जेन्सन हुआंग Jensen Huang

Life and career

  1. 1963 · Born in Taiwan. Born Jen-Hsun Huang in Taiwan in 1963. His father was a chemical engineer and his mother a schoolteacher. The family moved to Tainan and then to Thailand when he was five. (Wikipedia: Jensen Huang · Computer History Museum: Jensen Huang, 2024 Fellow)
  2. 1973 · A Kentucky reform school. At nine he and his older brother were sent to an uncle in Tacoma. The relatives enrolled them at the Oneida Baptist Institute in Kentucky. They thought it was a good boarding school. It was a religious reform academy. He was bullied and cleaned toilets every day. (Wikipedia: Jensen Huang)
  3. 1978 · Denny’s and Oregon. After two years the boys joined their parents in Beaverton, Oregon. From 15 he worked the night shift at a Denny’s as a dishwasher, busboy and waiter. He kept the job until 1983. (Wikipedia: Jensen Huang)
  4. 1984 · Oregon State and AMD. He graduated from Oregon State University with a degree in electrical engineering. He chose it for its low in-state fees. He met his wife Lori there as a lab partner. He then designed microprocessors at AMD. (Wikipedia: Jensen Huang)
  5. 1989 · LSI Logic. At LSI Logic he became director of CoreWare. He worked with Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem on the GX graphics engine. He took a Stanford master’s at night and finished it in 1992. (Wikipedia: Jensen Huang)
  6. 1993 · Nvidia is founded. In 1992 the three engineers drew up a plan at a Denny’s in East San Jose. Nvidia was incorporated on 5 April 1993 with $600. Huang became chief executive on the first day. He was 30. (Wikipedia: Jensen Huang · Computer History Museum: Jensen Huang, 2024 Fellow)
  7. 1997 · Thirty days from closing. A $5 million investment from Sega kept the company alive. Nvidia was down to one month of payroll when the RIVA 128 chip came out in August 1997. It sold well and saved the firm. (Wikipedia: Jensen Huang)
  8. 1999 · The GeForce 256 and the IPO. Nvidia went public in 1999. The same year it launched the GeForce 256. Nvidia called it the first graphics processing unit. (Wikipedia: Jensen Huang · Computer History Museum: Jensen Huang, 2024 Fellow)
  9. 2006 · CUDA. Nvidia introduced CUDA. It let programmers use graphics chips for general computing. Universities and national laboratories began to build supercomputers on Nvidia chips. (Computer History Museum: Jensen Huang, 2024 Fellow)
  10. 2012 · AlexNet. Nvidia GPUs trained the AlexNet neural network. Its success turned deep learning research towards GPUs. Nvidia shifted its strategy to accelerated computing for AI. (Computer History Museum: Jensen Huang, 2024 Fellow)
  11. 2023 · Modi and two Indian deals. In September he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi before the G20 summit in New Delhi. Nvidia signed deals with Reliance and Tata. Reliance Jio would run AI cloud infrastructure on Nvidia chips. TCS would build AI applications and upskill its staff. (Devdiscourse (Reuters): Nvidia strikes deals with Reliance and Tata (8 September 2023))
  12. 2024 · Blackwell and Mumbai. In February he told the World Governments Summit that every country needs its own AI. In March he unveiled the Blackwell chip at GTC. In October he shared a stage with Mukesh Ambani at Nvidia’s AI Summit in Mumbai. (NVIDIA Blog: Every country needs sovereign AI (12 February 2024) · The Star (Reuters): Nvidia unveils flagship AI chip the B200 (18 March 2024) · NVIDIA Blog: ‘India should manufacture its own AI’ (24 October 2024))
  13. 2025 · $4 trillion then $5 trillion. In April a US ban on H20 sales to China cost Nvidia a $5.5 billion charge. In July Nvidia became the first company worth $4 trillion. On 29 October it passed $5 trillion. In December the Financial Times named him Person of the Year. (TechRadar: Huang labels export controls a failure (21 May 2025) · Bloomberg: Nvidia hits $4 trillion value (9 July 2025) · Entrepreneur: Nvidia becomes the first company to reach a $5 trillion market value (29 October 2025) · Wikipedia: Jensen Huang)
  14. 2026 · Rubin and a missed Delhi summit. In January he said Vera Rubin was in full production. He cancelled his trip to the India AI Impact Summit in February. At GTC in March he forecast $1 trillion in sales of Nvidia’s top chips through 2027. In May he joined Donald Trump in Beijing. (Tom’s Hardware: Vera Rubin NVL72 is now in production (6 January 2026) · Business Today: Huang to skip India AI Impact Summit (14 February 2026) · eWeek: At GTC 2026 Huang shows how Nvidia plans to run the full AI stack (16 March 2026) · Techloy: Huang joins Trump in Beijing after H200 shipments stall (14 May 2026))

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