Nvidia’s meteoric rise in the past few years has been good news for its CEO, Jensen Huang.
The chipmaker hit a trillion-dollar valuation in 2023 and has shown few signs of slowing down amid the AI boom. In July 2025, Nvidia became the first company to crack the $4 trillion mark.
By October 2025, the company’s stock price reached an all-time high, keeping Nvidia at the top spot for the world’s most valuable company.
Huang, who cofounded Nvidia in 1993 and has served as its president and CEO ever since, has seen his net worth balloon as the chipmaker’s market cap rises.
In 2024, he broke into Forbes’ list of the top 10 richest people for the first time ever. His net worth is about $158.7 billion, according to the ranking.
Leading one of the Magnificent 7 companies, Huang has come a long way from his first job washing dishes and cleaning toilets at Denny’s. However, recent questions about his relationship with a woman who, according to The New York Times, US officials believe was passing information to China may threaten his position at Nvidia.
Here’s a closer look at how Huang built and spends his fortune, and how he hit his recent rough patch:
How Huang became a billionaire
As of March 2025, Huang owned roughly 3.77% of the company’s outstanding shares, according to a proxy statement. He is the company’s largest individual shareholder.
Before starting Nvidia, Huang worked at computer chip manufacturer LSI Logic and at semiconductor company AMD, which is today helmed by his distant cousin, Lisa Su.
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How much of Nvidia Huang owns, and what is his CEO salary
Huang received a total compensation package of $49.8 million for fiscal year 2025, which included a base salary of $1.5 million, $38.8 million in stock awards, $6 million in cash bonuses, and $3.6 million in other expenses, including residential security and car and driver services.
His pay package was up 46% from the prior fiscal year, when it was $34.2 million.
Huang followed a prearranged trading plan in 2024 to sell 6 million shares by the end of the first quarter of 2025; as a result, he offloaded roughly $700 million in Nvidia shares.
How Huang compares to other tech CEOs and billionaires
Huang’s total compensation for 2024 was pretty middle of the pack compared to other tech CEOs of the Mag 7 companies.
He’s one of roughly 17 centibillionaires identified on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
At 62, Huang is older than some of his Big Tech peers, such as Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, and Amazon’s Andy Jassy, but younger than others, such as Apple’s Tim Cook.
How Huang spends his fortune
As far as Huang’s real estate is concerned, he has owned property in California, where Nvidia is headquartered in Santa Clara, as well as in Hawaii.
He isn’t known for many ostentatious splurges, but Huang’s leather jacket is a staple of his wardrobe. He has worn several over the years at high-profile events, including one lizard-embossed jacket that appeared to be from Tom Ford’s spring 2023 collection and retailed for $8,990.
Huang has also given some of his fortune to philanthropic causes. In 2007, he and his wife established the Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang Foundation.
They’ve given $50 million to Oregon State University, which subsequently named a research center for the couple, both of whom are OSU alums.
The couple donated $30 million to Stanford University, from which Huang received his master’s degree, for an engineering center. They’ve also given $22.5 million to the California College of the Arts.
An Nvidia spokesperson declined to comment.
Jensen Huang hit a rough patch
Huang is facing questions about his relationship with Alice Huang, who has worked as an executive at Nvidia customer Megaspeed.
Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, was photographed with the Nvidia CEO on various occasions, including at dinner events in Taipei.
In October 2026, The New York Times reported that US officials believed Alice Huang had been recruited to gather information about Nvidia for the Chinese government. Jensen Huang initially described their interactions as normal business dealings involving Megaspeed, a Singapore-based company that rents out computing capacity.
On November 8, Jensen Huang told employees in an open letter that he had been unfaithful to his wife of more than 40 years and apologized to his family. He did not name the person with whom he had the affair.
Nvidia’s board launched an independent investigation into whether he was targeted by a “foreign intelligence effort.” The board said it still has confidence in his leadership and that it has no reason to believe that company secrets or national security have been compromised.
