Jensen Huang

Jensen Huang co-founded NVIDIA in 1993 to build graphics processing units (GPUs) for video games. Thirty years later, those same chips became the engines powering the artificial intelligence revolution, and NVIDIA became the most valuable company on Earth. Huang's long-term bet — that parallel computing would eventually matter beyond gaming — turned out to be one of the most prescient technology bets in history.

NVIDIA's CUDA platform, launched in 2006, allowed researchers to use GPUs for general-purpose computing. When deep learning exploded in 2012, NVIDIA GPUs were the only hardware that could train neural networks at scale. Every major AI breakthrough since — from AlphaGo to ChatGPT to autonomous driving — has run on NVIDIA hardware. The company's data center revenue went from a side business to a $100B+ annual run rate.

Huang has led NVIDIA as CEO for over 30 years without interruption — one of the longest CEO tenures in tech. His leather jacket, his dramatic product launches, and his ability to explain complex technology in simple terms have made him the most important figure in the AI era. Under his leadership, NVIDIA's market cap surged past $3 trillion, surpassing Apple and Microsoft.