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Hailed as a once-in-a-generation tech visionary, Jensen Huang, CEO of chip manufacturer Nvidia<\/a>, can add a new feather to his cap: He\u2019s the 24th-richest man in the world<\/a>. It\u2019s hard to miss the news about his company, the semiconductor manufacturer that has just leapfrogged Google<\/a> in market cap.\u00a0<\/p>\n The company\u2019s stock has soared 409% since last year. After its year-end earnings call on Wednesday, Nvidia\u2019s value rose $250 billion in a single day, topping Meta\u2019s $197 billion rise from earlier this month as the largest such daily increase. On its year-end earnings call Wednesday, Nvidia crushed analyst expectations<\/a>, setting off a frenzy among Wall Street investors and Silicon Valley analysts. Nvidia reported $22.1 billion revenue<\/a> in the fourth quarter of 2023, roughly $1.7 billion more than expected.\u00a0<\/p>\n Goldman Sachs<\/a> just called Nvidia \u201cthe most important stock on planet earth.\u201d<\/a> But who is the man leading the runaway trillion-dollar firm in his signature moto leather jacket?\u00a0<\/p>\n Huang, who turned 61 earlier this week, was born in Taiwan and, at age 9, was sent with his brother to live with an uncle in Tacoma. The following year, Huang moved once more, to rural Oneida, Ky., where he lived in an all-boys dorm at the Oneida Baptist Institute\u2014a religious reform academy his uncle mistakenly believed<\/a> was a boarding school.<\/p>\n Huang\u2019s parents eventually joined him and his brother in the U.S., and the family settled outside Portland, Ore., where Huang went to high school, played competitive tennis, and graduated two years early\u2014at age 16. According to a New Yorker<\/em> profile<\/a> from 2023, Huang briefly worked as a dishwasher at Denny\u2019s. He earned his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from Oregon State University, and then a master\u2019s in the same field from Stanford.\u00a0<\/p>\n After several years working in engineering, including as a microprocessor designer, Huang cofounded Nvidia in 1993 at another roadside Denny\u2019s in East San Jose\u2014while eating, not serving. Huang was 30 at the time, and he and his cofounders, friends and fellow microchip designers Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem, had just $40,000<\/a> in the bank between them, but they were armed with a keen sense of what was to come in computing.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe believed this model of computing could solve problems that general-purpose computing fundamentally couldn\u2019t,\u201d Huang told Fortune<\/em><\/a> in 2017. \u201cWe also observed that video games were simultaneously one of the most computationally challenging problems and would have incredibly high sales volume. Those two conditions don\u2019t happen very often. Video games were our killer app\u2014a flywheel to reach large markets funding huge R&D to solve massive computational problems.\u201d<\/p>\n Nvidia quickly grabbed $20 million in VC funding, including from Sequoia Capital<\/a>, and he\u2019s the rare tech founder who\u2019s remained at the helm of his company steadily since its inception. \u201cI\u2019ve been talking about the same story for 15 years,\u201d Huang said in 2017, to reporter Andrew Nusca. \u201cI\u2019ve barely had to change my slides.\u201d<\/p>\n Huang\u2019s approachability and decency has probably added to his longevity at Nvidia. In 2010, Huang told the New York Times<\/em><\/a> he defines good leaders based on authenticity.\u00a0 \u201cThey don\u2019t dress like a CEO because they think that\u2019s what CEOs dress like. They don\u2019t talk like CEOs because that\u2019s the way they think CEOs talk,\u201d he said. \u201cThey don\u2019t conduct their meetings and expect people to treat them like CEOs because that\u2019s the way they think CEOs are supposed to be treated. They are just who they are.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Nvidia\u2019s business has been turbocharged by the AI boom that\u2019s taken over the global tech industry. The company makes many of the critical chips that provide the computing power needed to run the models that underpin AI tools. Nvidia provides the building blocks for what some consider to be among the most significant developments in the history of tech\u2014and it joined the trillion-dollar club<\/a> last June.\u00a0<\/p>\n Nvidia\u2019s historic stock rally is perhaps the example par excellence of the old investing adage that to make money in a gold rush one should sell shovels and pickaxes. Nvidia is especially lucky in that it has a seemingly insurmountable lead on the other proverbial shovel-makers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s Huang himself. Per Fortune\u2019<\/em>s <\/em>2017 profile<\/a>, the billionaire doesn\u2019t even keep a desk\u2014much less a corner office\u2014opting instead to roam around his building, working in any number of conference rooms he passes. He also has a large arm tattoo resembling his company\u2019s logo, which he got in the mid-2000s on a dare from his staff once the company\u2019s stock price hit $100. (Tattoos and leather jackets are welcome at Nvidia\u2019s offices, where staff tenure is unusually long and bonds are tight-knit.)\u00a0<\/p>\n Nvidia stock is inching closer to $800 these days, but don\u2019t expect another tattoo on its formidable cofounder-CEO. As he told Fortune<\/em>\u2019s Nusca in 2017: Getting the company logo on his shoulder made him \u201ccry like a baby.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nThe electrical engineer and former busboy<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Leadership philosophy\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Unique leadership style<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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