Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang speaks at the COMPUTEX Forum in Taipei, Taiwan on May 29, 2023.
Anne Wang | Reuters
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is rarely seen without a leather jacket. It’s his signature look. He’s been wearing it for nearly 20 years.
At product launches, corporate events, and trade shows, fans almost always wear Tom Ford’s trademark black leather jacket.
One of them was recently put up for auction. And on Friday, after 65 bids, a worn autographed jacket by a fan sold for $960,000 at a Sotheby’s auction. This far exceeds the pre-sale estimate of $40,000 to $60,000.
It’s also significantly more expensive than the retail price of just under $10,000 for a single piece of clothing.
He wore this jacket in 2023 at an event at Foxconn in Taipei, Taiwan.
The clothing’s high prices are a sign that collectors are bidding on artifacts and collectibles from the artificial intelligence boom.
“The response to this sale has exceeded even our wildest expectations,” Brahm Wachter, head of modern collectors at Sotheby’s, said in a statement. Sotheby’s said 45 different collectors had bid on the jacket.
Sotheby’s said in a statement that proceeds will be donated to charities supporting the Edge Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to innovation. Proceeds from sales will support fellowships, grants, and residencies.
Mr. Huang has long joked about the company’s founder’s uniform. In 2023, he said on a podcast that his wife and daughter dressed him, and in 2016 he said in a Reddit discussion that he was “a guy in a leather jacket.”
Other CEOs are also paying attention to his style.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg famously swapped clothes with fans in a pro sports-style “jersey swap” in 2024. Later that year, on stage at a computer graphics conference, a fan gave Zuckerberg one of the jackets he was wearing that day.
“It’s valuable because it’s used,” Zuckerberg said.
