Jensen Huang

Born

1963 · Tainan, Taiwan

Roots

Taiwanese; sent to the US at nine

Family

Middle class

His father, an air-conditioning engineer once trained in the US, resolved to send his sons there; his mother drilled them in English with a dictionary.

Education

Oregon State (electrical engineering) → Stanford (MS)

Started with

A Denny's booth

The founding plan was sketched at a San Jose Denny's — the same chain where he had bussed tables and washed dishes at 15.

Affiliations & societies

None documented.

Information only — claims like these are often unverifiable and may be wrong.

The pathway

1. 1973 · age 9
   Kentucky by mistake

   Relatives enroll him and his brother at Oneida Baptist Institute, believing it a prep school; it is a reform school, where he cleans toilets and his roommate is recovering from a knife fight.

2. 1978 · age 15
   Denny's dishwasher

   Busboy and dishwasher in Oregon; he has credited the job with teaching him that no task is beneath him.

3. 1985 · age 22
   Chip designer

   AMD, then LSI Logic, after engineering school.

4. 1993 · age 30
   Founds Nvidia$40K

   With Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem, $40K between them; Sequoia's Don Valentine adds $2M.

5. 1996 · age 33
   Thirty days from failure$5M

   The first chip flops; Sega's decision to let Nvidia keep a $5M advance on a cancelled console contract keeps it alive.

6. 1999 · age 36
   IPO and the GeForce 256

   Marketed as the world's first GPU.

7. 2006 · age 43
   CUDA

   Opens the GPU to general computing; Wall Street questions the spending for years.

8. 2012 · age 49
   AlexNet moment

   A neural network trained on gaming GPUs wins ImageNet; AI demand transforms the company.

9. 2024 · age 61
   World's most valuable company$3T+

   Nvidia passes a $3T valuation, at points ranking first globally.