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Jensen and Lori Huang have made a multi-year commitment to donate $5 million/year to San Francisco Opera. If the names seem familiar, Jensen Huang is the CEO of Nvidia, which makes high-performance chips that are in great demand to power artificial intelligence applications and data centers. Nvidia has been in the news quite a bit lately. The Huangs are very wealthy. They were also honorary chairs of the honorary committee for The Monkey King.
San Francisco Opera continues to succeed in cultivating prominent Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, unlike most Bay Area arts organizations. You might or might not have noticed that Dr. William and Mrs. William M. Coughran are major donors at SFO, and if you did notice, you might or might not know that Bill Coughran was a senior vice president of engineering at Google. He's been on the SFO board for a number of years.
SFO has now commissioned two operas based on classic Chinese novels, additional demonstrations of why diversity and inclusion are so important to the arts. Both Dream of the Red Chamber and The Monkey King have been artistic and commercial successes; The Monkey King is utterly sensational and the company could have sold out a few more performances. In past seasons, Omar and El Ultimo Sueño de Frida y Diego were also successfully artistically and commercially. This is why opera must include voices from all cultures.
After the jump is the press release from SFO about the Huangs' donation.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA (November 20, 2025) — At a special Monkey King event hosted by Jensen and Lori Huang in the Green Room at the War Memorial Veterans Building, the Huangs announced a multi-year commitment of $5 million a year to the San Francisco Opera to support its artistic work and the San Francisco artist community. This year their gift will help underwrite the Opera’s acclaimed production of composer Huang Ruo and librettist David Henry Hwang’s The Monkey King. In subsequent seasons, the gift will support the creative vitality of the Company including mainstage operas, young artist training, community programming such as the Bohème Out of the Box series, and digital media initiatives, allowing San Francisco Opera to build on record ticket sales, new audiences and an exciting creative momentum.
With this extraordinary commitment, the Huangs join the Opera’s Company Sponsors, a group of 18 households who provide seven-figure support for the Company through both annual gifts and through draws on their endowment funds. As part of this commitment, the Huangs will host a number of events each year on the War Memorial campus.
Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, said: “San Francisco is home to innovation and imagination. We are delighted to partner with and support the San Francisco Opera – one of the city’s greatest anchors of culture and the arts.”
Matthew Shilvock, General Director of San Francisco Opera remarked: “I am profoundly grateful to Jensen and Lori Huang and their family for this breathtaking commitment to San Francisco Opera. At this exciting moment when San Francisco is reverberating with the extraordinary possibilities of tech innovation, this gift shows what is possible when the technology and arts sectors join together to propel forward creativity. This is a great affirmation of the cultural vitality of the Bay Area, and I am overjoyed to be taking the creativity of the company forward with Jensen and Lori’s heartfelt partnership.”
Jack Calhoun, President of San Francisco Opera, said: “This significant support from Jensen and Lori Huang will allow the Opera to continue the artistic excellence that is engaging our patrons and attracting new audiences with such great energy. The success of The Monkey King is a wonderful exemplar of the amazing artists and artisans we have here in San Francisco, and this incredible investment will allow the Opera to carry forward such thrilling energy into the future.”
Maryam Muduroglu, member of the San Francisco Opera board, The Monkey King committee, and Chair of the Silicon Valley Office of Protocol Host Committee remarked: “This represents an exceptional opportunity to further strengthen the cultural bridge between Silicon Valley, San Francisco, and our global community. I extend my sincere appreciation to Lori and Jensen Huang for their remarkable initiative and leadership.”
As Co-Chairs of The Monkey King Honorary Committee, a group of leaders from the business, nonprofit, tech, and cultural sectors formed to serve as ambassadors for this major new work, the Huangs have been an instrumental part of one of the most successful artistic undertakings in the Company’s recent history.
This world premiere opera, commissioned in partnership with the Chinese Heritage Foundation of Minnesota and produced by San Francisco Opera, opened on November 14 to great critical acclaim. Based on the opening episodes of the Ming Dynasty literary classic Journey to the West, this new action-hero opera centers around the mythical Monkey King (Sun Wukong). The New York Times said: “Now, his tale has been turned into a spectacular new opera by Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang … It’s a production that has been given resources to pull off a jaw-dropping feat of music theater, making a thrilling case for the vitality and potential of opera on a grand scale.”
The Monkey King has completely sold out its run of eight performances and has realized over $3M in philanthropic support from the community under the leadership of board member Doreen Woo Ho. Performances continue at the War Memorial Opera House through November 30. For more information, visit sfopera.com.
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