Huang’s night market stop pulls crowds in Taipei

Jensen Huang’s – Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang turned a routine night out into a public spectacle on Sunday, visiting Taipei’s Raohe Street Night Market and drawing cheering crowds. The stop landed alongside renewed debate over AI-linked layoffs after Huang said the job-loss narrati

For a brief stretch on Sunday night, the Raohe Street Night Market in Taipei stopped behaving like a tourist spot and started behaving like a scene.

Nvidia’s newsroom account posted videos on X showing Jensen Huang walking through the crowds. ordering food from local vendors. and drawing onlookers who gathered as he moved from stall to stall. The clip went live with the caption that a “spontaneous stop from NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang brought crowds out to Taipei’s Raohe St. Night Market.”.

In another video, people waited just outside a store for Huang and cheered as he emerged.

He even left a personal mark. One video shows Huang scribbling a note on a bathroom wall reading: “Jensen was here.”

Earlier this year, the street-food spotlight has followed Huang beyond Taiwan. After accompanying President Donald Trump on his state visit to China. Huang was spotted eating noodles at a roadside stall in Beijing. Across Silicon Valley circles. those sightings have become part of his public image: a billionaire CEO who will track down a local delicacy as easily as a deal.

Over the years, he’s been photographed buying food at night markets and street food spots across the world, including in Vietnam, Hong Kong, and South Korea.

Dan Liu, a tech founder, has gone further, compiling what he says is every restaurant, stall, and noodle shop Huang has visited around the world. The running tally, called Jensen Eats, includes 47 spots so far—from a Korean fried chicken spot in Santa Clara to a hotpot restaurant in Shanghai.

That food trail intersects with the tech world’s loudest argument about the economic cost of artificial intelligence. In an interview with Channel News Asia in Taiwan that aired on Monday. Huang addressed layoffs being attributed to AI. saying: “I think the narrative that connects AI to job loss for many of the CEOs that are doing it. it is just too lazy.”.

At the same time, Nvidia’s latest results are supplying the kind of momentum markets usually reward. The company delivered $81.6 billion in revenue in its first quarter, beating its $79.15 billion estimate. Nvidia’s stock is up 14% this year.

Huang’s street-food moments also trace back to his own early working life in the restaurant business. At 15, he worked at a Denny’s in Portland as a dishwasher, waiter, and busboy. Years later. another Denny’s in San Jose is where Huang and Nvidia’s cofounders Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem first discussed the idea that would become Nvidia. The Denny’s spot at 2484 Berryessa Road now has a plaque dedicated to that history-making moment.

Food and business mingle in the way some tech leaders reminisce. In an April 2024 podcast interview with Robert Nickson. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Huang once invited him over for cheesesteaks. adding: “Jensen is really into cooking. so he invited me over to his house.” Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison also recalled having dinner with Huang. In 2024, Ellison said that he and Elon Musk once begged Huang for GPUs at Nobu in Palo Alto.

Taken together. the sequence is hard to miss: one week. Nvidia is posting strong quarterly numbers while its CEO appears in public markets; the next. he’s answering questions about whether AI is becoming a job-loss story. Each scene pulls focus from the other. but both are tied to the same person—Huang—whether he’s leaving notes on a bathroom wall in Taipei or pressing back on a narrative that has been shaping boardrooms and headlines.

Jensen Huang Nvidia Raohe Street Night Market Taipei AI layoffs Mark Zuckerberg Larry Ellison earnings stock up 14% $81.6 billion revenue