Before becoming one of the most influential entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, Jensen Huang was a microprocessor engineer who bet on a technology still associated primarily with video games. In 1993, he founded Nvidia with Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem, convinced that graphics chips would have much broader applications. Three decades later, the company had become an essential piece for the development of artificial intelligence.
His business career took a turn this Thursday, November 12, with his resignation as CEO, president, and a member of Nvidia’s board of directors. The departure comes amid an independent investigation into an alleged foreign espionage attempt that would have targeted the founder. Colette Kress, until now the chief financial officer, has provisionally taken over as executive director.
The replacement ends an exceptionally long period at the helm of a major U.S. technology company. Huang not only had taken part in the creation of Nvidia, but he also had led its expansion into data centers, advanced computing, and artificial intelligence, until becoming one of the industry’s most recognizable figures.
From Taiwan to the United States: Jensen Huang’s early years
Jen-Hsun Huang, known as Jensen Huang, was born on February 17, 1963, in Tainan, Taiwan. During his childhood, he also lived in Thailand and later moved to the United States, where he completed his education.
He studied Electrical Engineering at Oregon State University, where he graduated in 1984. Years later, he obtained a master’s degree in the same field at Stanford University, in 1992.
Before embarking on his own project, he worked at AMD and LSI Logic, two companies linked to the semiconductor industry. That experience allowed him to learn about an industry in which processor design and manufacturing capacity were decisive for competing.
In 1993, at the age of 30, he decided to found Nvidia together with two other engineers. The company began its operations at a time when personal computers were gaining power and video games demanded ever greater graphics capability.
The founding of Nvidia and the bet on graphics cards
The company was founded with the intention of developing processors capable of handling complex images and accelerating the graphic performance of computers. Its growth was initially tied to the video game market, but that specialization would eventually open up opportunities in other sectors.
One of the decisive moments came in 1999 with the launch of the GeForce 256, presented by Nvidia as the first graphics processing unit, or GPU. That same year, the company went public.
GPUs differ from conventional processors in their ability to execute numerous operations simultaneously. Although they were initially used to generate images and graphics, that characteristic proved especially useful for scientific tasks and, later, for training artificial intelligence models.
The next major bet came in 2006, when Nvidia presented CUDA, a platform that allowed its graphics processors to be used for applications other than video games. With it, researchers and developers began to take advantage of the power of GPUs to perform complex calculations.
That decision was fundamental for the business that Nvidia would develop years later. When technology companies began to need enormous amounts of computing capacity to train artificial intelligence systems, the company’s processors already had an ecosystem of tools and developers.
The entrepreneur who turned Nvidia into a powerhouse of artificial intelligence
Nvidia’s growth accelerated with the development of generative artificial intelligence. Training models capable of producing text, images, and other content requires enormous computing capacity, and the GPUs designed by the company became one of the most in-demand technologies for large data centers.
Companies such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta have invested thousands of millions of dollars in artificial intelligence infrastructure—a market in which Nvidia has achieved a dominant position. Demand for its processors drove the company’s revenue and its market valuation.
In 2023, Nvidia surpassed, for the first time, a trillion dollars in market capitalization. Two years later, its valuation was already measured in several trillions, making Huang one of the most influential executives in the world of technology.
Success also boosted his personal fortune. In November 2026, the estimates published by Forbes placed her above $150 billion, although her net worth fluctuates with Nvidia’s share price.
The leather jacket, his family, and his management style
Huang’s public image is closely tied to his distinctive black leather jacket, which he habitually wears during Nvidia presentations. That garment has become one of his most recognizable elements, especially at conferences where he announces new processors and technological advances.
In the business sphere, he has cultivated a demanding management style and one that is highly involved in technical decision-making. His management structure, with numerous executives who reported directly to him, reflected an organization that was unusual for a multinational of such a size.
Huang is married to Lori Huang, whom he met during his university studies in Oregon, and they have two children. Both have taken part in philanthropic initiatives linked to education and research. Among them is support for Stanford University, whose engineering building, Huang Engineering Center, bears his name.
The investigation that preceded his resignation
His departure from Nvidia comes after reports emerged about an extramarital relationship and suspicions that Huang might have been the subject of a foreign intelligence operation.
On the past November 8, the businessman acknowledged to employees having been unfaithful to his wife, apologized for the harm caused to his family, and expressed his willingness to cooperate with the independent investigation opened by the board of directors.
The company had initially assured that there were no grounds to believe that business secrets or information related to U.S. national security had been compromised.
Huang’s resignation does not prove that he engaged in espionage activities or that confidential information was leaked. The investigation remains open, and its findings will be decisive in clarifying the circumstances of the case.
At 63 years old, the businessman leaves the direction of the company he founded in 1993 and that he turned into one of the leading technology providers for artificial intelligence. His departure leaves Nvidia with the challenge of finding a successor capable of running a company whose strategy has been closely tied to its founder for more than three decades.