Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's signature leather jacket sold for nearly $1 million at Sotheby's

The Tom Ford $F jacket, worn by Huang at Foxconn's Taipei campus in October 2023, drew interest from 45 collectors who together submitted 65 bids, according to CNBC. The jacket has been photo-matched by PSA to Huang at the Hon Hai Tech Day in Taipei on October 18, 2023, and its signature has been authenticated by James Spence Authentication, Sotheby's said.

"The response to this sale surpassed even our highest expectations," Sotheby's head of modern collectibles Brahm Wachter said in a statement. The final price was also well above the retail price of just under $10,000 for one of the garments, according to CNBC.

Proceeds from the auction will go to the Edge Institute, a nonprofit, to fund fellowships, grants, and residencies for young builders. The sale was organized as a philanthropic initiative by Long Journey Ventures, Sotheby's said.

For roughly two decades, the leather jacket has been a fixture of Huang's public persona, showing up on his back at keynotes, industry conferences, and major Nvidia milestones alike. The result points to an expanding market among collectors eager to acquire objects connected to the AI industry's rise.

Meta $META CEO Mark Zuckerberg has shown his own appreciation for Huang's look: the two staged a jersey-swap-style exchange in 2024, and Huang followed it up by presenting Zuckerberg with a jacket he had on during an onstage appearance at a computer graphics conference later that year. "This is worth more because it's used," Zuckerberg said at the time.

Huang has spent years playing up the jacket's role as his personal uniform, joking on a 2023 podcast that wardrobe decisions belong to his wife and daughter, and noting in a 2016 Reddit $RDDT thread that people know him as "the guy in the leather jacket." The leather jacket entrance has itself become a set piece at Nvidia events, with audiences raising phones as Huang walks onstage.