- Leather jacket belonging to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sells for $960,000, well above the estimate of $40-60,000
- Huang’s jackets have become an icon of the technology sector and a permanent CEO ‘uniform’ piece
- Proceeds will help fund scholarships and more across technology
A black Tom Ford leather jacket worn and signed by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has sold at an auction in New York for $960,000.
“The response to this sale exceeded even our highest expectations,” explained Sotheby’s head of contemporary collectibles Brahm Wachter, with the jacket selling for about $900,000 more than auctioneers had expected, given the auction house’s estimate of $40,000 to $60,000.
The jacket itself – one of many the CEO has owned, of course – has become a staple recognized throughout the tech sector, with Huang rarely seen in public wearing anything else.
Jensen Huang’s jacket sold for $0.9 million
This specific jacket came from Tom Ford’s spring-summer 2023 collection, but the CEO has been wearing similar jackets for years, leading similar examples to become essential parts of any Nvidia keynote or tech conference.
Huang is one of a growing number of CEOs who have opted for uniformity and simplicity in their clothing – Mark Zuckerberg’s blue jeans and gray t-shirt and Steve Jobs’ black turtleneck are also becoming similarly iconic.
Independent verifiers are said to have confirmed both the authenticity of the jacket and the authenticity of the signature, revealing that it was worn by Huanh at Foxconn Tech Day in 2023.
It’s clear that Jensen Huang’s jacket is the main reason it fetched nearly $1 million at auction. His company, Nvidia, is something of an AI success story, rising from a valuation of around $300 billion in 2020 to $4.9 trillion today.
At the time of writing, Nvidia is the world’s most valuable company, just a touch ahead of Apple – with the $940,000 it costs you to buy around 4,653 shares in the company at today’s market price.
Proceeds are set to help fund the Edge Institute, a nonprofit organization that will support scholarships, grants and residencies across the technology sector.
Via CNBC
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews and opinions in your feeds.
