Jen-Hsun (Jensen) Huang is a Taiwanese American businessman and technology entrepreneur best known as the founder and chief executive officer of Nvidia, a computer chip supplier that grew rapidly in value during 2023 and 2024, becoming the largest company in the world by market capitalization in June 2024. Huang’s net worth has similarly skyrocketed, growing from $3 billion to over $100 billion in 2024, making him among the 15 richest people in the world according to Forbes. ^{1 2}

He and his wife founded the Palo Alto, California-based Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang Foundation, which owns 69 million shares of Nvidia. In line with the growth of the company’s stock price, the foundation’s asset value has grown eightfold since the end of 2022 reaching an estimated $8 billion, making it the 20th-largest foundation in the United States according to Bloomberg. ³

Huang was described by Inside Philanthropy as a “black box billionaire,” meaning that he uses a variety of organizational structures to mask the organizations that receive most of his giving in the United States, circumventing traditional requirements for private foundations to disclose their grantees. ⁴

Early Life and Career

Jensen Huang was born in Taiwan in 1963 and moved to the United States at age nine. He received an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from Oregon State University in 1984, and later earned a master’s degree, also in electrical engineering, from Stanford University. ⁵

Nvidia

In 1993, Huang founded Nvidia as a company dedicated to building graphics cards for video game consoles. Nvidia competed with other chip producers such as Intel and AMD and rose to prominence in 2023 during the launch of numerous artificial intelligence systems and products such as ChatGPT. Nvidia came to dominate the AI processing chip industry, controlling over 85% of the market. In June 2024, Nvidia surpassed Microsoft as the largest company in the world by market capitalization. Huang’s net worth similarly skyrocketed, growing from $3 billion to over $100 billion in 2024 making him among the fifteen richest people in the world according to Forbes. ^{1 2}

Huang liquidated some of his stock, selling $230 million in Nvidia shares in the first half of 2024. The sale represented less than 0.5% of Huang’s Nvidia holdings, and he still held over 934 million shares of the company in mid-July 2024. ⁶

Foundation Giving

Jensen Huang and his wife founded the Palo Alto, California-based Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang Foundation, which owns 69 million shares of Nvidia. In line with the growth of the company’s stock price, the foundation’s asset value has grown eightfold since the end of 2022 reaching an estimated $8 billion, making it the 20th-largest foundation in the United States according to Bloomberg. ³

Huang was described by Inside Philanthropy as a “black box billionaire,” meaning that he utilizes contributions from his foundation to donor-advised funds that receive the vast sum of his giving in the United States, circumventing traditional requirements for private foundations to disclose their grantees, as well as allowing the foundation to meet its annual legally required disbursement amounts. ⁴

Huang’s family foundation, the Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang Foundation, awards two-thirds of its giving to donor-advised funds. The foundation owns 69 million shares of Nvidia valued at more than $8 billion as of mid-2024. In addition, Huang and his wife control the GeForce Fund, a donor-advised fund (DAF) managed by DAFgiving360 (also known as Schwab Charitable). According to Bloomberg, DAFgiving360’s aggregated holdings include $4.4 billion in Nvidia stock, “at least some of which” is held in DAFs controlled by the Huangs and their foundation. ³

A statement from the foundation noted that “The Huang Foundation supports higher education, public health, and STEM initiatives across the U.S., alongside local community organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area.” ⁴

According to a New York Times 2024 story from December 2024, Huang was listed as the 10th-richest person in the United States and worth roughly $127 billion at the time. The story alleges that when he dies, the family estate should be expected to pay roughly 40% of his net worth in taxes to the government, though the story estimates the estate might be able to dodge avoid paying over $8 billion in taxes allegedly due to tax filings and securities reported on by the Times. The story accused the tax dodge as being due to issues with the U.S estate tax and is “a case study in how the ultrarich bend the U.S. tax system for their benefit.” ⁷ The story further alleges that Huang and his estate were able to “shield” their money from the estate tax through using existing financial systems such as a “irrevocable trust” they created in 2012 which they moved roughly 584,000 Nvidia shares into that were worth $7 million at the time but would be worth roughly $3 billion as of December 2024. The Times story also claims that Huang used additional means of dodging the estate tax including an online tool “I Dig It” used as a “grantor trust” as well as grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATs), of which the story alleges that 3 million in Nvidia shares worth $100 million were moved into 4 such GRATs in 2016. ⁷

1. “Jensen Huang.” Forbes. Accessed July 28, 2024. https://www.forbes.com/profile/jensen-huang/
2. Wodecki, Ben. “Nvidia Overtakes Microsoft as World’s Most Valuable Company.” AI Business. June 19, 2024. Accessed July 28, 2024. https://aibusiness.com/companies/nvidia-becomes-most-valuable-company-in-the-world-overtakes-microsoft
3. “NVIDIA CEO’s $8 billion foundation awards two-thirds of giving to DAFs.” Philanthropy News Digest. July 4, 2024. Accessed July 28, 2024. https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/nvidia-ceo-s-8-billion-foundation-awards-two-thirds-of-giving-to-dafs
4. Kavate, Michael. “Meet the Black Box Billionaires: Are These America’s Most Secretive Megadonors?” Inside Philanthropy. July 10, 2024. Accessed July 27, 2024. https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2024/7/10/meet-the-black-box-billionaires-are-these-americas-most-secretive-mega-donors
5. “Time 100 AI: Jensen Huang CEO, President and Co-Founder, Nvidia.” Time. September 7, 2023. Accessed July 28, 2024.  https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/6310609/jensen-huang-ai/
6. Duberstein, Billy. “Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Sold $169 Million in Stock During the First Half of 2024. Time to Worry?” The Motley Fool. July 14, 2024. Accessed July 28, 2024. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nvidia-ceo-jensen-huang-sold-090000710.html
7. Drucker, Jesse. “How One of the World’s Richest Men Is Avoiding $8 Billion in Taxes.” New York Times, December 5, 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/business/nvidia-jensen-huang-estate-taxes.html