Before he co-founded NVIDIA, Jensen Huang bussed tables and washed dishes at Denny’s. He has said the discipline of that first job shaped how he runs the company now worth trillions.

NVIDIA was conceived in 1993 in a booth at a Denny’s in San Jose, where its three founders sketched out a company to make graphics chips for video games.

Jensen Huang immigrated from Taiwan as a boy and was sent to a strict boarding school in rural Kentucky, where he cleaned the dormitory toilets before class. He later co-founded NVIDIA.

AMD’s Lisa Su and NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang — who run the two companies at the center of the AI-chip boom — are distant relatives, a fact both have publicly confirmed.