Jen-Hsun Huang might be ‘Taylor Swift but for tech’, but did you know he was once praised in Sports Illustrated as being ‘perhaps the most promising junior ever to play table tennis in the Northwest’?

Yep, it’s true. Zuckerberg might call him “Taylor Swift, but for tech,” but back in 1978 someone was calling now-Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang “perhaps the most promising junior ever to play table tennis in the Northwest” in a letter to Sports Illustrated.

Lou Bochenski wrote in to the mag (archived here), explaining: “In mentioning promising junior players, however, [a previous writer] overlooked perhaps the most promising junior ever to play table tennis in the Northwest, Jen-Hsun Huang.

“In sharp contrast to [another junior player], Jen-Hsun earns his money to travel to tournaments, to take part in clinics and to play table tennis by scrubbing floors here at the Paddle Palace. He is a straight-A student and very hungry to become a table-tennis champion. He has played only three months, but I suggest you watch out for him in another year.”

This lovely little anecdote was brought to our attention by Tae Kim in his new book The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant, which is all about the founding and function of Nvidia, from Huang’s early days at Denny’s to the AI powerhouse it’s become today.

Our Jacob Ridley’s been reading it and says so far it’s a great read. Apparently it’s filled with quotes from Jensen Huang on business, building graphics cards, and some bragging about how many toilets he’s cleaned in his lifetime.

You know, all the things you really want to know about humanity’s potential future beneficent AI overlord.

Anyway, getting back to the table tennis—okay, “ping pong” for all those who insist—the book explains that Bochenski, who wrote the letter to Sports Illustrated, was the owner of a table-tennis club called Paddle Palace, and paid a 14-year-old Jen-Hsun to “scrub the Paddle Palace’s floors”.

Apparently, “Bochenski considered it his duty to help discover promising young table-tennis players and develop them into national-level talents” and, being impressed with Huang, wrote the letter to Sports Illustrated.

Perhaps most striking to me, though, is the thought that Huang was “very hungry to become a table-tennis champion”. What do you reckon: a squashed dream or diverted ambition?

While it would certainly be impressive to see Huang rallying in his paddle-smashing prime, I think he’d pluck the multi-trillion dollar company that Nvidia’s blossomed into from the hat again, if he had to go back for a do-over. That’s what I’d choose, at least. Maybe with table tennis champion in close second.