Meet Nvidia cofounder Jensen Huang, whose fortune just shot up almost $9 billion

Huang founded Nvidia over a meal at Denny’s.

Nvidia was founded in 1993 at a Denny’s restaurant where he was meeting with two friends, Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem, per a September 2020 report in the Wall Street Journal.

His friends were with their work at the time, and the three “wondered whether starting a graphics company would be a good idea,” Huang told Stanford University’s engineering school in a 2010 interview.

“We brainstormed and fantasized about what kind of company it would be and the world we could help. It was fun,” he told Stanford.

Denny’s was also where Huang part-timed when he was a student, per a New York Times 2010 interview. There, he learned how to be more outgoing.

“I was a very good student and I was always focused and driven. But I was very introverted. I was incredibly shy,” he told The Times. “The one experience that pulled me out of my shell was waiting tables at Denny’s. I was horrified by the prospect of having to talk to people.”

Huang is 61 years old this year — making him years older than Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos when they left day-to-day operations at 52 and 57 years old, respectively.

But there are few signs he is slowing down.

“Nothing is more fun to me than to build a once-in-a-generation company with all of my friends here,” Huang told Business Insider’s Jeff Elder in April 2021 . “I can’t imagine wanting to do anything other than that.”