> born in Taiwan in 1963 > moves to Thailand as a child > moves to the United States at age 9 > works as a dishwasher at Denny's at age 15 > studies electrical engineering at Oregon State University > earns a master's degree from Stanford in 1992 > works at AMD and chipmaker LSI Logic > co-founds NVIDIA in 1993 at a Denny's restaurant > wants to build chips capable of realistic 3D graphics > takes NVIDIA public in 1999 at $12 per share > introduces the GeForce 256, marketed as the world's first GPU > sees NVIDIA's first major graphics-chip design fail > faces near-bankruptcy in 1996 > pivots to a new graphics-chip architecture > releases the RIVA 128 in 1997, helping NVIDIA recover > expands into graphics chips for PC gaming > unveils CUDA in 2006, allowing GPUs to tackle general-purpose computing > sees NVIDIA GPUs become essential to scientific computing > NVIDIA GPUs help power AlexNet's landmark AI breakthrough in 2012 > delivers NVIDIA's first DGX-1 AI supercomputer to OpenAI in 2016 > launches RTX graphics with real-time ray tracing in 2018 > acquires networking company Mellanox for about $7B in 2020 > becomes a central supplier of chips powering the AI boom > sees ChatGPT's rise accelerate demand for AI computing infrastructure > leads NVIDIA into the center of the global AI race > turns a graphics-chip company into one of the world's most valuable businesses Jensen Huang