Jensen Huang Still Earns $811M a Year After Resigning

Jensen Huang may have just lost the job he held for 33 years, but financially speaking there is a silver lining: his dividends. The NVIDIA co-founder resigned as president, chief executive and a member of the board in November 2026, effective immediately — yet his NVIDIA shares will still pay him $811.5 million a year in dividends. That is more than $2.2 million a day, and roughly 540 times the $1.5 million base salary he earned as chief executive.

The Resignation

NVIDIA announced that Jensen Huang had resigned as president, CEO and a member of its board of directors, effective immediately. The stunning departure ends one of the longest and most successful CEO tenures in American corporate history. Huang co-founded NVIDIA in 1993 and led the company from a scrappy graphics-chip startup into an artificial intelligence powerhouse worth trillions of dollars.

NVIDIA CFO Colette Kress has been named interim CEO, while longtime board member Harvey C. Jones has become the company’s first chairman. The announcement followed days of controversy surrounding Huang’s extramarital relationships, including reports of a relationship with a woman suspected by US officials of having ties to Chinese intelligence. Huang publicly acknowledged being unfaithful to his wife. NVIDIA has said it has no reason to believe its secrets or national security were compromised, while an independent investigation continues.

The $800 Million Dividend Windfall

On 20 May, NVIDIA announced another spectacular quarter, reporting $81.6 billion in revenue and $58.3 billion in net income. The company also authorised an additional $80 billion in stock buybacks and made a dramatic change to its dividend policy: NVIDIA increased its quarterly cash dividend from $0.01 per share to $0.25 per share.

For an ordinary investor holding 100 shares, the difference was $4 per year versus $100 per year. Nice, but hardly life-changing. For someone holding hundreds of millions of shares, however, the numbers become almost comically large.

According to Jensen’s 18 September 2026 SEC Form 4 filing, he held 811,521,160 NVIDIA shares directly and through associated family trusts and limited liability companies. At NVIDIA’s current quarterly dividend rate of 25 cents per share, those holdings would generate $202.9 million every quarter — $811.5 million every year. That is more than $2.2 million per day when averaged across an entire year, assuming the shares remain in place and NVIDIA maintains its dividend.

And there is another piece to the calculation. NVIDIA’s March 2026 proxy statement listed 870.6 million shares under Huang’s beneficial ownership. That larger figure included 58.7 million shares belonging to the Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang Foundation, the family’s charitable organisation — the subject of our Jensen Huang foundation story. At the current dividend rate, 870.6 million shares would generate $870.6 million annually.

According to the company’s fiscal 2026 executive compensation disclosures, Huang received a total compensation package valued at $36.3 million. That included a $1.5 million base salary, $6 million in cash incentive compensation, $24.8 million in stock awards and another $4 million in other compensation, much of it related to security arrangements. In other words, even without being CEO, he will continue to earn roughly 540 times his former salary every year going forward — unless the company changes the dividend schedule.

And Then There’s His Stock

Obviously, the dividend payments are based on Jensen’s stock holdings. And those holdings are, obviously, quite large. According to the company’s last SEC filing, Jensen owns around 3.6% of NVIDIA, roughly 870 million shares.

At the $1 trillion market cap level, Jensen Huang was worth $35 billion. At the $2 trillion mark, he was worth $70 billion. When the company’s market cap briefly touched $6 trillion back in May, Jensen was worth $210 billion — making him the seventh richest person in the world.

At a $3.85 trillion market cap, Jensen’s net worth is around $138 billion (technically, around $9 billion of that amount is earmarked for the foundation). The company’s share price was down 8% on the day of the resignation alone, and 30% in the last six months.

From $2.65 an Hour at Denny’s

As a teenager, Jensen worked at Denny’s for $2.65 an hour. Years later, he and his future co-founders discussed launching NVIDIA during meetings at another Denny’s. He spent the following three decades guiding the company through near-bankruptcy, technological reinventions, the rise of graphics processing, cryptocurrency mining and ultimately the artificial intelligence boom.

By the time NVIDIA became the world’s most valuable company, Jensen’s wealth had reached levels that would have been almost unimaginable when he started the business. Now, his career as the company’s only CEO has come to a sudden and deeply controversial end. The title is gone. The corporate responsibilities are gone. His role in NVIDIA’s future is uncertain. But the dividends — $811.5 million a year, every year — are still very much his.

Net worth figures are estimates only, based on public sources.