Jensen Huang’s future at Nvidia hangs on board meeting
Nvidia’s board is preparing to remove Jensen Huang as chief executive, The Wall Street Journal reports, three days after the same board said it trusted his leadership. Huang also had a second affair, with Kimberly Powell, the senior Nvidia executive who runs the company’s healthcare business, according to WSJ. The move follows Huang’s admission that he had an extramarital affair with Alice Huang, a Megaspeed executive whom US intelligence officials believe works for China’s spy services.
Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and built a gaming chip startup into the AI industry’s main chip supplier, with an estimated 90% share of that market. Nvidia shares fell about 8% in after-hours trading on the news. On November 8, Nvidia’s board opened an independent investigation into reports that Huang had been the target of a foreign intelligence effort. Its Malaysian sister company bought more than $4.8 billion worth of Nvidia-powered equipment between June 2024 and February 2026. A Commerce Department probe into the firm began in late 2024 and has since moved to the Justice Department, which WSJ says is now leading multiple investigations involving her. Powell, 48, joined Nvidia in 2008 and has headed its healthcare unit since late 2017. Intel’s Brian Krzanich resigned in 2018 over a past relationship with an employee, and McDonald’s removed Steve Easterbrook a year later for similar breaches. Huang, 63, has around 60 direct reports and has said he doesn’t believe in succession planning. He is also Nvidia’s largest individual shareholder, with a stake of about 3.56%. By Wednesday, it was deciding whether Nvidia, a company he has run for 33 years, can carry on without him.
The board was planning to meet as soon as Wednesday to decide his future, WSJ reported.
At the time, it said it had “no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised. Two of them said the pair were filmed being affectionate at a San Jose hotel during Nvidia’s GTC conference in March. Asked about Powell over the phone, Huang said, “I don’t think you should be talking to me directly,” and hung up. He has stood by Huang, calling him an “amazing guy” and an “honorable man” who did not know she was a suspected spy.
The law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz is running the probe. The same day, Huang admitted the affair in a letter to employees and apologised to his family. “My family bears no responsibility for my choices. I do. Please give them privacy,” he wrote. Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, was a top executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed, one of Nvidia’s biggest customers in Southeast Asia. US officials suspect Megaspeed of diverting some of those chips to China. China has denied the espionage claims, and Alice Huang has not responded to requests for comment. People who worked at the company say the relationship was discussed internally. Huang’s security team then had the bystander who filmed them sign a non-disclosure agreement. Both are married to other people. Nvidia’s code of conduct asks employees to avoid conflicts that arise from personal relationships. Powell has not commented. Boards have acted on this before. The harder question for the board is who comes next. The company’s own proxy statement warns that Nvidia is “highly dependent on the services of our longstanding executive team. WSJ notes there is no clear successor. Pressure is building outside Nvidia too. Republican leaders of three House committees have asked Huang for a closed-door briefing on his dealings with Alice Huang. President Donald Trump was briefed on the intelligence about a year ago and took no action. You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.
A class-action shareholder lawsuit was also filed on Monday in a California federal court. On Sunday, the board said it trusted Huang to lead.