Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s Humble Beginnings: From Dishwasher to Tech Billionaire

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s LinkedIn profile has recently gone viral after social media users noticed a surprising detail: the billionaire business executive listed his early experiences working as a dishwasher, waiter, and busboy. Huang, who now leads Nvidia, the world’s most valuable chipmaker, proudly includes these humble jobs among his past experiences.

Born in Taiwan and raised in Oregon during the 1980s, Huang worked at an American fast-food chain, Denny’s, to support himself while attending school. His early jobs, including cleaning bathrooms and serving customers, taught him the value of hard work—a principle he continues to uphold.

Huang, who is now worth an estimated $102 billion, has often spoken about his modest beginnings. During a fireside chat with Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, he shared how his parents, though not wealthy, instilled in him a strong work ethic.

“I had all kinds of jobs and we went to a school that included a lot of chores,” Huang said during the chat. “Look, I used to clean bathrooms, and now I’m a CEO of a company.”

Notably, Huang’s LinkedIn profile omits some key positions he held after graduating from university, such as his roles as director of CoreWare at LSI Logic and as a microprocessor designer at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). His profile skips from 1983 directly to 1993, the year he co-founded Nvidia at the age of 30.

Interestingly, Denny’s also played a significant role in the founding of Nvidia. It was at this diner that Huang met with Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem, his future co-founders of Nvidia, in 1993. Today, Nvidia is a global leader in AI computing and graphics technology, but Huang’s journey from a Denny’s busboy to the CEO of a tech giant remains a testament to his resilience and determination.