Jensen Huang: The Story Behind the Fortune
Jensen Huang co-founded the chipmaker Nvidia in 1993 and has led it ever since. Once known mainly for graphics cards, Nvidia became one of the world's most valuable companies as its chips became the backbone of the artificial-intelligence boom.
Jensen Huang co-founded the chipmaker Nvidia in 1993 and has led it ever since. Once known mainly for graphics cards, Nvidia became one of the world's most valuable companies as its chips became the backbone of the artificial-intelligence boom.
Jensen Huang built this fortune from the ground up — a self-made success in technology & semiconductors.
He studied at Stanford University and is based in California.
A few of the highlights on the public record: Born in Taiwan; moved to the United States as a child; Has led Nvidia as CEO for more than 30 years; A central figure in the AI hardware boom.
The journey to get here is well documented. In 1993, started Nvidia with Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem. In 1999, took Nvidia public and shipped the GeForce 256, marketed as the first GPU. In 2006, introduced Nvidia's CUDA computing platform, which later became central to AI workloads. In 2023, nvidia's chips became the backbone of the generative-AI buildout, propelling the company's market value past $1 trillion.
In his own words: "Run, don't walk. Either you're running for food, or you are running from becoming food." — said National Taiwan University commencement address in 2023.
On net worth alone, the closest companies are Elon Musk ($417.59B) and Michael Dell ($324.48B) — a reminder of how tightly bunched the very top of the wealth list really is.
Today, Jensen is worth an estimated $173.77B — #7 in the world on our real-time list, a figure that moves with NVDA's share price.