Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang speaks at the COMPUTEX forum in Taipei, Taiwan May 29, 2023.
Ann Wang | Reuters
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is rarely seen without his leather jacket. It’s his signature look. He’s been wearing them for nearly 20 years.
At product launches, company events, and trade shows, Huang is nearly always clad in his trademark black Tom Ford leather jacket.
One of them recently went up for auction. And on Friday, after 65 bids, one of Huang’s pre-worn and signed jackets sold at auction at Sotheby’s for $960,000, much higher than the pre-sale estimate of $40,000 to $60,000.
It’s also significantly higher than the retail price of just under $10,000 for one of the garments.
He wore the jacket in 2023, at an event at Foxconn in Taipei, Taiwan.
The high price for the garment is a sign that collectors are looking to bid on artifacts and collectibles from the artificial intelligence boom.
“The response to this sale surpassed even our highest expectations,” Sotheby’s head of modern collectibles Brahm Wachter said in a statement. Sotheby’s said 45 different collectors bid on the jacket.
Sotheby’s said in a statement that proceeds will go to a philanthropic initiative in support of the Edge Institute, which is a nonprofit dedicated to innovation. The proceeds from the sale will go towards fellowships, grants, and residencies.
Huang has joked over the years about his founder’s uniform — telling a podcast in 2023 that his wife and daughter dress him, and telling a Reddit discussion in 2016 that he’s “the guy in the leather jacket.”
Other CEOs have noticed his style, too.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg famously traded garments with Huang in a pro sports-style “jersey swap” in 2024. Later that year, on stage at a computer graphics conference, Huang gave Zuckerberg one of his jackets that he had been wearing that day.
“This is worth more because it’s used,” Zuckerberg said.
