Few CEOs have had as distinct a public image as Nvidia founder Jensen Huang. The leather jackets, the social media cameos resulting from his street-food enthusiasm, the theatrical optimism about an AI future powered in part by his company’s chips. For years, Huang’s personal brand has been effective and winning.
But now, of course, the revelation of an extramarital affair with a woman alleged to be a Chinese spy, and another with a subordinate, has thrown 63-year-old Huang’s reputation into a tailspin, and ultimately cost him his job, as he resigned under pressure from Nvidia’s board. As for that potent personal brand—it may well have worked against him.
Huang isn’t the first business figure to cultivate a high-flying public image, only to see it crash back to reality. Elon Musk rode a quirky mad genius vibe into hosting SNL in 2021; today his reputation is, let’s say, mixed. Elizabeth Holmes landed on magazine covers as an innovator with a turtleneck and a husky voice; today she is in prison. The AI boom seems particularly fueled by larger-than-life characters, and figures like OpenAI chief Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei have already seen their demigod status undermined.
But the arc of The Brand Called Jensen Huang stands out. Just a few years ago, Huang’s public profile was modest. Born in Taiwan, Huang was sent to a boarding school in the U.S. at age 9. He went on to work in Silicon Valley as a chip designer, and co-founded Nvidia in 1993. Only in the past couple of years, as AI took off, have its industry-leading chips become widely coveted, making Nvidia a household name—and Huang a public figure.
Despite crafting his personal story around the relatable attributes of hard work and fear of failure, Huang has become a hugely powerful presence in the AI debate. Yes, he has a regular-guy taste for street food and mingling with fans, but in Taiwan, he’s reportedly treated as a borderline pop star, attracting autograph- and selfie-seekers.
Then there were the leather jackets. Huang has reportedly worn a black leather jacket and T-shirt for public events for more than a decade, and today owns at least 30. A “Jensen Jacket” designed by Tom Ford and signed (and worn) by Huang sold through Sotheby’s in July for $960,000 (over its $40,000–60,000 estimate).
The catalog entry described the item as “an iconic garment associated with some of the most consequential moments in modern technology.” Noting that Huang wore such jackets for product launches and street corner meals, Sotheby’s declared: “This is not only a jacket. It is the uniform of a ‘first believer’; a symbol of his leadership style embodying authenticity, ingenuity, persistence, courage and joy. It has become a symbol for the vision at the forefront of the AI revolution.”
Much of this public persona has boomeranged. Huang’s joie de vivre now feels cavalier, his breezy optimism naïve. And the leather jacket now reads as some sort of midlife-crises symbol. While the likes of High Snobiety credits Huang for coming across as “someone with drip,” unlike “the sartorially confused Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg,” the street-fashion site also cautioned, in the wake of the Huang scandals, that even the most studiously orchestrated public image is “brittle,” and “attaching yourself to a piece of clothing so tied to rebelliousness is a gamble when things go sideways.”
In an ironic but telling twist, an AI-faked image of Huang in a particularly ostentatious studded Saint Laurent/Hedi Slimane jacket went viral just as Nvidia’s board was considering his fate. Aside from illustrating that even AI’s greatest champions are subject to the technology’s abuse, the image turned Huang’s public brand inside out, with the leather jacket signaling ostentatious indifference.
Now that Huang has resigned, it’s unclear what his post-Nvidia fate may turn out to be. But that personal brand that served him so well has become a liability. We’ll never see his leather jackets the same way again.