arrived in Oneida, his parents moved to the United States and settled inBeaverton, Oregon, where the brothers withdrew from school in Kentucky to live back with them.[22] As a teenager, Huang attendedAloha High School inAloha, Oregon,[23] where he excelled academically. Heskipped two grades, graduated at age 16, and became a nationally ranked table-tennis player in addition to being a member of its mathematics, computer, and science clubs.[16] In 1977, the school purchased anApple II computer. Huang used the machine to play Super Star Trek, a text-based game, and to program inBASIC, creating his own version ofSnake.[24]
Beginning at age 15,[25] Huang got his first job working thegraveyard shift[26] at a localDenny's restaurant as a dishwasher,busboy, and waiter from 1978 to 1983.[27][28] After high school, he chose to enroll inOregon State University due to its lowin-state tuition.[29] He studiedelectrical engineering and graduated in 1984 with a bachelor's degree with highest honors.[30][31] Huang later recalled, "I was the youngest kid in school, in class" and the only student who "looked like a child".[32] Years later, while working as a microchip designer inSilicon Valley, he concurrently pursued graduatenight classes atStanford University, where he earned a master's degree in electrical engineering in 1992.[16][33]
Sun GX version 1. Note the two large LSI Logic chips implementing the accelerator.
After graduating from college, Huang was a microchip designer in Silicon Valley.[16] He was recruited for positions atTexas Instruments,Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), andLSI Logic,[34] ultimately choosing the California-based AMD due to already being familiar with the company. Huang designed AMDmicroprocessors while simultaneously attending Stanford and raising his two children. However, when he heard of new chip design processes at LSI Logic, Huang left AMD to assume a role as a technical officer at the LSI Corporation, working under astartup company,Sun Microsystems, where he met engineersChris Malachowsky andCurtis Priem.[35]
LSI was in contract with Sun Microsystems and had introduced Huang to Malachowsky and Priem, who were working on a newgraphics accelerator card. While the three produced the card's manufacturing process, the relationship between Malachowsky and Priem became strained as the two disputed the chip's design, leading to infighting; according to Malachowsky, they "broke every tool that LSI Logic had in their standard portfolio".[36] In 1989, Huang, Malachowsky, and Priem finalized the accelerator, which they called the "GX graphics engine".[37] GX was a widespread financial success; the sales of the graphics engine contributed to Sun Microsystem's revenue increasing from $262 million in 1987 to $656 million in 1990, and Huang was promoted to be the director of LSI's CoreWare, a division that manufactured chips for hardware vendors.[38]
When business began to slow for Sun Microsystems after 1990, Huang, along with Priem and Malachowsky, each resigned their jobs to pursue a venture together in makinggraphics chips forPC games.[39] They initially named their new company "NVision" until Huang suggested that the company be named "Nvidia" based on the Latin wordinvidia, as Priem wanted competitors to turn "green with envy".[16] They eventually dropped the "i" to honor the NV1 chip that they were then developing.[40] The three met frequently in 1992 at a Denny's roadside diner inEast San Jose to formulate abusiness plan.[41] Huang chose for them to meet at Denny's due to his prior work experience at the restaurant chain and because it was "quieter than home and had cheap coffee".[16] The three founded the company during one meeting at a breakfast booth at the diner.[42][43]
To formally incorporate the company, Huang found a lawyer, James Gaither ofCooley Godward, who demanded the $200 in cash in Huang's pockets to capitalize the company.[40] After that meeting, Huang went back to Priem and Malachowsky to ask each of them for $200 for their respective shares of the company, which meant that Nvidia's initial capital was $600.[44] On April 5, 1993, Huang personally signed Nvidia's originalarticles of incorporation into effect.[1]
Although he left LSI, Huang remained in good standing with the company and was able to secure funding for Nvidia from LSI's CEO,Wilfred Corrigan, who introduced Huang to venture capitalistDon Valentine. An account cited how Huang's presentation pitch went badly.[45] Valentine, the leader ofSequoia Capital, chose to invest in Nvidia through Corrigan's support,[45] as didSutter Hill Ventures. The funding enabled Nvidia to begin development efforts toward its first chip and to begin paying wages for its employees.[46] By the first day of operation, Huang was made Nvidia's president and CEO.[47] Even though Huang, at age 30, was younger than Priem and Malachowsky, both Priem and Malachowsky believed that he was prepared to be CEO.[16] According to Priem, "we basically deferred to Jensen on day one" and told Huang, "you're in charge of running the company—all the stuff Chris and I don’t know how to do".[48][c]
As of 2024, Huang has been Nvidia's chief executive for over three decades, a tenure described byThe Wall Street Journal as "almost unheard of in fast-movingSilicon Valley".[49] He owns 3.6% of Nvidia's stock, which went public in 1999.[50] He earnedUS$24.6 million as CEO in 2007, ranking him as the 61st highest paid U.S. CEO byForbes.[50]
Huang meeting with Indian Prime MinisterNarendra Modi in 2023
According to Huang, the three co-founders in 1993 had "no idea how" to start a company,[43] "building Nvidia turned out to have been a million times harder" than they expected, and they probably would not have done it if they had realized up front "the pain and suffering [involved] ... the challenges [they were] going to endure, the embarrassment and the shame, and the list of all the things that [would] go wrong."[51] For its first graphics accelerator chips, Nvidia focused on renderingquadrilateralprimitives (forward texture mapping) instead of the triangle primitives preferred by its competitors,[16] and barely survived long enough to successfully pivot to triangles only becauseSega agreed to keep Nvidia alive with a $5 million investment.[52] By the time theRIVA 128 was released in August 1997 and saved the company, Nvidia was down to one month of payroll.[16] This resulted in the "unofficial company motto": "Our company is thirty days from going out of business."[16] Huang regularly began presentations to Nvidia staff with those words for many years.[16] However, Huang regards the "pain and suffering" of Nvidia's early years as essential to the company's success in later years, because it forced him to become a better leader.[53]
Huang does not keep a fixed office; he roams Nvidia's headquarters and settles temporarily in conference rooms as needed.[54] He prefers to maintain a relatively flat management structure, with around 60 direct reports as of November 2024,[55] based upon his view that people reporting directly to him "should be at the top of their game" and "require the least amount of pampering".[56] He does not wear a watch, because as he likes to say, "now is the most important time".[49]
Historically, Huang and Nvidia were well-known only among thegamers andcomputer graphics experts who were the original intended markets for Nvidia'sgraphics processing unit (GPU) products. In 2017, aFortune profile article acknowledged: "If you haven’t heard of Nvidia, you can be forgiven."[54] During theAI boom, Huang's net worth rose rapidly along with the value of Nvidia's stock, fromUS$3 billion in 2019 toUS$90 billion in May 2024.[57] During this same timeframe, Huang became more widely known. In March 2024,Mark Zuckerberg wrote onInstagram with a picture of himself and Huang wearing each other's signature jacket: "He's likeTaylor Swift, but for tech".[58]
In June 2024, Nvidia's market capitalization reachedUS$3 trillion for the first time and Huang's net worth grew toUS$100 billion.[59] By then, the news media was using the term "Jensanity" to refer to Huang's celebrity status in Taiwan,[59] and it was compared to the "Linsanity" phenomenon of 2012.[11] Huang was the center of attention atComputex 2024 in Taipei, even though he was not on the official speaking program.[59] Large crowds of fans and paparazzi followed Huang and his family members around every time they appeared in public during their 2024 visit to Taiwan.[59][11]
In January 2025, Huang delivered the keynote address at theConsumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.[60] During this keynote, Huang made a number of announcements such as a new gaming chip called the GeForce RTX 50-series, new chips for both PCs and laptops.[60]
In May 2025, Huang traveled to Taiwan by himself to deliver the keynote address at Computex 2025 and to attend the opening ceremony of theWorld Masters Games as a guest of honor.[61] The news media noted the recurrence of "Jensanity" during his 2025 visit.[61] Huang was constantly surrounded by "adoring fans and excited reporters", while his bodyguards struggled to hold back the crowds.[61]
In January 2026, Huang appeared at theWorld Economic Forum Annual Meeting inDavos in a one-on-one session with BlackRock chief executiveLarry Fink. During the discussion, Huang described artificial intelligence as a major platform shift comparable to previous transitions such as personal computing, the internet, and cloud computing.[62] He emphasized that AI development requires a multi-layered infrastructure spanning energy, computing hardware, cloud services, models, and applications, and stated that the expansion of AI has driven what he characterized as the largest infrastructure buildout in human history. Huang also discussed the implications of AI for productivity and labor, arguing that AI is more likely to augment human work by automating tasks rather than eliminating job roles entirely.[63]
In February 2026, Huang presented at theDassault Systems 3DEXPERIENCE® WORLD 2026 in Houston, Texas. Huang focused on how AI is moving from software chat tools into the physical industrial world — powering “virtual twins,” simulation, and AI-driven manufacturing innovation.[64]
2004: Received the Dr. Morris Chang Exemplary Leadership Award from the Fabless Semiconductor Association, which recognizes a leader who has made exceptional contributions to driving the development, innovation, growth, and long-term opportunities of the fabless semiconductor industry[67]
2023[80] and 2024:[81] included inTime's list of the 100 most influential people in AI (Time 100/AI)
February 2024: Elected to theNational Academy of Engineering "for high-powered graphics processing units, fueling the artificial intelligence revolution"[82]
While at Oregon State University, Huang met his future wife, Lori Mills, who was his engineering lab partner at the time.[16] They have two children, Spencer Huang (Chinese:黃勝斌;pinyin:Huáng Shèngbīn) and Madison Huang (Chinese:黃敏珊;pinyin:Huáng Mǐnshān).[54] Spencer launched a bar in Taipei in 2015 that was honored as one of the top 50 bars in Asia byForbes. The bar closed in May 2021, and he is currently a product manager at Nvidia. Madison previously worked in the hotel industry and is currently director of product marketing at Nvidia.[96]The Huang family lived in ordinary middle-classstarter homes inSan Jose before Nvidia went public in 1999.[97] In 2003, they moved to a larger house inLos Altos Hills, California, and they acquired a second home inWailea, Hawaii the following year.[97] In 2017, alimited liability company reportedly linked to the Huangs acquired a mansion in San Francisco for $38 million.[97]
Huang andAMD Chair and CEOLisa Su are relatives.[98] His mother is the youngest sister of Su's maternal grandfather, making them first cousins, once removed.[99][100] Huang was unaware of their familial connection until Su became AMD's CEO.[101]
Huang hasdual Taiwanese and American citizenship.[102] During his time at AMD in 1984, Huang, who grew up speakingTaiwanese Hokkien,[103] began learningMandarin Chinese in order to communicate with Chinesephotomask workers employed at the company. He has said that he learned the language phonetically through regular conversations with his co-workers.[24] He makes frequent visits back to Taiwan.[104]
Huang and Taiwanese billionaireCharles Liang, co-founder ofSupermicro, are longtime friends. Both companies were established in 1993 and have collaborated on products, with the latter utilizing Nvidia AI chips in its servers.[105] Huang is also a close friend ofTSMC founderMorris Chang.[106]
Jensen Huang and his wife, Lori Huang, established the Jen-Hsun & Lori Huang Foundation in 2007 with an initial donation of Nvidia stock valued at $300 million.[107] The foundation's assets, primarily Nvidia shares, have significantly appreciated, reaching a value exceeding $12 billion as of late 2025, placing it among the largest private foundations in the United States.[108][109] A December 2024 investigation byThe New York Times reported that the Nvidia shares donated by the Huangs to the foundation and other charitable vehicles are valued at approximately $2 billion, enabling significant tax benefits while committing these assets to philanthropic purposes.[107] The foundation focuses its support on higher education, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) initiatives, public health, and community development, with an emphasis on institutions connected to the Huangs' personal histories and the San Francisco Bay Area.[110] Approximately two-thirds of its grants are allocated to donor-advised funds, including the GeForce Fund at Schwab Charitable.[111][112] In June 2025, the Huangs contributed an additional $60 million in Nvidia stock to the foundation.[113]
Notable contributions include a $2 million donation in 2019 to theOneida Baptist Institute in Kentucky, where Huang studied as a young immigrant, to fund the construction of Jen-Hsun Huang Hall, a dormitory and classroom facility for female students.[114][110] In 2022, the Huangs donated $50 million to Oregon State University, their alma mater, to establish the Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang Collaborative Innovation Complex, a research center dedicated to artificial intelligence, materials science, and robotics.[115] The foundation also provided $30 million toStanford University to support the Jen-Hsun Huang School of Engineering Center.[116] In 2008, under Huang's leadership, Nvidia funded the construction of a classroom at the Beijing Haidian Foreign Language Shi Yan School to assist students affected by the Wenchuan earthquake.[117]
In early 2025, the foundation matched a $22.5 million fundraising effort by theCalifornia College of the Arts, contributing an equivalent amount to complete a $45 million campaign to address the institution's financial deficits and enrollment challenges, marking one of the largest individual gifts in the college's history.[118][119][120] The foundation has also provided grants ranging from five to six figures to organizations including the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, the Tides Center, the B612 Foundation, AI4ALL (promoting diversity in artificial intelligence), and Mental Health Innovations (developing technology-based mental health solutions).[112] In accordance with Internal Revenue Service regulations for private foundations, the foundation disbursed $123 million in 2024 and is projected to distribute $369 million in 2025.[121]
Huang consistently capitalizes the second syllable of his given name in legal documents. For example, on April 5, 1993, he signed Nvidia's original articles of incorporation as Jen-Hsun Huang.[1]
^According toForbes, Huang "placed third in junior doubles at the U.S. Table Tennis Open championship, at age 15" in 1978.[19]
^In a 2011 interview atStanford University, Huang recalled that Priem said, "Jensen, you’re the CEO, right? Done".[48]
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