Meet Jensen Huang, the Nvidia CEO who is now one of the world’s richest people

Born as Jen-hsun Huang in Taipei in 1963, Huang spent part of his childhood in Taiwan and Thailand, per Bloomberg. 

In 1973, Huang’s parents sent their children to relatives in the US owing to the social unrest in the Southeast Asian country, before relocating there themselves.

Huang’s aunt and uncle — who were recent migrants to Washington state at the time — accidentally sent Jensen and his brother to Oneida Baptist Institute in Kentucky, which was considered a reform school instead of a prep school, according to Huang’s 2002 interview with Wired.

“And the kids were really tough,” Huang told NPR in a 2012 interview. “They all had pocket knives — and when they get in fights, it’s not pretty. Kids get hurt.”

Students at the school also had to work, and Huang’s duty was to clean the bathrooms. 

“The ending of the story is I loved the time I was there,” Huang told NPR. “We worked really hard — we studied really hard, and the kids were really tough.”

In 2019, he and his wife Lori donated $2 million toward building a female dormitory and classroom building at the school, per the institute’s website.

The couple have two children, according to OSU’s profile. 

“I enjoyed computers growing up, but OSU opened up my eyes to the magic behind them,” he told the university.

Huang graduated in 1984 — the “perfect year to graduate,” he said at a keynote speech at National Taiwan University’s commencement ceremony this year, per Fortune. That was the same year when the first Mac computers were released, bringing forth a new age in personal computing.

After graduating from OSU, Huang worked at chip companies LSI Logic and Advanced Micro Devices in a variety of roles, according to his bio on Nvidia’s website.

He founded Nvidia in 1993 after leaving LSI Logic.

Nvidia has made itself a key player in the AI boom by supplying hardware to major companies, including OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.

Demand for the company’s hardware has been driven by several factors, including a sophisticated software system that makes its chips simple to use as well as a shortage of AI chips. 

Huang now believes we’ve hit a new threshold in the AI hype cycle. “Accelerated computing and generative AI have hit the tipping point. Demand is surging worldwide across companies, industries, and nations,” Huang said in the company’s fourth-quarter earnings press release.

According to Bloomberg, Huang sold 1.3 million Nvidia shares in June, worth nearly $169 million. 

The sale came in the same month as Nvidia’s market value reached $3 trillion for the first time and briefly peaked as the world’s most valuable company. 

It’s the most Huang has netted from selling stock in a single month.

Nvidia did not respond to a request for comment on the sale. 

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect movements in Nvidia’s share price and Jensen Huang’s net worth.