Why Suddenly, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Has Become As Popular As a Pop Star

In case you missed it, renowned artificial intelligence chipmaker Nvidia, broke a record recently.

Nvidia should be a household name by now, given that they were the ones who invented the graphic processing unit (GPU) back in 1999 and the RTX in 2018. These are essential components of the computers you have today.

On Wednesday (5 June 2024), Nvidia’s valuation breached the USD 3 trillion mark, overtaking Apple to become the world’s second most valuable company.

Its founder, Jensen Huang was reportedly swarmed by fans and reporters following the recent developments.

Here’s everything you need to know about the “Jensanity”.

Jensen Huang Returns To Taiwan

Back in 1993, Jensen Huang and two other partners, Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem, founded the Nvidia we know today.

He is rightfully dubbed as Nvidia’s president, CEO and member of the board of directors. He is currently 61 years old.

A little bit about him:

• He was born in Taiwan but was raised in the United States.
• He has honory doctorate degrees from Taiwan’s National Chiao Tung University, National Taiwan University and Oregon State University
• He was named the world’s best CEO by various magazines
• He was deemed one of TIME Magazine’s 100 most influential people.

According to Reuters, Huang had returned home to Taiwan after so many years for the 2024 Computex in Taipei.

Apparently, he has been constantly swarmed by reporters and fans, and his every move has been watched and followed meticulously.

 

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New Celebrity Status – “Jensanity”

Part of the reason that he’s being trailed around by media reporters is due to the supposed upcoming investigations initiated by US regulators on Nvidia following its rising dominance in the artificial intelligence field.

With Nvidia’s success in tech, the Taiwanese people felt a sense of pride and were not shy to show their support to Huang, especially during Computex where he delivered a keynote on Nvidia’s latest developments.

The media craze over Huang was dubbed the “Jensanity”, with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg describing Huang as the “Taylor Swift” for tech.

What an honour.

Speaking to Huang’s fans at Computex earlier this week, Reuters said that they view Huang as an “inspiration” and claim he is “one of us”.

Another attendant of Computex who works in finance, Ms Amanda Shih, said that “he’s like a pop star”.

Huang was reported to have patiently stopped for selfies and answered questions from fans.

 

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Fans were shouting “Jensen, Jensen, Jensen”. This rarely happens to rich tech CEOs.

Most interestingly, among all the autographs he signed for fans, he obliged to a request by a fan to sign on her chest.

Professional CEO going direct:
Gonna need marketing and legal to sign off on my ghostwritten LinkedIn post

Jensen going direct: pic.twitter.com/WYlRvw4M42

— Lulu Cheng Meservey (@lulumeservey) June 4, 2024

We can only hope to have a crumb of her confidence.

Business Opportunity

Huang told reporters that he was “very grateful” that he and his company Nvidia were made to “feel so welcome in Taiwan”.

He added that “Taiwan is the home of Nvidia’s very treasured partners”, referring to TMSC, Foxconn, Quanta and ASUS.

During a media interview on 3 June, Huang revealed that he has plans for Nvidia to establish a research and development centre in Taiwan within the next five years.

That centre is aimed to house at least 1,000 engineers and they are looking for a spacious location.

And oh, lest you’re not aware, if you’ve bought Nvidia’s shares last year, you should be part of Jensanity, too. Just look at this table and you’d understand:

It’s mainly due to the AI boom, but there have been some concerns about the growth. Watch this to the end and you’d understand why: