NVIDIA CEO Huang receives top IEEE award

IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional organisation of more than 500,000 worldwide, dedicated to advancing technology for humanity, announced that Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, has been named the recipient of the 2026 IEEE Medal of Honour, the organisation’s highest accolade, and its accompanying $2 million prize.

Huang is being recognised for a lifetime of visionary leadership and pioneering work in accelerated computing, which has propelled NVIDIA to the forefront of technological innovation. This joins Huang’s other recent honours including the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, Person of the Year from Financial Times and TIME Magazine, and the Professor Stephen Hawking Fellowship. Under his guidance, NVIDIA - which became the first company to top $5 trillion in market cap in October 2025 - invented the first graphics processing unit (GPU) in 1999 — a breakthrough that revolutionised computing and enabled advancements across medicine, engineering, robotics, autonomous vehicles, manufacturing, and more. Huang’s foresight in accelerated computing laid the foundation for today’s AI technologies and industrial revolution.

“The IEEE Medal of Honour represents the pinnacle of career achievement,” said Mary Ellen Randall, IEEE President. “Jensen Huang’s contributions have advanced the frontiers of technology and enabled innovations whose impact is yet to be imagined. IEEE is proud to honour work that not only defines excellence in our field, but inspires the next generation of engineers and technologists.”

Established in 1917, the IEEE Medal of Honour is awarded to individuals whose contributions have profoundly shaped technology and engineering.

Its recipients boldly envision the new and revolutionary and expand the limits of what’s possible. Their accomplishments inspire today’s technologists to make the world a more innovative and better place. These pioneers transform radical ideas into world-changing realities that reshape how we live, work, and connect.

Huang joins a distinguished lineage of Medal of Honour laureates whose work has transformed modern life, including Vinton G. Cerf and Robert Kahn (Internet architecture), Bradford W. Parkinson (GPS), and Morris Chang (semiconductors).

NVIDIA’s accelerated computing platform powers every industry, from enabling generative AI models like ChatGPT to building up the world’s leading AI factories and data centres.

Huang’s commitment to innovation and his ability to operate decades ahead of industry trends have created an infrastructure that empowers technologists globally and impacts millions of lives daily.