Jensen Huang’s future rests in the balance as Nvidia board reportedly meet
Nvidia’s board is meeting to decide whether to oust CEO Jensen Huang, a source familiar with the matter told the Reuters news agency, as the world’s dominant supplier of AI processors grapples with reports of two extramarital affairs involving its longtime leader.
The reports mark a sharp escalation in a controversy that began with revelations about Huang’s relationship with Alice Huang, a woman US intelligence has said was involved in facilitating shipments of Nvidia chips to Chinese firms.
In a memo to employees on Sunday, Huang acknowledged being unfaithful to his wife and took “full responsibility,” but gave no details about the relationship.
Huang, 63, has no obvious successor and owns about 3.6% of Nvidia’s stock. He also has dozens of direct reports, underscoring the tight control he maintains over the company.
The company’s shares slid about 8% in after-hours trading after the Wall Street Journal first reported that Nvidia was preparing to oust Huang. Including Wednesday’s after-hours selloff, Nvidia has lost about $600bn in stock market value this week since the board announced its investigation into his relationship with a Chinese businesswoman.
Earlier in the day, the New York Times reported that Huang had also had an extramarital affair with a company executive who reported to him.
Key events
Good morning, readers. Julia Kollewe in London is now taking over from Jonathan Yerushalmy in Sydney.
A Chinese university with close ties to the country’s defence bodies recently bought advanced AI chips made by Nvidia, procurement notices show, despite stringent US controls.
Agence France-Presse reported that Northwestern Polytechnical University in the city of Xi’an purchased two Nvidia H200 chips from Shaanxi Bosuan Network Technology – not Nvidia directly – for $131,200), according to a procurement notice dated 21 October.
H200 chips are subject to US export controls that limit direct shipments to China and apply certain restrictions on their resale globally.
The spotlight is already on Nvidia’s relationship with China this week after the news of Jensen Huang’s extramarital affair with a woman accused of spying for Beijing.
China and the United States are locked in a fierce competition for supremacy in the AI field, and Nvidia’s market-leading products have become a major point of contention.
We’re pausing our live coverage now – but you can read the latest report on Nvidia and Jensen Huang’s future as CEO here.
SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that it would “be an honour” to hire Jensen Huang, in a response to a poster making the suggestion on X.
Musk has been among the more prominent supporters of the embattled Nvidia CEO, after it was revealed he was facing an internal investigation over a romantic relationship with an alleged Chinese spy.
On Wednesday he indicated that he agreed with a suggestion from AI investor Gavin Baker that Nvidia’s board should “wait for the results of the investigation before ousting Jensen.”
More now on the call from two Democratic Senators for the Trump administration to preserve all documents tied to Nvidia’s chip exports to China.
As first reported by the Wall Street Journal, Elizabeth Warren and Chris Coons wrote in a letter to commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, secretary of state Marco Rubio and White House chief of staff Stephen Miller:
This incident raises significant concerns about the federal government’s ability to effectively enforce our export controls and protect our national security.”
Questions also remain regarding whether or not prudent defensive counter-intelligence action was taken or national security recommendations were overruled.”
Warren and Coons also requested a congressional briefing on the national security risks posed by the suspected intelligence operation.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has been one of the poster boys for the AI revolution, because his company’s chips are essential for the technology. But the $4tn company had more humble beginnings.
Huang was born in Taiwan and then spent some time in Thailand because his father moved the family there for work. His parents then sent him to live with an uncle in the US when he was 9, along with his older brother. Huang’s parents later came to the US and the family reunited in Oregon, where he attended high school, graduating early after skipping two grades.
At Oregon State University, Huang studied electrical engineering in a class that had about 250 students, only three of whom were women, including his future wife, Lori, who was on his lab team.
The couple went on to work as chip designers in Silicon Valley, with Huang earning his graduate degree from Stanford University in 1992.
Nvidia got its start when three engineers – Huang, Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem – gathered in 1993 at a Denny’s diner in San Jose, California, in what is now the heart of Silicon Valley.
Huang worked at a Denny’s restaurant when he was young and has spoken about how working there helped him overcome his shyness and to learn the value of hard work. On his LinkedIn profile he lists only two work experiences – as Nvidia’s founder and CEO, and as a dishwasher, busboy and waiter at Denny’s.
At that first meeting, the three men discussed building a computer chip that would make graphics for video games faster and more realistic. That conversation, and ones that followed, led to the founding of Nvidia.
Nvidia’s specialised graphics processing units (GPUs) were designed to rapidly process computer graphics for video games, but are now also widely used to power the booming spread of artificial intelligence systems.
Huang is now one of the world’s wealthiest people, with a personal fortune that Forbes estimates at more than $150bn.
Alice Huang – the woman accused of spying for Beijing during an affair with Jensen Huang – visited Taiwan a total of eight times in 2024 and 2025, a Taiwanese government minister said Thursday.
Chiu Chui-cheng, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) minister, made the remarks in parliament in response to lawmakers’ questions about a New York Times report that the US had advised Taiwan as early as 2024 to monitor her movements.
Taiwan, a dominant player in the global semiconductor industry, sits at the centre of strategic competition between the US and China, which claims the self-ruled island as part of its territory.
Huang has admitted to having an extramarital affair, reportedly with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed who US officials believe was working for Chinese intelligence. Beijing has rejected the spying allegations.
Alice Huang, who is also known as Huang Le, used a Hong Kong passport to enter Taiwan “under a standard business visitor status” and there were “no special flags” about her at the time, Chiu said.
“At least we at the Mainland Affairs Council did not receive any relevant information,” Chiu said.
If we had, we definitely would have stepped up our entry screening and border flow management. If we had any of the kind of critical intelligence … we would have definitely flagged her for heightened review,” Chiu said.
The government has said Taiwan’s security agencies are investigating the incident.
Opinion: Nvidia’s board needs to do some succession planning – sharpish
Nils Pratley
Too big – and too well-connected – to sack?
Huang does not enjoy the supercharged voting rights that are par for the course elsewhere – his shareholding is a plain vanilla 3.6%. On the other hand, Nvidia’s board does not appear to have spent much time worrying about succession planning and “key person risk” or other standard concerns of corporate governance wonks outside the US.
There isn’t even a Nvidia board member with the title of chair. Instead, a “lead director” is “designated annually by a majority of the independent directors”, which sounds like a formula for ensuring the attention remains wholly focused on Huang, the sole executive member.
It’s the American way, of course: the cult of the superstar founder or chief executive runs deep and there is a fair argument that such set-ups encourage adventurous risk-taking in pursuit of grand corporate visions. But such governance arrangements look unsuited to situations where the behaviour of the boss is under scrutiny and the role of the board itself is being examined.
Yu-chen Li
The scandal surrounding Nvidia chief Jensen Huang has been closely followed and widely reported in Chinese media. Much of the coverage, however, has framed the affair as a celebrity style scandal while dismissing allegations linking it to Chinese espionage.
The state-run Global Times has published commentaries this week accusing American media of manufacturing a Chinese spy narrative without sufficient evidence.
“Whenever US-China relations begin to improve, there always seem to be people taking potshots from behind the scenes,” the Global Times wrote on Monday, with US president Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping expected to meet in Shenzhen next week.
China’s foreign ministry has repeatedly dismissed the espionage allegations as baseless smears.
The Communist party-linked Hunan Daily also argued that the affair was being exploited in US domestic political battles.
By turning an extramarital affair into evidence of ‘Chinese infiltration’ … what they really care about is votes, power and building higher walls as globalisation retreats.”
Commercial and financial media in China have gone into more detail about Alice Huang, known in Chinese as Huang Le. Meanwhile, the hashtag “Jensen Huang could be ousted as Nvidia CEO” has attracted over 61m views on China’s microblogging platform Weibo.
Why is Nvidia so important to the AI sector?
Jensen Huang has built up Nvidia to be one of the world’s biggest and most important companies, designing advanced chips crucial to the AI buildout that has helped drive stock markets to record highs and boosted economies around the world.
US tech companies are collectively planning to spend $750bn this year on AI infrastructure, a significant portion of which will be spent on Nvidia chips for datacentres.
The CEOs of OpenAI and Anthropic have said Nvidia’s infrastructure – and ability to keep pace – is key for their ability to run powerful models safely and at scale.
So with a valuation of more than $4tn, any serious knock to Nvidia’s share price could have ramifications for valuations of US tech stocks.
“Nvidia is huge and at the heart of the AI supply chain, so what happens to this stock matters to the rest of the market. There is the potential for this story to knock sentiment, which is already pretty fragile,” said Neil Wilson, an analyst at the investment platform Saxo UK, earlier this week.
A major portion of Nvidia’s revenue comes from its datacentre business. In May, the chip maker reported 92% year-over-year growth in this are to a record $75.2bn. But the company is facing some competition in producing chips from other tech companies such as Amazon and Google.
“Nvidia has spent years convincing investors that it is one of the most important companies in the AI revolution,” said Charu Chanana at Saxo Markets on Wednesday.
But when so much of a company’s success is associated with one individual, leadership becomes an investment risk … Nvidia has a deep management team, but no publicly identified successor to Huang. An unexpected departure could create uncertainty around strategic continuity, customer relationships and execution.”
US Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Chris Coons are asking Donald Trump’s administration to preserve all documents tied to Nvidia’s chip exports to China or Jensen Huang’s affair with an alleged Chinese intelligence asset, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has reported.
The request was made in a letter to commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, secretary of state Marco Rubio and White House chief of staff Stephen Miller, the paper reported.
The WSJ reports that Democrat and Republican lawmakers are calling for an investigation into US chip exports and policy decisions involving Huang – while other US lawmaker have already indicated a subpoena could be ahead for Huang.
John Moolenaar, chair of the House select committee on the Chinese Communist party, told Fox Business on Wednesday that there “will likely be subpoenas” for Huang to appear on Capitol Hill if the Nvidia CEO doesn’t respond by day’s end to a request to meet with lawmakers.
Moolenaar, House foreign affairs committee chair Brian Mast and House intelligence committee chair Rick Crawford sent a letter last week to Huang, requesting a closed-door briefing on Nvidia’s security protocols and Huang’s interactions with Alice Huang, the businesswoman accused of spying for China.
Moolenaar told Fox Business that the Republican lawmakers wanted to know if Beijing was able to access “privileged information” and if it was able to influence US national security policy.
“I think transparency is very important for him at this point,” Moolenaar said.
Donald Trump said on Monday he was “amazed” after the revelations concerning Jensen Huang – one of his closest allies in Silicon Valley – came to light. The president’s close ties with the Nvidia CEO have come under renewed scrutiny after revelations about the billionaire executive’s affair with an alleged Chinese spy were revealed.
Trump said on 9 November that Huang had told him he had no idea that the woman was a spy. The president added that he believed the CEO.
I asked him that question ’Did you have any idea that she was a spy?’ He said ’I had no idea that she was a spy’ and I really believe him.”
I know the FBI is looking into it … I think that he’ll be in good shape.”
Over the past two years, Huang has voiced support for the Trump administration’s AI agenda and met the Republican leader many times as Nvidia sought to sell advanced chips to the Chinese market and lobbied for looser restrictions on Chinese access to Nvidia’s sophisticated AI chips.
In May 2026, Huang was among a delegation of tech CEOs who joined Trump during his visit to China to meet Xi Jinping, as the Republican leader urged Beijing to “open up” to US business.
Then in September, as the Trump administration and AI companies faced increasing scrutiny over risks posed by advanced AI, Trump announced that Huang was among a number of tech CEOs who had signed a voluntary safety pact and backed data center expansion.
Trump, who had argued previously that the US does not need new AI-specific regulations, said the pact was “morally binding,” prompting criticism that it was “toothless’” regulation.
In the previous week, Huang had attended a high-profile state dinner for Xi Jinping at the White House, accompanied by his wife.
In early October, Trump awarded the National Medal of Science, the United States’ highest honour for scientists and engineers, to the Nvidia CEO and some other tech industry leaders.
As recently as Tuesday, Nvidia was saying that Jensen Huang would continue to lead the business he co-founded “without interruption”. That statement was made as the company announced it had appointed a leading US law firm to conduct a “thorough and independent” investigation into the relationship between its chief executive, Huang, and an alleged Chinese spy.
The $4.1tn chipmaker’s board has hired New York-based Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz for the investigation, which will be led by the Wachtell partner Joon Kim.
Under Nvidia’s bylaws, Huang can be removed “with or without cause” by a majority vote of directors.
“The market is starting to price Nvidia without its founder as the likely outcome, not a tail risk,” said Armina Rosenberg, portfolio manager and co-founder of Minotaur Capital, which holds Nvidia shares.
Losing Jensen would be a real blow.”
Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that Nvidia’s board has been working with an outside firm to identify potential replacements for Huang, citing a person familiar with the situation.
Rosenberg said Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress, who has held the role for more than a decade, would be the natural choice as an interim CEO, but said the bigger question was who would lead Nvidia longer term.
How did we get here?
Reports that Nvidia’s board is weighing Jensen Huang’s future at the company mark a dramatic escalation in events that began last week, when it was revealed that the CEO had been engaged in an affair with an alleged Chinese spy who was involved in facilitating shipments of Nvidia chips to Chinese firms.
The chip mogul is alleged to have had a relationship with Alice Huang, a businesswoman that US intelligence services suspect of spying for the Chinese government.
US intelligence agencies believe Alice Huang, acting on behalf of Beijing, pushed Jensen Huang to lobby Trump for relaxed export controls on Nvidia’s sales in China, which he has done multiple times publicly. Nvidia said in a statement that neither trade secrets nor US national security had been compromised.
The affair and alleged intelligence operation involving Huang could have far reaching implications for Nvidia and the tech industry, which are already enduring a period of high market volatility. Huang’s leadership of Nvidia, which is deeply financially intertwined with other leading tech companies like OpenAI, has long been viewed as crucial to the company’s success and stability.
Huang’s defenders framed his affair as a personal lapse in judgment rather than evidence of treachery against the US, which has imposed strict limits on what chips Nvidia can sell to China.
Huang, who has been married to his wife, Lori, since 1985, admitted in an email to employees on Sunday that he had an affair and that he would cooperate with an internal investigation. Nvidia’s board of directors put out a statement the same day that the company was launching a probe regarding reports that Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort.
The probe is being overseen by independent directors with outside legal counsel. At the time it was announced, the board expressed confidence in Huang.
Donald Trump has said he had not discussed the allegations with Huang but voiced support for the Nvidia chief, calling him “an honourable guy” who had “done an amazing job for our country.”
Nvidia share price plunges 8% in after-hours trade
Nvidia’s shares plunged in after-hours trading on news that its board may oust longtime CEO Jensen Huang, with the chipmaker losing about $600bn in stock market value this week since the board announced its investigation into his relationship with a Chinese businesswoman.
Shares in Nvidia slid more than 8% after close of trade.
Strategists said investors were still digesting the implications of the midterm elections, which resulted in Democrats taking control of Congress, but also now, the news surrounding Nvidia.
Jensen Huang “was the one who led the marvelous rise of Nvidia,” said Bruce Zaro, managing director at Granite Wealth Management in Plymouth, Massachusetts. “I guess the question would be, can someone step up if Jensen has to resign or is forced out?“
“It looks bad from every single angle,” said Jake Dollarhide, chief executive officer at Longbow Asset Management in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
“I believe the board won’t oust him until they have an all-star, a known entity in the tech sector, to replace him,” said Jake Dollarhide, chief executive officer at Longbow Asset Management in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
At the end of the day, let’s not forget that the Nvidia chip is the centrepiece of the AI story.“
Analysts have suggested that with no obvious successor, the Nvidia board has a difficult decision to make on whether to remove Jensen Huang as CEO.
“Huang being removed immediately could be challenging for Nvidia since it does not have a succession plan in place,” Gil Luria, head of technology research at DA Davidson, said.
Huang’s potential departure would leave a leadership vacuum at the roughly $4tn chipmaker he co-founded and built over more than three decades to become the top supplier of AI chips at the center of the global artificial-intelligence boom and US-China technology rivalry.
Investors and analysts said while demand for Nvidia’s chips would be unlikely to drop in the near term, the broader universe of companies backed by the company might suffer.
“Nvidia is also at the centre of the circular financing which is providing capital to the investment boom,” said Nick Ferres, chief investment officer at Vantage Point Asset Management in Singapore.
They are financing their customers. In these types of booms or bubbles, sometimes all it takes is a slowdown to shift it into the bust phase.”
Jensen Huang’s future rests in the balance as Nvidia board reportedly meet
Nvidia’s board is meeting to decide whether to oust CEO Jensen Huang, a source familiar with the matter told the Reuters news agency, as the world’s dominant supplier of AI processors grapples with reports of two extramarital affairs involving its longtime leader.
The reports mark a sharp escalation in a controversy that began with revelations about Huang’s relationship with Alice Huang, a woman US intelligence has said was involved in facilitating shipments of Nvidia chips to Chinese firms.
In a memo to employees on Sunday, Huang acknowledged being unfaithful to his wife and took “full responsibility,” but gave no details about the relationship.
Huang, 63, has no obvious successor and owns about 3.6% of Nvidia’s stock. He also has dozens of direct reports, underscoring the tight control he maintains over the company.
The company’s shares slid about 8% in after-hours trading after the Wall Street Journal first reported that Nvidia was preparing to oust Huang. Including Wednesday’s after-hours selloff, Nvidia has lost about $600bn in stock market value this week since the board announced its investigation into his relationship with a Chinese businesswoman.
Earlier in the day, the New York Times reported that Huang had also had an extramarital affair with a company executive who reported to him.
