At nearly $10,000 a pop, Tom Ford leather jackets are already pricey. But put one on a tech CEO, and its value will soar even higher—almost a million dollars higher, apparently.
Earlier this month, a leather jacket owned by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang went up for auction at Sotheby’s. The auction house estimated its value as between $40,000 and $60,000, already an eyebrow-raising price tag. But when the jacket actually sold, it blew that estimate out of the water: After 65 bids, the so-called “Jensen Jacket” went for $960,000.
Huang is nearly always seen in a leather jacket, even calling himself “the guy in the leather jacket” during a 2016 Reddit AMA. He wore this particular jacket to a Foxconn event in 2023 and signed the lining in gold marker.
Are those factors enough to explain adding $900,000 to the jacket’s value? Even Sotheby’s was taken aback by the winning bid: “The response to this sale surpassed even our highest expectations,” Sotheby’s head of modern collectibles Brahm Wachter said in a statement. The auction house added that 45 different collectors bid on the jacket, with proceeds from the sale going to the Edge Institute, a nonprofit that trains educators and entrepreneurs.
Huang is far from the first tech mogul with an iconic look, nor is he the first to have his old clothes sold at auction. Mark Zuckerberg may have ditched the hoodies he was once known for, but that didn’t stop an original Facebook hoodie he frequently wore (and a handwritten note from the Meta CEO) from selling for $15,875 in 2025.
Late Apple founder Steve Jobs was perhaps the pioneer of CEO style, becoming practically synonymous with black turtlenecks. His sweaters have since gone on auction for thousands apiece, including sales for $2,880 and $7,500 in 2016.
Can’t afford a full turtleneck? Never fear: Jobs’ scraps are also for sale. Square swatches from one of Jobs’ turtlenecks, measuring just a centimeter across and encased in acrylic, are for sale on Mini Museum for $29 each, themselves sourced from a sweater purchased at a public auction. Even less iconic pieces from Jobs’ wardrobe are worth high prices to collectors, like a striped bow tie that sold for $35,750 last year.
Still, the highest of those numbers pale in comparison to Huang’s jacket sale. Why the value of CEO style seems to be skyrocketing isn’t totally clear, but even CEOs themselves aren’t immune to the hype. When Huang gifted Zuckerberg one of his jackets at a conference in 2024, Zuckerberg remarked, “This is worth more because it’s used.”
