--- description: Find out why Jensen Huang was selected for the list title: TIME100 AI 2023: Jensen Huang image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7b1b44f046375d68/698a400be6e84a36ab2b06f3/Huang.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Sep 07, 2023 # Jensen Huang CEO, President and Co-Founder, Nvidia by [Charlie Campbell](/author/charlie-campbell/) ## Charlie Campbell Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Editor at Large  Illustration by TIME; reference image courtesy of Jensen Huang Stunning visuals have been a lifelong obsession for Jensen Huang. Once, when he was just 8 years old, Huang sprayed lighter fluid on a swimming pool and jumped in just to watch the flames dance from below the surface. “Unbelievable,” he recalled, during a [talk show](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3xB8M2GF7E "undefined") in China. “I still remember the beautiful images.” --- ### More from TIME --- Huang parlayed that passion into an entire industry when in 1993 he founded Nvidia, whose original remit was building graphics cards for increasingly fantastical and immersive video games. Today, however, Huang’s firm, based in Santa Clara, Calif., is the world’s dominant producer of the microprocessors that power the AI revolution, propelling Nvidia’s stock to rocket 191% over the past year to late August’s $1.1 trillion valuation. Demand for Nvidia’s chips has soared with the explosion of large language models such as ChatGPT, with the firm’s latest GH200 processor, unveiled Aug. 4, significantly slashing algorithm-training time. “We have reached the tipping point of a new computing era,” Huang [told](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-29/nvidia-nvda-unveils-more-ai-products-to-further-capitalize-on-frenzy "undefined") the Computex conference in Taipei in May. “Everyone is a programmer now. You just have to say something to the computer.” Huang, 60, was born in the southern Taiwanese city of Tainan and spent a chunk of his childhood in Thailand, where he has confessed to being “a very good student” though “very mischievous.” His family eventually settled in the U.S., first in rural Kentucky and then outside of Portland, Ore. After earning his masters from Stanford in 1992, Huang worked as a microprocessor designer at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) before founding Nvidia over breakfast with two friends at a Denny’s in San Jose, Calif. The trio might have choked on their Grand Slams had they been told back then that their fledgling enterprise would one day be thrust into a geopolitical tussle. U.S.-export controls introduced by the Biden Administration last October have blocked Nvidia from selling its most advanced chips to Chinese customers, prompting Huang to [complain](https://www.ft.com/content/ffbb39a8-2eb5-4239-a70e-2e73b9d15f3e "undefined") to the _Financial_ _Times_ of “enormous damage to American companies” if they’re unable to trade with the world’s No. 2 economy. “If they’re not thoughtful on regulations, they will hurt the tech industry.” It’s left Nvidia with exactly what Huang has long railed against: a lack of clarity. Jensen Huang: The 100 Most Influential People in AI 2023 ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai/6310609/jensen-huang-ai-2/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai/6310609/jensen-huang-ai-2/"},"headline":"Jensen Huang","datePublished":"2023-09-07T11:00:22.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-03T02:27:38.320Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai/6310609/jensen-huang-ai-2/","keywords":["sponsorshipblock","TIME100 AI","AI-Innovators2023"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7b1b44f046375d68/698a400be6e84a36ab2b06f3/Huang.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Charlie Campbell","jobTitle":"Editor at Large","url":"https://time.com/author/charlie-campbell/"}],"creator":"Charlie Campbell","articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7b1b44f046375d68/698a400be6e84a36ab2b06f3/Huang.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai/6310609/jensen-huang-ai-2/","name":"Jensen Huang"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"See Everyone on the TIME100 AI List","description":"The TIME 2023 Time 100 AI list features innovators, thinkers, shapers and leaders who are making the future of AI.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/QiijrnNF/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2023-09-07T10:45:00.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/QiijrnNF.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai/6310609/jensen-huang-ai-2/","duration":"PT1M48S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/collections/time100-ai/6310609/jensen-huang-ai-2/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```