Washing dishes at 15, ruling AI boom at 60: Nvidia’s Jensen Huang journey before building the $4 trillion empire

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's connection with Denny's has an interesting link to the company's early days. The restaurant where he once worked as a teenager eventually became the meeting place where he and two future co-founders discussed building a company around a new kind of computer chip. That idea would go on to shape Nvidia's business and its position in the global technology industry.

Now, the restaurant chain has marked that connection with a permanent tribute at its East San Jose outlet. The recognition brings the spotlight back to a lesser-known chapter of Nvidia's history, when its founders were still figuring out what kind of company they wanted to build.

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How a meeting at Denny's led to Nvidia

Huang's association with Denny's dates back to 1978, when he was 15 and took his first job as a dishwasher. He was later promoted to busboy. Recalling those days in a March 2024 interview with Stanford Graduate School of Business, Huang said he worked efficiently and never left or returned to his station empty-handed.

His connection with the restaurant took a different turn in 1993. According to Nvidia's blog post, Huang met Sun Microsystems employees Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem at one of Denny's popular locations in Northern California.

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The three discussed developing a chip that could deliver realistic 3D graphics on personal computers. Malachowsky and Priem wanted to leave Sun Microsystems and encouraged Huang to work with them on starting a company.

Huang later explained that the idea was to solve computing problems that ordinary computers, relying on general-purpose processing, could not handle. That became Nvidia's original mission.

Denny's gives Nvidia's founders' meeting a permanent tribute

Huang and Denny's CEO Kelli Valade unveiled a commemorative plaque at the exact corner booth where the three discussed their business idea. The restaurant has dedicated it as "the booth that launched a $1 trillion company".

Denny's has also added a special menu item, Nvidia Breakfast Bytes, in Huang's honour. Introduced last year, it features four sausage links wrapped in buttermilk silver dollar pancakes and dipped in maple syrup, his favourite way of eating the dish.

Valade said the restaurant was honoured to have played a role in Nvidia's journey from an early idea to a global AI powerhouse.