Jensen Huang is Among Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People

Artificial intelligence is transforming our world. The software that enables computers to do things that once required human perception and judgment depends largely on hardware made possible by Jensen Huang.

In 2003, amid great skepticism, Huang directed his company NVIDIA to adapt chips designed to paint graphics on computer screens, known as graphics processing units or GPUs, to perform other, more general-purpose computing tasks. The resulting advancements—and powerful chips—laid a foundation that could accommodate much bigger neural networks, the programs behind much of today’s AI. In the process, he has helped enable a revolution that allows phones to answer questions out loud, farms to spray weeds but not crops, doctors to predict the properties of new drugs—with more wonders to come.

Huang’s gamble paid off largely because he is among the world’s most technically savvy CEOs. He’s also a compassionate steward of his employees and a generous supporter of education in science and technology. With still emerging AI technologies creating an insatiable hunger for more computation, Huang’s team is well-positioned to keep driving technological advances for decades to come.

Jensen Huang founded NVIDIA in 1993 and has served since its inception as president, chief executive officer and a member of the board of directors.

Starting out in PC graphics, NVIDIA helped build the gaming market into the largest entertainment industry in the world today. The company’s invention of the GPU in 1999 made possible real-time programmable shading, which defines modern computer graphics, and later revolutionized parallel computing. More recently, GPU deep learning ignited modern AI — the next era of computing — with the GPU acting as the brain of computers, robots and self-driving cars that can perceive and understand the world.

Prior to founding NVIDIA, Huang worked at LSI Logic and Advanced Micro Devices. He holds a BSEE degree from Oregon State University and an MSEE degree from Stanford University.