Jensen Huang, the multibillionaire founder and CEO of chipmaking company Nvidia, was recently awarded the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Medal of Honor. He received the organization’s highest award for his leadership in GPU development and advancing the field of artificial intelligence.
Huang has built the most valuable company in the world. At the IEEE announcement ceremony earlier this year, he reflected on how it all started.
Huang said he went into engineering because he always enjoyed solving math and science problems. Drawn to the challenging nature of the work, he studied electrical engineering at Oregon State University, where he became a member of IEEE and also met his wife, Lori, who was his lab partner.
When he co-founded Nvidia in 1993, he said he could never have envisioned that the company would change the future of computing and lead to the “industrial revolution” that is AI. Under Huang’s leadership, Nvidia became the first company to reach a $5 trillion market capitalization.
At the core of this revolution are engineers, according to Huang. They turn ideas into reality and solve problems with creativity and persistence, a conviction that can be attributed to his own origin story.
“This profession is the most noble of all, expressed in that way,” Huang said in an Instagram Reel of the ceremony posted last week. “To be the building blocks, to be the foundation of what builds society today.”
“Ultimately, engineering is a field that is about applying first principles in science and math,” Huang added. “It is about learning how to solve problems, breaking down incredibly challenging problems into solvable parts, and having the resilience and dedication to go solve and make possible what was nearly impossible.”
The company that Huang built over the last three decades has remade what it means to be an engineer. From software engineers working with AI agents to generate code at Big Tech companies, to the value of engineering shifting from execution to judgment, the field is rapidly changing.
While AI has completely reshaped and flattened other professions, Huang still deems engineering as one of the most important career paths—and he doesn’t see that changing anytime soon.