Jensen Huang
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Jensen Huang (Jen-Hsun Huang) is an electrical engineer and business executive who co-founded NVIDIA in 1993 and has been its president and chief executive officer since then.[1][2] NVIDIA designs graphics processors used for virtual reality and other extended reality rendering, and Huang has used the company's keynotes to introduce several of its XR products and demonstrations, among them Iray VR (2016), the Holodeck collaborative VR design environment (2017), the CloudXR streaming platform (2019) and the Omniverse open beta (2020).[3][4][5][6]
At GTC 2024 NVIDIA announced that Omniverse Cloud could stream to the Apple Vision Pro, and in September 2024 Huang was one of the testers shown in Meta's reaction video for its Orion AR glasses prototype.[7][8]
Early life and education
Huang spent part of his childhood in Taiwan.[9] According to Fortune, his family was living in Bangkok during one of Thailand's coups when his parents decided it was no longer safe to keep their children there, and in the mid-1970s they sent him and his brother to the United States. An uncle in Tacoma, Washington, found them places at Oneida Baptist Institute, a boarding school in Clay County, Kentucky, where Huang, at 9 the youngest student on campus, was assigned to clean the toilets. His parents reached the United States two years later.[10] As a young man he worked at Denny's, where he has said he was a dishwasher, busboy and waiter.[11]
Huang holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Oregon State University and a master's degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University.[1] Fortune gives 1984 as the year he graduated from Oregon State.[9] He met his wife, Lori, also an Oregon State alumna, at the university.[12]
Career
Before NVIDIA
Huang worked at the semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices from 1984 to 1985 and at the chip maker LSI Logic from 1985 to 1993.[1]
Founding and leadership of NVIDIA
NVIDIA was founded on 5 April 1993 by Huang, Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem, with the aim of bringing 3D graphics to gaming and multimedia.[2] The three founders planned the company at a Denny's restaurant on Berryessa Road in San Jose, California; in September 2023 Denny's placed a plaque in the booth to mark it.[11] Huang has been NVIDIA's president, chief executive and a member of its board since the founding, and still held those roles as of October 2026.[1]
NVIDIA's corporate timeline credits the company with inventing the GPU in 1999 and records the unveiling of the CUDA parallel computing architecture in 2006.[2]
Virtual reality and XR keynotes
Several of Huang's keynotes at NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference (GTC) and at trade events have presented VR and AR products and demonstrations.
| Date | Event | XR content presented |
|---|---|---|
| April 2016 | GTC 2016 keynote | Iray VR and Iray VR Lite; Mars 2030 demo with Steve Wozniak; Everest VR[3] |
| May 2016 | GeForce GTX 1080 launch | NVIDIA claimed twice the VR performance of the GTX Titan X[13] |
| May 2017 | GTC 2017 keynote | Project Holodeck collaborative VR design review of a Koenigsegg Regera[4] |
| March 2018 | GTC 2018 keynote | Remote driving of a real car from a VR cockpit using Holodeck[14] |
| October 2019 | MWC Los Angeles | CloudXR streaming of cloud-rendered AR and VR over 5G[5] |
| October 2020 | GTC 2020 keynote | Omniverse open beta[6] |
| March 2024 | GTC 2024 keynote | Omniverse Cloud streaming to Apple Vision Pro[15] |
GTC 2016
In his GTC keynote of April 2016, Huang described VR as a new computing platform rather than a new gadget. He showed Mars 2030, a VR recreation of the Martian surface built from photographs taken by NASA's probes and rovers, and brought in Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak by live video. Wozniak, wearing an HTC Vive, was the first person outside the development team to try it. The keynote also showed Everest VR, a photogrammetry model of Mount Everest.[3]
Huang announced Iray VR, which NVIDIA said would be made available to VR developers in June 2016. It uses light probes for lighting; according to UploadVR, the demo used 100 of them, each taking an hour to render on an 8-GPU system. Huang showed an architectural visualization of NVIDIA's new headquarters on a Vive. Because Iray VR needs heavy computing power, NVIDIA also announced Iray VR Lite, which turns Iray scenes into compressed photospheres that can be viewed on smartphones in Google Cardboard or View-Master headsets.[3]
A month later Huang presented the GeForce GTX 1080. NVIDIA said the card performed twice as fast as the US$999 GTX Titan X in VR titles; UploadVR listed the GTX 1080 at US$599.[13]
Holodeck
At GTC in May 2017 Huang demonstrated Project Holodeck with Christian von Koenigsegg, who joined from Sweden in a VR headset and gave a virtual tour of a Koenigsegg Regera hypercar. The car model had 50 million polygons. NVIDIA opened applications for Holodeck early access at GTC Europe in Munich in October 2017.[4]
At GTC in March 2018 Huang used Holodeck in a remote driving demonstration. A driver on stage wore an HTC Vive and sat in a car cockpit. Holodeck loaded a virtual car, and live video let him drive a real Ford Fusion around a private lot behind the convention center. "He's not with us," Huang told the audience, pointing to the driver; "He's looking at this virtual world through live video."[14]
CloudXR and Omniverse
At MWC Los Angeles in October 2019 Huang demonstrated CloudXR, NVIDIA's platform for streaming cloud-rendered AR and VR content over 5G connections. In the demo a high-fidelity 3D car model, rendered in the cloud, was projected onto the stage through a phone running handheld AR. NVIDIA said it would release a CloudXR SDK, with a server driver for data centers and client libraries for Android and Windows devices.[5]
Huang revealed the open beta of Omniverse, NVIDIA's real-time 3D collaboration and simulation platform, in a digital GTC keynote on 5 October 2020. In NVIDIA's announcement he said: "Physical and virtual worlds will increasingly be fused" and called the platform "the beginning of the Star Trek Holodeck, realized at last."[6]
Apple Vision Pro
NVIDIA announced at GTC on 18 March 2024 that Omniverse scenes could be streamed to the Apple Vision Pro. Developers send OpenUSD industrial scenes to NVIDIA's Graphics Delivery Network, a network of data centers that streams the rendered 3D content to the headset.[7] The keynote showed a car configurator, built on Omniverse by the CGI firm Katana Studio, streamed to a Vision Pro in real time, combining local rendering on the headset with cloud rendering.[15] At the same GTC Huang described Omniverse as "the operating system for building and operating physically realistic digital twins."[16]
Appearances with Meta
On 29 July 2024 Huang and Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg held a public fireside chat at SIGGRAPH 2024 in Denver, which NVIDIA billed as a discussion of the future of AI and simulation.[17][18]
Two months later, at Meta Connect 2024 on 25 September, Meta showed a video of well-known people trying its Orion prototype AR glasses, and Huang was among them. Business Insider reported that he called the glasses' light weight "a big deal" and said: "The tracking is good, the brightness is good, the color contrast is good, field of view is excellent."[8]
Recognition
Fortune named Huang its Businessperson of the Year for 2017, and in 2019 the Harvard Business Review ranked him first among the world's 100 best-performing chief executives over the length of their tenure.[1][19] He received the Semiconductor Industry Association's Robert N. Noyce Award for 2021.[20] In February 2024 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for contributions in "high-powered graphics processing units, fueling the artificial intelligence revolution".[21] He shared the 2025 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, awarded for modern machine learning; the citation credits him and Bill Dally with leading developments in the hardware platforms that underpin modern machine learning.[22]
Philanthropy
In October 2022 Huang and his wife, Lori, gave US$50 million toward a US$200 million research and education complex at Oregon State University, to be equipped with an NVIDIA supercomputer for training large AI models and running digital twin simulations.[23] Ground was broken in April 2024 for the building, named the Jen-Hsun Huang and Lori Mills Huang Collaborative Innovation Complex.[12]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 "Jensen Huang". NVIDIA. https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/about-nvidia/board-of-directors/jensen-huang/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 "Our History: Innovations Over the Years". NVIDIA. https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/about-nvidia/corporate-timeline/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Joe Durbin (2016-04-05). "NVIDIA Sends Steve Wozniak To Mars, Announces Iray VR". UploadVR. https://uploadvr.com/nvidia-sends-steve-wozniak-to-mars-announces-iray-vr/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Dominic Brennan (2017-10-10). "NVIDIA 'Holodeck' Collaborative VR Design Tool Opens Applications for Early Access". Road to VR. https://roadtovr.com/nvidia-koenigsegg-showcase-project-holodeck-real-time-automobile-visualization-vr/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Ben Lang (2019-10-22). "NVIDIA Announces CloudXR for AR/VR Rendering of SteamVR Applications Over 5G". Road to VR. https://www.roadtovr.com/nvidia-cloudxr-vr-ar-cloud-rendering-5g-steamvr-openvr/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 "NVIDIA Announces Omniverse Open Beta, Letting Designers Collaborate in Real Time From Home or Around the World". NVIDIA Newsroom. NVIDIA. 2020-10-05. https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-announces-omniverse-open-beta-letting-designers-collaborate-in-real-time-from-home-or-around-the-world. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Max Bickley (2024-03-18). "NVIDIA Omniverse Expands Worlds Using Apple Vision Pro". NVIDIA Blog. NVIDIA. https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/omniverse-apple-vision-pro/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Ana Altchek (2024-09-25). "Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang gushes over Meta's new 'Orion' prototype glasses". Business Insider (via AOL). https://www.aol.com/nvidia-ceo-jensen-huang-gushes-200325023.html. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Steve Mollman (2023-05-28). "2023 is a 'perfect year to graduate' thanks to A.I., says Nvidia CEO". Fortune. https://fortune.com/2023/05/28/nvidia-ceo-jensen-huang-says-2023-is-a-perfect-year-to-graduate-thanks-to-a-i. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ Eva Roytburg (2025-12-05). "Before running the world's most valuable company, Jensen Huang was a 9-year-old janitor in Kentucky". Fortune. https://www.fortune.com/2025/12/05/jensen-huang-nine-year-old-janitor-before-nvidia-joe-rogan-podcast. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 Scott Budman (2023-09-26). "Trillion-dollar tech company gets its start at a South Bay Denny's booth". NBC Bay Area. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/south-bay/nvidia-ceo-dennys-san-jose/3327542/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 Brian Caulfield (2024-04-15). "AI Is Tech's 'Greatest Contribution to Social Elevation,' NVIDIA CEO Tells Oregon State Students". NVIDIA Blog. NVIDIA. https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/oregon-state-higher-ed/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 Jason Evangelho (2016-05-06). "VR Performance Gets Supercharged With Nvidia's New GTX 1080 Graphics Card". UploadVR. https://www.uploadvr.com/vr-performance-gets-supercharged-nvidias-new-gtx-1080-graphics-card/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 Matt Burns (2018-03-27). "Nvidia stuns by driving a car in real life through virtual reality". TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/27/nvidia-stuns-by-driving-a-car-in-real-life-through-virtual-reality/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 Jim Thacker (2024-03-18). "Check out NVIDIA's Omniverse announcements from GTC 2024". CG Channel. https://www.cgchannel.com/2024/03/check-out-nvidias-omniverse-announcements-from-gtc-2024. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ Kyt Dotson (2024-03-18). "Nvidia announces APIs for Omniverse Cloud to power digital twins for software tools". SiliconANGLE. https://siliconangle.com/2024/03/18/nvidia-announces-apis-omniverse-cloud-power-digital-twins-software-tools/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ Claudia Cook (2024-07-15). "Jensen Huang, Mark Zuckerberg to Discuss Future of Graphics and Virtual Worlds at SIGGRAPH 2024". NVIDIA Blog. NVIDIA. https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/huang-zuckerberg-siggraph-2024. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ Kyle Wiggers (2024-07-29). "Huang and Zuckerberg swapped jackets at SIGGRAPH 2024 and things got weird". TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/29/huang-and-zuckerberg-swapped-jackets-at-siggraph-2024-and-things-got-weird/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ Andrew Nusca. "Jensen Huang". Fortune. https://fortune.com/ranking/businessperson-of-the-year/2017/jen-hsun-huang. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ "Awards". Semiconductor Industry Association. https://www.semiconductors.org/news-events/awards/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ Rick Merritt (2024-03-19). "NVIDIA, Huang Win Top Honors in Innovation, Engineering". NVIDIA Blog. NVIDIA. https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/fast-company-nae-honors/. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ "Modern Machine Learning". Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. https://qeprize.org/winners/modern-machine-learning. Retrieved 2026-10-13.
- ↑ Kate Lucariello (2022-10-17). "Oregon State U Announces $200M Research Complex with Supercomputer for AI, Materials Science, and Robotics". Campus Technology. https://campustechnology.com/articles/2022/10/17/oregon-state-u-announces-200m-research-complex.aspx. Retrieved 2026-10-13.