Jensen Huang Resigns: How a $960,000 Leather Jacket Became a Liability

A Tom Ford leather jacket signed by Jensen Huang sold at Sotheby's in July for $960,000—16 times its high estimate. Four months later, the 63-year-old Nvidia founder resigned under board pressure over revelations of an extramarital affair with a woman alleged to be a Chinese spy, and another with a subordinate. The personal brand that built that $960,000 price tag may have helped bring him down.

For years, few CEOs have had as distinct a public image as Huang. The leather jackets. The social media cameos born of his street-food enthusiasm. The theatrical optimism about an AI future powered in part by his company's chips. His personal brand was effective and winning—until it wasn't.

How did a chip designer become a pop star?

Huang's public profile was modest until recently. Born in Taiwan, he was sent to a U.S. boarding school at age 9. He worked in Silicon Valley as a chip designer and co-founded Nvidia in 1993. Only in the past couple of years, as AI took off and Nvidia's industry-leading chips became widely coveted, did the company become a household name—and Huang a public figure.

He built the persona on relatable attributes: hard work and fear of failure, per his biographer. He kept a regular-guy taste for street food and mingling with fans. In Taiwan, he's reportedly treated as a borderline pop star, attracting autograph- and selfie-seekers. At COMPUTEX in Taipei on June 3, 2026, a crowd raised smartphones and cameras to catch a glimpse of him on the exhibition floor.

Then there's the wardrobe. Huang has reportedly worn a black leather jacket and T-shirt to public events for more than a decade and now owns at least 30.

What did the auction reveal about the brand?

The Sotheby's catalog described the jacket 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."

That $960,000 hammer price, against a $40,000–60,000 estimate, marked the peak of the brand's market value.

Why did the image boomerang?

Much of the persona has now curdled. Huang's joie de vivre reads as cavalier. His breezy optimism reads as naïve. The leather jacket reads, in the New York Times' framing, as some sort of midlife-crisis symbol.

The street-fashion site High Snobiety had credited Huang with coming across as "someone with drip," unlike "the sartorially confused Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg." After the scandals, it cautioned that even the most studiously orchestrated public image is "brittle," and that "attaching yourself to a piece of clothing so tied to rebelliousness is a gamble when things go sideways."

The most telling twist came via the technology Huang championed. An AI-faked image of Huang in an ostentatious studded Saint Laurent/Hedi Slimane jacket went viral on November 10, 2026—just as Nvidia's board was weighing his fate. The image proved that even AI's greatest champions are subject to the technology's abuse, and it turned the brand inside out: the jacket now signaled indifference.

Is Huang an outlier among founder-CEOs?

He isn't the first business figure to cultivate a high-flying image only to watch it crash. Elon Musk rode a quirky mad-genius vibe into hosting SNL in 2021; his reputation today is, charitably, mixed. Elizabeth Holmes landed magazine covers as an innovator with a turtleneck and a husky voice; she is in prison.

The AI boom seems particularly fueled by larger-than-life characters. OpenAI's Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei have already seen their demigod status undermined.

Still, the arc of the brand called Jensen Huang stands out. Now that he has resigned, his post-Nvidia fate is unclear. But the asset that served him so well has become a liability. As Fast Company put it: we'll never see his leather jackets the same way again.