Mark A. Stevens

Stevens was born and raised in Culver City, CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry, about 10 miles from the USC campus. His father learned electronics in the U.S. Navy and became an electronics test engineer at Hughes Aircraft; his mother, a child of Italian immigrants, was a secretary.⁠[1][2]

At USC he worked 20 hours a week at Hughes Aircraft in exchange for tuition, graduating magna cum laude in 1981 with a BSEE and a BA in economics; while working full time at IntelIntelIntel is a semiconductor company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, founded by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore in 1968; it introduced the 4004 microprocessor in 1971, its x86 processors have long powered personal computers, it has pursued a foundry strategy since 2021, and Lip-Bu Tan has been its chief executive officer since 2025.Open the full entry he returned part time for a master’s degree in computer engineering, completed in 1984. He later earned an MBA from Harvard Business School.⁠[2][1][3]

He was a member of the technical staff at Hughes Aircraft and later held technical sales and marketing positions at Intel; USC’s profile notes that he took a pay cut to leave the stability of Hughes for the then-upstart Intel.⁠[3][2]

He joined Sequoia Capital as an associate in 1989 and became a managing partner four years later, serving until 2011. USC’s profile states that at Sequoia he was involved with YahooYahooYahoo is an internet brand founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in 1994, with email, search, news, finance, sports, and advertising businesses. It developed from a web directory into a portal, underwent major acquisitions and security incidents, and sold its operating business in 2017, when the original listed company became Altaba. Apollo-managed funds acquired the brand’s operating business in 2021. Yahoo launched the AI answer service Scout in 2026.Open the full entry and nurtured Microchip Technology after its buyout from General Instrument, and that his first Sequoia investment failed, losing millions.⁠[3][2]

Stevens served as an NVIDIA director from 1993 to 2006 and rejoined the board in 2008. NVIDIA’s May 2026 proxy statement gave his age as 66 and listed him on the compensation committee and the nominating and corporate governance committee.⁠[3][4]

He joined the Board of Councilors of USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering in 1998 and the USC Board of Trustees in 2001, where he was the youngest trustee for much of his tenure, serving until 2021; he received an honorary doctorate from USC in 2016. In June 2024 USC announced that he would begin a second tour as a voting trustee that fall, welcomed by board chair Suzanne Nora JohnsonSuzanne Nora JohnsonSuzanne Nora Johnson is an American finance executive, a former vice chairman of Goldman Sachs and former chair of Intuit. She chairs the University of Southern California Board of Trustees, co-chairs the Brookings Institution, serves on the Pfizer board and has been an NVIDIA director since July 13, 2026.Open the full entry. He chairs USC’s investment committee.⁠[1][2][3]

In 2012 he founded S-Cubed Capital, a private family office investment firm, and became its managing partner; his LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry profile dates this to April 2012 and lists him as an investor and executive board member of the Golden State WarriorsGolden State WarriorsThe Golden State Warriors are an NBA basketball team based in San Francisco, playing at Chase Center. The franchise began as the Philadelphia Warriors in 1946.Open the full entry since 2013.⁠[1][5]

He was a director of Quantenna Communications, a provider of Wi-Fi solutions, from 2016 to 2019.⁠[3]

On May 5, 2026, USC announced a $200 million gift from Stevens and his wife, Mary, one of the largest in the university’s history, to advance AI research across the university; the USC School of Advanced Computing was renamed the USC Mark and Mary Stevens School of Computing and Artificial Intelligence.⁠[6]

The couple had earlier given $22 million in 2004 to establish the USC Stevens Institute for Technology Commercialization, later renamed the USC Stevens Center for Innovation, $50 million to name the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, and $10 million for the Stevens Academic Center; a 2017 USC profile said they had donated more than $100 million to the university.⁠[1][2]

On November 8, 2026, the NVIDIA board began an independent investigation in light of reporting that founder and CEO Jensen HuangJensen HuangJensen Huang is a co-founder of NVIDIA who served as its president, chief executive officer, and a director from the company’s founding in 1993 until he resigned from those positions in November 2026. He has a background in electrical engineering education and the semiconductor industry, and under his leadership NVIDIA’s business expanded from graphics chips to GPU general-purpose computing, artificial intelligence, and data center computing platforms.Open the full entry had been the target of a foreign intelligence effort, overseen by a committee of independent directors assisted by outside independent counsel; the board said it had no reason to believe that national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised. On November 10, the independent directors announced that they had retained Joon H. Kim, former acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and his firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to conduct the investigation.⁠[7][8]

On November 11, the board accepted Jensen Huang’s resignation as president, chief executive officer and director, appointed Colette KressColette KressColette Kress is an American business executive who has been executive vice president and chief financial officer of NVIDIA since September 2013 and, since November 2026, also its interim chief executive officer following the resignation of Jensen Huang; she previously held finance positions at Texas Instruments, Microsoft and Cisco.Open the full entry interim chief executive officer and named Harvey C. JonesHarvey C. JonesHarvey C. Jones is an American entrepreneur and investor in electronic design automation who co-founded Daisy Systems in 1981, led Synopsys from 1987 to 1998 and co-founded Tensilica in 1997. An NVIDIA director since 1993, he became NVIDIA’s first-ever chair of the board on November 11, 2026.Open the full entry the company’s first-ever chair of the board; the company announced the changes on November 12.⁠[9][10]

NVIDIA: Official website: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/ (opens in a new window).⁠[11]

Sequoia Capital: Official website: https://sequoiacap.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[12]

University of Southern California: Official website: https://www.usc.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[13]

LinkedIn: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-a-stevens/ (opens in a new window).⁠[5]