How Nvidia’s billionaire CEO went from Denny’s dishwasher to leading a company with a $4.3 trillion market cap

Fallon/AFPJensen Huang was once Denny’s “best dishwasher.” “I planned my work

I was mise en place,” Huang said during a March 2024 interview with Stanford Graduate School of . “I washed the living daylights out of those dishes.” Now he’s beating the living daylights out of the competition as president and CEO of Nvidia, the world’s premiere advanced chip manufacturer

But Huang attributes his wild success in to the work ethic he picked up during his time with Denny’s as a dishwasher, before he was “moted” to busboy. “I never left the station empty-handed

I never came back empty-handed

I was very efficient,” Huang said. “Anyways, eventually I became a CEO

I’m still working on being a good CEO.” And his alma mater of s, Denny’s, has honored Huang the best way they know how: by adding a item in honor of his chipmaking behemoth

Denny’s debuted the aptly named Nvidia Breakfast Bytes earlier this year to pay tribute to Huang’s “remarkable journey from Denny’s dishwasher and server to a titan.” The breakfast includes four sausage links that customers can wrap in Denny’s buttermilk silver dollar pancakes and dip in maple syrup—which is Huang’s favorite way to eat the dish, according to Denny’s. “Jensen’s journey from Denny’s kitchen and dining room to the pinnacle of the world is a testament to the power of dreams and determination,” Denny’s CEO Kelli Valade said in a statement. “We’re deeply honored that America’s Diner played a role in NVIDIA’s origin story as a global AI powerhouse

He went to high school outside of Portland, Ore., where he started working for Denny’s at age 15, according to an Nvidia blog post

In 1993, Huang, along with Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem (who both worked at Sun Microsystems), met at what was one of Denny’s “most ” locations in Northern California to discuss “creating a chip that would enable realistic 3D graphics on personal computers,” according to the Nvidia blog post. “Chris and Curtis said one day they’d to leave [Sun Microsystems], and they’d me to go figure out what they’re going to leave for,” Huang said. “They insisted I figure out with them how to build a company.” But with little runway on how to build a , Huang said he resolved to visit a bookstore to find books on starting a and found one titled How to Write a Plan by Gordon Bell

And not even close,” Huang said. “I flipped through a few pages and I go, ‘You know what, by the time I’m done reading this thing, I’ll be out of .” So with that, Huang took to a Denny’s booth with his two friends to brainstorm a

At the time, Huang was working as an engineer with LSI Logic, a company in Santa Clara, Calif., that sold semiconductors and software

But Huang kind of skips over that part when he’s telling his career story. “My first job before CEO was a dishwasher,” Huang said in the Stanford interview. “And I did that very well.” While at Denny’s that fateful night, Huang, Malachowsky, and Priem “polished off a Lumberjack Slam, Moons Over My Hammy, and a Super Bird sandwich—washed down with plenty of coffee,” according to Nvidia, the perfect fuel for masterminding a new nology

Now there’s a booth dedicated to Huang at an East San Jose Denny’s location. “The PC revolution was just getting going,” Huang said in the Stanford interview. “We thought, why don’t we build a company that solves blems that a normal computer that is powered by general purpose computing can’t

That became the company’s mission.” Some of the industries “opened up,” Huang said, as a result of Nvidia’s nology, include computational drug design, weather simulation, materials design, robotics, self-driving cars—and the big one: artificial intelligence

Nvidia’s nology “enabled a whole new way of software where the computer wrote the software itself—artificial intelligence as we know it today,” Huang said. “That was the journey.” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s leadership advice While Nvidia has undoubtedly been the nology fueling the AI revolution, it had done so relatively quietly until just a month ago

Then Nvidia beat out Alphabet to become the third most valuable U.S. company

But there are some skeptics who think Nvidia may be overvalued

Apollo Global Management said that Nvidia’s inflated earnings are creating an AI bubble even “bigger than the 1990s bubble.” But even as successful as Nvidia becomes, Huang consistently reflects on his humble beginnings

He tries to maintain a very flat structure at his company and lends a helping hand where he can

He says (counter to conventional wisdom) that a CEO should have the most direct reports; he has 50. “No task is beneath me,” he said. “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

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