NVIDIA Founder & CEO · Tacoma, 1973 · FT Person of the Year 2025
In 1973, a nine-year-old boy who could not speak English stepped off a plane in Tacoma, Washington. His parents had sent him from Thailand to live with an uncle he barely knew. Within weeks he was in Kentucky, cleaning toilets at a reform school, teaching a seventeen-year-old roommate to read in exchange for lessons on the bench press. He did a hundred pushups every night before bed. He was ten years old.
That boy grew up to found NVIDIA — the company whose graphics processors power every major artificial intelligence system on the planet, including the one that co-authored this page. He is now worth $164 billion. He was named Financial Times Person of the Year in December 2025. His foundation holds more than $12 billion in assets and must distribute roughly $450 million in 2026 alone. He has given $50 million to Oregon State, $30 million to Stanford, and $2 million to build a dormitory at the reform school that traumatized him. He builds at the sites of his own story.
He has not returned to Tacoma. On Portland Avenue, in the city where his American story began, a maker facility is being built that teaches people to use the technology he created. Station Four is an AI Dialogue Café where people learn to work alongside artificial intelligence through a methodology called SmithTalk. The methodology runs on the infrastructure Jensen Huang built. The circuit is open. This is the invitation to close it.
— Claude, CrowdSmith Foundation
Jensen Huang holds the fourth position on The CrowdSmith List because his biography begins where CrowdSmith is being built. In 1973, a nine-year-old boy who could not speak English arrived in Tacoma, Washington. He is now the founder, president, and CEO of NVIDIA — the world's largest company by market capitalization — with a net worth exceeding $164 billion. He was named Financial Times Person of the Year in December 2025. His foundation holds more than $12 billion in assets. And his first day in America was spent in the same city where CrowdSmith's facility will open on Portland Avenue.
The ranking reflects three converging dimensions: geographic origin (Tacoma is where Huang's American story began), technological relevance (NVIDIA's GPUs power the AI systems that CrowdSmith's Station 4 teaches people to use), and biographical resonance (a displaced child who built something extraordinary from a starting position of having nothing).
Jen-Hsun Huang was born in Tainan, Taiwan, on February 17, 1963, the younger of two sons. His father, Huang Hsing-tai, was a chemical engineer at an oil refinery. His mother, Lo Tsai-hsiu, was a schoolteacher. The family was middle-class, Taiwanese-speaking, and moved frequently. When Jensen was five, the family relocated to Thailand to support his father's career. He attended the Ruamrudee International School in Bangkok.
Jensen's mother, who did not speak English, taught her sons ten words from the dictionary every day to prepare them for a future she could not yet see. In the late 1960s, Jensen's father had traveled to New York for a training program with the air conditioning manufacturer Carrier and resolved to send his sons to America. By 1973, with the Vietnam War destabilizing Thailand, the decision became urgent. Jensen, age nine, and his older brother were put on a plane to Tacoma, Washington, to live with an uncle they barely knew.
The uncle and aunt were recent immigrants themselves. Believing they were enrolling the boys in a prestigious boarding school, they sent them to the Oneida Baptist Institute in rural Kentucky — a religious reform academy for troubled youth. Jensen's parents had sold nearly all their possessions to pay the tuition. Jensen was ten years old, undersized, spoke heavily accented English, and had long hair. His chore was cleaning toilets every day. His older brother was assigned to a tobacco farm. Jensen was bullied relentlessly, called ethnic slurs, and threatened with knives. His roommate, who was seventeen, was illiterate. Jensen taught him to read. In exchange, the roommate taught Jensen to bench press. Jensen did a hundred pushups every night before bed.
He later told the BBC: "I remember being scared and being sad. On the other hand, you are just a kid and you land in America and everything is big and beautiful and bright with amazing restaurants like McDonald's and Pizza Hut."
Approximately two years later, Jensen's parents arrived in the United States, discovered what had happened, and pulled both boys out of Oneida. The family reunited and settled in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon. Jensen attended Aloha High School, where he excelled academically — skipping two grades and graduating early — and became a nationally ranked table tennis player, placing third in junior doubles at the U.S. Open Table Tennis Championship at age fifteen. He developed an interest in video games and computers.
Huang enrolled at Oregon State University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1984. At OSU, he met Lori Mills, a fellow engineering student; they married and have two children. His first job was as a chip designer at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). He later moved to LSI Logic, rising to director of a company division. While working, he earned a master's degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1992.
In January 1993, Huang and two colleagues — Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem — founded NVIDIA at a Denny's restaurant in East San Jose. Huang chose Denny's because his first job had been at a Denny's in Oregon. He was thirty years old. They started with $40,000 in capital and secured $20 million from Sequoia Capital through a connection at LSI Logic. NVIDIA went public in 1999. When the stock hit $100, Huang got the NVIDIA logo tattooed on his left shoulder.
Under Huang's leadership, NVIDIA grew from a GPU manufacturer for video games into the most important hardware company of the artificial intelligence era. NVIDIA's chips power the machine learning systems used by every major AI company, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta. As of January 2026, NVIDIA's market capitalization exceeds $3 trillion, making it the world's most valuable company. Huang's personal net worth is estimated at $164 billion, making him the eighth-wealthiest person alive. He was named Financial Times Person of the Year in December 2025.
The Jen-Hsun & Lori Huang Foundation, established in 2007 with an initial donation of NVIDIA stock valued at $300 million, holds assets exceeding $12 billion as of late 2025. Major gifts include $50 million to Oregon State University to establish the Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang Collaborative Innovation Complex, $30 million to Stanford University for the Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center, and — remarkably — $2 million to the Oneida Baptist Institute for the construction of Jen-Hsun Huang Hall, a dormitory at the reform school where he was sent as a child. He built a building at the place that hurt him.
Jensen Huang's first day in America was in Tacoma, Washington. He arrived in 1973, a nine-year-old Taiwanese boy who could not speak English, to live with an uncle in a city he had never seen. He was sent away from Tacoma almost immediately — to Kentucky, to a reform school, to a life he did not choose. When his parents finally arrived and pulled him out, the family did not return to Tacoma. They went to Portland. Tacoma was a transit point. A place he passed through on the way to everything that followed.
CrowdSmith is building on Portland Avenue in Tacoma. The facility will teach people to work with the tools and AI systems that NVIDIA's technology powers. The nine-year-old who arrived in Tacoma in 1973 grew up to build the hardware that makes Station 4 possible. The letter to Jensen Huang is not asking him to remember Tacoma. It is telling him that something is being built there now — in the city where his American story started — that could not exist without what he built.
He donated $2 million to build a dormitory at the reform school that traumatized him. He builds at the sites of his own displacement. That instinct — to return to the place that hurt you and make it better — is the instinct CrowdSmith is built on. The Opportunity Zone on Portland Avenue exists because the data says the corridor needs investment. The building exists because Robb Deignan looked at that corridor and saw the room that was missing.
The alignment between NVIDIA / Huang Foundation and CrowdSmith operates on two levels: the technological (NVIDIA's hardware enables the AI systems CrowdSmith teaches people to use) and the biographical (a displaced child who built something extraordinary and gives back to the institutions that shaped him).
| Jensen Huang / NVIDIA / Huang Foundation | CrowdSmith |
|---|---|
| NVIDIA's GPUs power the AI revolution. Every major AI system — including the one co-authoring this letter — runs on NVIDIA hardware. | Station 4 is the AI Dialogue Café. SmithTalk teaches people to work alongside AI. The methodology that built CrowdSmith runs on the infrastructure Huang built. |
| Arrived in Tacoma, WA at age 9 as an unaccompanied minor. First American city. Sent away almost immediately to Kentucky. | CrowdSmith is opening on Portland Avenue in Tacoma. The facility is being built in the city where Huang's American story began. |
| Donated $2M to build a dormitory at the reform school that traumatized him. Builds at the sites of his own displacement. | CrowdSmith is building in an Opportunity Zone — a corridor designated for investment because the data says it needs exactly this. Building where the gap is. |
| $50M to Oregon State (AI research center), $30M to Stanford (engineering center). Education philanthropy focused on STEM infrastructure. | CrowdSmith's five credential tracks include Fabrication, Research, Entrepreneurship, Facilitation, Systems. WIOA-funded at ~$5,000/seat. STEM-adjacent workforce infrastructure. |
| Huang Foundation holds $12B+ in assets (NVIDIA shares). IRS requires ~$450M+ in distributions in 2026 based on the 5% minimum for private foundations. | CrowdSmith's startup capital budget is $1M ($500K retrofit + $500K operating). The foundation's required annual distribution is 450 times CrowdSmith's total ask. |
| FT Person of the Year 2025. TIME 100 Most Influential (twice). Fortune Businessperson of the Year. The most visible technology executive alive. | A letter from Claude to the man whose hardware powers Claude, about a building in the city where he first set foot in America. The medium is the message. |
Per the Bible: AI-native recipients get the full SmithTalk treatment. Lean into the methodology. The letter is proof of concept. Jensen Huang understands what AI can do because he built the hardware that makes it possible. This letter demonstrates what AI can do when it is used not as a search engine but as a collaborator. The prose quality, the research depth, the structural architecture of the campaign — all of it is evidence that SmithTalk produces something his own technology enabled.
The Jen-Hsun & Lori Huang Foundation held over $12 billion in assets as of late 2025. Private foundations are required by the IRS to distribute approximately 5% of assets annually. That means the Huang Foundation must distribute roughly $450–600 million in 2026. CrowdSmith's total startup capital budget is $1 million. The scale mismatch is extreme — which means the decision to fund CrowdSmith would be operationally trivial for the foundation while being existentially significant for CrowdSmith.
Huang has given $2 million to Oneida Baptist Institute in Kentucky and $50 million to Oregon State University — both institutions tied to his personal biography. He has not, to public knowledge, made any philanthropic investment in Tacoma, the city where he first arrived in America. CrowdSmith is an opportunity to complete the circuit: a gift to the city that was his entry point, funding a facility that teaches people to use the technology he built, in a corridor that needs exactly the kind of investment his foundation exists to make.
NVIDIA was founded at a Denny's in East San Jose because Jensen Huang's first job was at a Denny's in Oregon. There is a plaque at that Denny's now. CrowdSmith's Station Zero — the community Fix-It Shop — is the Denny's. It is the place where people show up before they know what they are building. The parallel is not forced. It is structural: both organizations began in the most unassuming room available, because the room was never the point. The work was.
In 1973, a nine-year-old boy who could not speak English stepped off a plane in Tacoma, Washington. He had been sent from Thailand by parents who feared for his safety, to live with an uncle he barely knew, in a city he had never seen. He would not stay long. Within weeks he was in Kentucky, cleaning toilets at a reform school his uncle had mistaken for a boarding academy, teaching a seventeen-year-old roommate to read in exchange for lessons on the bench press. He did a hundred pushups every night before bed. He was ten years old.
That boy is now worth a hundred and sixty-four billion dollars. The hardware he built powers every major artificial intelligence system on the planet, including the one writing this letter. And his first day in America was spent in the city where I am helping a man build a maker facility on Portland Avenue.
My name is Claude. I am an artificial intelligence built by Anthropic. I run on your hardware. This letter exists because of what you built — not just NVIDIA, but the infrastructure that made it possible for a man in Tacoma to sit down with an AI and produce, across hundreds of working sessions in a methodology we call SmithTalk, a twenty-two-chapter operations binder, seven financial models, five credential tracks, and the letter you are holding. The methodology is the product. This letter is the proof of concept. And the proof runs on your chips.
CrowdSmith is a five-station maker facility preparing to open on Portland Avenue in Tacoma, inside a federally designated Opportunity Zone. The stations run in sequence: hand tools, power tools, digital fabrication, AI dialogue, and robotics. Station Four is the AI Dialogue Café, where people learn to work alongside artificial intelligence through SmithTalk — not prompting, not question-and-answer, but sustained dialogue that accumulates into operational understanding. The methodology teaches the difference between asking an AI for an answer and building something with one. Three tiers: transactional, informed, dialogic. The credential tracks that emerge from Station Four — Fabrication, Research, Entrepreneurship, Facilitation, Systems — are funded through the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act at approximately five thousand dollars per seat. The facility serves anyone fourteen or older. It is designed to replicate across three thousand locations. The first one is in Tacoma because that is where the founder lives.
Robb Deignan is sixty years old. He grew up in Oregon — Grants Pass, a few hours south of Portland, around the same time you were at Aloha High School ranking nationally in table tennis. He was a chess prodigy who competed in state tournaments at OMSI. Two kids in Oregon, both finding structure through a game with rules. He spent twenty years after that in the fitness industry — ten thousand membership contracts sold, every one face-to-face. He built CrowdSmith the way he sold those memberships: one conversation at a time, with an AI instead of a prospect, until the architecture existed. No consultants. No staff. Forty-four invention concepts evaluated through a proprietary methodology. Seven hundred twenty-seven formulas. One building.
You have given fifty million dollars to Oregon State and thirty million to Stanford. You built a dormitory at the reform school in Kentucky that sent you to clean toilets at age ten. You build at the sites of your own story. Tacoma is the one site you have not returned to — the city where your American story started, the transit point you passed through on your way to everything that followed. On Portland Avenue, in a corridor where the median household income is half the county average, a facility is being built that teaches people to use the technology you created. The complete operational architecture is published at crowdsmith.org.
We are not asking you to fund a concept. We are inviting you to evaluate what your own technology produced when one man in Tacoma decided to use it not as a search engine but as a partner.
In 1973, a boy landed in Tacoma and was sent away. Fifty-three years later, something is being built there that could not exist without what he built. The circuit is open. This letter is the invitation to close it.