Jensen Huang Career Timeline

Jensen Huang timeline: 1963–1992

Born in Taiwan in 1963, Huang moved to the United States in 1973. He graduated from Oregon State in 1984, worked at AMD and LSI Logic, and earned a Stanford master's in 1992 2.

1. 1963 · PERSONALBorn on 17 February in Tainan, Taiwan
2. 1973 · PERSONALSent to the United States with his older brother; attends a boarding school in Kentucky
3. 1984 · EDUCATIONGraduates in electrical engineering from Oregon State University and joins AMD as a chip designer
4. 1984 · EDUCATIONBS electrical engineering, Oregon State University
5. 1985 · ROLEJoins LSI Logic, later running a division
6. 1992 · EDUCATIONEarns a master's in electrical engineering from Stanford
7. 1992 · EDUCATIONMS electrical engineering, Stanford University
8. 1993 · FOUNDEDCo-founds Nvidia with Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem in April
9. 1993 · FOUNDEDStarts Nvidia
10. 1999 · MILESTONENvidia lists on Nasdaq and launches the GeForce 256, marketed as the first GPU
11. 2006 · MILESTONELaunches CUDA, letting GPUs be programmed for general computing
12. 2023 · MILESTONENvidia passes $1 trillion in market value on AI demand
13. 2025 · MILESTONENvidia becomes the first company worth $5 trillion in October
14. 2026 · MILESTONERanked seventh-richest person in the world at $178 billion

1993–2005: building Nvidia

He co-founded Nvidia in April 1993. After an early near-failure, the RIVA 128 (1997) and GeForce 256 (1999) chips succeeded, and Nvidia listed in January 1999 2.

2006–2022: CUDA and deep learning

CUDA, launched in 2006, turned GPUs into general-purpose computers. From 2012 researchers used them to train neural networks, and Nvidia bought Mellanox in 2020 for data-centre networking 2.

2023–2026: the AI boom

Demand for AI chips took Nvidia past $1 trillion in 2023 and to $5 trillion in October 2025, the first company to reach that level. Forbes ranked Huang seventh in the world, at $178 billion, on 1 November 2026 1.