Nvidia cofounder and CEO Jensen Huang isn’t just a technology and business wizard—he also engineered a successful marital acquisition strategy as a teenager.
During a speech last weekend at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, which awarded him an honorary degree, the Silicon Valley titan looked back at his time at Oregon State University, saying was just 16 when he started and only 17 when he met his future wife, who was 19 at the time.
“I was the youngest kid in school, in the class. There were 250 students and three girls,” Huang said. “I was the only student that looked like a child, and they were all children.”
He attended OSU from 1980 to 1984. According to the school, his freshman-year lab partner in electrical engineering fundamentals was Lori Mills.
Knowing that his youthful appearance stood out, Huang said he was certain that her first impression of him was that he must be very smart.
“So I walked up to her and I said, ‘Do you wanna see my homework?’” he recalled.
Huang then promised that if they did homework together every Sunday, Lori would get straight A’s. As a result, he had a “date” every Sunday.
He further leveraged their study sessions by having her do homework all day, ensuring they spent the entire Sunday together.
When he was 20, Huang sought to further ensure they would get married by vowing to be a CEO by the time he turned 30.
“I had no idea what I was talking about,” he admitted. “And then we got married. That’s all the advice I’m going to give all the entrepreneurs.”
Huang also revealed that he did his homework in advance so that he had all the answers and would look like a genius by the time he and Lori compared notes.
Five years after meeting, they got married, according to OSU. And sure enough, when he cofounded Nvidia in 1993 and became CEO, he was 30.
Fast forward to 2024: Huang is number 2 on Fortune’s list of the 100 most powerful people in business. Nvidia is a chip giant, powering the artificial intelligence boom, and its AI hyperscaler customers can’t get enough of its processors.
The company’s market cap was about $3.4 trillion as of Friday’s market close, and Nvidia has traded places with Apple on and off this year as the world’s most valuable company.