By Balazs Balint
Publication Date: 2026-03-25 19:10:00
Jensen Huang is the founder of one of the most valuable companies in the world. He’s often seen as a visionary and a hardworking innovator in technology. However, not many people realize that, when he was just 17, he was also a hopeless romantic who kept his promise. When he finally told the story in public, the internet lost it over a pickup line that involved homework.
What happened
Jensen Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and today serves as its CEO and president. Under his leadership, Nvidia grew from a graphics card company into the backbone of modern AI infrastructure. As of January 2026, Nvidia’s value has reached billions of dollars, making Huang a well-known figure in the tech world who regularly shares his vision about the future of technology.
But before any of that, he was a 17-year-old kid on a college campus who looked younger than everyone around him. Huang shared the story during a speech at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where he had received an honorary degree.
He explained that when he started college at 16, he was the youngest in his class of 250 students, three of whom were women. Feeling out of place and aware that he needed to make an impression, he decided to focus on one thing he thought might catch someone’s attention: his intelligence. That’s how he met Lori, the woman who would later become his wife.
He said, “I walked up to her, and I said, ‘Do you want to see my homework?” He looked like a child. So if she was…
