What is Jensen Huang's Net Worth?
Jensen Huang is a Taiwanese-American billionaire business magnate and electrical engineer who has a net worth of $120 billion. Jensen Huang earned his fortune as the co-founder and CEO of the technology company Nvidia Corporation, which designs GPUs, APIs, and SoCs, among other hardware and software. Between 2016 and 2023, Jensen's net worth rose from around $3 billion to as much as $30 billion at the end of 2021, back down to $10 billion and then back up to $20 billion. He hit $100 billionaire status for the first time on May 28, 2024, as NVIDIA's stock price gave the company a $2.8 trillion valuation. On the philanthropic side of things, Huang has made major donations to his alma maters Oregon State University and Stanford University.
Nvidia Stock Holdings
As of this writing, Jensen Huang owns 3.5% of Nvidia's total outstanding shares. He also owns an additional 3 million vested restricted stock units.
Early Life and Education
Jensen Huang was born as Jen-Hsun Huang on February 17, 1963 in Tainan City, Taiwan. When he was nine, he moved with his family to the United States, living at first in Oneida, Kentucky. There, he went to the boarding school Oneida Baptist Institute. Huang and his family eventually settled in Oregon, where Huang attended Aloha High School in the suburbs of Portland. He went on to attend Oregon State University in Corvallis, graduating with a degree in electrical engineering in 1984. After that, Huang enrolled in an electrical engineering master's program at Stanford University. He graduated with his degree in 1992.
Career Beginnings
After earning his master's degree in electrical engineering from Stanford in 1992, Huang became a director at LSI Logic Corporation in Santa Clara. He also worked as a microprocessor designer at the Santa Clara-based semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices.
Nvidia Corporation
In 1993, Huang co-founded the technology company Nvidia with former Sun Microsystems engineer Chris Malachowsky and former Sun and IBM senior staff engineer and graphics chip designer, Curtis Priem. The three men believed that the next wave of computing should be graphics-based, and understood that video games were the next big thing in that area. In 1998, Nvidia solidified its reputation as a leader in graphics adapters with the release of the RIVA TNT, a graphics accelerator chip for PCs. The following year, Nvidia released the GeForce 256, which introduced on-board transformation and lighting to consumer-grade 3D hardware. The company also went public that year. Nvidia went on to make many major acquisitions in the new millennium, purchasing such companies as 3dfx, Exluna, MediaQ, iReady, ULI Electronics, Hybrid Graphics, and Ageia.
Nvidia is particularly renowned for its professional line of GPUs, which is used in a wide range of fields including engineering, architecture, entertainment media, manufacturing, and scientific research. The company also designs an API called CUDA that facilitates the creation of massively parallel programs utilizing GPUs. They are used in supercomputing throughout the world. As it has expanded, Nvidia has moved more into mobile computing, including vehicle navigation systems and mobile processors for smartphones and tablets. Additionally, it has widened its presence in the gaming industry by creating handheld consoles, such as the Shield Portable, as well as the cloud gaming service GeForce Now. Nvidia has also grown into a leader in artificial intelligence.
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Philanthropy
In philanthropy, Huang donated $50 million to his alma mater Oregon State University in 2022. The donation was to go toward the establishment of a supercomputing institute on the school's campus. Huang had earlier donated to his other alma mater, Stanford University, contributing $30 million toward the creation of the Jen-Hsun Huang School of Engineering Center. Additionally, he donated $2 million to his childhood alma mater Oneida Baptist Institute to build a new girls' dormitory and classroom building.
Honors and Awards
Many honors and awards have been bestowed upon Huang for both his corporate and philanthropic endeavors. In 2003, he earned the Dr. Morris Chang Exemplary Leadership Award from the Fabless Semiconductor Association. Huang later received the Daniel J. Epstein Engineering Management Award from the University of Southern California. In 2007, he received the Pioneer Business Leader Award from the Silicon Valley Education Foundation, and in 2009 received an honorary doctorate from his alma mater Oregon State. Huang's other laurels have included the Robert N. Noyce Award, the highest honor given by the Semiconductor Industry Association. In 2021, he was included on Time magazine's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Personal Life & Real Estate
Huang is married to Lori, whom he first met when they were engineering lab partners at Oregon State. The couple has two children together.
Not long after graduating from Oregon State, Jensen and Lori bought a 1,500 square foot home in San Jose, California. They sold this home in 1988 for $185,000. That same year they paid $338,000 for a new home in San Jose. In 1999, the year NVIDIA went public. In 2002 the Huangs sold their home for $500,000.
In 2003, the Huangs paid $6.9 million for a newly-built 7,000 square foot mansion in Los Altos Hills, California. They continue to own this home today and it appears to be their primary California mansion.
In 2004 the Huangs paid $7.5 million for an 8,000 square foot mansion within a gated community in Maui.
In 2017 they paid $37 million for a newly-constructed, 11,400 square foot mansion in San Francisco.
