Alleged espionage scandal and affair rocks Jensen Huang's world: What to know about the Nvidia CEO
"You deserve better from me," Huang told Nvidia colleagues.
Giving the keynote speech earlier this year at the Carnegie Mellon University graduation, Jensen Huang spoke of an "embarrassing, humiliating" experience that taught him a valuable lesson.
The 63-year-old co-founder and CEO of the tech giant Nvidia told the graduates that he had to tell the CEO of Sega Co. in the 1990s that the technology his company sold to the gaming manufacturer didn't work.
"It was very embarrassing, humiliating, and one of the hardest things I have ever done," Huang said of the meeting.
In the meeting, Huang said he acknowledged that without the Sega money, "Nvidia would vaporize" and asked the CEO to still pay for the failed technology. The CEO agreed.
"I learned early that being CEO was not about power, but the responsibility that comes with keeping the company alive. And that honesty and humility can be met with generosity and kindness," Huang told the Carnegie Mellon graduates.
Scandal rocks Nvidia
On Sunday, Huang -- who helped grow Nvidia into an artificial intelligence behemoth, estimated to be worth $4 trillion -- was forced to admit another humiliating episode, one not caused by failed technology, but by human error of his own making.
Following reporting in The New York Times that Huang had engaged in a love affair with a Chinese businesswoman and alleged spy named Alice Huang, Nvidia's board announced it is conducting an independent investigation into allegations that its CEO "has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort." China has denied Alice Huang, who has no relation to Jensen Huang, is a spy, calling the accusations "baseless" and "slanderous smears."
"I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry," Huang said in a written statement. "Throughout my life, my family has given me love and support. They deserve my honesty and loyalty. Instead, I let them down and damaged the life we built together. I take full responsibility for what I did and the hurt I caused, and I accept the criticism that comes with it."
The American dream
Born Jen-Hsun Huang in Taiwan in 1963, he spent his early childhood in Thailand. But political unrest in the region prompted his parents to send him and his older brother unaccompanied to live with an aunt and uncle in Tacoma, Washington, Huang has explained in multiple interviews and speeches. He was 9 years old when he arrived in America.
"My father had a dream to raise his family in America," Huang told the Carnegie Mellon graduates in May.
Once in the United States, Huang's uncle sent him and his brother to a boarding school in Oneida, Kentucky. The Oneida Baptist Institute turned out to be a private boarding school that enrolled troubled youth, Huang told The New Yorker in a 2023 interview.
"Every student smoked, and I think I was the only boy at the school without a pocketknife," Huang told the magazine.
He said he was bullied daily. "The way you described Chinese people back then was [racial slur]. We were called that every day," Huang told The New Yorker.
Two years after he and his brother moved to the United States, they were reunited with their parents who immigrated to Oregon.
"My parents left everything behind to join us. They came with little to nothing," Huang said in his speech to the Carnegie Mellon graduates.
Path to becoming a Silicon Valley titan
Living in Oregon, Huang said he developed a relentless work ethic, washing dishes and busing tables at a Denny's restaurant and scrubbing floors at a sports equipment store, while at the same time becoming a nationally ranked ping-pong player.
His drive and determination to succeed were also transferred to the classroom, and he graduated from high school at the age of 16.
While majoring in electrical engineering at Oregon State, Huang met his wife, Lori Mills, when they became lab partners.
The couple were married in 1985 and have two children, both now working at Nvidia.
In 1993, while working as an engineer for a Silicon Valley tech company, Huang met computer scientists Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem and formed Nvidia over a meal at a Denny's. The trio set out to build a computer that would make competitors "green with envy," Priem told The New Yorker.
They initially wanted to call the company NVision, but the name was already taken. Huang has said he came up with the name Nvidia based on the Latin word for envy, invidia.
Following their Sega failure, Nvidia invented a graphics processing unit (GPU), a semiconductor, or chip, that has fueled the AI revolution and made Nvidia one of the most valuable companies in the world.
The company went public in January of 1999, trading on the Nasdaq index for $12 a share. Nvidia's stock has skyrocketed ever since, reaching an all-time high of $239 a share in October.
"I have lived through every major computing platform shift: Mainframes, PCs, the internet, mobile, and cloud. Each wave built on the one before, each expanded access, each transformed industries and society," Huang told the Carnegie Mellon graduates this past spring. "But what is about to happen now is bigger than anything before. Computing is undergoing a complete reset."
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