- Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang credited his style to his wife and daughter in a recent interview.
- Huang’s black leather jacket is notorious and spurred a cottage industry of copycats.
- The interest in his signature style comes as the chip maker attempts to cash in on the AI hype.
Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, is rarely seen in public without his shiny black leather jacket — but he doesn’t take credit for his signature style.
During an interview for HP’s online show “The Moment,” host Ryan Patel asked the 60-year-old CEO about how he feels about being a fashion icon.
“You got the infamous jacket,” Patel said. 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. What do you think? How do you feel?” he added, referring to the diner chain where the idea for Nvidia was born.
“Don’t give me that,” Huang replied, modestly. “I’m happy that my wife and my daughter dresses me.”
The CEO of the chip giant is married to Lori Huang, who he met when he was 16 in an electrical engineering class.
“I had a great pickup,” he said in the interview. “I asked her if she wanted to see my homework.”
Huang’s signature look is so popular that some online sellers have tried to capitalize off of it, selling knockoffs using his name or image on Amazon, Jacketpop, and Wilson Jackets.
Of course, Huang isn’t just known for his motorcyclist aesthetic. The CEO, who has a net worth of $36.1 billion, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, has helped pave the way toward an AI future through Nvidia’s GPUs, a specialized type of computer chip. The company has seen its stock price grow over 200% in the last year.
In August, Nvidia announced its plans to triple production of its $40,000 chips to meet the demand from AI companies. That same month, he predicted that $1 trillion will be spent over the next four years on upgrading AI data centers. He expects the chip bill to be paid largely by cloud providers like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, as well as Meta, which is leaning into generative AI with its large language model Llama 2.
Huang said that he never expect his company — which has seen its stock price grow over 200% in the last year — to come this far.
“People are surprised, but I don’t have long-term plans,” Huang said.
“My plan is to be here, do an incredibly good job, make a contributing, enjoy the moment — which is the reason why I don’t wear a watch,” he said, pointing to another element, or lack there of, of his signature style.
Nvidia didn’t immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment before publication.
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