Jensen Huang Explained

Jensen Huang
Native Name:黃仁勳
Native Name Lang:zh-tw
Birth Date:17 February 1963
Birth Place:Tainan, Taiwan
Citizenship:United States
Occupation:Businessman, electrical engineer, philanthropist
Co-founder, president, and CEO of Nvidia
Spouse:Lori Huang
Children:2[1]
Relatives:Lisa Su (cousin)
Module:
Child:yes
T:黃仁勳
S:黄仁勋
Tl:N̂g Jîn-hun
Poj:N̂g Jîn-hun
Bpmf:ㄏㄨㄤˊ ㄖㄣˊㄒㄩㄣ
Gr:Hwang Renshiun
P:Huáng Rénxūn
W:Huang2 Jen2-hsün1
J:Wong4 Jan4-fan1

Jen-Hsun "Jensen" Huang (; born February 17, 1963[2]) is an American businessman, electrical engineer, and philanthropist who is the president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Nvidia.

The son of Taiwanese immigrants, Huang moved from Taiwan to the United States in his childhood. After graduating from Stanford University, he co-founded Nvidia in 1993 at age 30. In June 2024, Nvidia became the largest company in the world by market capitalization.[3] As of June 2024, Forbes estimated Huang's net worth at $118 billion, making him the 11th richest person in the world.[4]

Early life and education

Huang was born in Tainan, Taiwan, on February 17, 1963. His family moved to Thailand when he was five years old. When he was nine, he and his older brother were sent to the United States to live with an uncle in Tacoma, Washington. When he was ten, he lived in the boys' dormitory with his brother at Oneida Baptist Institute while attending a separate public school, Oneida Elementary school, in Oneida, Kentucky—his uncle had mistaken what was actually a religious reform academy for a prestigious boarding school.[5] Huang's roommate at Oneida was illiterate and in exchange for being taught how to read, he taught Huang how to bench press.

Several years later, their parents also moved to the United States and settled in Oregon and the brothers moved back to live with them. Huang skipped two years and graduated at sixteen from Aloha High School in Aloha, Oregon.[6] While growing up in Oregon in the 1980s, Huang got his first job at a local Denny's restaurant, where he worked as a busboy and waiter.[7]

Huang received his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from Oregon State University in 1984, and earned his master's degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1992.[8] [9]

Career

After graduating from university, Huang served as the director of CoreWare at LSI Logic and a microprocessor designer at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).[10] In 1993, at 30 years old, he went on to start his own business, where he co-founded Nvidia with Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem and became its CEO and president.[5] [11] The three men founded the company in a meeting at a Denny's roadside diner in East San Jose.[12] [13]

As of 2024, Huang has been Nvidia's chief executive for over three decades, a tenure described by The Wall Street Journal as "almost unheard of in fast-moving Silicon Valley".[14] He owns 3.6% of Nvidia's stock, which went public in 1999. He earned as CEO in 2007, ranking him as the 61st highest paid U.S. CEO by Forbes.

According to Huang, the three co-founders in 1993 had "no idea how" to start a company, "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."[15] For its first graphics accelerator chips, Nvidia focused on rendering quadrilateral primitives (forward texture mapping) instead of the triangle primitives preferred by its competitors, and barely survived long enough to successfully pivot to triangles only because Sega agreed to keep Nvidia alive with a $5 million investment.[16] By the time the RIVA 128 was released in August 1997 and saved the company, Nvidia was down to one month of payroll. This resulted in the "unofficial company motto": "Our company is thirty days from going out of business." Huang regularly began presentations to Nvidia staff with those words for many years. 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.[17]

Huang does not keep a fixed office; he roams Nvidia's headquarters and settles temporarily in conference rooms as needed.[18] He prefers to maintain a relatively flat management structure, with around 50 direct reports, on the ground that people reporting directly to him "should be at the top of their game" and "require the least amount of pampering".[19]

Historically, Huang and Nvidia were well-known only among the gamers and computer graphics experts who were the original intended markets for Nvidia's graphics processing unit (GPU) products. In 2017, a Fortune profile article acknowledged: "If you haven’t heard of Nvidia, you can be forgiven." During the AI boom, Huang's net worth rose rapidly along with the value of Nvidia's stock, from in 2019 to in May 2024.[20] During this same timeframe, Huang became more widely known. In March 2024, Mark Zuckerberg wrote on Instagram with a picture of himself and Huang wearing each other's signature jacket: "He's like Taylor Swift, but for tech".[21]

In June 2024, Nvidia's market capitalization reached for the first time and Huang's net worth grew to .[22] By then, the news media was using the term "Jensanity" to refer to Huang's celebrity status in Taiwan, and it was compared to the "Linsanity" phenomenon of 2012.[23] Huang was the center of attention at Computex 2024 in Taipei, even though he was not on the official speaking program. 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.

Philanthropy

In 2008, Nvidia contributed funds to establish a classroom at the Beijing Haidian Foreign Language Shi Yan School to cater to 101 elementary and middle school students from regions affected by the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in China. As a gesture of appreciation for the donation, the students ceremoniously bestowed a red scarf upon Huang, symbolizing their gratitude towards him. In return, Huang gifted kaleidoscopes to the students as a gesture of appreciation during the donation ceremony.[24] In addition, Huang also provided a donation of to his former university, Stanford University, in order to establish the Jen-Hsun Huang School of Engineering Center.[25] The building is the second of four that make up Stanford's Science and Engineering Quad.[26]

In 2019, Huang donated $2 million to his former school, Oneida Baptist Institute, for the construction of Huang Hall, a modern facility that serves as a dormitory and classroom building for female students.[27]

In 2022, Huang gifted to his alma mater, Oregon State University, as part of a larger philanthropic contribution to establish a cutting-edge supercomputing institute on the university campus.[28]

Awards

Personal life

While at Oregon State University, Huang met his future wife, Lori Mills, who was his engineering lab partner at the time.[5] They have two children, Spencer Huang and Madison Huang . Spencer launched a bar in Taipei in 2015 that was honored as one of the top 50 bars in Asia by Forbes. 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.

The Huang family lived in ordinary middle-class starter homes in San Jose before Nvidia went public in 1999.[46] In 2003, they moved to a larger house in Los Altos Hills, California and in 2004 they acquired a second home in Wailea, Hawaii. In 2017, a limited liability company reportedly linked to the Huangs acquired a mansion in San Francisco for $38 million.

Huang and AMD Chair and CEO Lisa Su are relatives.[47] Huang's mother is the youngest sister of Su's maternal grandfather, making them first cousins, once removed.[48] [49]

Huang and Charles Liang, co-founder of Supermicro, are longtime friends. Both companies were established in 1993 and have collaborated on products, with the latter utilizing Nvidia AI chips in its servers.[50]

See also

External links

Notes and References

  1. News: 多圖｜黃仁勳混血帥兒曝光！結束台北酒吧 進NVIDIA幫老爸做這事｜壹蘋新聞網 . Nextapple . May 31, 2023 . zh-TW . June 10, 2023 . October 3, 2023 . https://web.archive.org/web/20231003100257/https://tw.nextapple.com/finance/20230531/3400A87AE61BFFFEB0B0232998D9524E . live .
  2. News: 'It would be a tragedy if ARM did not move into the new era,' says Nvidia boss Jensen Huang . April 27, 2024 . The Sunday Times . July 4, 2020 . Nimmo . Jamie . subscription . https://archive.today/20240323194415/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/it-would-be-a-tragedy-if-arm-did-not-move-into-the-new-era-says-nvidia-boss-jensen-huang-7fp2qgxvv . March 23, 2024 . live.
  3. News: Wodecki . Ben . June 19, 2024 . Nvidia Becomes Most Valuable Company in the World, Overtakes Microsoft . AI Business.
  4. Web site: Jensen Huang . https://web.archive.org/web/20240619114254/https://www.forbes.com/profile/jensen-huang/ . June 19, 2024 . Forbes.
  5. Witt . Stephen . November 27, 2023 . How Jensen Huang's Nvidia Is Powering the A.I. Revolution . live . https://archive.today/20231127154917/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/12/04/how-jensen-huangs-nvidia-is-powering-the-ai-revolution . November 27, 2023 . December 5, 2023 . The New Yorker.
  6. Web site: The Silicon Forest Blog: NVIDIA v. Intel: Rivalry heating up. . Rogoway . Mike . . June 2, 2008 . June 2, 2008 . March 3, 2016 . https://web.archive.org/web/20160303174447/http://blog.oregonlive.com/siliconforest/2008/06/nvidia_v_intel_rivalry_heating.html . live.
  7. News: Takahashi . Dean . Jensen Huang returns to Denny's where trillion-dollar company began . September 28, 2023 . VentureBeat . September 26, 2023 . September 28, 2023 . https://web.archive.org/web/20230928033322/https://venturebeat.com/games/jensen-huang-returns-to-dennys-where-trillion-dollar-company-began/ . live .
  8. September 7, 2023 . TIME100 AI 2023: Jensen Huang . November 6, 2023 . Time . en . November 6, 2023 . https://web.archive.org/web/20231106040055/https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/6310609/jensen-huang-ai/ . live .
  9. Web site: April 30, 2008.
    1. 61 Jen-Hsun Huang
    . dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20080509095920/https://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/12/lead_bestbosses08_Jen-Hsun-Huang_BAN9.html. May 9, 2008. November 15, 2021. Forbes. en.
  10. Web site: Jensen Huang. NVIDIA. August 6, 2015. May 31, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20210531014035/https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/bios/jensen-huang. live.
  11. News: Gurdus . Lizzy . May 6, 2018 . Nvidia CEO: My mom taught me English a 'random 10 words at a time' before we emigrated from Taiwan . en . . May 28, 2023 . June 2, 2021 . https://web.archive.org/web/20210602215123/https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/06/nvidia-ceo-my-mom-taught-me-english-a-random-10-words-at-a-time.html . live .
  12. News: Tilley . Aaron . November 30, 2016 . The New Intel: How Nvidia Went From Powering Video Games To Revolutionizing Artificial Intelligence . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20230314141243/https://www.forbes.com/sites/aarontilley/2016/11/30/nvidia-deep-learning-ai-intel/?sh=6c0e3f037ff1 . March 14, 2023 . March 14, 2023 . Forbes. This article was written by a Forbes staff member and was published in the December 19, 2016, issue of Forbes magazine.
  13. News: Whitaker . Bill . Meet Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, the man behind the $2 trillion company powering today's artificial intelligence . June 19, 2024 . 60 Minutes . April 28, 2024.
  14. News: Fitch . Asa . February 26, 2024 . Nvidia's Stunning Ascent Has Also Made It a Giant Target . subscription . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20240227004315/https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/nvidia-ceo-jensen-huang-vision-company-f05db212 . February 27, 2024 . February 27, 2024 . . en-US.
  15. News: Taylor . Chloe . Nvidia cofounder Jensen Huang says 'nobody in their right mind' would start a company, and he'd opt out if he could go back in time . June 19, 2024 . Fortune . October 23, 2023 . subscription.
  16. News: Cohen . Ben . May 18, 2024 . The 84-Year-Old Man Who Saved Nvidia . The Wall Street Journal . subscription . https://archive.today/20240518101129/https://www.wsj.com/business/nvidia-stock-jensen-huang-sega-irimajiri-chips-ai-906247db . May 18, 2024 . live.
  17. News: Huddleston Jr. . Tom . Success requires 'ample doses of pain,' billionaire Nvidia CEO tells Stanford students: 'I hope suffering happens to you' . June 19, 2024 . CNBC Make It . March 15, 2024.
  18. Web site: Nusca . Andrew . November 16, 2017 . This Man Is Leading an AI Revolution in Silicon Valley—And He's Just Getting Started . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20171116192021/http://fortune.com/2017/11/16/nvidia-ceo-jensen-huang/ . November 16, 2017 . November 14, 2021 . Fortune.
  19. News: Leswing . Kit . Nvidia CEO: Senior executives don't need pampering, career guidance . June 19, 2024 . CNBC . November 29, 2023.
  20. News: Leswing . Kif . Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's net worth swells from $3 billion to $90 billion in five years . May 30, 2024 . CNBC . May 24, 2024.
  21. News: Tan . Kwan Wei Kevin . Mark Zuckerberg says Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is basically the Taylor Swift of tech . June 15, 2024 . Business Insider . March 27, 2024 . registration.
  22. News: Savov . Vlad . Lee . Jane Lanhee . Mochizuki . Takashi . Nvidia's Rise to $3 Trillion Fuels 'Jensanity' in Tech World . June 6, 2024 . Bloomberg . June 6, 2024. subscription.
  23. News: Lin . Liza . Wang . Joyu . Jie . Yang . Nvidia's Jensen Huang Finds Celebrity Status . June 8, 2024 . The Wall Street Journal . June 8, 2024 . subscription.
  24. Web site: 中国情 灾区学生亲手为黄仁勋系红领巾. Bo. Liu. ZOL. June 8, 2008. June 7, 2024.
  25. Web site: Alumnus, NVIDIA founder pledges $30 million for campus engineering center. Stanford University. August 6, 2015. September 22, 2009. https://web.archive.org/web/20090922193403/http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2008/september10/building-091008.html. live.
  26. Web site: Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center . August 6, 2015 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20150905133614/http://engineering.stanford.edu/visit/buildings/jen-hsun-huang-engineering-center . September 5, 2015.
  27. Web site: Events and News: Jen-Hsun Huang Hall Dedication Ceremony . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20220330053443/https://www.oneidaschool.org/newsevents.shtml . March 30, 2022 . November 15, 2021 . Oneida Baptist Institute.
  28. Web site: Rogoway . Mike . October 15, 2022 . OSU plans $200m supercomputer center backed by $50m from Nvidia CEO . October 15, 2022 . . en . October 15, 2022 . https://web.archive.org/web/20221015202805/https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2022/10/oregon-state-plans-200-million-supercomputer-center-backed-by-50-million-from-nvidia-ceo.html . live .
  29. News: May 20, 1999 . Northern California's 1999 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year . en . . live . May 28, 2023 . https://web.archive.org/web/20210804150724/https://www.bloomberg.com/press-releases/1999-05-20/northern-california-s-1999-ernst-young-entrepreneur-of-the-yea . August 4, 2021.
  30. Web site: Viterbi Awards . November 10, 2023 . USC Viterbi School of Engineering . en-US . November 10, 2023 . https://web.archive.org/web/20231110031239/https://viterbischool.usc.edu/alumni/viterbi-awards/ . live .
  31. Web site: Dr. Morris Chang Exemplary Leadership Award Nomination Form . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20230528130317/https://www.gsaglobal.org/gsa-awards/dr-morris-chang-exemplary-leadership-award-nomination-form/ . May 28, 2023 . May 28, 2023 . Global Semiconductor Alliance.
  32. Web site: Alumni Fellows . November 10, 2023 . fororegonstate.org . en . November 10, 2023 . https://web.archive.org/web/20231110031239/https://www.fororegonstate.org/stay-informed/osuaa-and-osuf-awards/alumni-fellows . live .
  33. Web site: January 24, 2020 . CEO Today Magazine January 2020 Edition . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20210202004950/https://www.ceotodaymagazine.com/issues/2020/01/24/ . February 2, 2021 . January 28, 2021 . CEO Today Magazine.
  34. Web site: June 11, 2009 . OSU to award 4,680 degrees this week in commencements at Corvallis, Bend . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20211115212220/https://today.oregonstate.edu/archives/2009/jun/osu-award-4680-degrees-week-commencements-corvallis-bend . November 15, 2021 . November 15, 2021 . Oregon State University.
  35. Web site: Lima . Joao . June 13, 2018 . EDGE 50: The world's first top 50 edge computing influencers . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20211115212213/https://www.broad-group.com/data/news/documents/b1m2y1yp7ss9g0/edge-50--the-world-s-first-top-50-edge-computing-influencers . November 15, 2021 . November 15, 2021 . Broad Group.
  36. News: October 22, 2019 . Harvard Business Review Publishes 2019 Ranking of the World's Best-Performing CEOs . Bloomberg.com .
  37. Web site: October 22, 2020 . Jensen Huang, 57 . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20220602184736/https://europe.autonews.com/awards/2020-eurostars-jensen-huang?ncid=so-twit-36184&sfdcid=VT03#cid=av06_so-twit_en-gb . June 2, 2022 . November 15, 2021 . Automotive News Europe.
  38. Web site: November 15, 2020 . NVIDIA 創辦人暨執行長黃仁勳獲頒臺灣大學名譽博士 . live . https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211221/BnueaBrjT7k . December 21, 2021 . November 15, 2021 . YouTube.
  39. News: Strong . Matthew . May 27, 2023 . Nvidia founder to set up AI center at National Taiwan University . . live . May 28, 2023 . https://web.archive.org/web/20230528131819/https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4903356 . May 28, 2023.
  40. Web site: August 12, 2021 . NVIDIA Founder and CEO Jensen Huang to Receive Semiconductor Industry's Top Honor . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20211127082142/https://www.semiconductors.org/nvidia-founder-and-ceo-jensen-huang-to-receive-semiconductor-industrys-top-honor/ . November 27, 2021 . November 15, 2021 . Semiconductor Industry Association.
  41. Web site: Shilov . Anton . September 15, 2021 . Jensen Huang Makes Time 100 List of Influential People . November 15, 2021 . . en . February 19, 2024 . https://web.archive.org/web/20240219042532/https://www.tomshardware.com/news/jensen-huang-time-100 . live .
  42. Web site: Mann . Jyoti . April 19, 2024 . Zuck just revealed the secret ingredient in his bromance with Jensen Huang . Business Insider.
  43. News: Who was the best CEO of 2023? We measure up the business world's top dogs . June 19, 2024 . The Economist . December 28, 2023 . subscription.
  44. Web site: National Academy of Engineering Elects 114 Members and 21 International Members . February 7, 2024 . February 7, 2024 . https://web.archive.org/web/20240207064045/https://www.nae.edu/312025/NAENewClass2024 . live .
  45. Web site: Thompson . Jack Dunn,Selena Kuznikov,Jazz Tangcay,Jaden . Dunn . Jack . Kuznikov . Selena . Tangcay . Jazz . Thompson . Jaden . May 1, 2024 . Keanu Reeves, Jung Kook, Hayao Miyazaki Among Gold House's A100 Honorees . May 11, 2024 . Variety . en-US.
  46. News: Solomont . E.B. . Jensen Huang's Homes: How the Nvidia CEO Grew His Property Portfolio . March 6, 2024 . The Wall Street Journal . March 4, 2024 . subscription.
  47. Web site: Masters of Leadership: Dr. Lisa Su . February 24, 2023 . www.cta.tech . August 1, 2023 . https://web.archive.org/web/20230801165532/https://www.cta.tech/Resources/Articles/2020/Masters-of-Leadership-Dr-Lisa-Su . live .
  48. Web site: June 1, 2023 . 台南四百最大榮光 黃仁勳蘇姿丰各寫傳奇 | 中華日報|中華新聞雲 . June 16, 2023 . . June 16, 2023 . https://web.archive.org/web/20230616171506/https://www.cdns.com.tw/articles/810958 . live .
  49. Web site: June 1, 2023 . 羅家女會念書 與南女淵源深 | 中華日報|中華新聞雲 . June 16, 2023 . . July 5, 2023 . https://web.archive.org/web/20230705072918/https://www.cdns.com.tw/articles/810967 . live .
  50. Web site: Super Micro's shares up 3454% in the past 5 years .

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