Founder · Taiwan / United States
Jensen Huang
His parents sold nearly everything to send him to a US boarding school that turned out to be a reform school for troubled kids. He cleaned its toilets, waited tables at Denny's, and later started Nvidia in a Denny's booth.
01 / At a glance
- Born
- 17 February 1963, Taipei, Taiwan
- Moved to the US
- 1973, aged 9, with his older brother
- Teen job
- Dishwasher, busboy and waiter at Denny's, 1978–1983
- Education
- Oregon State, BS electrical engineering (1984); Stanford, MS electrical engineering (1992, night classes)
- Before Nvidia
- Chip designer at AMD, then LSI Logic
- Founded
- Nvidia, 5 April 1993, with Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem
- Starting capital
- $600 in founders' share capital ($200 each)
- Near-death
- 1996: cut staff from 100 to 40; one month of payroll left in August 1997
- Company today
- First company to pass $5 trillion in market value (October 2025)
- The question his life answers
- How do you run a company that is always thirty days from going out of business?
01 / Where he came from
- Born on 17 February 1963 in Taipei. He grew up in Tainan and then Thailand, where his father worked for an oil refinery.[1]
- In 1973, aged 9, he was sent to the US with his brother. An aunt and uncle enrolled them at Oneida Baptist Institute in Kentucky, thinking it was a good boarding school. It was a religious reform academy for troubled kids; locals saw it as a reform school, and county schools sent it children they had expelled.[1][3]
- His parents sold nearly all their possessions to pay the fees.[1]
- He was bullied and beaten at the local school. At Oneida he cleaned the toilets every day. Wikipedia says he taught his roommate, a 17-year-old, to read in return for lessons in bench pressing.[1][3]
- "The ending of the story is I loved the time I was there. We worked really hard — we studied really hard, and the kids were really tough."[3]
02 / How he paid the bills
- At 15 he started the night shift at Denny's as a dishwasher, busboy and waiter. He worked there from 1978 to 1983.[1]
- At Aloha High School in Oregon he skipped two grades, finished at 16, and became a nationally ranked table-tennis player.[1]
- He picked Oregon State because in-state fees were low, and graduated in electrical engineering in 1984.[1]
- "To me, no task is beneath me," he said in 2024. "Because remember I used to wash dishes, and I mean I used to clean toilets. I cleaned a lot of toilets."[4]
03 / Starting Nvidia in a Denny's booth
- He designed chips at AMD, then moved to LSI Logic. Working with LSI's client Sun Microsystems, he met two Sun engineers, Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem. He took a Stanford master's at night and finished in 1992.[1]
- The three planned Nvidia at a Denny's in East San Jose. In 2023 a plaque was put on the booth.[1][2]
- A lawyer asked for the $200 cash in his pocket to set up the company. Each founder put in $200, so its first share capital was $600. He signed the papers on 5 April 1993.[1]
- Sequoia Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures and others then invested $20 million.[2]
04 / Thirty days from going out of business
- Nvidia's first chip, the NV1, drew graphics with four-sided shapes. The rest of the industry used triangles, and NV1 flopped.[2]
- Sega's president, Shoichiro Irimajiri, came in person to tell him Sega was choosing another chip for its Dreamcast console. Irimajiri then persuaded Sega's management to invest $5 million anyway. Huang said Irimajiri's "understanding and generosity gave us six months to live".[2]
- In 1996 he laid off more than half the staff, from 100 people to 40, and put everything into one chip, the RIVA 128.[2]
- When it shipped in August 1997, Nvidia had money for one month's payroll. It sold about a million in four months.[2]
- For years he opened staff meetings with the company's unofficial motto: "Our company is thirty days from going out of business."[2]
05 / From game chips to AI
- In late 1999 Nvidia released the GeForce 256, the first chip it sold as a "GPU".[2]
- In the 2000s it spent over a billion dollars on CUDA, software that let its chips run all kinds of parallel work, not just games.[2]
- By 2025 Nvidia had more than 80% of the market for chips used to train and run AI models. It became the world's most valuable company in June 2024, at over $3.3 trillion, and became the first company past $5 trillion in October 2025.[1][2]
- His advice to Stanford students: "I wish upon you ample doses of pain and suffering."[5]
Lessons
- No job is beneath you. He cleaned toilets at 10 and bussed tables at 15.
- When you are wrong, switch fast. NV1 bet on the wrong shapes; the RIVA 128 used triangles and saved the company.
- Cut deep enough to survive. Laying off 60 of 100 people kept Nvidia alive long enough to ship.
- Tell your team how close the edge is. "Thirty days from going out of business" kept everyone honest.
- Build for the future before it arrives. CUDA cost over a billion dollars years before AI made it matter.
Read more
Key sources
Watch
Jensen Huang, Founder and CEO of NVIDIA
Stanford Graduate School of Business
Stanford GSB conversation with Huang about his life and how he leads Nvidia.
Watch on YouTubeNvidia CEO Jensen Huang and the $2 trillion company powering today's AI | 60 Minutes
60 Minutes
60 Minutes profile of Huang and how Nvidia came to power today's AI.
Watch on YouTubeNVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang
Acquired
Long Acquired podcast interview with Huang about Nvidia.
Watch on YouTubeHow Nvidia Grew From Gaming To A.I. Giant, Now Powering ChatGPT
CNBC
CNBC film on Nvidia's path from gaming chips to AI.
Watch on YouTube