In recent days, NVIDIA has become the center of attention in the global business and tech community.
Last week, the latest quarterly report released by NVIDIA sparked a frenzy in the market. In just one day, its market value surged by $277 billion (approximately 2 trillion RMB), setting a record for the largest single-day increase on Wall Street. Overnight, it added the equivalent of the market value of a major bank like ICBC (currently valued at 1.93 trillion RMB) or Kweichow Moutai (currently valued at 2.16 trillion RMB).
Currently, NVIDIA's market value has exceeded $2 trillion, making it the third largest company in the U.S. stock market, only behind Microsoft and Apple, surpassing Google and Amazon. It took just nine months for its market value to reach $1 trillion, achieved back in April 2023.
Behind the scenes, the co-founder of NVIDIA, Huang Renxun, also rose to prominence, becoming one of the most influential figures in the chip industry. His personal fortune recently reached $69.2 billion, surpassing China's richest person, the founder of Nongfu Spring, Zhong Shanshan, ranking 21st on the Forbes Global Billionaires list.
This 61-year-old American-born Chinese has built a legendary life of constant struggle, self-transcendence, and ultimately standing at the pinnacle of the world of technology over the course of 30 years.
How did the "chip godfather" Huang Renxun grow into prominence?
Born in Taiwan and raised in the United States
In a recent interview, Huang Renxun nostalgically expressed gratitude to his father, whose foresight and initiative brought him to the United States, realizing the American Dream.
Born in Tainan, Taiwan, in February 1963, Huang Renxun's family roots trace back to Zhejiang, mainland China. His father, a visionary chemical engineer, and his mother, a primary school teacher, made a significant decision when Huang was very young—they relocated the family from Taiwan to Thailand to start a chemical business.
However, the political situation in Thailand and the entrepreneurial experience of his father during the 1960s might not have been favorable. His father made another decision—to seek help from relatives and friends in the United States and send the two children there first. Huang Renxun was just 9 years old at the time.
Due to limited accommodations with their American relatives, they had to settle in a rural boarding school in Kentucky. The advantage was the affordable tuition fees, but the downside was that for such young foreign students with limited English proficiency, this unfamiliar environment was like a jungle where only the fittest survived: there were many "troublemakers" in the school, students carrying knives, and even people with tattoos all over their bodies.
Huang Renxun's first roommate was a 17-year-old drug addict. In this environment, he and his brother learned to clean toilets and serve tea and water. To fit into the group, they also learned to climb walls, climb trees, steal sugar, and smoke. Huang Renxun recalled, "I had a clear idea at that time that being a 'bad kid' wasn't the real me."
It wasn't until two years later that his parents finally immigrated to the United States, and Huang Renxun and his brother ended their boarding life and reunited with the family in Oregon, where they attended middle school.
Perhaps it's a trait common among Chinese children, but during middle school, Huang Renxun showed two major characteristics: outstanding academic abilities with excellent grades and athletic talent, winning third place in the national doubles table tennis competition at the age of 15.
At this point, Huang Renxun had already determined his academic interests for the future. After graduating from high school at the age of 16, he enrolled at Oregon State University (OSU) to study electrical engineering. In 1984, Huang Renxun graduated from Oregon State University and entered Stanford University for his master's degree.
His university experiences had a profound impact on him. In the university laboratory, Huang Renxun met his future wife, Lori Mills, with whom he later had two children. Jokingly, his wife later said, when asked why she was willing to marry Huang Renxun, "Maybe it was his determination and confidence when he said he wanted to start his own company before the age of 30."
Huang Renxun, who had loved computer games since childhood, coincidentally witnessed the rise of the American computer industry during his formative years: "I've always been interested in computers since I was a child, but my studies at OSU made me truly realize the fascinating world behind computers."
His unique growth experiences during his teenage years forged his strong character traits: resilience, perseverance, refusal to surrender, readiness to face challenges, and continuous innovation. Huang Renxun later recalled, "This period of life was my best teacher." These qualities, cultivated during difficult times, would support and accompany him during his 30 years of entrepreneurial journey.
30 years of entrepreneurship
Indeed, one's life experiences are closely related to destiny. Enrolling at Stanford University and then staying to work in Silicon Valley may have been one of the most important decisions of Huang Renxun's life: he coincidentally entered the explosive growth phase of the American computer industry in the 1980s and 1990s. After decades of technological development in the computer field since World War II, large-scale demand for chips began to emerge with the maturation of personal computers, games, the Internet, and other large-scale applications.
Before starting his own business, Huang Renxun joined the chip company AMD as a software designer. Two years later, he moved to LSI Logic, another chip company, which focused not on CPUs but on graphics processing chips.
At that time, the semiconductor industry in the United States was beginning to boom. However, Silicon Valley had not yet reached its current scale: future chip giants like Intel and AMD were still expanding their territories; Microsoft and Apple were not yet the world's top two companies; Internet companies like Yahoo and Google were yet to emerge.
At LSI Logic, Huang Renxun, with his abundant energy, actively requested a transfer to the sales department. It was this job change that laid the foundation for his later entrepreneurship. He worked at this company for 8 years, rising to the position of director, becoming a versatile talent who understood both technology and sales and management.
As the promised age of 30 approached and the opportunity for entrepreneurship finally arrived, Huang Renxun seized it. Previously, two colleagues he met at work—Chris Malachowsky, an engineer at Sun Microsystems, and Curtis Priem—had thoughts of starting their own business due to lack of support for their technical ideas within the company. Independently, they all thought of Huang Renxun, who was energetic, technically and humanly knowledgeable, and had management skills.
The three met at a restaurant near Huang Renxun's home to discuss their entrepreneurial direction. They firmly believed that the next generation of computer technology would be based on graphics computing. As a result of that meal, Huang Renxun resigned from LSI Logic, and NVIDIA was born.
It is said that to fulfill his goal of establishing his own company before the age of 30, Huang Renxun deliberately set his first day at NVIDIA as February 17, 1993, which happened to be his 30th birthday.
However, Rome wasn't built in a day. The road to greatness is always filled with challenges. Today, NVIDIA, the behemoth of the global semiconductor industry, has also faced the brink of bankruptcy during its 30-year journey.
NVIDIA's earliest product application was focused on the realm of video games. At that time, Jensen Huang foresaw that with the advent of the PC era, video games would be a prime application: gamers worldwide, each with a gaming console, connecting to battle monsters and experiencing the exhilarating world of 3D gaming. Thus, NVIDIA introduced its first chip, the NV1.
Driven by a quest for perfection, this chip was overloaded with too many features such as sound cards and controllers, resulting in a poor user experience. To survive, the company was forced to lay off employees, reducing its workforce from over 100 to just a third. The initial funding was nearly depleted.
At this juncture, Japanese gaming giant Sega approached NVIDIA, hoping they would develop a new gaming console chip, the NV2. However, the collaboration fell through, and the NV2 also failed. It's said that Jensen Huang managed to reclaim a $7 million deposit, temporarily keeping the company afloat.
After two significant setbacks and struggling to survive, Jensen Huang finally found a breakthrough on the third attempt. He shifted NVIDIA's strategy from gaming consoles to the PC market, hiring Dr. David Kirk from the game design company "Crystal Dynamics" as Chief Scientist, and adopting Microsoft's Direct 3D API standard for PC graphics cards.
This move garnered support from Microsoft. Leveraging Microsoft's vast ecosystem, numerous downstream manufacturers also collaborated with NVIDIA. This enabled NVIDIA to finally escape peril and survive.
NVIDIA's turning point came with the revolutionary product, the GPU, launched in August 1999. This product redefined modern computer graphics technology, greatly enhancing the gaming experience for PC users. With this breakthrough, NVIDIA embarked on a path of resurgence.
Today, NVIDIA stands as the undisputed leader in GPU design, holding over 80% of the discrete graphics card market.
Over the next 20 years, NVIDIA encountered challenges and investor skepticism, but under Jensen Huang's leadership, it never missed a technological wave. Facing successive waves of software, hardware, the metaverse, and the AI boom, NVIDIA firmly established its position in the industry.
Opportunities always favor those with vision and the courage to act. Just over a year ago, NVIDIA was not as widely recognized as it is today, quietly focusing on foundational technological research. It was only with the sudden rise of ChatGPT and Sora last year that NVIDIA and Jensen Huang ascended to the pinnacle of the chip world, proving the resilience of determined individuals.
Jensen Huang once said, "You can describe me in many words, but 'resilient' must come first."
A New Legend in Entrepreneurship
Human nature always anticipates new heroes and the next genius creator. Against the backdrop of Jobs' departure and Musk's emergence, Jensen Huang is also starting to be seen as a new legend among tech entrepreneurs. There are now legends about him:
Always clad in leather jackets and black shoes; Never having his own office; Roaming the office building and working at any available desk; His friendship with TSMC's Morris Chang; Tattoos; Even after releasing financial reports and giving three-hour speeches, he can tirelessly attend the next leadership masterclass.
Admirers abound, and here's a summary from an American netizen:
Jensen Huang has 55 direct reports, no 1:1 meetings, only group discussions, achieving maximum transparency. The organizational structure resembles a "neural network," breaking away from the old pyramid model;
He bets on graduates to lead large projects. The so-called "lack of experience" actually means no boundaries;
He prefers offices with fewer elevators: elevators mean waiting, and Jensen Huang dislikes waiting.
Among the myriad viewpoints and opinions, perhaps Jensen Huang's statement resonates most with entrepreneurs at home and abroad: "Unless you can tolerate failure, you will never attempt. If you don’t attempt, you won’t innovate. If you don’t innovate, you won’t succeed."
