Nvidia has just become the most valuable company in the world – so who is the man behind it?

A friend of mine works for the tech company Nvidia in London. I won’t say who he is or provide any detail that will identify him, because it’s not fair. He’s not a tech person and when he first went there, in a non-tech role, there was a certain bemusement and disinterest. “They make chips”, he would say, almost shrugging apologetically. He didn’t seem to know what they did either.

It was a conversation stopper and we would change the subject and move on. Then, the tenor of the chat altered. He’d got some shares and he would say what the business was worth compared to the last time we met.

Even then, it seemed temporary and unreal. Yet, sure enough, on the next occasion he would quote a higher figure. Last time he was pinching himself. He was gleeful, shaking his head at the steepness of Nvidia’s upward market capitalisation curve, not believing his own good fortune.

Now the talk has shifted completely. This week Nvidia became the world’s most valuable company overtaking Microsoft after its share price climbed to an all-time high of $136 on Tuesday. It overtook Apple earlier this month and far from wondering what he is doing there, we find ourselves trying to hide our jealousy. We’re pleased for him, of course we are, but we would be lying if we said we’re not envious.

He’s on the staff and shareholder of a company now worth $3.34tn (£2.63tn), with the price having nearly doubled since the start of this year. Eight years ago, the stock was worth less than 1 per cent of its current price.

Wall Street is on a tear, as they say in the US, where Nvidia is concerned. Investors cannot get enough of the company that makes microchip artificial intelligence processors, trading and operating AI systems, such as ChatGPT.

As AI has taken off and is displaying its usefulness and hinting at what is likely to be undreamt of potential, so too has Nvidia. Someone investing $8,000 (£6,250) nine years ago is today sitting on a stake of over $1.22m (£950,000).

Jen-hsun Huang, or “Jensen” as he is known to everyone, or “the godfather of AI” as Wall Street likes to call him, is Nvidia’s Taiwanese-born founder and chief executive. He was worth $13.8bn (£10.8bn) at the start of last year; today his personal wealth is $119bn (£93bn), making him the 11th richest person in the world.

Another arresting statistic: Nvidia’s market value recently overtook the entire FTSE 100 index of the London Stock Exchange’s 100 most valuable companies.

With his success, Huang has achieved god-like status. At the recent Computex conference in Taiwan, “Jensanity” was much in evidence, as crowds clamoured to see and touch him. He stopped at one point to sign a female fan’s top across her chest. We’ve witnessed this level of adulation previously. The last to enjoy this kind of attention in the tech world was Steve Jobs.

Huang, 61, moved to the US when he was nine, with his brother. Prodigiously bright, he graduated from high school in Oregon two years early. A degree in electrical engineering at Oregon State was followed by a masters at Stanford.

He moved into microprocessor design, working for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). In 1993, aged 30, he met with two friends at a Denny’s roadside diner – coincidentally, his first job had been at a Denny’s in Oregon as a waiter – and they agreed to found Nvidia. Huang became CEO and president, and Chris Malachowsky, in charge of engineering and operations, and Curtis Priem, chief technical officer. Malachowsky, a billionaire, is still with the company, Priem retired in 2003.

Huang, married with two children, is a rarity in Silicon Valley where he is based, as someone who has been a CEO of the same company for more than three decades. Again, someone who dominated his corporation with a similar grasp and longevity was Jobs. Like the Apple titan, Huang has his own trademark style. With Jobs it was always the black turtlenecks; Huang’s preference is for a black T-shirt and a black leather jacket.

The similarities do not end there. Huang has also mastered the art of building excitement, turning his products into must-haves by creating anticipation in the run-up to the big reveal. He is on stage, same as Jobs, surrounded by razzmatazz, unveiling his product to an audience comprising adoring investors, stakeholders and industry media.

He’s got cute names for the products, too, adding to their appeal and sexiness. They may appear like boring bits of silicon but his processors are “Hopper”, “Blackwell” and “Rubin”. The latter is the future generation of Nvidia processors. They don’t start shipping until 2026 but Huang delighted in teasing the Computex faithful about them, in true Jobs fashion.

He also talked about the next wave of AI, suggesting that leading chatbots ChatGPT and Copilot may themselves prove obsolete, with robots taking over. He was on stage with humanoid robots as he said “The next wave of AI is physical AI. AI that understands the laws of physics. AI that can work among us. Everything is going to be robotic. All of the factories will be robotic. The factories will orchestrate robots and those robots will be building products that are robotic.”

Nvidia is well-placed to take advantage, as its software and hardware are used in the more sophisticated AI, such as the production of robots. The company is not a one-trick pony, either. Nvidia is also producing world-beating graphics cards for gaming manufacturers and screens in cars like Tesla.

Like Jobs, Huang has proved adept at ensuring that buyers remain loyal. His products will only take Nvidia software and they’re regularly updated and superseded by new models. He maintains his purchasers are receiving access to the latest technology, others accuse him of creating a monopoly and being anti-competitive. It’s taken a while but this has finally aroused the interest of the US authorities, with the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission announcing they are investigating the main players in the AI market.

They are dividing up the targets so that Microsoft and OpenAI will be scrutinised by the FTC and Justice will examine Nvidia. The development could be a rare cloud on the Huang horizon; there again, it might prove to be not much at all.

So far, the market is relatively unperturbed and we’ve been here before. Another company has stirred controversy and been the subject of repeated probes over its sales methods and tying in its consumers. Apple is still the third most valuable company in the world.