Some of the biggest ideas in tech get worked out in pretty ordinary places, and Nvidia might be the best example we have here in the South Bay. The chipmaker that became the first company in history to be worth $5 trillion was planned over coffee and diner breakfasts at the Denny’s at 2484 Berryessa Road in San Jose. I’ve driven past that restaurant more times than I can count, and it’s still one of my favorite bits of San Jose history to share with people who are new to the area. Here’s the real story, including a couple of details the popular version usually gets wrong.
Key Takeaways
Summary: Nvidia was founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem, who worked out their plan for a PC graphics chip company in a booth at the Denny’s on Berryessa Road in East San Jose. The company went on to invent the modern GPU, which later became the engine behind today’s AI boom and made Nvidia the world’s first $5 trillion company. The booth now carries a commemorative plaque, the restaurant is still open, and the story is a fun reminder of how much Silicon Valley history happened in everyday San Jose neighborhoods.
A Booth on Berryessa Road: How Nvidia Started
In 1993 Jensen Huang was 30 years old and working at LSI Logic, while Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem were engineers at Sun Microsystems. They didn’t have an office, funding or a finished business plan, so they did what a lot of Silicon Valley people did back then and camped out at Denny’s, where the coffee refills were endless and nobody rushed you out of your booth. Huang has said his usual order was a Lumberjack Slam, Moons Over My Hammy and a Super Bird sandwich, which tells you these were long meetings.
The name came out of those sessions too. The founders had been labeling their files “NV,” short for “next version,” and they landed on Nvidia from invidia, the Latin word for envy. Huang’s former boss at LSI Logic, Wilfred Corrigan, introduced him to Don Valentine at Sequoia Capital, and that introduction helped secure the company’s first venture funding. Nvidia was officially incorporated on April 5, 1993.
The Original Bet Was Graphics, Not AI
You’ll sometimes read that Nvidia was chasing artificial intelligence back in 1993, but that isn’t quite right. The founders’ idea was a chip that could bring realistic 3D graphics to personal computers, mainly for video games, at a time when that market was close to nonexistent. Huang has often joked that they were building for a market worth zero dollars.
The early years were rough. Nvidia’s first chip, the NV1, came out in 1995 and didn’t sell well, and the RIVA 128 in 1997 is widely credited with saving the company. Nvidia went public in January 1999 and released the GeForce 256 later that year, marketing it as the world’s first GPU, or graphics processing unit. That term, and that product category, is what everything else was built on.
Accurate Home Price Data Is Just a Click Away!
Live MLS Data
What Are Homes Actually Selling For Right Now?
Median price, days on market, and how many homes are selling over asking, pulled straight from current MLS data for your neighborhood.
See the Live Sales Data →From Gaming Chips to the Engine of AI
The turn toward AI came much later. In 2006 Nvidia released CUDA, a platform that let researchers use GPUs for general computing instead of just graphics. In 2012 a University of Toronto team trained a breakthrough image recognition network called AlexNet on two Nvidia gaming cards, and that result kicked off the deep learning boom.
Today Nvidia’s data center chips power most of the world’s large AI models. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, for example, was trained on Nvidia GPUs running in Microsoft’s Azure supercomputers. The company has also partnered with businesses well outside tech, including advertising giant WPP, which announced a generative AI content engine built on Nvidia’s Omniverse platform in 2023.
Nvidia by the Numbers Today
When I first wrote this post in October 2023, Nvidia had just crossed a $1 trillion market value and had reported about $27 billion in revenue for fiscal 2023. The growth since then has been hard to believe. For fiscal 2026, which ended January 25, 2026, Nvidia reported revenue of $215.9 billion, up 65% from the year before. On October 29, 2025 it became the first public company worth $5 trillion.
Nvidia is headquartered in Santa Clara on San Tomas Expressway, and it’s one of the employers that shapes the local housing market. A lot of the buyers I work with are in tech, and stock compensation from companies like Nvidia has a real effect on what homes sell for around here. If you’re curious how that’s showing up in prices, my Santa Clara home prices and San Jose home prices pages are updated with current sales data.
Huang’s Own Denny’s Roots
Huang’s connection to Denny’s goes back further than the founding. He was born in Taiwan and came to the United States as a child, and he’s said he had his first hamburger and his first milkshake at Denny’s. At 15 he got a job at a Denny’s in Portland, Oregon, where he worked as a dishwasher, a busboy and a waiter. It’s a popular myth that he worked at the San Jose location where Nvidia was planned, but his restaurant job was in Oregon, years before he moved to Silicon Valley. He’s talked often about how that job taught him to work hard, take pride in the small stuff and treat people well.
Free Relocation Guide
Thinking About Living in Silicon Valley?
What it really costs to live here, town by town, from someone who has sold homes in this valley since 2003. Current home prices, property taxes and Prop 19, commutes, school districts, and how buying here actually works.
Read the Relocation Guide →The Plaque and Denny’s Trillion-Dollar Incubator Contest
On September 26, 2023, Huang returned to the Berryessa Road Denny’s with Denny’s CEO Kelli Valade to unveil a plaque at the corner booth where it all started. At the same event, Denny’s launched the Trillion-Dollar Incubator Contest, which offered $25,000 in seed money for the best startup idea born in a Denny’s booth. In January 2024 Denny’s named the winner: Walter Arnett of Lexington, Kentucky, for Dad Mob, a platform that gets busy dads together for volunteer projects in their communities.
Visiting the Nvidia Denny’s Today
The restaurant is still open, and according to a March 2026 Peninsula Press story, it now gets tour buses from around the country. The plaque at the corner booth has been updated to call it “the booth that launched a multi-trillion-dollar company.” If you want to sit there, a weekday morning is your best shot, and the staff is used to people asking.
The Berryessa area itself is worth a look while you’re there. It’s a mostly residential part of northeast San Jose with a lot of 1960s and 1970s single-family homes, good freeway access to I-680 and US 101, and the Berryessa/North San Jose BART station, which opened in 2020 and connects the neighborhood to the East Bay and San Francisco. If you’re making a day of it, Little Saigon on Story Road is a short drive south, and my guide to things to do in downtown San Jose covers what’s a few minutes further.
The Power of Unlikely Origins
Nvidia’s story is a good reminder that Silicon Valley wasn’t only built in garages and glass office parks. Some of it happened in ordinary neighborhood spots that are still sitting there on the same streets, serving the same pancakes. The next time you drive down Berryessa Road, it’s fun to think about the three engineers who sat in that booth with a notebook and a pot of coffee, and what might be getting sketched out in a booth near you right now. If you’re thinking about living in Silicon Valley or making a move within it, I’m always happy to talk it through.
-
- Corner Booth where Nvidia was born at Dennys
-
- Plaque commemorating the booth where Dennys was Born
-
- The dining room where Nvidia was born in San Jose
-
- Welcome to the Dennys where Nvidia was Born
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is the Denny’s where Nvidia was founded?
It’s the Denny’s at 2484 Berryessa Road in East San Jose. Nvidia’s three co-founders met there in 1993 to plan the company, and the booth they used now has a commemorative plaque.
Who founded Nvidia?
Nvidia was founded by Jensen Huang, who came from LSI Logic, and Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem, who both came from Sun Microsystems. Huang has been the company’s CEO since its founding.
When was Nvidia founded?
The founders met at Denny’s to plan the company in 1993, and Nvidia was incorporated on April 5, 1993.
Did Jensen Huang work at the San Jose Denny’s?
No. Huang worked at a Denny’s in Portland, Oregon when he was 15, as a dishwasher, busboy and waiter. The San Jose Denny’s on Berryessa Road is where he later met with his co-founders to plan Nvidia.
Can you visit the Nvidia booth at Denny’s?
Yes. The restaurant is still open, and the founders’ corner booth has a plaque that Huang and Denny’s unveiled on September 26, 2023. It’s first come, first served, so a weekday morning is usually the easiest time to get it.
What did the Nvidia founders order at Denny’s?
Huang has said his regular order was a Lumberjack Slam, Moons Over My Hammy and a Super Bird sandwich, along with plenty of coffee.
Where is Nvidia headquartered today?
Nvidia’s headquarters is in Santa Clara, California, on San Tomas Expressway, roughly a 20 minute drive from the Berryessa Road Denny’s.
Private Access
See the Bay Area Homes That Never Hit Zillow
A lot of the best homes in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area change hands quietly, before they're ever listed. Get free access to our off-market homes database and see what's available right now.
You're in. Thanks! Taking you to the off-market homes database now.
Wonderful San Jose Homes for Sale
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
