Nvidia's former CEO has deep Oregon ties

Driving the news: Huang resigned as CEO of the chipmaker after he reportedly had multiple affairs, including one with a purported Chinese spy.

• He played a critical role at Nvidia, a foundational part of the AI buildout, the stock market and the economy as a whole.

Catch up quick: Before all that, though, he was a student at Aloha High School after his family moved to Oregon when he was a teenager, the Oregonian reported.

• At 15, Huang worked the graveyard shift at a local Denny's and played competitive table tennis in downtown Portland.
• He enrolled at Oregon State at 17, graduating in 1984, before co-founding Nvidia in 1993.

Zoom in: Huang met his wife, Lori, at Oregon State, where they were engineering lab partners.

• In 2022, the couple donated $50 million toward a supercomputing research center in Corvallis expected to open next year.

Follow the money: Nvidia shares fell as much as 13% after news of Huang's resignation before rebounding somewhat.

The bottom line: The company is the backbone of the global AI economy, with its chips, investments and financial guarantees sustaining an entire ecosystem of companies worth trillions of dollars.