Little-known personal life of billionaire Jensen Huang who just won the $3 million VinFuture prize

GĐXH - Few people know that billionaire Jensen Huang - CEO of Nvidia, who owns a net worth of 126.5 billion USD and is the 11th richest person in the world, used to wash dishes and work as a waiter to make a living.

Billionaire Jensen Huang just won the $3 million VinFuture prize

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh presented the VinFuture Prize 2024 to Mr. Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA. Photo: MH/VFP

Last night (December 6), NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang surprised many people when he appeared at the VinFuture 2024 Awards Ceremony, an award co-founded by billionaire Pham Nhat Vuong and his wife.

More surprisingly, Mr. Jensen Huang, along with four other scientists, was honored as the owner of the VinFuture 2024 Main Prize, worth 3 million USD. This prize category aims to honor groundbreaking contributions to promote the advancement of Deep Learning, opening a breakthrough era for technological innovations, thanks to which machines can "learn" from huge amounts of data and achieve incredible accuracy in tasks such as image recognition, natural language processing and decision making.

Speaking when receiving this special award, Mr. Jensen Huang shared: "Hello Vietnam. Thank you for welcoming me back and for your kind words honoring scientific and technological achievements.

I am honored to receive the VinFuture Prize. In the presence of friends and great scientists such as Professor Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun. This is a recognition for us by the VinFuture Foundation for the breakthrough potential of AI in all fields. I am honored to receive this award, representing my colleagues at NVIDIA who have dedicated their lives to computer science and related fields. Thank you VinFuture Foundation for recognizing us."

Nvidia CEO invites Hanoians to eat lemongrass and lime chicken feet on the evening of December 5. Photo: GH

Earlier, at around 7am the same day, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang was present at Bat Dan, one of the famous pho streets in Hanoi.

On the evening of December 5, NVIDIA CEO and Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh drank beer and walked around the old town after attending the signing ceremony to establish an AI R&D center in Vietnam. The boss of the trillion-dollar chip company was considered friendly and approachable, and was willing to stop to take photos and sign autographs for fans on the street.

Mr. Jensen Huang currently owns a fortune of more than 120 billion USD, the 11th richest person in the world (according to Forbes). He co-founded NVIDIA in 1993. Currently, NVIDIA is the largest supplier of specialized chips for AI.

Since the emergence of artificial intelligence in 2022, demand for NVIDIA's chips has skyrocketed, pushing the company past a valuation of over $3.5 trillion and steadily competing with Apple for the title of the world's most valuable company.

Billionaire Jensen Huang's difficult childhood

Billionaire Jensen Huang appeared on the red carpet of the VinFuture Awards 2024. Photo: VFP

Mr. Jensen Huang is the CEO of NVIDIA, a chip company that is a "star" in the semiconductor industry. However, few people know that this businessman had a difficult childhood, working as a waiter and facing opposition from his family.

He was born in Taiwan (China) in 1963 and grew up in the US. In 1973, his parents sent their children to relatives in the US before they immigrated. He can be considered a typical case of successful immigrant entrepreneurship. From a small restaurant employee, Mr. Jensen Huang became the head of a chip giant with a market value of up to 3.5 trillion USD.

According to his 2017 Oregon State University profile, he placed high in the national youth table tennis tournament while attending high school in Beaverton. He also holds a master's degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University.

Jensen Huang met Lori Mills as freshmen at Oregon State University. They married five years later and have two children.

“I have loved computers since I was a kid, but Oregon State University made me see the magic behind computers!”, he shared.

Billionaire Jensen Huang recently revealed in a speech at a graduation ceremony at Taiwan University that he graduated from college in 1984, calling it the most appropriate year to graduate. That same year, the first Mac computer was released, ushering in a new era of personal computing.

After graduating from Oregon State University, he worked at chip companies LSI Logic and AMD.

Before deciding to start his own business with two friends, Jensen Huang worked part-time at a restaurant called Danny's Restaurant. He once shared that this experience had a big impact on the trajectory of his life. Working as a waiter in a restaurant helped him become less shy.

Before it became the birthplace of Nvidia, Danny's Restaurant meant a lot to Jensen Huang, who once said that without his experience as a waiter at the restaurant, he would not have become the leader he is today.

The experience had a profound impact on the trajectory of his life. Jensen Huang was a shy boy, but taking pancake orders taught him how to interact with strangers and compromise in stressful situations that were out of his control.

"I was a good student, I was always focused and active. But I was also very introverted and very shy. The only experience that made me come out of myself was working as a waiter at Denny's. Just thinking about talking to people scared me," he recalled.

One X user commented alongside a screenshot of the profile page: "This is the cleanest and most inspiring bio ever."

In terms of experience, Mr. Huang's first job was as a dishwasher, busboy, and waiter (from 1978 to 1983) at the Denny's restaurant chain. His second job was as the founder and CEO of NVIDIA, from 1993 to present.

Since founding NVIDIA, over the past 30 years, billionaire Jensen Huang has attracted intense attention as his company has become one of the most important names globally in the "coin mining", gaming and generative AI craze. Companies around the world are now competing to buy powerful processors from NVIDIA.

Source: https://giadinh.suckhoedoisong.vn/doi-tu-it-biet-cua-ty-phu-jensen-huang-vua-thang-giai-vinfuture-3-trieu-usd-172241207080207132.htm