Jensen Huang IEEE Medal of Honor 2026 Complete Acceptance Speech

Jensen Huang’s CES 2026 NVIDIA keynote detailing the company’s latest advances in AI, including the Vera Rubin Architecture launch, self-driving car technology, and, of course, gaming announcements, has received extensive coverage worldwide. Jensen’s acceptance of the IEEE’s 2026 Medal of Honor on Tuesday at CES has barely been noted. Previous Medal of Honor winners include Marconi and Armstrong for radio, Vincent G. Cerf and Robert E. Kahn for the Internet, and Bradford W. Parkinson for GPS. The most prestigious award offered by the global community for technologists, the IEEE Medal of Honor recipients, “represent today’s most groundbreaking technological advancements and are innovators at the forefront of the technology that is poised to drive society forward for the benefit of humanity.” The complete transcript of Jensen’s acceptance speech follows; it has been lightly edited for clarity:

Hi, this is an incredible honor, uh, Mary Ellen. Sophie is, uh, really, really incredible honor to receive this.

I went into engineering because it was math-heavy and science-heavy. And, uh, I’ve always enjoyed solving math problems and science problems. Right. I didn’t think too deeply about the selection of professions. It was really the challenge of the work and the technical content of the work that attracted me.

I had the good fortune of not even deciding what university to go to. I chose to go to Oregon State University ’cause it was our home university. And because of that lack of choice, I ended up having a lab partner who, today, is my wife. We met when we were sophomore EE Fundees. We were lab partners, and I had the good wisdom of asking her to do homework with me every Sunday, which, which led to, uh, several years of dating. And it changed everything.

It, of course, was the foundation of a very beautiful family and a happy life. And it gave me the opportunity to go pursue, over time, endeavors that were greater and greater and more and more ambitious. No engineer could possibly imagine that their life or profession would ultimately lead to becoming one of Nvidia’s founders or its CEO.

Being the company that reinvented computing and led to this industrial revolution that we now recognize as artificial intelligence. It is not humanly possible to imagine that the company you started along with Chris and Curtis in a townhouse would now become the most valuable company in the world.

That’s not a game plan that you can reasonably imagine. It’s not reasonable to imagine really that you would, your company would go forward and end up reinventing the most important instrument, the single most important tool of humanity called computers. That, that this, this endeavor, this life’s work we call Nvidia, would go off and literally transform every single field of science and every industry in the world today. It is not reasonable to imagine that. It is not reasonable to expect that. And yet here we are, through the good friendship of all of the employees of our company.

This award is really a recognition of their life’s work. You know, ultimately engineering is a field that, that, uh, is about applying principles, first principles in science and math. It is about learning how to solve problems. Breaking down incredibly challenging problems into solvable parts, and the dedication and resilience to go solve them and make possible what was nearly impossible. And this profession is the most noble of all, expressed in that way to be the building blocks, to be the foundation of what builds society today. And I’ve had the benefit, the good fortune of having a loving, supporting family.

That made it possible for me to dedicate my life’s work at Nvidia. But mostly, really, the incredible geniuses and the amazing people I get to work with. I’m surrounded by some of the finest engineers, scientists, and researchers in the world. Who make everything that we do at Nvidia.

And so I’m deeply humbled to receive this award. I’ve always, you know, I think of IEEE often actually. When you think about 802.11, you have to think about IEEE. And when you think about IEEE 754, frankly, we wouldn’t have a global standard for how to express floating point numbers for computers to understand. And those foundations, the industrial

standards, become the building blocks, the fabric by which the computer industry is built. The list of IEE standards goes on and on. I won’t, uh, impress you with my knowledge of IEE standards. But it is an essential ingredient and an essential contribution to the world’s technology industries. And I want to thank the IEEE for this incredible honor.

I want to thank my wife, my beautiful lab partner for supporting me all these years and, for raising two amazing kids who are both in technology today. I’m quite proud that they’re working at Nvidia. So, thank you for this incredible award. I receive it on behalf of all the great employees.

Thank you. Along with the honor of being selected by your peers, this is the second year the IEEE Medal of Honor has included a $2 million prize, “reflecting – the award’s stature as one of technology’s most esteemed recognitions.”