Many tech executives have their signature look, like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s t-shirts and hoodies, and Apple cofounder Steve Jobs’ turtleneck, and Huang, the Nvidia CEO’s, happens to be very expensive leather jackets.
He’s nearly always seen in them, and many of the leather jackets in his wardrobe cost several thousand dollars a pop. But Huang has never shied away from his identity-making garments.
“You may know me better as ‘the guy in the leather jacket who repeats things three times,’” Huang wrote when he hosted a Reddit AMA in 2016. It’s become his signature look, and one he sported when he was on the cover of Time in 2021 as one of its men of the year.
The jacket, which went up for auction earlier this month via Sotheby’s, had a presale estimate of $40,000 to $60,000. But bidding blew those estimates out of the water. The proceeds will go toward a philanthropic initiative organized by San Francisco-based venture capital firm Long Journey Ventures to benefit the Edge Institute, a nonprofit that brings together people working in tech, science, culture, and society to live together in pop-up villages and work on experiments.
Photo courtesy Sotheby’s
The group is part of a growing “pop-up village” movement—rooted in the tech and crypto worlds—that convenes founders and researchers into month-long live-in gatherings. Its flagship event, Edge Esmeralda, drew more than 1,300 people to Healdsburg, Calif., last year. The proceeds will fund fellowships, grants, and residencies, according to Sotheby’s.
It’s unclear what Huang’s relationship to the organization is and whether he ideated the sale himself. Sotheby’s and Nvidia didn’t immediately respond to Fortune’s requests for comment.
The jacket sale is different from how Huang usually gives. He and his wife, Lori—both Oregon State University graduates who met in a campus lab—run the Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang Foundation, which one estimate pegs at more than $10 billion in assets. Their giving has largely flowed to universities and AI research, including a $50 million gift to Oregon State to build a research complex now bearing their names, along with donations to Stanford and a $22.5 million gift to the California College of the Arts.
The specific jacket was photomatched by PSA to Huang during Hon Hai Tech Day in Taipei on Oct. 18, 2023, with his signature authenticated by James Spence Authentication.
More about Jensen Huang’s love for leather jackets
The jacket that was up for auction was a black leather jacket from luxury menswear brand Tom Ford that Huang wore during Nvidia’s product launches, developer conferences, and major announcements as his company became a major pioneer in artificial intelligence.
“This is not only a jacket,” according to Sotheby’s. “It is the uniform of a ‘first believer’; a symbol of his leadership style embodying authenticity, ingenuity, persistence, courage and joy.”
In a 2024 keynote address, Huang appeared to be wearing a lizard-embossed Tom Ford jacket that cost almost $9,000. That’s barely a drop in the bucket for Huang, though, since his net worth is $172 billion, making him the world’s eighth-richest man, and Nvidia’s market cap is nearly $5 trillion.
Fashion experts confirmed to Fortune in 2025 that Huang often wears Tom Ford, where some jackets cost more than $10,000 a piece. While they come in different styles and materials, Huang appeared to be sporting a biker-style black leather jacket by Tom Ford at Nvidia’s GTC 2025 keynote speech.
“It’s not his first rodeo. He wears a lot of Tom Ford. They’re all expensive,” Reginald Ferguson, owner and founder of menswear fashion consultancy New York Fashion Geek, previously told Fortune. “He’s found his lane, and he’s sticking to it. I doubt he has a motorcycle outside. The black jackets go well with his gray hair.”
To be sure, Huang admitted in a 2024 interview with HP the idea for his black leather jackets wasn’t his own.
“I’m happy that my wife and my daughter dress me,” Huang said. A spokesperson for Huang also previously told The New York Times that Huang had been wearing black leather jackets “for at least 20 years.”
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