The most influential company in modern artificial intelligence (AI) is Nvidia, which operates behind the scenes, building computer chips called graphics processing units (GPUs) that power everything from video games to tools like ChatGPT. In The Thinking Machine, Stephen Witt attributes Nvidia’s success to CEO Jensen Huang’s decades-long bet on one contrarian idea: that the future of computing would require processing thousands of calculations simultaneously, rather than one at a time.
Huang’s investment in this seemingly niche technology—at a time when competitors like Intel focused on making traditional processors faster—put Nvidia in the right place at the right time to power the AI revolution. Below, we’ll dive into Huang’s background, starting as an immigrant from Taiwan and Thailand, and how he rose as a powerful figure in the AI industry.
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Jensen Huang’s Journey From Immigrant to Tech CEO
Jensen Huang’s background starts with early life experiences that would shape his approach to leadership under pressure. Born in Taiwan in 1963 and raised partly in Thailand, Huang was sent to the United States at age 10, where a family miscommunication landed him at a Kentucky boarding school that was more like a reform institution than the elite academy his parents had envisioned. Facing bullying and harsh living conditions, Huang learned self-reliance and resilience. After reuniting with his family in Oregon, he excelled academically while working as a busboy at the restaurant chain Denny’s. He also discovered a passion for table tennis that led to national-level competition.
(Shortform note: Huang’s family left Taiwan during a period of geopolitical uncertainty, which stemmed from China’s civil war between Nationalist forces and Mao Zedong’s Communist Party. When the Communists won in 1949, the Nationalist government fled to Taiwan, established martial law, and ruled as a government in exile. Taiwan remained under this authoritarian rule while Communist China claimed the island must be reunified with China. Huang’s family moved to Thailand when he was five, but decided not to stay there permanently due to the proximity of the Vietnam War. The choice to send Jensen and his brother ahead to the US reflects the urgency many immigrants felt to secure their children’s futures in a stable democracy.)
Huang attended college at Oregon State University, where he met his future wife, Lori Mills, as lab partners in an engineering class. After graduating with honors in electrical engineering, he joined the Silicon Valley tech scene, working first at AMD and then at LSI Logic. There, he rose to lead a division with $250 million in revenue while pursuing a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Stanford at night. (Shortform note: Historically, computer engineering grew out of electrical engineering: Electrical engineers were the ones who understood how to design and build the electronic circuits that eventually became the components of computer processors.)
(Shortform note: Both AMD and LSI Logic built processors, the chips that handle a computer’s operations. AMD was taking on Intel—the dominant maker of processors, including those for IBM’s personal computers—and made breakthroughs like the world’s first gigahertz processor, which could perform one billion operations per second. During Huang’s stint at AMD from 1984-1985, he worked on the design of these processors, which were built to handle any type of computing task that might be thrown at them. At LSI Logic, he learned a different approach: creating specialized chips called ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits), which were custom-designed to excel at one particular type of task, rather than trying to do everything well.)
At LSI Logic, Huang became friends with two Sun Microsystems engineers, Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem. When the trio decided to start Nvidia in 1993, it was a big risk. Huang was 30 years old with a young family and a career at LSI Logic, where he was being groomed as a potential CEO. The three engineers saw an opportunity in the emerging PC gaming market that others were ignoring. Meeting at a San Jose Denny’s restaurant, the same chain where Huang had worked as a teenager, they planned a company that would make 3D graphics chips for video games. The decision to target the gaming market positioned Nvidia perfectly for the parallel processing revolution that would later power AI.
(Shortform note: The shift from 2D to 3D gaming in the 1990s created enormous new computational demands that established companies weren’t equipped to handle. Early 2D games like Super Mario Bros. used simple flat graphics called “sprites,” or digital drawings that moved across the screen. 3D games required “polygonal modeling,” where every character and object was constructed from complex geometric shapes and rendered in real time from multiple angles. This meant calculating lighting, textures, and movement for thousands of polygons simultaneously, exactly the type of processing that traditional computer chips struggled with.)
Learn More About Jensen Huang’s Background
To better understand Jensen Huang’s background in its broader context, take a look at Shortform’s guide to the book The Thinking Machine by Stephen Witt.
