Billionaires Jensen Huang’s Journey: From Dishwasher And Waiter To Nvidia CEO

Huang, known for his workaholic tendencies and habit of starting his day at 5 am to oversee his trillion-dollar company, has detailed two past job experiences on his LinkedIn profile

Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang’s rise to becoming one of the world’s wealthiest individuals started far from the realms of high-tech innovation and billion-dollar valuations. In the late 1970s, Huang was not yet at the helm of a global corporation or developing cutting-edge technology; instead, he was working at a Denny's diner in the US, where he scrubbed toilets, washed dishes, and served tables. Today, Huang is the CEO of Nvidia, the world’s most valuable public company, and his net worth has soared to make him the 12th richest person globally, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Huang, known for his workaholic tendencies and habit of starting his day at 5 am to oversee his trillion-dollar company, has detailed two past job experiences on his LinkedIn profile. These roles reflect his early career before he became a prominent figure in the tech industry.

Huang founded Nvidia in 1993 and has served as its CEO since its inception. Before this, from 1978 to 1983, Huang worked at Denny's, an American diner chain, where he took on various roles, including waiter, busboy, and dishwasher.

He completed his undergraduate studies at Oregon State University and earned a Master’s degree from Stanford University in 1992. Now 61, Huang frequently reflects on his early experiences and work ethic, often sharing insights into how they shaped his career.

During an interview at Stanford's Graduate School of Business in March this year, Huang shared that to him, no task is beneath him because, remember, “I used to be a dishwasher. I used to clean toilets. I cleaned a lot of toilets. I've cleaned more toilets than all of you combined.”

Huang values all types of work and isn't afraid to get his hands dirty, a principle that has earned him considerable respect and admiration within the industry. As he noted in the same interview, "If you send me something and seek my input, and I can contribute by sharing how I reasoned through it, then I've made a meaningful contribution."

Nvidia’s success has been extraordinary. The company’s stock has soared by 3,776 per cent since 2019, driven largely by the surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. This remarkable growth led to an increase of over $4 billion in Huang’s net worth in just one day in June.