Jensen Huang, co-founder and CEO of Nvidia, recently convinced Donald Trump to lift restrictions on certain GPU exports to China.
Unknown to the public just three years ago, Jensen Fan is now one of the world’s most powerful entrepreneurs, head of Chip Giant Nvidia.
The modest 62-year-old portrays a stadium crowd of over 10,000 people as his company’s products push the boundaries of artificial intelligence.
The chips designed by Nvidia, known as graphics cards or GPUs (Graphic Processing Units), are essential for the development of generative artificial intelligence power source technologies such as ChatGPT.
Big Tech’s insatiable desire for Nvidia’s GPUs, each sold for tens of thousands of dollars, surpassing the market valuation of California chipmakers by more than $4 trillion.
The rise of Nvidia’s meteors has brought Huang’s personal fortune to $150 billion. He chases after one of the richest people in the world.
In a clear demonstration of his influence, he recently convinced President Donald Trump to lift restrictions on certain GPU exports to China despite the fact that China is trapped in the fight against the United States due to AI hegemony.
“It did well,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor of governance at Yale University.
Huang can explain to Trump that “the world using the US technology platform as its core protocol is the interest of this country,” and he cannot help the Chinese military, Sonnenfeld said.
early life
Born in Taipei in 1963, Jensen Huang (originally named Jen-Hsun), embodies an American success story. At age 9, he and his brother were sent to boarding school in a small town in Kentucky.
His uncle recommended the school to his Taiwanese parents, whom he believed was a well-known institution when it was actually a school for troubled youth.
Too young to become a student, Huang got in there, but went to a nearby public school with his tobacco farm children. His poor English made him bullied and forced to clean the toilet, a two-year ordeal that changed him.
“We worked really hard, studied hard. The kids were really tough,” he said in an interview with US broadcaster NPR.
But “The ending of the story is that I loved the time I was there,” fans said.
Leather jacket and tattoo
He was brought home by his parents, who had previously settled in Oregon in the northwest of the United States, and he graduated from university at just 20 years old, joined AMD, then joined LSI Logic, and designed his passion.
But he went further, founding Nvidia in 1993, using semiconductors that are powerful enough to handle 3D graphics, as explained in the “No Priors” podcast, to “solve problems that normal computers can’t do.”
Nvidia created its first GPU in 1999 and rides at the intersection of video games, data centers, cloud computing, and current generation AI.
Always wearing a black t-shirt and leather jacket, Huang features a tattoo with the Nvidia logo, giving it a sports car taste.
But it is his lack of political cooperation that sets him apart from the likes of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
Unlike them, Huang was particularly lacking in Trump’s inauguration.
“He has retreated his aura and made the Star a technology rather than himself,” observed Sonnenfeld, who considers Han “the most respected high-tech titan of today.”
One former high-ranking Nvidia employee explained to AFP as the “most driven person” he has ever met.
Food from the street
On his visit to his hometown of Taiwan, fans are treated like a megastar, and fans are busy for autographs and selfies as journalists chase him down to the barbershop and his favorite night market.
“He created this phenomenon because of personal appeal,” Wayne Lin pointed out by the Witology Market Trend Research Institute.
“People like him are very busy and his schedule should meet Big Boss every day. But when he comes to Taiwan, he remembers eating food from the streets,” he said.
Nvidia is a tight ship and takes great care in projecting Huang’s drama-free image.
But the former high-ranking employee draws more subtle pictures and provides intense protection for his employees, but within Nvidia’s executive circle, he describes the “very paradoxical” individual who “tears people” about big mistakes and poor choices.
©2025 AFP
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