Jensen Huang, co-founder and chief executive of Nvidia, is ranked No. 8 on the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list with a net worth of $154 billion. Nvidia became the first company valued at more than $5 trillion, in October 2025.
Jen-Hsun “Jensen” Huang was born on February 17, 1963, in Taipei, Taiwan. When he was five his family moved to Thailand for his father’s refinery career, and at nine he and his older brother were sent to live with an uncle in Tacoma, Washington.
Net Worth and Rank
- Forbes 2026 list: No. 8, with $154 billion
- Later estimate: Wikipedia cites a Forbes estimate of over $200 billion in October 2026, making him the world’s seventh-wealthiest person
Early Struggles
His aunt and uncle enrolled the brothers by mistake in the Oneida Baptist Institute, a reform academy in Kentucky for troubled youth, which they believed to be a prestigious boarding school. From the age of 15, Huang worked the night shift at a Denny’s restaurant as a dishwasher, busboy and waiter from 1978 to 1983. He studied electrical engineering at Oregon State University, graduating in 1984, and later earned a master’s degree from Stanford University.
Founding Nvidia
- 1993: at age 30 he launched Nvidia from a Denny’s restaurant in San Jose, California
- Near-bankruptcy: he led the company out of a close call with bankruptcy in the 1990s
- AI boom: Nvidia grew from graphics chips into high-performance computing and artificial intelligence, and in October 2025 became the first company worth over $5 trillion
Recognition and Giving
Time magazine listed him among its most influential people in 2021 and 2024, and in 2025 named him one of the “Architects of AI” for its Person of the Year. He and his wife, Lori, whom he met at Oregon State, set up the Jen-Hsun & Lori Huang Foundation in 2007 with a gift of $330 million in Nvidia shares; its assets have grown to more than $12 billion as of late 2025, according to Wikipedia.
Why It Matters
Nvidia’s chips power most advanced AI systems, and Huang’s stake rises and falls with demand for them.
Net worth figures change daily with share prices. Rankings here follow the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list, with wealth measured on March 1, 2026.
Image: Jensen Huang at CES in January 2017. Photo: Maurizio Pesce / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
