- Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang met his wife Lori Huang at Oregon State University.
- In a recent interview, he said that he tried to use homework as an excuse to spend time with her.
- Huang said he promised her he’d be CEO by 30 to ensure she’d marry him.
When Jensen Huang met his wife in college, the odds weren’t in his favor.
He was 17 years old, and she was 19. “I was the youngest kid in school, in class. There were 250 students and 3 girls,” he said in an interview at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology last week after receiving an honorary degree. He was also the only student who “looked like a child,” he said.
Huang used his youthful appearance to approach his future wife, hoping she’d assume he was smart. “I walked up to her and I said, ‘do you want to see my homework?'” Then he made a deal with her. “If you do homework with me every Sunday, I promise you, you will get straight As.”
From that point on, he said he had a date every Sunday. And just to ensure that she would eventually marry him, he told her that by 30, he’d be a CEO.
Huang married Lori Mills five years after they first met at Oregon State University, according to his biography on OSU College of Engineering’s website. The couple has two children, Madison, a director of marketing at Nvidia, and Spencer, a senior product manager at the company.
After graduating from OSU in 1984, Huang worked at chip companies LSI Logic and Advanced Micro Devices, according to his bio on Nvidia’s website. He then pursued a master’s degree in electrical engineering at Stanford University in 1992, a year before he founded Nvidia, which has grown into a $3.48 trillion company thanks to the artificial intelligence boom.
Huang was 30 years old when he founded Nvidia.
The CEO often shares the lore about Nvidia’s origin: He conceived the idea for a graphics company while dining at Denny’s, a US diner chain, with his friends. Huang said in a 2010 New York Times interview that he also waited tables at Denny’s while he was a student.
Huang’s net worth is now estimated to be $124 billion.
The CEO also credits his wife and daughter with establishing his signature style: the black leather jacket.
In an interview last year on HP’s online show, “The Moment,” host Ryan Patel asked Huang how he feels to become a style icon.
“Now, at Denny’s I’m sure you weren’t thinking you were gonna be the style star of the future, but now you are,” Patel said. “What do you think? How do you feel?”
“Don’t give me that,” Huang replied. “I’m happy that my wife and my daughter dresses me.”
A spokesperson for Nvidia did not respond to a request for comment.
