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As co-founder and CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang has helped transform a company once focused on computer graphics into a chip powerhouse underpinning data-center infrastructure, artificial intelligence (AI), and robotics. Fortune reports that Nvidia is currently the world’s most valuable company, with a market capitalization of over $5.1 trillion. Huang’s personal wealth has also risen to around $175 billion, placing him among the top 10 richest people globally.
Huang’s background is often described as an immigrant success story. Born in Taiwan, he moved to the United States as a child in the 1970s. He and his brother attended a boarding school in Kentucky before the family later settled in Oregon. By age 15, Huang had held a range of jobs, including delivering newspapers and washing dishes at Denny’s, as well as mowing lawns.
He finished high school two years early and studied electrical engineering at Oregon State University. During this period, he joined IEEE, the world’s largest professional organization for engineers, which includes figures such as Thomas Edison. Huang has said this was when he began to recognize how technology could shape the future.
Fortune attributes Nvidia’s rise to a large engineering workforce. Huang has also said the company plans to double its headcount to about 75,000 over the next decade.
Huang emphasizes engineering as a key driver of progress in the years ahead. He argues that engineers turn inventions into real products that are safe, useful, and capable of transforming society. In the context of AI, he says engineers must push the technology toward a better future. He also compares the current moment to earlier industrial revolutions, when engineering helped translate new ideas into widespread impact.
While AI may disrupt some jobs, the article cites data suggesting engineers could be among the least affected. In the United States, the Bureau of Labor Statistics notes that demand for engineering disciplines—electrical, electronic, and computer hardware—is expected to grow faster than average. The article links this to factors including retirements, immigration constraints, and rising demand from AI, energy, and defense.
Nvidia, the article notes, employs thousands of engineers and has signaled plans to expand to roughly 75,000 employees in the decade ahead.
Huang also frames engineering as a life-shaping discipline. He recalls meeting his wife, Lori Mills, in an electrical engineering class during college and describing his technology ambitions to her on their first date.
After graduating at the top of his class in 1984, Huang worked at Sun Microsystems, where he met engineering colleagues Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem. The three sketched Nvidia’s early ideas on a napkin at Denny’s in 1993, the year Huang turned 30.
Despite building one of the world’s most powerful companies, Huang’s definition of success has evolved. The article says he ultimately focuses on family and loved ones, rather than technology alone, company-building, or wealth accumulation.
In an interview, Huang argues that AI should not be met primarily with fear of displacement. Instead, he says AI is expanding humanity’s frontier by boosting productivity. Higher productivity, he argues, enables societies to tackle larger problems, which in turn creates new opportunities. Rather than shrinking the labor market, he says technology can keep people engaged with creative ideas and projects they previously could not pursue.
When asked for advice for young people, Huang urges them to become proficient in using AI quickly and to treat it as a powerful tool. He also says the rapid diffusion of AI creates more equitable opportunities, adding that “everyone starts from the same starting line in the new industrial revolution,” and that “there has never been a better time to enter this field than now.”
Source: Fortune
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