I recently recalled Nvidia's rather strange reaction to the Gamers Nexus investigation into GPU smuggling [0]. Found it somewhat strange at the time how incredibly agitated the reaction seemed to have been, given Nvidia could sell the same GPUs for the same price essentially instantly without the Chinese market. Their reaction wasn't merely a denial, dismissal or even silence, but very irrationally sounding for a company of their size and standing.
Why not just sell to not-sanctioned entities, ensure compliance to the best of your abilities and otherwise keep your head down? Again, wasn't like they struggled to find buyers for their chips.
Considering Megaspeed, I now see this in a very different light. Him cheating is personal and I wish the affected members of any family of a cheater the best, but not relevant for us outsiders.
Being honey trapped very bad securities wise, but he'd be a victim (and evidence for why we shouldn't discount Mistral in the frontier lab race [1]). If sanctions avoidance went all the way to the top, that is hard to negate even for a board that is interested in keeping him. At that stage he was neither honey trapped nor "merely horny"...
This is the same as asking Apple to ignore Chinese market, when China has more active iPhone user than the whole US population.
I am not entirely sure I buy the Spy thesis. And Alice's husband knew this all along. Which makes the whole thing more doggy.
And Jensen's view isn't wrong. There is no way you could contain China via import restrictions. Not when they are the second-largest economy and still rapidly advancing. There are better ways to handle this, one huge ban isn't one.
But I wholeheartedly disagree with ousting Jensen. And given the timing of all these releases, I wouldn't be surprised someone inside the government wants to bring him down.
It was so important the security services didn't even bother to warn him when they found out about the affair. You can say 'suspected' spy about anyone. Classic spin language.
The question you have to be asking is why was the memo leaked now and what political game are they playing.
In terms of ousting him - I know nothing about him as a person - but he has lead Nvidia for 30 years during which time it has wildy succeed in not an easy market - whatever this is about, it's not about competence.
Aren't open-weight models good for Nvidia's business? Chinese labs releasing models that people can run themselves on Nvidia GPUs creates more potential buyers of Nvidia GPUs.
I don't think it's good for Nvidia if everyone has to go through a few labs APIs to get access to AI inference.
It makes sense to me why they would benefit from chinese labs having more compute.
If he was actually a victim, it would be gross negligence on him and/or his board. CEO's at $100B market cap companies should be undergoing regular, advanced training on spearfishing as well a due diligence on such large chip deals.
> Found it somewhat strange at the time how incredibly agitated the reaction seemed to have been, given Nvidia could sell the same GPUs for the same price essentially instantly without the Chinese market.
"For the same price" may be an incorrect assumption. The middlem[ae]n in the smuggling process could have been willing to pay a higher price to Nvidia because the final destination customer (the Chinese government?) was willing to pay a premium.
When you have a fixed supply (which GPU production basically is), the more demand the more you can charge and the more you can make. It’s not about finding buyers, it’s about creating even more demand so you can ask more than ever for the GPUs you’re making.
Being a victim doesn't make him less guilty in the eyes of the law. Even if a judge finds him to be 100% misled and honey trapped, they will still hold him accountable. If it turns out he expressly avoided sanctions and probably worse leaked military secrets then he might be going to jail. And possibly a small Nvidia top heavy pyramid with him. Anyone who followed orders will go with him, it's going to be more painful than "just" losing the CEO.
The U.S. blocking advanced chip sales to China has ensured China increased their efforts to someday no longer need them.
In effort for us to see clear eyed, it would be good to stop assuming someone is a spy without a shred of credible evidence. Avoiding trade restrictions by routing them through another country does not indicate spy craft.
Those are not the main issues. Only two core issues. The national security aspect, and the mother of all lawsuits by activist investors of NVIDIA, that the company, their current CEO and the Board is about to get hit by.
NVDA stock lost hundreds of billions of dollars. Erased ALL gains from the last year, and there are at least four or five materially significant investor information, that NVIDIA should have disclosed as risk to investors and did not.
For a company with 4 Trillion in stock market value, this is an absolute wet dream for the lawyers who specialize on this type of lawsuits.
And its telling that even Trump basically refused to back him, and said the FBI is investigating and "he hopes there is nothing there..." what is telling, so there is a lot. So he is gone. Its just taking time for the board to find a CEO.
So the affair is going on for 3 years...and it was her husband that made the introductions [1].
Trump, Rubio and the security community knew about this for at least one year, and knew NVIDIA was in all likelihood, engaging or tolerating criminal activity on violating export controls that come with a few years of prison.
Look at this [2] excellent work from Bloomberg. For Jensen Huang as a dual Taiwanese and United States citizen, to completely ignoring what is going in the South China Sea, the Chinese threats of invading Twain, and be so forthcoming on saying "China is not our enemy" like you see here:
https://youtu.be/JW5s9Md4U2U?t=1058
While failing to disclose a relationship with CEO of the main company traffic forbidden NVIDIA GPUs to China, shows a recklessness that probably meant to side observers of the intelligence community, he had to justifiably be taken down.
And its telling this is a takedown from within the government and the intelligence community, because most is coming from the New York Times. They seem to be ahead of everybody else, and is well know it has always been a mouthpiece of the US intelligence community when they want to leak something convenient.
If it's not due to a love affair (which is now public), and not just working for PRC out of ideological readons, it might be some kind of secret pressure, some kind of a secret hostage situation, so serious as to force a CEO of the world's top company to act so recklessly.
He made a strong case that the sanctions harmed his long term ecosystem lock in play.
Those statements sound different today, but I think they are both commercially reasonable desires and follow naturally from his very successful playbook over the last twenty years: CUDA built that company. Or at least got it to its first trillion.
At the time I didn't think it would happen because of impact on Nvidia's stock price, but at that point we didn't know about his second affair - with Kimberly Powell.
I'd suggest this latest revelation makes his position untenable, especially if the board found out about the second affair via a source other than Huang himself. He should have spilled the beans on that when the first affair came out, not that it would necessarily have saved him, but withholding the information - if that's what he did - should condemn him. It's another serious lapse in judgement and a failure of integrity that is not befitting of one of the most powerful corporate leaders on earth.
Goodness knows how his wife is feeling at this point. Certainly makes his apology from a couple of days back ring rather hollow.
EDIT: The fact that someone like Jensen Huang - who I'd previously considered to be an incredibly smart guy as opposed to a nitwit - can somehow completely implode his life in almost the most ridiculous way imaginable does give me some hope that at least some of the troublemaker ne'er do wells that have wielded so much power over us all over the past decade or so might also experience some just desserts in the not too distant future.
Someone mentioned that the 2nd affair was known about by the board for a long time, and this is pretty common in boards. They don't really care, they just keep it in their pocket until they need the ammo to fire someone. It sounds right to me, affairs are very hard to keep secret for someone that public, and then this news dropped right after the first one.
As bad as cheating is morally, we don't really know how his wife feels or if they had some open relationship type arrangement, and it's not really material to his running the company because it's been doing very well during all of that. I don't think it makes much sense to fire someone over this, it's more like a power struggle with other parties vying for control.
> who I'd previously considered to be an incredibly smart guy
This is a common fallacy. Often being incredibly smart in a few areas leaves you incredibly naive in others. If nothing else, your success in some domains will lead to overconfidence in others.
Being smart and having full cognitive control over the animal part of your brain are completely orthogonal to each other - loads of intellectuals were also massive uncontrollable sexual deviants in one way or another.
He probably didn't come clean about the second one because there's actually 5+ and if he came clean about everything he'd definitely be done
> who I'd previously considered to be an incredibly smart guy
To an extremely ignorant person on the matter like me, and genuinely asking, what has he achieved in terms of engineering and development, that makes you think he's smart? Or do you mean in the sense of knowing its way through business and politics? Idk I always find difficult to believe that people really think that CEOs are smart, when they commonly are not involved what so ever in any scientific leading or research, and just funnel money to a product that make them richer.
But I prefer to believe I'm wrong and would like to hear form the other side.
Yeah, he should leave. Next earnings call is Nov 17, he needs to be out by then so that he is not a distraction (CFO could do the call).
As a large shareholder and world's 7th [now 12th] richest person he would certainly retain a lot of power, even with a new CEO. Time to start his own personal VC firm or something.
There is some nepotism at Nvidia, those people are likely going to be very annoyed with him since their positions may not now be tenable.
> can somehow completely implode his life in almost the most ridiculous way imaginable
oh boy, get outside and take a deep fresh breath of air. how limited can life experience
be if someone feels that having an sexual affair is about the same like completely imploding ones own life..
> The fact that someone like Jensen Huang - who I'd previously considered to be an incredibly smart guy as opposed to a nitwit - can somehow completely implode his life in almost the most ridiculous way imaginable...
Mmm. Infidelity is very common. [0] What's fairly uncommon is getting caught in a way that requires the infidelity to be acknowledged. Just ask the French. ;)
[0] ...it's almost as if monogamy is an unnatural state of being for many (but definitely not all!) people...
I am not sure why several top comments here express sadness for the wife and affected loved ones. Do you actually feel bad? Why is it necessary to bring this pseudo sympathy to this topic? The topics are: what are the impacts to the stock market as a whole as there's a precarious arrangement at the moment with circular financing and Nvidia being a disproportionate piece of the stock market, national security and many other problems that affect hundreds of millions of people. But let us weep for the billionaire families of this soap drama. Get over yourselves.
Here's why Jensen is critical to Nvidia as well as the industry:
Without Jensen Huang's vision, Nvidia might have remained primarily a graphics chip maker, and the deep learning revolution would not have arrived when it did. Long before deep neural networks took off, Huang backed the use of Nvidia GPUs for scientific and general-purpose computing, including the development of CUDA. In 2012, Krizhevsky, Sutskever, and Hinton used Nvidia GPUs and CUDA to train AlexNet, whose breakthrough performance helped ignite the modern deep learning boom. Nvidia's investment in programmable GPUs helped make that breakthrough possible.
The critical vision was that GPUs could become a platform for computing beyond graphics—and that Nvidia should invest in making them programmable before a large market for that use existed.
The board should punish Huang without punishing the industry and the nation. For example by cutting his salary and stock to 0 for 2 years.
Viewing people like this is unhealthy. Nvidia could have failed instead of 3dfx, and that it didn't involved some luck, not just the magical clairvoyance of one individual.
And anyway, whether Nvidia created CUDA and deep learning are all moot at this point.
You are definitely overselling him. If you are a hardware maker, you naturally want to sell to as many markets as possible. It doesn’t take a huge leap of faith.
> In 2012, Krizhevsky, Sutskever, and Hinton used Nvidia GPUs and CUDA to train AlexNet, whose breakthrough performance helped ignite the modern deep learning boom.
didn't the very early deep learning frameworks use opengl and shader constructs? I recall reading something to that effect.
NVIDIA went nowhere for much of its history. Just look at its stock chart for most of its history.
They got a major upside due to two things that happened outside of NVIDIA: Crypto currency and AI, both of this found GPUs to be the best available technology to retrofit. Most of the initial work in retrofitting GPUs to these workloads happened outside of NVIDIA.
So, it's not Jensen but the Crypto and AI that propelled NVIDIA.
I feel like you're overstating NVidia's influence. OpenCL with AMD GPUs was also just fine around that time, we were all figuring out how much you could port and get a crazy speed up for not much effort. NVidia's ecosystem was particularly annoying to deal with on Linux. Maybe we'd have gotten AlexNet a year later without Cuda.
Back in 2002-2003 there were folks attempting to get GPUs to do non graphics tasks because of the amount of potential compute available. I recall running a sorting algorithm on a Radeon at the time. It wasn't quick but it worked.
The idea was out there and Nvidia leaned into it first. GPU compute was going to happen regardless, but credit to Nvidia they actively developed it seeing its future uses.
> Huang backed the use of Nvidia GPUs for scientific and general-purpose computing, including the development of CUDA
Very well, but backing CUDA is an old decision that has paid off and will continue to pay off because Nvidia has operationalized it. It can and will continue to run without Jensen Huang.
> The board should punish Huang without punishing the industry and the nation. For example by cutting his salary and stock to 0 for 2 years.
What sort of punishment is this to somebody who is already worth hundreds of billions of dollars?
the only things the "AI industry" has done is price normal people out of computing, give justification for companies to lay people off, fill the internet with slop, contribute to centralizing capital, and add a transaction cost to everything people do with their computers.
i couldn't care less about the "industry" that focuses on profits or the "nation" that is more committed to overseas wars than providing basic infrastructure.
Nope. These are inexplicable things that point to Jensen allegedly collaborating with a foreign actor and nation. The board should punish Huang and save our industry and the nation. Plain and simple.
He's an extremely skilled shovel seller, but let's not pretend he foresaw the reason for every hole being dug. Most universities taught CUDA classes way back. Did they also see deep learning and cryptocurrencies coming? Supercomputers did exist and where all about FLOPS and that was a legit market. Intel released their Xeon Phi cards around the same time. Ironically, while deep learning started with consumer graphics cards, it could have started on super computers and right now it's back to super computers anyway.
Nobody is irreplaceable. And this includes Jensen Huang.
You can say (rightly) that he has vastly contributed to NVidia's success. Well, he's been well compensated for that to the tune of almost $200 billion. Will the company fall apart without him now? No. No, it won't.
Also, if they fire him today, nothing will really change for a few years anyway. The short-to-medium plans are already locked in.
People arguing the technical and business merits of what Jensen brought to the company aren't getting how serious these allegations against him are.
The US Government is using NVIDIA chips for all sort of stuff across all classification levels. Subsequently, Jensen has deep relationships within the government that warrants additional scrutiny.
Him authorizing his company to sell massive amounts of chips to a restricted country is massively illegal, but companies work around that and have since forever. Doesn't make it less illegal, but that's only a small part of the problem.
The real problem is that nobody knows how much sensitive info Jensen gave this woman or how far that info spread.
It's really about fairness. Us technical salespeople take training that tells us all of the ways that deals with restricted countries happen and how we will immediately get fired ten ways to Sunday if we forego that to close quota. Also, normies with clearances tell their partners stuff they shouldn't. Stuff they think isn't really sensitive since it seems so minute. This isn't bad until said partner spills at the wrong place and wrong time. That's how normies get sent to prison for treason. Loose lips sink ships and all that. [^0]
Getting fired -- WHICH HE ABSOLUTELY SHOULD BE -- is the least of his problems.
The claim that he sold massive amounts of chips to a restricted country as being "massively illegal" is absolutely false.
NVIDIA is licensed by the United States government to sell GPUs to China, and they do so at a rate well under their licensed quantity.
Read up on 91 CFR 1684 which directly contradicts your claims.
Your most important argument is categorically false and completely unresearched.
Your subsequent claims also have no basis: you cite a bunch of cases in which people leaked sensitive information as equivalent to the Jensen case, where the affair was with the CEO of a customer they were legally selling product to, and where we have no evidence that any leaks occurred.
> The real problem is that nobody knows how much sensitive info Jensen gave this woman or how far that info spread.
Why? If he's that important then our own intelligence community ought to be doing stuff to fight espionage - doing counterintelligence, generally just making sure he's ok and providing support to him, etc. This is not some random guy. Did we just forget to do that?
If we're not doing that, then are foreign countries just after all of our important people? Forget sexpionage - what about hacking their computers? Do we have zero ability to combat any of this, whereas other countries can do whatever they want?
Yes. A lot of folks on here were initially thinking the issue with the Chinese spy was a sort of “oh funny how silly” type issue. For someone in his position with Nvidia a strategically important company for the US that’s a grave error of judgment. Add then yesterday revelations of additional indiscretions and this suddenly a growing pattern of incredibly poor judgement.
It appears almost certain now that he’s finished. The lack of any succession planning (which also is too looks like more poor judgment) appears to be the only thing now slowing down his removal by the board.
The relationship has been to a degree known to even the public for years, it's extremely unlikely that intelligence services didn't know about it until now and that they'd permit it if they'd consider it a possibility that Jensen could leak any important IP
But this is not the domain of the board, is it? Whether he put the national security at risk is up to US Government to decide. The moral side of the question is for the people involved to decide. For the board to decide is the company will be better off w/o him.
On the contrary, the allegations are tabloid level nonsense. Jensen does not even posses any "sensitive info". He is just a ceo for a company that designs chips, something China has no trouble doings. What China lacks is the manufacturing knowhow of the most advanced lithography machines which will also allow them to manufacture the most advanced chips locally. Huang however does not have a single clue about that chip manufacturing.
The amount of times the word “allegation” and “suspicion” and the way this soap opera is flowing around screams that its all smokescreen. We don’t even know if this women was a spy… even that is an “allegation”.
The facts are very scarce and yet this has been blown out of proportion.
> The real problem is that nobody knows how much sensitive info Jensen gave this woman or how far that info spread.
Non-American here. Isn’t it your goverment’s/CIA’s job to detect Chinese agents and conduct counter-intelligence. Individuals (CEO or not) can’t do that. I heard that they already knew for a long time (as they must have). Then this becomes a hit job with political/business motivations rather than a serious national security issue as promoted to the public. Why don’t you all talk that obvious angle instead? 50s Red Scare rhetorics or a 70s James Bond narrative is politically more appealing I guess.
But we live in 2020s. We live under constant surveillance today. All national secrets are in digital environment (not on a microfilm in a CEOs leather jacket). Also Chinese spies, who require a visa to enter US, can be easily tracked the moment they get in touch with any VIP.
And for the sexual/marriage life of individuals, suddenly everyone goes back to 50s standards. (Note: This is extra interesting because I heard there is a “sex cult” attracting high profile AI engineers in SV. And everyone seems ok with it. But that’s probably another honeypot operation.)
They guy has been running Nvidia for over 30 years and has billions of dollars - what would make him want to sell out to China? What possibly could they offer him? You actually think she was like, "if you tell me secrets then I'll sleep with you"
A lot of people with ulterior motives want to throw him under the bus, don't buy into those narratives so easily. Use some common sense first.
What's so magical about selling to the USG that it should create some sort of obligation on the part of a civilian CEO?
Remember, Huang isn't an army officer, or someone in intelligence working at the Pentagon, or a CIA officer.
Surely he gets to do what he likes. You are not at war with China. Treason is not relevant here, nor are graphics cards some sort of ultra-secret domain. What NVIDIA does is easy, it's just that the package is not so easy to reproduce, what with it having many aspects, from software to chips and fast interconnect.
What’s the non-cynical explanation here which doesn’t involve Jensen having ruffled feathers he shouldn’t have?
Elon regularly gets away with way more morally (and perhaps legally) egregious stuff and yet he has increasingly cemented his position. Partly through indirect leverage from his companies and partly from buying access to power directly.
Even Sam managed to stage an employee revolt to stay in control.
For founders of companies perhaps the lesson keeps repeating itself - keep control of your companies no matter what.
I’m not sure this is good for shareholders and the larger AI ecosystem either. Corporate governance is obviously important especially for mature industries.
But Jensen has consistently demonstrated ability to keep Nvidia alive during dire times and eventually delivered the biggest profits in corporate history.
Edit: some cynical explanations:
1. China hawks in tech and admin wanted him out
2. Nvidia competitors found oppo research too juicy to ignore and sequenced a set of destructive reporting
3. People in AI found Jensen’s grip of the supply chain too annoying and wanted to loosen it somehow
You're making the assumption implicitly when comparing to Musk that this should be fair or about morality.
That ship has sailed.
Huang has a problem now because his ability to advocate for NVIDIA in a politically charged environment is damaged.
He can't be an effective CEO for NVIDIA if there's a plausible (even if unproven) suspicion that he's on a geopolitical adversary's side.
He was very strongly advocating for selling to China before this. At that point, it could be understood simply as him looking out for NVIDIA's business interests. Now, there's doubt sowed in everyone's mind about whether it really was just that.
Maybe you don't care, because you think selling to China is the right thing to do - fine, there can be different views on this.
But, a lot of influential people very much do not hold that view, and he needs to be able to effectively communicate to them also.
I think you should consider the genuine do-gooders inside the federal government who wanted to blow the lid on this for a year but were blocked by the president. Now that he’s weak, they went for it.
There are three forms of accountability here, that Elon and other newer tech founders meticulously calcified themselves away from
First
The board. Elon and his brother are the board, and some sycophants. They are also heavily weighted shareholders.
Jensen doesn’t have that.
Second
The wife, who also is entitled to significant shareholdings. Musk avoided that, and major shareholders are already in trusts, his private foundation, his donor advised fund, and just outside of any future marriage to begin with. The market doesn’t care what a disagreement with his partners mean
Third
The state, and the product. Elon sells cars and it isnt the backbone of economies. The rockets and starlink do pursue waivers or avoid sanctioned countries. Indiscretions were already paid for in the campaign.
So “canceling or not” masquerades as a societal view or tacit consent, when it is solely a matter of who your masters are and if they will stand by you or have any capability of a choice.
I would be surprised if every publicly traded American company didn’t have policies against fraternizing with subordinates or customers. Every one I’ve worked for banned this or required oversight. Additionally, companies of this scale would almost certainly have policies demanding due diligence with customers. But given Jensen is the founder, I’d expect he could survive that.
What’s really hurting Jensen here are the accusations of sanctions violations. That can impact Nvidia. It’s already hurting the stock price. That hurts the investors. A 20% drop while the rest of the market is fine is probably enough to oust him.
6. China wants to implode the US AI capability and crash their stock markets
Cui bono? China. Incredibly low cost op. She doesn't even have to be a spy, just the rumour is sufficient for the puritanical US media, china hawks, and anti-AI lobby to do the rest.
> Elon regularly gets away with way more morally (and perhaps legally) egregious stuff and yet he has increasingly cemented his position. Partly through indirect leverage from his companies and partly from buying access to power directly.
I'm not an Elon fan at all, but ... while he sure sleeps around, I have not heard he slept with subordinates, or Chinese spies.
Nvidia is one of the most critical strategic assets in the USA today, underpinning economic dominance and national defence. Leadership at this level usually operates under an implicit shield. Normal procedure would be to cover-up. A sudden loss of Nvidia's founder and CEO at this juncture is a blow to American strategic posture and a windfall to China.
I think the real story is not the affair, which was already reported in asian media in 2024, but what specific catalyst broke that protective shield and made continued containment untenable.
2 affairs - one with a sub-ordinate and one is a foreign agent who got chip flow through to a sanctioned country.
Do we even know thats the end of this? This is only whats public at this point... It doesn't feel like the end of it but more like beginning to middle.
I'm trying to figure out who pushed this story through or if this is just bubbling up naturally.
A "windfall to China?" Jensen Huang seems to have been conspiring with Alice Huang to illegally sell high-end NVIDIA chips to China. That's a windfall to China.
"If the US doesn't allow government intervention into the business dealing of important private entities during times of scandal, to protect lies and initiate cover-ups, then China will win."
1) The fact that he cheated on his wife isn't particularly relevant, other than the lack of a prenup meaning she owns half his stock (4% of the company).
2) The fact that he slept with a subordinate shows bad judgment, but isn't a huge deal (although improper and opens up potential quid-pro-quo lawsuits)
3) The fact that he slept with a Chinese spy is a huge deal.
4) The fact that there are allegations that he was aware that they were selling illegally to China is a huge deal.
5) Even though those export control were arguably bad, the law must be respected and the being seen ignoring the law would have a chilling effect on appearance of a fair democracy.
6) There is definitely a demonstration of lack of judgment (getting caught selling to china rather than maintaining plausible deniability), (sleeping with a spy rather than just hiring an escort)
7) Despite all of this, in theory he would arguably still be the most profitable CEO (if he doesn't get charged with a crime, AND if there are no other issues to discover) in the medium term, but where there's smoke there may be fire. Does this raise the odds of circular financing and other shenanigans?
> The fact that he slept with a subordinate shows bad judgment, but isn't a huge deal
Most companies have policies that strongly discourage this, or forbid it, and for good reason.
It's a big enough deal that former CEOs of Nestle, Norfolk Southern, McDonald's and Intel were either terminated or resigned after similar relationships were uncovered.
> the law must be respected and the being seen ignoring the law would have a chilling effect on appearance of a fair democracy.
While I appreciate the spirit of this comment, I think that this ship sailed long time ago when United States elected a convicted felon twice, who then proceeded to virtually break all the laws with no repercussion.
>3) The fact that he slept with a Chinese spy is a huge deal.
I'm 50/50 on whether or not Alice Huang is actually a spy for the Chinese government, or rather just a social climber and opportunist. She certainly didn't hide her perceived closeness to Jensen Huang, and in fact actively flaunted it on her social media.
Furthermore, I think it possible if not likely that Jensen has had more than just 2 extramarital liaisons, and if more were to come out, then IMO that would actually shift the likelihood towards Jensen simply being a lustful old man taking sexual advantage of his power and status, rather than being honeypotted by some Chinese intelligence operation.
> The fact that he cheated on his wife isn't particularly relevant
Him being married is relevant: he opened himself to extortion/blackmail, assuming his wife was not aware of his affairs. Anyone who knew that was happening would have had enormous leverage over him.
Even if no one actually did so it still demonstrates a massive risk.
> 3) The fact that he slept with a Chinese spy is a huge deal.
I'll admit I haven't really been following this story, but I ASSUME he didn't know she was a spy? (Given a good portion of a spy's job is making sure you don't know they are a spy) So why is this an issue either?
> the law must be respected and the being seen ignoring the law would have a chilling effect on appearance of a fair democracy.
While I appreciate the spirit of this comment, I think that this ship sailed long ago when United States elected a convicted felon twice, who then proceeded to virtually break all the laws with no repercussion.
I agree with you on the first and second point. Perhaps you can argue it's in bad taste to have an affair but the private matters of adult lives should be of no interest to outsiders.
Yes and no. I think the board knew about the smuggling and now that it's out they need to sacrifice the CEO. Probably, they still trust him but that does not matter here, saving the company's valuation and trying to evade fines is more important.
> other than the lack of a prenup meaning she owns half his stock
They were married years before he founded the company, and lived in California, a community property state. And they got married right out of college. Unless he somehow knew that he would start a company and got a prenup that says "if I start a company it's all mine", a prenup wouldn't matter anyway (and would probably but null and void anyhow).
3) The fact that he slept with a Chinese spy is a huge deal.
She's alleged to have been an 'intelligence asset', which is not the same thing as a spy (assets are not agents). Assets are often just good sources of insight and analysis, whereas agents are tasked with active deception and exfiltration of information. Jensen Huang is arguably an intelligence asset; I'm sure he's given informative briefings to spooks on the state of the world, albeit not necessarily knowingly.
A related question to this is whether Jensen Huang even has a US government security clearance.It's not obvious to me that he's privy to any government secrets, even if the US regards Nvidia as a strategic asset. To pick up on your point 4, he might have been knowingly violating the law, a problem for any CEO. But if he's not definitely violating sanctions and is instead just chasing profits, that's considered the norm.
To be frank I think this is a storm in teapot because there have been rumors about his affair floating around since last May, and if the US government has known for at least that long and hasn't intervened or arrested him it's probably not that big of a deal. I can't help wondering if it's a case of the current US administration trying to look tough after the President suffered a humiliating election defeat.
It breaks my heart that so many people will excuse his infidelity as irrelevant. We need better leaders to set examples for the youth. This current crop is so slimy and distasteful.
Your opinions are just that, but not really nuanced.
1) This is a huge matter of character. If you cannot be faithful to your wife, what makes you a faithful leader of a company? There is also the issue of respect: when a leader is morally compromised, the people he is leading lose confidence and respect in him.
2) Isn’t there something of a power dynamic issue here too? He has a greater responsibility to use his authority and power as a superior to not abuse that authority, and committing adultery with an inferior is a huge problem.
3) On what basis is this a huge deal and the previous two are not? Where’s the nuance? It’s just arbitrary.
4) Well yeah, it looks like he was complicit in breaking sanctions. It’s no longer an arms-length deal.
5) Again, why are the first two worth shrugging shoulders and this one is not? It’s no big deal, people cheat and break the law all the time.
6) That sure undersells it. It underlines the stupidity of sin, and the sinfulness of man.
That’s… a take. The fact the only problem you have with him violating export controls is that he got caught isn’t really nuanced. It mostly just points to you not having a moral compass.
Whether he would be the most profitable CEO is absolutely irrelevant. The guy is literally facing prison time if he can be directly tied to the violation of those sanctions. If the board takes more than about 30 seconds to come to a conclusion they should probably all be replaced as well.
Or is the evidence right over there next to the evidence of WMD?
I know some people believe anonymous govt officials but I kinda don't so if there's actual evidence, let's see it, or note the the doubt legitimately exists.
It seems a very odd thing to be briefing newspapers about rather than the very many other, seemingly more useful ways of using that information if it is true. How does everyone feel about the CIA briefing the New York Times in general to seemingly get a CEO removed? Who takes responsibility for making that decision?
> Even though those export control were arguably bad, the law must be respected and the being seen ignoring the law would have a chilling effect on appearance of a fair democracy.
On one hand I firmly believe that if a rule is stupid you have no moral obligation to obey it. There might still be consequences though, however unjust.
On the other hand so many rules can be in place for years because people just don't obey them so their stupidity is mitigated to the point of invisibility.
> The fact that he slept with a subordinate shows bad judgment, but isn't a huge deal (although improper and opens up potential quid-pro-quo lawsuits)
That is absolutely a huge deal, I have no idea why you don't think it is. That is the kind of behavior which anyone in an American workplace knows is not tolerated in the slightest and would lead to firing. The fact that he did it anyway shows he has shockingly poor judgement.
You've left out the worst parts of the scandal, which involves the US government investigation into the Megaspeed being buried after a large contribution was made to the White House ballroom fund. This website has a pretty good summary https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-nvidia-scandal-no-e...
1. Cheating on his wife when that will likely significantly change the ownership of the company is a big deal;
2. Here's where I disagree most. A married billionaire CEO sleeping with an also-married subordinate is a huge deal and that alone warrants an ouster. It creates huge legal exposure for the company;
3. The biggest issue with the Chinese spy is he's wealthy enough that this shouldn't happen. I'm sorry but you can afford corporate security who can vet the people you're involved with and do so discreetly;
Huang hired Heller (a crisis PR firm) a year ago. It seems like he knew something was coming and possibly failed to inform the board. Ok, that's more grounds for termination.
I too am reminded of this quote [1]:
> If you find two ants in your kitchen, the best estimate of the total number of ants in your kitchen is not two
Such weird takes. Selling shit is bigger deal than destroying your family?! Fuck money, take care of your family, your lives! Family > geopolitics. Everything trickles down from there
If this had happened at a more recent founder-led tech company, the board would have far less practical independence
Dual-class share structures have become the defacto standard for founder led companies, giving founders disproportionate (even majority) voting power.
Someone like Zuckerberg effectively controls the board and would be extraordinarily difficult to oust against his wishes (absent some exceptional legal intervention or a decision to step aside)
I think even if NVIDIA were founded recently, it still wouldn't have such a share structure. The companies that do have dual class shares are software companies that can grow significantly without raising a ton of capital. NVIDIA being a hardware company, that is a lot harder to do even today.
Anthropic are planning a bizarre share structure that strips any voting power from shareholders. They will have a single special founders share, held by some new entity owned by the founders, that has 51% voting weight. 1 share to rule them all.
This is kinda huge; my layperson view is that Jensen has been responsible for their long term technology strategy, which requires deep understanding of so much outside of the business domain. I'm not exactly thrilled that they are "eating the world" (hf purchase had me bent out of shape, for example), but they've undeniably executed on some long term complex shit. Who could take his place?
It's really interesting to me how unaggressive Jensen has been vs. his peers about tighting up control over his company (even during the recent years when he had huge leverage):
- His board setup is ... odd. He isn't Chairman of the Board (a role over 50% of Fortune 100 CEOs apparently hold). He seems to be responsible for Nvidia having a wierdly more egalitarian structure (all directors including him, are equal, with a designated lead independent director)
- His compensation (~$35M, primarily stock) is ... not up there with other tech CEOs
- He doesn't seem to have ever pushed for super-voting rights (he only has like ~3.5% of the company), but I guess that's hard to change once you IPO
I kinda wonder if this ends with him taking a month off, spending 12-18 months transitioning to a successor and ending as the chairman of the board or some such. He really does seem vital to the company (and thus the stock price).
Seems like much more sane governance for a publicly-traded company.
Honestly this arrangement (total comp aside) is how it should be for all these companies. When Facebook went public the dual class structure (and Zuck retaining voting control) was a big point of contention.
I wonder how much of this is to do with how recent and explosive (relative to the history of the company) nvidia’s growth was. Like before the back to back booms of cryptocurrency and AI, the company was mainly selling products to gamers (iirc, their datacenter business was like 10% in 2019). It wasn’t that long ago that nvidia’s comparable companies were like… super micro and western digital, rather than Apple and Google.
Also having been more capital intensive and founded further back, Jensen had less sway in the early days of the company and may have put off using the growth to his advantage.
Jensen cooperated with china well before the affair. I'm pretty sure her being a chinese spy did not change anything in his decisions. His position on China did not change for years. And he is right. As long as we export chips to china it's really hard for them to invest into developing their own chips from scratch. It's just too expensive. If that door closes they will be incentivised to go for it that much harder. As it is right now they are one step behind us but in the future this won't be the case anymore and since we don't have hardware manufactuing experts in US it's just a matter of time we'll get surpassed. Sure we can bet on AI to overcome that but it's way easier for china to get a software stack going then for us to get hardware manufacturing back.
Jensen effectively is Nvidia, and is likely the only person that truly knows the company - this is what ties him to his place and of that doesn't ensure it I don't think anything else would. Almost all significant successes Nvidia had were results from direct action from him, and he truly knows the tech
The fact that him staying is even a considerable possibility, although made much smaller by the second affair if it is true, is a testament to that.
Instead he made his daughter Senior Director of Product Marketing, made his son Director of Robotics Product, and made his son-in-law VP of AI Infrastructure Growth.
Maybe his idea of asserting control is less about voting rights and more about family allegiance.
A flat structure means nobody is a clear competitor with Huang for the top job. If Huang was able to get his way as was, adopting a more traditional structure would have just made somebody else a significantly more powerful #2. A lack of a clear successor might make the transfer of power rougher unfortunately.
Huang's net worth is over $200B, high enough to be in the world top-ten. He has been very well compensated by Nvidia. Either he decided he has enough money at some point or his current compensation numbers are just marketing. The real numbers were clearly much higher in the past, if not presently.
I suspect he's going quietly because the scandals haven't finished emerging yet[1]. At this point, it wouldn't surprise me if somebody has photos of secret Nvidia bunga bunga parties. I do find it interesting that Americans will tolerate lies, murder, and all sorts of other things from their highest elected officials but, if a CEO is revealed to be overly randy, he's got to go.
He could've gave us seamless private cloud GPUs (basically let you run anything on any device, rent out your GPU to earn money, let you play GTA-6 on your phone...)
How about this all is some sort of theater for him to "peacefully" exit the whole operation and retire, given he not gonna be poor and is very likely to not go in jail given his role in making NVIDIA the company it is.
As another comment thread brought up, his children are both working pretty nice sinecures, which would have been huge negative press during any kind of corporate governance struggle. I don’t think it was even widely known, I was a Jensen fanboy and I just now learned about it.
Of course these revelations are always managed to force a powerful person out of his position. Some 15 years the same happened with Staus Kahn, IMF's leader. The exception was Bill Clinton that the story turned in soap opera.
In these positions nobody is irreplacable. He is not a father, just a skilled employer. Why a Vice President is considered consumable? Why will just never know the why and by whom that was triggered.
Sounds like he helped China get GPUs in violation of export controls. This puts NVidia in a tough place as keeping him as CEO risks broader legal ramifications.
it seems like this is the legal equaivent of smoking dope behind the McDonald's ..basically no one cares that much. The govt. could prosecute or make an example.,but whatevah. It's implicitly understood nvdia is a huge success and central to the US tech boom.
Large companies always have a backup plan in case the CEO needs to be replaced. What usually happens in these cases is that a new CEO will be named. That new CEO will focus on maximizing the company's earnings while neglecting the tech. And the company will be an earnings winner for the next few years.
He's out as CEO but he'll continue to be a force at Nvidia. If the new CEO is smart, he'll keep him in the company, but it will be hard since Huang will be seen as the company's leader and it will be very hard for Huang to act any other way.
They need to fire him outright. The company needs to set the example that misconduct won’t be tolerated at any level. Keeping him on in anything but a transition capacity would be a mistake.
This doesn’t bode well for Anthropic’s IPO indirectly, due to whole AI industry being propped up largely by Nvidia’s circular investment.
Also there’s likely a big overlap of institutional investors who are both NVDA and ANT investors and will now likely seek to dump ANT at the opening bell.
If anything this should impact the IPO only to the extent it affects the production of new compute capacity, because it is clear that is the #1 thing they need to scale revenues.
Part of me wonders if recent problems with AI (Huang leaks, OpenAI models hacking Huggingface), haven't been arranged by OpenAI in order to poison Anthropic's IPO.
This might rather save the IPO. Banned open source models will allow the closed source players to maintain power and recoup a larger part of their investment by driving up the prices.
Short term, days or weeks, there will be panic. But the impact of the change won't really be felt for years to come. For the next few years, the company will be fine.
The coup of Jensen Huang was precisely organized by the same large institutional investors.
They want NVIDIA to lock-up firmware and prevent any open-weight models from being run. Everyone (at least in US/NATO/US-aligned world) will be forced to use Anthriopic/OpenAI or some other US based closed source model.
Open models will be banned at the GPU level.
This is done to cement the multi-trillion dollar valuation of the AI labs and prevent AI bubble from popping due to customers using free open-weight, instead of pay-per-token closed models
Crazy times for the markets. Right after the second AI trade collapse and unwind Jensen Huang is found to have extramarital affairs, including one with a potential spy?
News of his resignation just dropped. I'm wondering how much Nvidia's success is tied to him personally.
This doesn't seem like a healthy move for the company's longevity. What else did Jensen do? It's a given that companies that size will be targets for espionage and leak information even without it. This one mistake is enough to end all the value he has-and would continue to add to nvidia? Feels like we're missing information about the whole thing.
Jensen's been lobbying hard for years to get the government to allow selling high-end GPUs to China. It's his position that this will discourage local competitors from getting big enough to meaningfully threaten nVidia's dominance.
While there's nothing inherently incorrect about this position, the affair with an alleged spy means that he, personally and uniquely, cannot advocate for this policy without seeming compromised. Ironically, if nVidia agrees with him, they have to fire him.
The thing I don't understand is what is the real issue? Just the bad PR? I would kind of think affairs are pretty common, it's just this is public? I'm struggling to find anything where he did something bad business wise or compromised national security. Seems like Americans just love the sensationalism of affairs. Makes for good news I guess.
The woman he was having an affair with is suspected of being a Chinese spy, and she may have been using him to circumvent US export controls to move lots of NVidia chips into China.
A CEO cheating on his wife doesn't exactly paint them as a trustworthy leader to partners, suppliers and customers. Even less so when he does it twice, with a foreign intelligence operative.
Well, what makes me little dissapointed is instead of focusing on issues and topics that really matter, we discuss who f*cked whom.
There are gravely important matters to focus on in the current state of affairs that affect us all, our kids and future of human kind, but we got somehow trained to waste our focus and time on mere noise every single day.
Can someone make the strong case for why he should be ousted?
I’m not deep into this story, but my initial reaction is that marital infidelity doesn’t seem like a strong reason to oust him, aside from him possibly being compromised by an international spy. Haven’t other successful leaders continued to lead after having their affairs exposed?
(And no, I don’t believe what he did is morally excusable for the record.)
It's come out that he was having another affair with a Nvidia employee as well, their vice president of healthcare. Having an affair with a client is one thing but having one with a client and a subordinate is maybe enough for the board to remove him.
Considering that only Jensen has been pushing for anything close to open-source models in terms of AI vs the token merchants of OpenAI and Anthropic, it seems a really bad time for Huang to leave.
I do think that "eventually" AI will be open-(source, weight, something) and most people will run at least some of their workload on their own hardware; but his leaving might delay that day considerably.
There isn't enough discussion of how many controls needed to fail for Nvidia to smuggle billions of dollars of GPUs to Chinese firms in violation of export controls. The affairs with alleged spies is not even the most egregious failure of corporate governance.
Controlling such high-volume products has never really worked, especially if you sell to other third countries. Plenty of western electronic parts show up in Russian weapons, despite export restrictions.
Is there any reason why this will actually change the fundamentals of Nvidia's business so long as 5080s go for as much as a used car and the entire world wants H200s? Even if they lose an extremely hands-on CEO, they're selling a very expensive product with extremely high global demand.
I wonder what happens to NVDA afterwards. People say Jensen is NVDA or at least he has a lot of controls over the company. I guess they finally found the right time (very bad midterm) and the right opportunity (mistress as Chinese spy).
I even wonder whether some elements within the Chinese government has a hand in it -- not (only) the mistress part but the ousting part.
I think it's worth even considering that if the allegations are true that the objective was to get Huang fired. Sure, he sold China chips, but they have their own homegrown chips now and the Chinese government have played a direct part in that.
I'm thinking the people behind trying to oust him are people who don't appreciate him likely knowingly violating export sanctions and putting the rest of the company and himself at risk of massive fines and criminal prosecution
There is no “they” in this. My read is the timing of all of this entirely down to the results of the midterm elections.
Over the next two years, Congress is going to haul in every tech CEO who licked Trump’s boots. I think Jensen tried to get in front of it and now journalists and institutional short sellers are digging up the dirt.
Something very fishy is going on here. If NVIDIA suddenly closes down GPU sales to the general public after Jensen is gone then we know what is happening: the Altman/Dario/Musk mafia have gotten what they wanted: no more compute for open weight models for the general public.
Interesting to see what happens to the consumer, gaming GPU market.
Financially it almost certainly makes sense to sell to AI hyperscalers alone; without Jensen, perhaps Nvidia shifts like Micron before them, leaving the lower margin consumer market to others.
I would figure Jensen for the type to "dance with the girl who you bought to the dance" type. A new CEO may lack that sort of sentimentality for the gamers/prosumers that made Nvidia.
It's not immediately clear that Jensen is as visionary and indispensable as some people claim. True, under his watch, Nvidia rose from a relatively obscure company to one of the largest companies in the world, and even a national asset. But it's really hard to believe that these achievements are due to Jensen's brilliance. Jensen didn't create the crypto mania that propelled Nvidia in the 2010s, nor did he create the current AI revolution.
To me, he had the good fortune of standing in the right place at the right time. He is no Steve Jobs, who almost single-handedly started the PC revolution and the iPhone revolution. This is not to deny his brilliance and business acumen, but I think too many people overstate his contribution to both the company and the United States. Of course I could be wrong so I welcome correction or alternative viewpoints.
Speaking of the US, Jensen has indeed become a liability. A compromised CEO is, of course, a liability to a national asset, and a politically toxic one at that. Nvidia is a business with sensitive political ties now. It can't afford to appear compromised in the eyes of Washington. Therefore, Nvidia's stakeholders must let Jensen go; otherwise, it will affect the company as a whole.
Jensen made basically two visionary decisions. The first was to promote GPGPU with CUDA across their entire lineup including consumer hardware. The second was to specifically invest heavily in supporting machine learning way before anyone else in chips cared. CuDNN came out in 2014, just two years after AlexNet. Three years before the transformer. Eight years before ChatGPT. Before PyTorch. Before TensorFlow. Other chip CEOs probably hadn't even heard of AlexNet in 2014. Even at the time I thought[1] AMD and Intel were crazy to completely ignore a market opportunity like this. They still haven't caught up.
Assuming these decisions are attributable to him personally, then he absolutely deserves the description "visionary". That said, he's made plenty of other choices I don't like, and also invested in plenty of silly stuff that isn't panning out for them. I don't really think Nvidia needs a visionary right now. They have the best business in the world and they just need to execute. Regardless of whether he deserves to be ousted, the company will be fine without him for the next decade at least. So a stock selloff is silly.
It still baffles me that most people don't realize how success in 'business'/'leadership' positions has almost nothing to do with an individuals skill/intelligence in leading/decisions but simply mere luck and timing. You could argue that to attain a high position in a company requires some level of shrewdness and intelligence though, but that is another game.
The common argument is, well 'x' leader has had success in 5+ companies! Surely they must be excellent visionaries. Firstly, no single person in their lifetime can possibly launch/aid enough companies to success to have a large enough sample size to prove they are a factor for success. Launching 'x' amount of companies is great but its still such a small amount that it cannot really demonstrate anything. Secondly, once you have had success once, you gain connections, wealth, e.t.c. that only bolster further endeavors that you do even if they are pretty bad ones.
Ofc, there are things an individual at the top of a company can do to make 'good decisions', but this is mostly just selecting the right people below you to delegate to (thus reading/spotting talent well) and listening to your data and people to get as much information as possible before making overarching decisions based on that. This is what I consider common-sense and what most people do in their day-to-day jobs all the way at the bottom of companies anyways, alongside all their regular hard-work (engineering e.t.c.). Upper management just has the luxury of only have to focus on the common-sense dull part; listen to incoming data, make obvious meta decision.
You are really not giving the man any credit - I suspect you weren't part of the GPU era of video games and don't understand the roots of nvidia. That man hustled that company. You can't say things like "right time and right place" without being a little blase.
I don't know much about Nvidia's history, but isn't Jensen largely responsible for CUDA and the company's monopoly on machine learning hardware? It wasn't an obvious bet at the time that this would pay off, but Nvidia sure poured a lot of money into making their software stack so good that nobody wanted to even consider other options.
Yes, you're entirely correct. But you're also underestimating the people's potential to squander great opportunities like these. Look at AMD for example, they had a good head start over nvidia yet they haven't done anything remotely as good.
Under his watch? You mean the entire time from the very beginning. He built the company from nothing and you are not sure he is visionary and indispensable. can't make this shit up :)
If Nvidia is going to fire Jensen Huang, my question is whether Jensen will be allowed to start another "Nvidia".
I hope he's allowed to do so. He now knows how not to get trapped into a tactically targeted honeypot, he knows the ins and outs of a GPU fab business plus he has all the connections.
This minus all the cruft and legacy overhead of a company as old as Nvidia. I'm now hoping he gets fired.
> he knows the ins and outs of a GPU fab business plus he has all the connections.
Building an Nvidia competitor would be a long, hard slog that almost certainly ends in failure for anyone including Jensen Huang.
They (NVIDIA) have tens of thousands of patents on their technology that would be hard to build around and commitments that lock up 60-70% of TSMC's CoWoS capacity.
> whether Jensen will be allowed to start another Nvidia
Sure. After he's done responding to the Congress and various investigators and his family, something I suspect will occupy a good part of his next decade.
He's still a shareholder. It is considered extremely bad form to start a company that competes with a company that you are still a shareholder of unless you have not been fired with cause. The only other example I can think of is Jobs. So it is possible but I would assume that post Jobs contracts were put together in such a way that it would be very hard to compete with the company you got booted out of and that you are still a shareholder of. I've signed a couple of contracts over the years just as shareholders and those already mentioned that if I had competing interests the deal would be null and void and I'd be liable, and for good reasons too.
It's #3 and shortsellers. There's no one who can lead Nvidea, like he does with his technical depth, connections and trust within the company. Getting rid of him will be a loss for all investors and board.
He would absolutely be fired if he were in any role, but as CEO cofounder, it's hard not to attribute Nvidia's success to his leadership.
The thing is, this is just what's been reported. There's almost certainly more going on if 2 affairs are public disclosure. If there is a sexual harassment angle here as well, he's toast.
Isn't this just not only about the severity of crimes but the potential to withstand the legacy of whatever crimes that were committed that seems untenable to digest.
Won't the CEO be fighting 2 big fights - One on the corporate front burning through the AI races and second the impending doom of lawsuits and the sheer number of avenues this opens up, frivolous or serios, for any Tom, Dick and Harry working with Nvidia as an employee, vendor, partner or anything just wanting an extra piece of the Trillion dollar pie?
Without knowing more this seems like the wrong move... The U.S. has the AI supply chain visualized incorrectly. The necessary manufacturing, raw materials and components all come from outside of the U.S. For nVidia to have decades of supplier relationships and manufacturing understanding, much of this was in the hands of the CEO more than other companies. Jensen has a lot of direct reports which is odd given the corporate structure.
I do wonder if Megaspeed and other shell companies have been monitored for over a year by the Feds where they broke export rules, failed to report to the Govt with the knowledge of several in the Administration... Everyone was making money on the side by allowing Jensen, Megaspeed and others profit off of bypassing export controls. Just recently a shipment of GPUs randomly disappeared as well.
If this all turns out to be true then removing him is a lot stronger than it seems and maybe in the long run fixing the bus factor problem will have been a good change.
Or, since nVidia is the central bank of the AI bubble, forcing him out kicks off a chain reaction that pops the bubble.
It’s not the crime, it’s the coverup, and there seems to be quite a bit of evidence of a coverup and deliberate deception. It’s a liability problem; shareholders will sue. Heads will roll.
This all looks like an excuse to force him to bend the knee. He is the only western tech ceo who is 1) a strong proponent of open weight models and 2) is highly critical of the chip sanctions on China because they’ve done the opposite of what they were meant to do.
If the allegations of selling “trade secrets” are false. He should remain CEO. I am unsure that there is ITAR or real regulations here, is it really an AI war. If it was it would be best if they trained on American chips for America.
The CEO works for the board. And the board really doesn't like when their company ends up on the front page of the WSJ for helping a Chinese intelligence agent traffic your company's own product in violation of US sanctions.
I would not be surprised if the woman is actually a CIA agent.
Since the government bought a stake in Intel, and 15% of Nvidia exports revenue, it has been clear that it want direct control of the industry.
My cynical view is that a lot of US IP has already gone to China through Nvidia. The US should probably now monitor AMD, its executives and its relationship with China (via Taiwan or direct), if any, just as closely.
Fired with cause or stepping down (most likely stepping down)>Interim CEO named> Jensen flew too close to sun and got burned. Board investigations will put everything on Jensen and they will turn that chapter over. Much more information will come out. His wife I will divorce him as well. This whole thing is more political than anything else. Who leaked all of this is my biggest question. Nvidia should be fine in the mid term, but unstable in the short term.
I still recall, as a young engineer (1999) working in a high-flying startup outside of Boston -- bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and full of naive optimism -- I flew to Houston in late '99 to demo a fabulous optical networking switch to ENRON, all the while thinking why in the world would ENRON want to be in the business of networking. Ended up selling them a TON of very expensive equipment.
It all unwound a few months later, much to my chagrin (and my lost stock options, obviously).
Recall that most bubbles do not pop due to one, key material cause. Instead, they pop due to adjacent troubles that, in turn, lead to cascading effects.
That was true of:
- LTCM failure (1998; Thailand and other SE Asian countries defaulted);
- 2000 market crash (dot-coms crash, then telecom crash of 2001);
- 2008-2010 financial crisis (mortgage backed securities);
... and so many others before these.
It's entirely possible that NVDA, despite earning $$$$, could unwind the circular funding within the ecosystem (the very crux of telecom market crash of 2001)
he'll move to Taiwan, Taiwan will become part of China, China will move talent, Jensen will become the CEO of a new asian company and they will become a powerhouse in chip production in ~5 years
This is overblown; nvda is a mature company jensen has set the right bets forward so it's just a matter in who the successor is. In terms of revenue impact, assuming megaspeed accounted for ~20% of sales (rumored estimate) then game optimal move is to have OAI/ANT pick those sales up. We will hear about a transition plan probably around earnings.
Jensen has always wanted Nvidia to have a footing in China. Without that, the Chinese innovate faster and commoditize Nvidia’s business sooner. I’m willing to bet he already knew about Alice Huang selling to China. Trump probably knew for some time too. The board also knew about his second affair with his subordinate for a while.
Jensen is getting thrown under the bus by the board because it both likely reduces legal consequences (especially now that democrats are a lot more powerful), and as an opportunity to gain power and place someone in the CEO position that is more controllable.
Did he break up with her after finding out she's a spy?
Was she trained as a spy and sent to entrap him specifically? Or did she form a relationship with him, then get told by the Chinese Communist Party "Xi wants you to steal him some secrets from your boyfriend. This is an offer you can't refuse; spy for us or your family in China will be beaten, jailed or worse"?
Is he a victim or an asset? Is she a willing patriotic spy for China, or a victim of blackmail from the Chinese Communist Party? Has she been arrested as a spy, or did she make it to the Chinese embassy before the story broke?
My feeling is he shouldn't be ousted if he took the honey but didn't fall for the trap. OTOH if he passed her company secrets, that's presumably a fireable offense for anyone lower on the totem pole; it's only fair for a CEO to get fired for the same.
I'm concerned about how this further could impact consumer access to GPUs and RAM, if he's replaced with someone who will prioritize these markets even less than they already are.
given that jensen has handshake deals with many of his critical (supply constrained) suppliers he may have more leverage than founder shares could ever provide.
The possible security implications of this entire affair (affairs now) can't be overstated. That hardware's in the most secret of facilities, computing very classified workloads for very very serious customers. Not the goofy AI heads, I'm talking about the military and intelligence communities in many nations.
Hopefully this teaches the market to migrate away from proprietary CUDA and NVIDIA and their proprietary drivers.
If you are getting paid millions, you should not make these intentional mistakes, he would have known she was a spy and just didn't care. There are better options for CEO.
Big companies should be resilient and diverse enough that their growth doesn't depend on one person, and yet most successful companies seem to be centered around someone with strong character and presence. Not to play cult of personality, but Huang looks like a central element of Nvidia's success. Will Nvidia go the way of Intel and other corporate grey bureaucracies that ultimately decline ?
I see people bemoan that this is going to hurt Nvidia. First of all, it’s not like Nvidia will crumble in a few weeks. The company has a sky-high valuation because of the moat they’ve built. That doesn’t just disappear simply because Jensen steps down.
Second, yeah long term this might set Nvidia back, but are we going to say that not only are there companies which are too big to fail, but now individuals can be too? They can violate international trade sanctions and get scott free because it might harm their company? What CEO wouldn’t then be incentivized against setting up a succession plan? Why wouldn’t adversarial governments target critical CEOs even more, knowing they are effectively untouchable?
Jensen objectively fucked up royally. I saw someone describe him as a victim in all of this. I’m sorry but I don’t see how it’s unreasonable to hold CEO’s in these key positions to very high standards. They’re rewarded with extraordinary wealth and influence, yet some seem eager to excuse them from the accountability that should come with that power.
NVidia doesn't need Jensen in the short / medium term - they are printing money. Unless we discover that all this circular financing was some kind of scheme.
We have 2 other companies though, Tesla and SpaceX, which CEO represents 90% of the valuation. That will be the real one.
Can someone explain to me why everyone on this website, and everyone in English-language media, takes for granted that “stopping China on AI” is a worthwhile or important goal?
From where I’m standing, China is the only world power ensuring that the entire world actually benefits from AI, by giving it away. They’re also underwriting and enabling the global transition away from fossil fuels while my country is doing its best to stall or reverse that progress. They are also not a belligerent in any current war of aggression, and to the extent that they are suppliers of weapons, appear to be providing them to countries acting entirely within their legitimate sovereign right to defend themselves.
Someone’s going to come along and call me ignorant or naive for saying “China are the good guys,” but let’s get real here. What are we talking about.
China is terrible to people who speak out against the government and the government censors models. Open weight is nice, but not good if it’s silently been lobotomized on topics.
Separate dimension, these models seem to be distillations of the flagship models. That isn’t healthy for AI because it’s not forward progress. If they suck away revenue that would fund training the next model, then we’re cooked.
Good tech CEOs are rare. Intel will break the bank to bring Jensen on. Even if he’s a Chinese spy, it’s worth more to shore up US fab capacity than it is to lose Intel’s tech secrets.
I am just curious. Not in relation to this story: Have other people here had a change in their perspective in the last two years?
For me I feel like: There are wealthy people doing what Jeffrey Epstein was doing. And so by comparison, it makes other bad behaviors look relatively less important.
I'm just curious if other people have had that thought as well, and/or what else you think or have learned.
Honestly kind of sounds like its a great time to start a DCA buy of NVIDIA.
It is hard for me to see how the company that is currently turning silicon into gold with established production and software, more like a blue chip stock than a tech company, is going to be worth 20%-25% less just because the Ceo cheated on his wife.
The company is a money printer, and they really don't have to do much to keep it that way.
They cannot unseat him now. The work is too important, nations are competing hard against us. He has to just get away with it and everyone needs to move on, same as Oppenheimer.
This does look like a hit job. The spy stuff is ultimately meaningless and a smoke screen and may even be offered up to create plausible deniability. My take is that Dems/Biden + China Hawk Rs + decel crowd/Dario wanted export control and closed models. Jensen and Trump took a different view. Now that Dems have the Congress again, it's going to be non-stop hearings and investigations in the same spirit as the TikTok CEO with all the "Are you a commie?" questions. So the spy is offered as an explanation; nobody evaded export controls and nobody is a commie. The 2nd unrelated affair just points to an op to oust him.
It’s pretty clear (if you aren’t a huge idiot) that Jensen is attempting to bury the lede here.
He knowingly helped advance China’s AI ambitions against the direction of congress. He got caught selling 7.5 Billion dollars of restricted chips to china.
Also he cheated on his wife with some Chinese woman, which is a totally separate and unrelated fuck up.
If you seriously think he got tricked by some random woman who batted her eyes, you are out of your mind. He founded the fucking company, he isn’t some clueless executive. He’s also not senile and he doesn’t have dementia. This is the only viable excuse for him to use, but it’s complete bullshit.
Think about it: He betrayed his longtime wife, who by all accounts supported him from the beginning. He betrayed his company and its shareholders. And he betrayed his country (BOTH of his countries?) who specifically forbid the chips to be sold to china. He’s fucked
He cheated on his wife with multiple women, it's coming out... I feel bad for her, everyone's saying she'll get billions and that's nice but she's been completely humiliated.
If this is correct, what was his motivation? I fail to see what he could have gained from it, other than a few extra billion in revenue, which they likely would have made otherwise anyway.
Trump has made a lot of money from NVIDIA stock, and he's very good friends with Jensen. Especially after he approved the Export Deals. Jensen will be fine after he's out of NVIDIA.
i dont get why everyone just eats up the propaganda that if she's a spy she automatically works for the chinese government. we are talking about 100s of billions of dollars here, this could easily just be a corporate spy or a honeypot. these mega corps are so rich and massive they have their own spy and enforcement teams, same as big oil and gas always had and still do. back in the day when oil and resources were in poorer countries they used the exact same tactics to control and take them over. its the same playbook, just now the target is a big us corporation.
Honestly, I hope this doesn’t play out in a rushed way. Evaluating this is the board’s top duty. It’s critical, and healthy, for them to weigh what’s best for all NVDA stakeholders.
Obviously, the affairs are a very serious issue, but the investigation needs to determine whether there were any security conflict of interest breaches
Let’s be clear: any abuse of power involving related-party relationships is wrong. Jensen should not get a “free pass” just because he’s Jensen. This is very serious.
Jensen’s leadership of the broader company is unparalleled, and replacing him would be nearly impossible. That step should only be taken when it’s extremely clear there is no other option. Even if the board does replace him, that brings significant risk, not just to NVIDIA but to all the other businesses connected to it. I hope a warning shot across the bow is enough for him to clean things up so everyone can get back to focusing on the work.
As for which way the board rules, the details are all that matter. When boards react emotionally, before a thorough investigation and before they have the full picture, they make bad decisions. They shouldn’t rush. They should investigate and dig into every detail.
Then make a decision. These decisions will carry enormous weight.
None of us really know the details. NVIDIA board: do your job and take it very seriously. Deliberately measure three times, cut once. Don’t spectate. The public likes/wants Hollywood drama, but what we really need is good corporate governance.
They had dirt on him for many years. Someone wants him ousted. That’s what’s happening behind the scene. Jensen probably pissed off someone very well-connected.
I don't care who it is as long as they give us open kernel drivers that can match amds offering. Preferably also someone who's not hostile toward consumers would also be nice.
people bemoaning the foreign interference angle seem to forget all the mountains of middle-east money thrown in the AI bubble, and where this money originates from.
Why are all the tech overlords scum people? Do they become that way with power, money and fame, or is it a certain kind of person from the start that achieves these things?
like sleeping Jensen Huang with an incredibly attractive Chinese agent that specifically showed traits he found desirable and exploit what ever weaknesses the Chinese spy agency could find about him to get him involved with her and divulge secrets in a SEXINT operation. Therefore Jensen is one of the worst people who are public figures.
I don't like CEO worship or tech culture (I know I am on hackernews but I am a developer and did like software development and related topics), but this take is crazy most people you know would probably take the bait on an operation like this even 'good' people.
And just take a look at the scum running things outside of Tech a lot worse then a moment of infedality, look at all western leaders you will probably find few better (or even equal) to Jensen. Jensen did not shape the shitshow you are seeing now (not saying he is not part of it), it was corrupt from the start, Just a worthless veneer of morality.
Don't morn your societies decay it was a cadaver from the beginning only by putrefaction will it become the soil to plant strong trees on.
That's an excellent question and I've been wondering about this a lot. I've known a few billionaires, exactly one was an amazing person, the rest were absolutely terrible people in every sense of the word. The whole word is full of NPCs to them. But your question goes to the heart of it: were they terrible people because that's a requirement for becoming a billionaire or did becoming a billionaire somewhere along the line turn them into terrible people?
I haven't found the answer. But I do know one thing from my (smallish) sample: the nice guy never let the money get to his head. He drove his own car (a VW Rabbit, ok, a nice one) and lived in the same house that he lived in when he started his company. And until the day he died he just kept doing what he loved without ever feeling the need to lord it over others. More like a Wozniak (who is the other 'nice billionaire' that I'm aware of but I've never met him).
I thought it was pretty humorous that Nvidia shareholders sued him claiming he didn't inform them about his secret sexual relationships and that this damaged their investment.
Most companies have codes of conduct that forbids personal relationships between employees. But him being the founder and owner why didn't he just scrap those rules if he intended to pounce on some intern? I mean, there are no laws that mandate such rules. If you want to allow it you're free to do so as a company.
> During the conference, Nvidia executives were at a nearby hotel for meetings. Mr. Huang and Ms. Powell were seen being affectionate at the hotel. One bystander captured the interaction on their phone, three people briefed on the incident said.
> Mr. Huang’s security witnessed the bystander with their phone and sequestered them, the people said. They made the person an offer to sign a nondisclosure agreement.
Well, at least there will be one way to make money after AI takes my job...
Jokes aside, I would expect we will soon learn there is more. Given that Nvidia was vouching for Megaspeed while exporting those chips, I still think there's a reasonable chance Jensen ends up in jail over this. Not large, but possible.
Ok but if you are having an affair with your direct report why would you "be affectionate" in public ?
When I encountered this ( in much smaller, non strategic companies!) both parties took great care to hide their affair and appear completely professional in public. The fun and games were kept behind closed bedroom doors. I don't get it.
I'm wondering how people like Musk, Zuckerberg, Altman, etc. just continually get away with it. Are they just more sociopathic and cover their tracks better?
I'm not really making a judgement on Huang, but it seems others have done worse. It's making me wonder if there's something larger at play where people (i.e., other billionaires and CEOs and perhaps politicians) are unhappy with Huang.
I’ve read through a lot of this thread and one thing that’s interesting to me is the relatively little weight that’s been given to the HR violation aspect of Huang’s behavior with a subordinate; specifically the power dynamic aspect.
I’m guessing most HN folks are in the camp that believes modern, powerful HR orgs serve a crucial function in protecting and advocating for employees in boss-underling relationships like this, where the power dynamic of these situations demands that they not be tolerated.
So which is it? Do you make allowances and exceptions and become a vocal (or tacit) apologist for this dynamic in some cases, or hold to what seems like a reasonable principle? (Not just in Jensen’s case but across the board?).
If the consensus here slides to the apologist side that’s fine, but in that case can we all agree to defund “Big HR”? If they can’t establish and enforce a consistent rule of no sleeping with your reports, especially at the highest echelons, then what good are they?
Here is a thought experiment: Put animals from different races into a singe cage and make them have same life-style. All of them are attached with an identifier tag that looks same, they all get same food, go on same rides, watch same TV shows. Then do the animals have same thoughts, beliefs, morals, norms and values? Most western governments thinks they would. Not sure when did the humanity got this dumber and forgot the saying "birds of a feather ...". Politicians decided that minds of people is separate from biology. Race, religion, culture, gender, background, age, geo-location - you were forced to ignore all of this. Just attach a American passport, give an american car, american food, american home; boom - everything is erased and all people are same.
I think (and I hope for the USA’s sake) Jensen was actually a CIA asset and they knew Alice from day 1 and let him play with his ding dong but also importantly covert reverse spy on China.
And they probably asked him to do other things and he probably was either too naive or didn’t understand the magnitude or just didn’t play ball. So they threw him under the bus.
They waited till after the election to release this carefully.
As it would tank the economy before the election (like that would have had any more effect).
Hopefully this is how I hope would be written in some future Netflix docshow.
And the fact that he went on some long winded media tour portraying himself as some sort of hippie savior (“oh I don’t know where I live” “i love my wife dearly”) seems like a well setup “white washing” to try and cap this follow on news.
Otherwise the news as it reads sounds too stupid to be true Occam’s razor and all that.
Goodbye, money! Who is seriously considering sabotaging their portfolio and precipitating a huge SP500 drop for months to come? Who, remembering the board of directors is making this decision, would want that?
I’m buying the affair and that it facilitated smuggling, but all could be explained by financial interest so far. Was she a spy or made a spy by circumstances on the smuggling itself?
Is this how the whole castle crumbles? some tabloid sex scandal on one side like it's 2017, anthropic vibecoding a CUDA replacement for AMD on the other?
If, as alleged, Alice Huang is an agent of the Chinese government, and if her activities result in Jensen Huang getting ditched by Nvidia, that is certainly going to win her Employee of the Year at the MSS (国家安全部) Christmas Party.
I like the guy, he's funny. I would say to keep him (on a leash), but if I could get endless 10/10 Chinese spy pussy I too would betray the AI race. I wouldn't cheat on my wife though, that's pretty low.
It’s not like he assaulted women, which is apparently par for the course at other big tech companies.
The guy had some consensual sex - so what? “Oh it shows poor judgement” Literally shut the f*k up… his judgement made NVIDIA the behemoth it is. Glad you get to backseat his personal life because judgement as it pertains to relationships is something you can actually relate to.
Removing him as CEO at this point in history is as the kids would say dumb af. Absolute garbage decision.
Did you hear about the container of gpus that was lost between california and texas?
I heard that if it's not found, someone is going to get REALLY F... a spy type F one lol.
I've been writing about history for over 20 years, and this feels like an inflection point. Some day a long-form essay will describe Huang's prescient foray into machine learning, the rise of AI, the resulting bubble, Ed Zitron's prolonged diatribes, Huang's infidelity that leads to the downfall of his company, Anthropic's disappointing IPO, OpenAI's subsequent disastrous IPO, a reckoning for AI's plagiarism, and then there are bubble bits all over everybody.
Some group is trying to make a big deal out of this. I mean which spy posts so publicly their itineraries/photos/business meetings, on wechat? Come on!
My armchair analysis is that going forward with this will most likely make the AI bubble pop.
Depending on how Jensen takes it, this could be the catalyst to steer AI in a new direction. Companies will line up to scoop him up, if not fight each other to get him. He is the head of the most valuable company, he has the tightest connection to the US government, it won't take a minute before Mudita* becomes a new company being fast-tracked to the top.
It won’t be the sex it will be the illicit sales of GPUs to China. That domino topples the next and all of the “sales” of goods to AI companies financed by the sellers. There’s a whole lot of paper sales boosting revenues while losing money with each sale going on.
If the big boys can fly to LSJ to eat "beef jerky" and fully avoid prosecution, then this is a CIA coup, because virtually nobody really cares about how he warmed his stick. They are probably mad at him for moving product to the Chinese, who they can't control as easily. They are going to install a puppet they can properly control. And "pace the frontier" by sucking the oxygen out of the room for open source and local models.
My tinfoil hat theory is that this is all orchestrated. They knew about the affair for months, but withheld it. My theory is that with the midterms results, rather than risk facing accountability as things unravel "naturally", they have this big bombshell as a "get out of blame free" card. That way everyone can collectively say "It wasn't _my_ fault things fell apart. I was doing my best, honest!"
Well, Mr. Huang sure seems to have turned his life upside down.
The extramarital affairs, while salacious, are largely immaterial.
The key issue seems to be not merely was he sleeping with someone who was not his wife, but rather, that he was sleeping with a Chinese spy who was rather essentially running a export smuggling operation to China in violation of United States law specifically crafted to recognize these Nvidia chips as sufficiently high-end to merit a national security concern.
And apparently, the United States government knew about it. But never told him they knew. What Huang personally knew is not clear, and is likely now to be subject to inquiry from a Congress that has also been turned upside down, ushering in a wave of AI skeptics while Huang was notable at the White House's "AI summit" for his almost singular bullishness. Howard Lutnick personally shut down an investigation, concerns from the CIA were not acted upon.
Donald Trump has seen people try to turn his life upside down given salacious scandals. Perhaps the President of the United States and Lutnick (among the well-heeled class known to have lied about their Epstein island connections) simply do not care, given both openly embrace Huang as a source of profit. It's also not clear the President shares the United States natsec consensus (what some of his followers term "the swamp") that actually sees Xi or China as a threat. After all, he plans to have what is likely to be another highly docile visit to the Chinese leader next week.
Put another way, it seems the federal government did not act as turning Mr. Huang's life upside down may have been calculated to turn the entire economy and their fortunes (both personal and political) upside down. Perhaps there is a backroom deal with China the President, Lutnick and Huang are secretly accommodating? I mean why would they not at least warn him?
The present irony is of course, for whatever aligned reasons that led to this hush-hush arrangement, the cat is out of the bag now. One wonders if the consequences this threatens to unleash in the present moment would have been mitigated if instead of trying to pretend it wasn't happening, the powers that be had acted with greater preemption. Perhaps so it goes. The best laid plans of this sort are often turned upside down.
Infidelity with a Chinese spy. Quite a different beast.
I do agree with anyone saying that this feels fishy as fuck. They can punish Jensen without firing the man who made the company. I'm sensing fuckery afoot or that the board is operating with a lot more information.
It's easy to blame a person like dumb Jensen who slept with the Chinese spy.
I don't see anyone accusing China of setting up such a trap. China always denies ofc, though all these scummy things eventaully comes out to be true, and by then everyone forgets.
As soon as they baited Huang, it was all win-win for them. China would be able to either get access to secrets and/or chips they wouldn't have before, or they'd decapitate one of the most important companies in the U.S. The public outcry to this is exactly as planned.
Truly ridiculous and anyone with their pitchforks out needs to get a clue.
Maybe now Apple and nvidia can rekindle their relationship after the bubble pops. Apple could come to the rescue, secure a heavy investment and enter into the cloud computing business.
I feel this is way over amplified to further restrict chinese models/open weights development by further controlling the company with a new CEO.. seriously, who cares what he’s doing in his personal life, I am not a big fan of him much as he should have made GPUs further more accessible to consumers, but he’s definitely not an evil AI lunatic like some AI ceo bros we see now.
Any ousting will probably be for having an affair with a direct report. At many companies, having an 'inappropriate relationship with a customer' isn't a policy violation unless there's also evidence of undue influence, so it's more conditional and complicated. Whereas just the existence of an inappropriate relationship with a direct report is a serious violation.
From an HR and legal perspective, if Alice was a spy, Jensen was arguably the targeted 'victim' of a foreign intelligence operation. While it was certainly very dumb and negligent, it may not have been a policy violation or may only have been a violation of company policies like mishandling confidential information or not following IT security policies. Those aren't usually "Fire the CEO Now" things, while slamming the sheets with a direct report absolutely requires some kind of immediate action.
The real question is who wants Jensen gone? Because the first leak was clearly intentional and reportedly placed by 'senior White House sources', citing a confidential NSC report. Now the second leak of the inappropriate affair happens immediately after. This was a designed sequence. Both of the underlying events are several months old. Given the facts, I think the most likely source is 'China Trade/AI Hawks' in the White House (possibly the NSC). The reasoning being that Jensen has generally been trying to minimize restrictions on selling AI to China (which is, arguably, part of his job).
He has to go because he opposes restrictions to run Chinese open weight models on NVIDIAs GPUs. He said so in an Axios interview in July - "The industry needs open models, science needs open models, cybersecurity needs open models". [1]
Good riddance. All these csuite people think they are so uniquely capable but if he gets kicked out nothing will change except we'll, hopefully, hear less about jackets at tech presentations.
Also to all the people saying how terrible this will be, would you really want someone running your company who can't keep his word to his wife? Maybe it is a quaint idea in 2026 but I think people who break their word shouldn't be trusted, particularly to be in positions of power.
The reports that he had a second affair with a subordinate, if true, are disgusting and would lead to termination at any other company. He should not get a pass. How someone who has had so much success could have such poor judgement is a mystery to me. It’s sad, he accomplished so much.
What is the endgame of this completely cumbersome and obvious CIA journalist and intelligence community rollout of this narrative surrounding Jensen and Nvidia? Why would they nuke the credibility of America's only AI chip company and hand the future of AI to China? Do they actually think this will gain them control over AI?
I think their concern is that NVidia is acquiescent and in support of policies which give China better AI chips, which is the core of the matter regarding the honeypot scandal. The goal, if it is an op, is to get a CEO who will comply more readily with export controls.
Americans voted for rooting out corruption. The Congressional committees that review stuff like corruptly quashing an investigation into your lover company [1] are changing hands. Jensen coming clean right after the election was, within the range of options he had, smart.
(Folks run to blow whistles when they realize they're involved in something they may pay the price for isn't new.
Also, have you seen our IC? The days of the CIA running a competent conspiracy, if they ever existed, are behind us.)
What is up with people who seem to love corruption?
Huang had an affair with a Chinese spy, as well as an affair with someone he manages. Either one of these would be grounds for dismissal at any company I've worked at. Committing both of these offenses shows appalling judgment by Huang.
Firing him seems like a very logical conclusion, not some CIA Illuminati bullshit conspiracy theory.
They’re just reporting on things that are true and have been kept secret inappropriately. That’s not a “narrative”.
You’re looking for a conspiracy when this is a pretty straightforward story. Jensen’s credibility is shot. Of course they’re preparing contingency plans.
perhaps they acquired or feign having acquired fundamental cryptographic breakthroughs, hoping the "bubble" spreads to China / India / ... to convert a few moths of cryptographic lead into perhaps a few years....
Unless there’s an evidence of him being compromised, this is crazy. I’m total outsider and don’t know Nvidia copropare rule machinery, but from perceived perspective that feels like significant blow to the company.
I expect shit show funnier than when OpenAI tried to put Altman with same result.
Even shift leaders at McDonalds need to sign various workplace policies, including policies about relations with their direct reports. So yeah, this is not exactly a surprise or something unheard of.
The NYT reports that Huang was caught on video with this second affair when they were together in San Jose.
Seems like this video and the first affair with the spy was a classic blackmail operation used against him as I said before [0] and Huang likely said no to the wrong person.
https://archive.is/ZmOEH
I recently recalled Nvidia's rather strange reaction to the Gamers Nexus investigation into GPU smuggling [0]. Found it somewhat strange at the time how incredibly agitated the reaction seemed to have been, given Nvidia could sell the same GPUs for the same price essentially instantly without the Chinese market. Their reaction wasn't merely a denial, dismissal or even silence, but very irrationally sounding for a company of their size and standing.
Why not just sell to not-sanctioned entities, ensure compliance to the best of your abilities and otherwise keep your head down? Again, wasn't like they struggled to find buyers for their chips.
Considering Megaspeed, I now see this in a very different light. Him cheating is personal and I wish the affected members of any family of a cheater the best, but not relevant for us outsiders.
Being honey trapped very bad securities wise, but he'd be a victim (and evidence for why we shouldn't discount Mistral in the frontier lab race [1]). If sanctions avoidance went all the way to the top, that is hard to negate even for a board that is interested in keeping him. At that stage he was neither honey trapped nor "merely horny"...
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H3xQaf7BFI
[1] https://time.com/archive/7146565/hollandes-popularity-goes-u...
This is the same as asking Apple to ignore Chinese market, when China has more active iPhone user than the whole US population.
I am not entirely sure I buy the Spy thesis. And Alice's husband knew this all along. Which makes the whole thing more doggy.
And Jensen's view isn't wrong. There is no way you could contain China via import restrictions. Not when they are the second-largest economy and still rapidly advancing. There are better ways to handle this, one huge ban isn't one.
But I wholeheartedly disagree with ousting Jensen. And given the timing of all these releases, I wouldn't be surprised someone inside the government wants to bring him down.
It was so important the security services didn't even bother to warn him when they found out about the affair. You can say 'suspected' spy about anyone. Classic spin language.
The question you have to be asking is why was the memo leaked now and what political game are they playing.
In terms of ousting him - I know nothing about him as a person - but he has lead Nvidia for 30 years during which time it has wildy succeed in not an easy market - whatever this is about, it's not about competence.
Aren't open-weight models good for Nvidia's business? Chinese labs releasing models that people can run themselves on Nvidia GPUs creates more potential buyers of Nvidia GPUs.
I don't think it's good for Nvidia if everyone has to go through a few labs APIs to get access to AI inference.
It makes sense to me why they would benefit from chinese labs having more compute.
> Why not just sell to not-sanctioned entities, ensure compliance to the best of your abilities and otherwise keep your head down?
Because a good exec plans long-term. Presidents and political parties in office are temporary. It takes much more to get a foothold in the market.
Off topic: Big ups for Gamers Nexus and their investigative journalism.
If he was actually a victim, it would be gross negligence on him and/or his board. CEO's at $100B market cap companies should be undergoing regular, advanced training on spearfishing as well a due diligence on such large chip deals.
> Found it somewhat strange at the time how incredibly agitated the reaction seemed to have been, given Nvidia could sell the same GPUs for the same price essentially instantly without the Chinese market.
"For the same price" may be an incorrect assumption. The middlem[ae]n in the smuggling process could have been willing to pay a higher price to Nvidia because the final destination customer (the Chinese government?) was willing to pay a premium.
When you have a fixed supply (which GPU production basically is), the more demand the more you can charge and the more you can make. It’s not about finding buyers, it’s about creating even more demand so you can ask more than ever for the GPUs you’re making.
Being a victim doesn't make him less guilty in the eyes of the law. Even if a judge finds him to be 100% misled and honey trapped, they will still hold him accountable. If it turns out he expressly avoided sanctions and probably worse leaked military secrets then he might be going to jail. And possibly a small Nvidia top heavy pyramid with him. Anyone who followed orders will go with him, it's going to be more painful than "just" losing the CEO.
You must be new to nvidia, Petty has been their middle name for a very long time now.
The U.S. blocking advanced chip sales to China has ensured China increased their efforts to someday no longer need them.
In effort for us to see clear eyed, it would be good to stop assuming someone is a spy without a shred of credible evidence. Avoiding trade restrictions by routing them through another country does not indicate spy craft.
Those are not the main issues. Only two core issues. The national security aspect, and the mother of all lawsuits by activist investors of NVIDIA, that the company, their current CEO and the Board is about to get hit by.
NVDA stock lost hundreds of billions of dollars. Erased ALL gains from the last year, and there are at least four or five materially significant investor information, that NVIDIA should have disclosed as risk to investors and did not.
For a company with 4 Trillion in stock market value, this is an absolute wet dream for the lawyers who specialize on this type of lawsuits.
And its telling that even Trump basically refused to back him, and said the FBI is investigating and "he hopes there is nothing there..." what is telling, so there is a lot. So he is gone. Its just taking time for the board to find a CEO.
So the affair is going on for 3 years...and it was her husband that made the introductions [1].
Trump, Rubio and the security community knew about this for at least one year, and knew NVIDIA was in all likelihood, engaging or tolerating criminal activity on violating export controls that come with a few years of prison.
Look at this [2] excellent work from Bloomberg. For Jensen Huang as a dual Taiwanese and United States citizen, to completely ignoring what is going in the South China Sea, the Chinese threats of invading Twain, and be so forthcoming on saying "China is not our enemy" like you see here: https://youtu.be/JW5s9Md4U2U?t=1058
While failing to disclose a relationship with CEO of the main company traffic forbidden NVIDIA GPUs to China, shows a recklessness that probably meant to side observers of the intelligence community, he had to justifiably be taken down.
And its telling this is a takedown from within the government and the intelligence community, because most is coming from the New York Times. They seem to be ahead of everybody else, and is well know it has always been a mouthpiece of the US intelligence community when they want to leak something convenient.
[1]-"A Mystery Businessman Introduced Jensen Huang to His Paramour. It Was Her Husband." - https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/a-mystery-businessman-introduced...
[2]-"The Rise and Reckoning of Jensen Huang" - https://youtu.be/JW5s9Md4U2U
If it's not due to a love affair (which is now public), and not just working for PRC out of ideological readons, it might be some kind of secret pressure, some kind of a secret hostage situation, so serious as to force a CEO of the world's top company to act so recklessly.
He made a strong case that the sanctions harmed his long term ecosystem lock in play.
Those statements sound different today, but I think they are both commercially reasonable desires and follow naturally from his very successful playbook over the last twenty years: CUDA built that company. Or at least got it to its first trillion.
There's news of another affair involving an Nvidia employee. He doesn't really look like a victim in that case.
I said on this a few days ago that he should be thinking about resigning: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50418016
At the time I didn't think it would happen because of impact on Nvidia's stock price, but at that point we didn't know about his second affair - with Kimberly Powell.
I'd suggest this latest revelation makes his position untenable, especially if the board found out about the second affair via a source other than Huang himself. He should have spilled the beans on that when the first affair came out, not that it would necessarily have saved him, but withholding the information - if that's what he did - should condemn him. It's another serious lapse in judgement and a failure of integrity that is not befitting of one of the most powerful corporate leaders on earth.
Goodness knows how his wife is feeling at this point. Certainly makes his apology from a couple of days back ring rather hollow.
EDIT: The fact that someone like Jensen Huang - who I'd previously considered to be an incredibly smart guy as opposed to a nitwit - can somehow completely implode his life in almost the most ridiculous way imaginable does give me some hope that at least some of the troublemaker ne'er do wells that have wielded so much power over us all over the past decade or so might also experience some just desserts in the not too distant future.
Someone mentioned that the 2nd affair was known about by the board for a long time, and this is pretty common in boards. They don't really care, they just keep it in their pocket until they need the ammo to fire someone. It sounds right to me, affairs are very hard to keep secret for someone that public, and then this news dropped right after the first one.
As bad as cheating is morally, we don't really know how his wife feels or if they had some open relationship type arrangement, and it's not really material to his running the company because it's been doing very well during all of that. I don't think it makes much sense to fire someone over this, it's more like a power struggle with other parties vying for control.
> who I'd previously considered to be an incredibly smart guy
This is a common fallacy. Often being incredibly smart in a few areas leaves you incredibly naive in others. If nothing else, your success in some domains will lead to overconfidence in others.
Being smart and having full cognitive control over the animal part of your brain are completely orthogonal to each other - loads of intellectuals were also massive uncontrollable sexual deviants in one way or another.
He probably didn't come clean about the second one because there's actually 5+ and if he came clean about everything he'd definitely be done
> who I'd previously considered to be an incredibly smart guy
To an extremely ignorant person on the matter like me, and genuinely asking, what has he achieved in terms of engineering and development, that makes you think he's smart? Or do you mean in the sense of knowing its way through business and politics? Idk I always find difficult to believe that people really think that CEOs are smart, when they commonly are not involved what so ever in any scientific leading or research, and just funnel money to a product that make them richer.
But I prefer to believe I'm wrong and would like to hear form the other side.
Yeah, he should leave. Next earnings call is Nov 17, he needs to be out by then so that he is not a distraction (CFO could do the call).
As a large shareholder and world's 7th [now 12th] richest person he would certainly retain a lot of power, even with a new CEO. Time to start his own personal VC firm or something.
There is some nepotism at Nvidia, those people are likely going to be very annoyed with him since their positions may not now be tenable.
TSLA's board also needs to do its job.
His Dwarkesh interview should have tipped everyone off that he had a, rather powerful, irrational side.
> It's another serious lapse in judgement and a failure of integrity that is not befitting of one of the most powerful corporate leaders on earth.
failure of integrity is the operating mode for the most powerful corporate leaders on earth.
> can somehow completely implode his life in almost the most ridiculous way imaginable
oh boy, get outside and take a deep fresh breath of air. how limited can life experience be if someone feels that having an sexual affair is about the same like completely imploding ones own life..
What is wrong with Jensen's sex life? It seems to disturb you.
Does he have to be a monk to head this company?
Have you checked with his wife that they are not in an open relationship, or polyamorous?
The security aspect is a totally different story, but the rest is his personal life and none of your business.
> The fact that someone like Jensen Huang - who I'd previously considered to be an incredibly smart guy as opposed to a nitwit - can somehow completely implode his life in almost the most ridiculous way imaginable...
Mmm. Infidelity is very common. [0] What's fairly uncommon is getting caught in a way that requires the infidelity to be acknowledged. Just ask the French. ;)
[0] ...it's almost as if monogamy is an unnatural state of being for many (but definitely not all!) people...
I am not sure why several top comments here express sadness for the wife and affected loved ones. Do you actually feel bad? Why is it necessary to bring this pseudo sympathy to this topic? The topics are: what are the impacts to the stock market as a whole as there's a precarious arrangement at the moment with circular financing and Nvidia being a disproportionate piece of the stock market, national security and many other problems that affect hundreds of millions of people. But let us weep for the billionaire families of this soap drama. Get over yourselves.
I'm sure he was thinking about it. doesn't mean he has to. now he probably will
> might also experience some just desserts in the not too distant future.
I don't know. Some people have too much power to be held accountable for their actions, e.g. Trump
Here's why Jensen is critical to Nvidia as well as the industry:
Without Jensen Huang's vision, Nvidia might have remained primarily a graphics chip maker, and the deep learning revolution would not have arrived when it did. Long before deep neural networks took off, Huang backed the use of Nvidia GPUs for scientific and general-purpose computing, including the development of CUDA. In 2012, Krizhevsky, Sutskever, and Hinton used Nvidia GPUs and CUDA to train AlexNet, whose breakthrough performance helped ignite the modern deep learning boom. Nvidia's investment in programmable GPUs helped make that breakthrough possible.
The critical vision was that GPUs could become a platform for computing beyond graphics—and that Nvidia should invest in making them programmable before a large market for that use existed.
The board should punish Huang without punishing the industry and the nation. For example by cutting his salary and stock to 0 for 2 years.
Viewing people like this is unhealthy. Nvidia could have failed instead of 3dfx, and that it didn't involved some luck, not just the magical clairvoyance of one individual.
And anyway, whether Nvidia created CUDA and deep learning are all moot at this point.
His behavior demonstrates poor judgement. Demonstrating poor judgement is the best reason to fire an executive. More companies should do it.
That doesn't explain why Jensen is critical to NVDA. It explain why he WAS.
You are definitely overselling him. If you are a hardware maker, you naturally want to sell to as many markets as possible. It doesn’t take a huge leap of faith.
This reads as inauthentic astroturfing. The man was compromised by intelligence.
He was sleeping with staff and a suspected Chinese spy. No one of character can respect or trust him anymore.
NVIDIA went nowhere for much of its history. Just look at its stock chart for most of its history.
They got a major upside due to two things that happened outside of NVIDIA: Crypto currency and AI, both of this found GPUs to be the best available technology to retrofit. Most of the initial work in retrofitting GPUs to these workloads happened outside of NVIDIA.
So, it's not Jensen but the Crypto and AI that propelled NVIDIA.
Visionaries you can get a dime a dozen. Worshipping individuals like this is not healthy.
I feel like you're overstating NVidia's influence. OpenCL with AMD GPUs was also just fine around that time, we were all figuring out how much you could port and get a crazy speed up for not much effort. NVidia's ecosystem was particularly annoying to deal with on Linux. Maybe we'd have gotten AlexNet a year later without Cuda.
Back in 2002-2003 there were folks attempting to get GPUs to do non graphics tasks because of the amount of potential compute available. I recall running a sorting algorithm on a Radeon at the time. It wasn't quick but it worked.
The idea was out there and Nvidia leaned into it first. GPU compute was going to happen regardless, but credit to Nvidia they actively developed it seeing its future uses.
> Huang backed the use of Nvidia GPUs for scientific and general-purpose computing, including the development of CUDA
Very well, but backing CUDA is an old decision that has paid off and will continue to pay off because Nvidia has operationalized it. It can and will continue to run without Jensen Huang.
> The board should punish Huang without punishing the industry and the nation. For example by cutting his salary and stock to 0 for 2 years.
What sort of punishment is this to somebody who is already worth hundreds of billions of dollars?
the only things the "AI industry" has done is price normal people out of computing, give justification for companies to lay people off, fill the internet with slop, contribute to centralizing capital, and add a transaction cost to everything people do with their computers. i couldn't care less about the "industry" that focuses on profits or the "nation" that is more committed to overseas wars than providing basic infrastructure.
I think we are yet to know how deep the rabbit hole goes.
> For example by cutting his salary and stock to 0 for 2 years.
That wouldn't really punish him. It makes no difference if you have 10 billion dollars or 90 billion dollars, your life is the same.
Nope. These are inexplicable things that point to Jensen allegedly collaborating with a foreign actor and nation. The board should punish Huang and save our industry and the nation. Plain and simple.
You describe why Jensen WAS critical for Nvidia and the industry.
> by cutting his salary and stock to 0 for 2 years
That's less than a slap on the wrist.
Sure, and Jobs was a visionary for launching the iPhone, yet Apple has still done incredibly well under Cook
He had a nice jacket but I think it was Ian Buck that was actually useful?
They should also give him a slap on the wrist while they're at it
Thank you for the insight, Claude.
The man cannot even keep his pants secure - how can he secure GPUs from being smuggled?
He's an extremely skilled shovel seller, but let's not pretend he foresaw the reason for every hole being dug. Most universities taught CUDA classes way back. Did they also see deep learning and cryptocurrencies coming? Supercomputers did exist and where all about FLOPS and that was a legit market. Intel released their Xeon Phi cards around the same time. Ironically, while deep learning started with consumer graphics cards, it could have started on super computers and right now it's back to super computers anyway.
Sleep with a subordinate. Sleep with Chinese spy. Sell export restricted chips to Chinese shell company (likely knowingly). Lobby on behalf of China.
No one is irreplaceable
This is some AI-generated slop.
Nobody is irreplaceable. And this includes Jensen Huang.
You can say (rightly) that he has vastly contributed to NVidia's success. Well, he's been well compensated for that to the tune of almost $200 billion. Will the company fall apart without him now? No. No, it won't.
Also, if they fire him today, nothing will really change for a few years anyway. The short-to-medium plans are already locked in.
>Here's why
stopped reading
> For example by cutting his salary and stock to 0 for 2 years.
Oh no he will no longer be able to afford anything and everything he wants and only be able to afford anything and everything he wants.
Great punishment. /s
Here’s why Jensen needs to go:
I’m a gamer and I want my fucking GPUs back.
People arguing the technical and business merits of what Jensen brought to the company aren't getting how serious these allegations against him are.
The US Government is using NVIDIA chips for all sort of stuff across all classification levels. Subsequently, Jensen has deep relationships within the government that warrants additional scrutiny.
Him authorizing his company to sell massive amounts of chips to a restricted country is massively illegal, but companies work around that and have since forever. Doesn't make it less illegal, but that's only a small part of the problem.
The real problem is that nobody knows how much sensitive info Jensen gave this woman or how far that info spread.
It's really about fairness. Us technical salespeople take training that tells us all of the ways that deals with restricted countries happen and how we will immediately get fired ten ways to Sunday if we forego that to close quota. Also, normies with clearances tell their partners stuff they shouldn't. Stuff they think isn't really sensitive since it seems so minute. This isn't bad until said partner spills at the wrong place and wrong time. That's how normies get sent to prison for treason. Loose lips sink ships and all that. [^0]
Getting fired -- WHICH HE ABSOLUTELY SHOULD BE -- is the least of his problems.
[^0] Examples:
- https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/article/retired-us-army-officer.... Army officer leaks secrets through dating website to sound cool; gets six years
- https://www.foxnews.com/us/pentagon-leaker-jack-teixeira-rec.... Leaked secrets about Ukraine war through Discord to sound cool; gets 15 years
- https://www.westernjournal.com/ex-cia-officer-accused-leakin.... CIA officer leaks stuff to journalist girlfriend; gets 10 years
The claim that he sold massive amounts of chips to a restricted country as being "massively illegal" is absolutely false.
NVIDIA is licensed by the United States government to sell GPUs to China, and they do so at a rate well under their licensed quantity.
Read up on 91 CFR 1684 which directly contradicts your claims.
Your most important argument is categorically false and completely unresearched.
Your subsequent claims also have no basis: you cite a bunch of cases in which people leaked sensitive information as equivalent to the Jensen case, where the affair was with the CEO of a customer they were legally selling product to, and where we have no evidence that any leaks occurred.
> The real problem is that nobody knows how much sensitive info Jensen gave this woman or how far that info spread.
Why? If he's that important then our own intelligence community ought to be doing stuff to fight espionage - doing counterintelligence, generally just making sure he's ok and providing support to him, etc. This is not some random guy. Did we just forget to do that?
If we're not doing that, then are foreign countries just after all of our important people? Forget sexpionage - what about hacking their computers? Do we have zero ability to combat any of this, whereas other countries can do whatever they want?
Yes. A lot of folks on here were initially thinking the issue with the Chinese spy was a sort of “oh funny how silly” type issue. For someone in his position with Nvidia a strategically important company for the US that’s a grave error of judgment. Add then yesterday revelations of additional indiscretions and this suddenly a growing pattern of incredibly poor judgement.
It appears almost certain now that he’s finished. The lack of any succession planning (which also is too looks like more poor judgment) appears to be the only thing now slowing down his removal by the board.
The relationship has been to a degree known to even the public for years, it's extremely unlikely that intelligence services didn't know about it until now and that they'd permit it if they'd consider it a possibility that Jensen could leak any important IP
But this is not the domain of the board, is it? Whether he put the national security at risk is up to US Government to decide. The moral side of the question is for the people involved to decide. For the board to decide is the company will be better off w/o him.
On the contrary, the allegations are tabloid level nonsense. Jensen does not even posses any "sensitive info". He is just a ceo for a company that designs chips, something China has no trouble doings. What China lacks is the manufacturing knowhow of the most advanced lithography machines which will also allow them to manufacture the most advanced chips locally. Huang however does not have a single clue about that chip manufacturing.
The amount of times the word “allegation” and “suspicion” and the way this soap opera is flowing around screams that its all smokescreen. We don’t even know if this women was a spy… even that is an “allegation”.
The facts are very scarce and yet this has been blown out of proportion.
Maybe I am wrong :-) time will tell.
Nah.
if you fire him, he can go work for China. Or he’ll go work for Elon. I just have this feeling you aren’t explicit with your implicit motive.
> The real problem is that nobody knows how much sensitive info Jensen gave this woman or how far that info spread.
Non-American here. Isn’t it your goverment’s/CIA’s job to detect Chinese agents and conduct counter-intelligence. Individuals (CEO or not) can’t do that. I heard that they already knew for a long time (as they must have). Then this becomes a hit job with political/business motivations rather than a serious national security issue as promoted to the public. Why don’t you all talk that obvious angle instead? 50s Red Scare rhetorics or a 70s James Bond narrative is politically more appealing I guess.
But we live in 2020s. We live under constant surveillance today. All national secrets are in digital environment (not on a microfilm in a CEOs leather jacket). Also Chinese spies, who require a visa to enter US, can be easily tracked the moment they get in touch with any VIP.
And for the sexual/marriage life of individuals, suddenly everyone goes back to 50s standards. (Note: This is extra interesting because I heard there is a “sex cult” attracting high profile AI engineers in SV. And everyone seems ok with it. But that’s probably another honeypot operation.)
They guy has been running Nvidia for over 30 years and has billions of dollars - what would make him want to sell out to China? What possibly could they offer him? You actually think she was like, "if you tell me secrets then I'll sleep with you"
A lot of people with ulterior motives want to throw him under the bus, don't buy into those narratives so easily. Use some common sense first.
What's so magical about selling to the USG that it should create some sort of obligation on the part of a civilian CEO?
Remember, Huang isn't an army officer, or someone in intelligence working at the Pentagon, or a CIA officer.
Surely he gets to do what he likes. You are not at war with China. Treason is not relevant here, nor are graphics cards some sort of ultra-secret domain. What NVIDIA does is easy, it's just that the package is not so easy to reproduce, what with it having many aspects, from software to chips and fast interconnect.
One thing is the China question. Another thing is the question of open source AI.
The latter is a question of how centralized modern AI-based computing is. And to me that is almost a fight between good and evil.
A marriage between an Anthropic/OpenAI duopoly and the national security establishment is a marriage made in hell.
What’s the non-cynical explanation here which doesn’t involve Jensen having ruffled feathers he shouldn’t have?
Elon regularly gets away with way more morally (and perhaps legally) egregious stuff and yet he has increasingly cemented his position. Partly through indirect leverage from his companies and partly from buying access to power directly.
Even Sam managed to stage an employee revolt to stay in control.
For founders of companies perhaps the lesson keeps repeating itself - keep control of your companies no matter what.
I’m not sure this is good for shareholders and the larger AI ecosystem either. Corporate governance is obviously important especially for mature industries.
But Jensen has consistently demonstrated ability to keep Nvidia alive during dire times and eventually delivered the biggest profits in corporate history.
Edit: some cynical explanations:
1. China hawks in tech and admin wanted him out
2. Nvidia competitors found oppo research too juicy to ignore and sequenced a set of destructive reporting
3. People in AI found Jensen’s grip of the supply chain too annoying and wanted to loosen it somehow
4. Internal politics / someone wanting Jensen’s job
5. Some combination of the above
You're making the assumption implicitly when comparing to Musk that this should be fair or about morality.
That ship has sailed.
Huang has a problem now because his ability to advocate for NVIDIA in a politically charged environment is damaged.
He can't be an effective CEO for NVIDIA if there's a plausible (even if unproven) suspicion that he's on a geopolitical adversary's side.
He was very strongly advocating for selling to China before this. At that point, it could be understood simply as him looking out for NVIDIA's business interests. Now, there's doubt sowed in everyone's mind about whether it really was just that.
Maybe you don't care, because you think selling to China is the right thing to do - fine, there can be different views on this.
But, a lot of influential people very much do not hold that view, and he needs to be able to effectively communicate to them also.
I think you should consider the genuine do-gooders inside the federal government who wanted to blow the lid on this for a year but were blocked by the president. Now that he’s weak, they went for it.
There are three forms of accountability here, that Elon and other newer tech founders meticulously calcified themselves away from
First
The board. Elon and his brother are the board, and some sycophants. They are also heavily weighted shareholders.
Jensen doesn’t have that.
Second
The wife, who also is entitled to significant shareholdings. Musk avoided that, and major shareholders are already in trusts, his private foundation, his donor advised fund, and just outside of any future marriage to begin with. The market doesn’t care what a disagreement with his partners mean
Third
The state, and the product. Elon sells cars and it isnt the backbone of economies. The rockets and starlink do pursue waivers or avoid sanctioned countries. Indiscretions were already paid for in the campaign.
So “canceling or not” masquerades as a societal view or tacit consent, when it is solely a matter of who your masters are and if they will stand by you or have any capability of a choice.
I would be surprised if every publicly traded American company didn’t have policies against fraternizing with subordinates or customers. Every one I’ve worked for banned this or required oversight. Additionally, companies of this scale would almost certainly have policies demanding due diligence with customers. But given Jensen is the founder, I’d expect he could survive that.
What’s really hurting Jensen here are the accusations of sanctions violations. That can impact Nvidia. It’s already hurting the stock price. That hurts the investors. A 20% drop while the rest of the market is fine is probably enough to oust him.
6. Huang's public persona wasn't unhinged enough, and too Asian, to withstand such a scandal.
> 1. China hawks in tech and admin wanted him out
kinda weird China would want him out, considering he's been begging to sell chips to them
6. China wants to implode the US AI capability and crash their stock markets
Cui bono? China. Incredibly low cost op. She doesn't even have to be a spy, just the rumour is sufficient for the puritanical US media, china hawks, and anti-AI lobby to do the rest.
Eh, the hammer will down on Musk for his Ukraine betrayal.
> Elon regularly gets away with way more morally (and perhaps legally) egregious stuff and yet he has increasingly cemented his position. Partly through indirect leverage from his companies and partly from buying access to power directly.
I'm not an Elon fan at all, but ... while he sure sleeps around, I have not heard he slept with subordinates, or Chinese spies.
Nvidia is one of the most critical strategic assets in the USA today, underpinning economic dominance and national defence. Leadership at this level usually operates under an implicit shield. Normal procedure would be to cover-up. A sudden loss of Nvidia's founder and CEO at this juncture is a blow to American strategic posture and a windfall to China.
I think the real story is not the affair, which was already reported in asian media in 2024, but what specific catalyst broke that protective shield and made continued containment untenable.
2 affairs - one with a sub-ordinate and one is a foreign agent who got chip flow through to a sanctioned country.
Do we even know thats the end of this? This is only whats public at this point... It doesn't feel like the end of it but more like beginning to middle.
I'm trying to figure out who pushed this story through or if this is just bubbling up naturally.
Seems like this happened just after the US midterm elections, maybe there's something there?
Three things are happening that seem relevant for timing.
Midterms over, major loss of power for faction Huang seems linked to
Distillation getting harder
Anthropic IPO
Your last sentence lacks clarity for me
Which affair?
If Apple can survive losing Jobs, Nvidia can definitely survive losing Huang.
A "windfall to China?" Jensen Huang seems to have been conspiring with Alice Huang to illegally sell high-end NVIDIA chips to China. That's a windfall to China.
let me get this straight :
standing on its' head your statement reads as :
"If the US doesn't allow government intervention into the business dealing of important private entities during times of scandal, to protect lies and initiate cover-ups, then China will win."
do I interpret that correctly?
Gates, Bezos, and now Huang ? Let's see, whose left ? Zuck ? I'm sure there are plenty of skeleton's hiding in his closet ...
CIA hawks. Self-inflicted wounds again.
llm slop
Nuanced opinions
1) The fact that he cheated on his wife isn't particularly relevant, other than the lack of a prenup meaning she owns half his stock (4% of the company).
2) The fact that he slept with a subordinate shows bad judgment, but isn't a huge deal (although improper and opens up potential quid-pro-quo lawsuits)
3) The fact that he slept with a Chinese spy is a huge deal.
4) The fact that there are allegations that he was aware that they were selling illegally to China is a huge deal.
5) Even though those export control were arguably bad, the law must be respected and the being seen ignoring the law would have a chilling effect on appearance of a fair democracy.
6) There is definitely a demonstration of lack of judgment (getting caught selling to china rather than maintaining plausible deniability), (sleeping with a spy rather than just hiring an escort)
7) Despite all of this, in theory he would arguably still be the most profitable CEO (if he doesn't get charged with a crime, AND if there are no other issues to discover) in the medium term, but where there's smoke there may be fire. Does this raise the odds of circular financing and other shenanigans?
> The fact that he slept with a subordinate shows bad judgment, but isn't a huge deal
Most companies have policies that strongly discourage this, or forbid it, and for good reason.
It's a big enough deal that former CEOs of Nestle, Norfolk Southern, McDonald's and Intel were either terminated or resigned after similar relationships were uncovered.
> the law must be respected and the being seen ignoring the law would have a chilling effect on appearance of a fair democracy.
While I appreciate the spirit of this comment, I think that this ship sailed long time ago when United States elected a convicted felon twice, who then proceeded to virtually break all the laws with no repercussion.
>3) The fact that he slept with a Chinese spy is a huge deal.
I'm 50/50 on whether or not Alice Huang is actually a spy for the Chinese government, or rather just a social climber and opportunist. She certainly didn't hide her perceived closeness to Jensen Huang, and in fact actively flaunted it on her social media.
Furthermore, I think it possible if not likely that Jensen has had more than just 2 extramarital liaisons, and if more were to come out, then IMO that would actually shift the likelihood towards Jensen simply being a lustful old man taking sexual advantage of his power and status, rather than being honeypotted by some Chinese intelligence operation.
> The fact that he cheated on his wife isn't particularly relevant
Him being married is relevant: he opened himself to extortion/blackmail, assuming his wife was not aware of his affairs. Anyone who knew that was happening would have had enormous leverage over him.
Even if no one actually did so it still demonstrates a massive risk.
> 3) The fact that he slept with a Chinese spy is a huge deal.
I'll admit I haven't really been following this story, but I ASSUME he didn't know she was a spy? (Given a good portion of a spy's job is making sure you don't know they are a spy) So why is this an issue either?
2 is a huge deal, enough to get you fired in almost all instances in Corporate America for that alone.
I think the revelations about his children working for the company as well aren't helping him much as well.
> the law must be respected and the being seen ignoring the law would have a chilling effect on appearance of a fair democracy.
While I appreciate the spirit of this comment, I think that this ship sailed long ago when United States elected a convicted felon twice, who then proceeded to virtually break all the laws with no repercussion.
I agree with you on the first and second point. Perhaps you can argue it's in bad taste to have an affair but the private matters of adult lives should be of no interest to outsiders.
> the law must be respected
I wouldn’t call this particularly nuanced, certainly if they were sold to intermediaries not subject to the export controls (Singapore)
Yes and no. I think the board knew about the smuggling and now that it's out they need to sacrifice the CEO. Probably, they still trust him but that does not matter here, saving the company's valuation and trying to evade fines is more important.
> other than the lack of a prenup meaning she owns half his stock
They were married years before he founded the company, and lived in California, a community property state. And they got married right out of college. Unless he somehow knew that he would start a company and got a prenup that says "if I start a company it's all mine", a prenup wouldn't matter anyway (and would probably but null and void anyhow).
> The fact that he slept with a Chinese spy is a huge deal.
Since US counterintelligence has known about the relationship since late 2024, they would be completely incompetent if they had not:
1) taken measures to ensure that she did not get US secrets,
2) collected information on Chinese priorities and methods for acquiring AI hardware, and/or
3) fed misinformation to the Chinese.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/11/10/800126553/whiteh...
1) They were married years before he founded NVIDIA and she already co-owns the stock.
curious from someone who is ignorant, what makes the export controls bad?
2) Got Brian Krzanich of Intel fired
3) The fact that he slept with a Chinese spy is a huge deal.
She's alleged to have been an 'intelligence asset', which is not the same thing as a spy (assets are not agents). Assets are often just good sources of insight and analysis, whereas agents are tasked with active deception and exfiltration of information. Jensen Huang is arguably an intelligence asset; I'm sure he's given informative briefings to spooks on the state of the world, albeit not necessarily knowingly.
A related question to this is whether Jensen Huang even has a US government security clearance.It's not obvious to me that he's privy to any government secrets, even if the US regards Nvidia as a strategic asset. To pick up on your point 4, he might have been knowingly violating the law, a problem for any CEO. But if he's not definitely violating sanctions and is instead just chasing profits, that's considered the norm.
To be frank I think this is a storm in teapot because there have been rumors about his affair floating around since last May, and if the US government has known for at least that long and hasn't intervened or arrested him it's probably not that big of a deal. I can't help wondering if it's a case of the current US administration trying to look tough after the President suffered a humiliating election defeat.
It breaks my heart that so many people will excuse his infidelity as irrelevant. We need better leaders to set examples for the youth. This current crop is so slimy and distasteful.
> The fact that he slept with a Chinese spy is a huge deal.
Is it true?
2 is a huge deal.
Either he's easily manipulated. Or he's a predator. Either way... not someone you want as CEO.
There's no scenario in 2026 where sleeping with a boss or subordinate is acceptable behavior for corporate leadership.
And... look, I get it, and maybe you can write it off as just something that happens in the real world.
But the fact that he would do it, also screams, "This is someone who thinks the rules don't apply to him."
Which again puts him squarely in the "not someone you want as a leader" category.
Your opinions are just that, but not really nuanced.
1) This is a huge matter of character. If you cannot be faithful to your wife, what makes you a faithful leader of a company? There is also the issue of respect: when a leader is morally compromised, the people he is leading lose confidence and respect in him.
2) Isn’t there something of a power dynamic issue here too? He has a greater responsibility to use his authority and power as a superior to not abuse that authority, and committing adultery with an inferior is a huge problem.
3) On what basis is this a huge deal and the previous two are not? Where’s the nuance? It’s just arbitrary.
4) Well yeah, it looks like he was complicit in breaking sanctions. It’s no longer an arms-length deal.
5) Again, why are the first two worth shrugging shoulders and this one is not? It’s no big deal, people cheat and break the law all the time.
6) That sure undersells it. It underlines the stupidity of sin, and the sinfulness of man.
7) I can’t argue with that.
That’s… a take. The fact the only problem you have with him violating export controls is that he got caught isn’t really nuanced. It mostly just points to you not having a moral compass.
Whether he would be the most profitable CEO is absolutely irrelevant. The guy is literally facing prison time if he can be directly tied to the violation of those sanctions. If the board takes more than about 30 seconds to come to a conclusion they should probably all be replaced as well.
https://fortune.com/2026/03/19/supermicro-arrested-founder-s...
Has anyone stood up the claim she's a spy yet?
Or is the evidence right over there next to the evidence of WMD?
I know some people believe anonymous govt officials but I kinda don't so if there's actual evidence, let's see it, or note the the doubt legitimately exists.
It seems a very odd thing to be briefing newspapers about rather than the very many other, seemingly more useful ways of using that information if it is true. How does everyone feel about the CIA briefing the New York Times in general to seemingly get a CEO removed? Who takes responsibility for making that decision?
> sleeping with a spy rather than just hiring an escort
Or just... not cheating on your wife
Fyi just calling something nuanced doesn't mean that it is.
> sleeping with a spy rather than just hiring an escort
I really don't like Jensen but I think this actually shows decent character! Sleeping with a femme fatale is rather romantic.
One man’s infidielities is going to cost every investor in index funds greatly given the outsized weighting of Nvidia in the SPY and QQQ ETFs.
Not to mention that Nvidia has a huge stake in the ai space being a backstop to a bunch of players in all its circular financing deals.
> Even though those export control were arguably bad, the law must be respected and the being seen ignoring the law would have a chilling effect on appearance of a fair democracy.
On one hand I firmly believe that if a rule is stupid you have no moral obligation to obey it. There might still be consequences though, however unjust.
On the other hand so many rules can be in place for years because people just don't obey them so their stupidity is mitigated to the point of invisibility.
Odds are she wasn't a spy see this write up - https://desmondshum.substack.com/p/alice-huang-the-spy-narra...
The tl;dr is she slept with Jensen in return for large benefits for her Husband's company.
Her actual role in this doesn't have a real good direct translation to English.
> The fact that he slept with a subordinate shows bad judgment, but isn't a huge deal (although improper and opens up potential quid-pro-quo lawsuits)
That is absolutely a huge deal, I have no idea why you don't think it is. That is the kind of behavior which anyone in an American workplace knows is not tolerated in the slightest and would lead to firing. The fact that he did it anyway shows he has shockingly poor judgement.
You've left out the worst parts of the scandal, which involves the US government investigation into the Megaspeed being buried after a large contribution was made to the White House ballroom fund. This website has a pretty good summary https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-nvidia-scandal-no-e...
I somewhat disagree.
1. Cheating on his wife when that will likely significantly change the ownership of the company is a big deal;
2. Here's where I disagree most. A married billionaire CEO sleeping with an also-married subordinate is a huge deal and that alone warrants an ouster. It creates huge legal exposure for the company;
3. The biggest issue with the Chinese spy is he's wealthy enough that this shouldn't happen. I'm sorry but you can afford corporate security who can vet the people you're involved with and do so discreetly;
Huang hired Heller (a crisis PR firm) a year ago. It seems like he knew something was coming and possibly failed to inform the board. Ok, that's more grounds for termination.
I too am reminded of this quote [1]:
> If you find two ants in your kitchen, the best estimate of the total number of ants in your kitchen is not two
I very much doubt it stops here.
[1]: https://x.com/_NathanCalvin/status/2084856543561093535
Agree with everything, except a sub point of #6: Jensen was presumably unaware she was a spy.
Where does "bribed the President of the United States to ignore 3 & 4" fit in? Or is that one more of a problem for said President?
smashing a spy doesnt affect anything, did he leak anything? Did he report to the authorities?
Who are we to judge beyond legal controls?
Judge not, for in the measure of your judgment, it will be measured to you.
Desire is the enemy of happiness. To abandon sorrow, abjure want.
We are all in wanting. Our want is lesser than the needs of our partners, our friends, and our world.
Such weird takes. Selling shit is bigger deal than destroying your family?! Fuck money, take care of your family, your lives! Family > geopolitics. Everything trickles down from there
Excellently put.
I'm glad others agree that his infidelity is a complete nothing burger. Moralising about this is wrong and is a purity spiral.
The Chinese spy thing and illegal dealing with China are far worse but they should be investigated properly.
He shouldn't be ousted from the company he built to be the biggest company in the world because he cheated on his wife.
If this had happened at a more recent founder-led tech company, the board would have far less practical independence
Dual-class share structures have become the defacto standard for founder led companies, giving founders disproportionate (even majority) voting power.
Someone like Zuckerberg effectively controls the board and would be extraordinarily difficult to oust against his wishes (absent some exceptional legal intervention or a decision to step aside)
I think even if NVIDIA were founded recently, it still wouldn't have such a share structure. The companies that do have dual class shares are software companies that can grow significantly without raising a ton of capital. NVIDIA being a hardware company, that is a lot harder to do even today.
Crazy we even allow non-voting shares and multiple tiers of shares.
And that’s precisely the sort of arrangement we should ban.
Humans need someone to be accountable to, even if it’s just some guy walking behind you saying “memento mori” twice a day.
Even among dual-class IPOs (which are the minority), only 18% of them have CEO control. [1]
That figure raises to about half if you include all officers/directors.
[1] https://www.law.nyu.edu/sites/default/files/Lowry%20-%20Buck...
Anthropic are planning a bizarre share structure that strips any voting power from shareholders. They will have a single special founders share, held by some new entity owned by the founders, that has 51% voting weight. 1 share to rule them all.
This is kinda huge; my layperson view is that Jensen has been responsible for their long term technology strategy, which requires deep understanding of so much outside of the business domain. I'm not exactly thrilled that they are "eating the world" (hf purchase had me bent out of shape, for example), but they've undeniably executed on some long term complex shit. Who could take his place?
> Who could take his place?
One of the greatest failures of Nvidia's Board was in failing to push for a successor. (Musks' companies face a similar risk.)
What about his cousin? I think she would be a perfect fit
Yeah but how much is just nvidia happened to be in the right business for the AI boom
It’s not like Jensen predicted it
China will pay him more.
It's really interesting to me how unaggressive Jensen has been vs. his peers about tighting up control over his company (even during the recent years when he had huge leverage):
- His board setup is ... odd. He isn't Chairman of the Board (a role over 50% of Fortune 100 CEOs apparently hold). He seems to be responsible for Nvidia having a wierdly more egalitarian structure (all directors including him, are equal, with a designated lead independent director)
- His compensation (~$35M, primarily stock) is ... not up there with other tech CEOs
- He doesn't seem to have ever pushed for super-voting rights (he only has like ~3.5% of the company), but I guess that's hard to change once you IPO
I kinda wonder if this ends with him taking a month off, spending 12-18 months transitioning to a successor and ending as the chairman of the board or some such. He really does seem vital to the company (and thus the stock price).
Seems like much more sane governance for a publicly-traded company.
Honestly this arrangement (total comp aside) is how it should be for all these companies. When Facebook went public the dual class structure (and Zuck retaining voting control) was a big point of contention.
I wonder how much of this is to do with how recent and explosive (relative to the history of the company) nvidia’s growth was. Like before the back to back booms of cryptocurrency and AI, the company was mainly selling products to gamers (iirc, their datacenter business was like 10% in 2019). It wasn’t that long ago that nvidia’s comparable companies were like… super micro and western digital, rather than Apple and Google.
Also having been more capital intensive and founded further back, Jensen had less sway in the early days of the company and may have put off using the growth to his advantage.
Jensen cooperated with china well before the affair. I'm pretty sure her being a chinese spy did not change anything in his decisions. His position on China did not change for years. And he is right. As long as we export chips to china it's really hard for them to invest into developing their own chips from scratch. It's just too expensive. If that door closes they will be incentivised to go for it that much harder. As it is right now they are one step behind us but in the future this won't be the case anymore and since we don't have hardware manufactuing experts in US it's just a matter of time we'll get surpassed. Sure we can bet on AI to overcome that but it's way easier for china to get a software stack going then for us to get hardware manufacturing back.
Jensen effectively is Nvidia, and is likely the only person that truly knows the company - this is what ties him to his place and of that doesn't ensure it I don't think anything else would. Almost all significant successes Nvidia had were results from direct action from him, and he truly knows the tech
The fact that him staying is even a considerable possibility, although made much smaller by the second affair if it is true, is a testament to that.
> He isn't Chairman of the Board (a role over 50% of Fortune 100 CEOs apparently hold).
Combining these roles is extremely poor governance, and it shouldn’t be legal but unfortunately it is.
A Taco Bell exec is on the board IIRC. I'm sure she is more than competent and capable. But it's a bit amusing.
I love Taco Bell though, so she is probably doing a good job.
He gets other benefits.
He does not seem vital to the company at all
Instead he made his daughter Senior Director of Product Marketing, made his son Director of Robotics Product, and made his son-in-law VP of AI Infrastructure Growth.
Maybe his idea of asserting control is less about voting rights and more about family allegiance.
A flat structure means nobody is a clear competitor with Huang for the top job. If Huang was able to get his way as was, adopting a more traditional structure would have just made somebody else a significantly more powerful #2. A lack of a clear successor might make the transfer of power rougher unfortunately.
Huang's net worth is over $200B, high enough to be in the world top-ten. He has been very well compensated by Nvidia. Either he decided he has enough money at some point or his current compensation numbers are just marketing. The real numbers were clearly much higher in the past, if not presently.
I suspect he's going quietly because the scandals haven't finished emerging yet[1]. At this point, it wouldn't surprise me if somebody has photos of secret Nvidia bunga bunga parties. I do find it interesting that Americans will tolerate lies, murder, and all sorts of other things from their highest elected officials but, if a CEO is revealed to be overly randy, he's got to go.
______________
[1]https://www.businessinsider.com/kimberly-powell-nvidia-exec-...
Then perhaps we will have a second NeXT and a Jensen Huang who will revolutionize the industry when he comes back.
Yep, he wasn't innovating at all, though:
He could've gave us seamless private cloud GPUs (basically let you run anything on any device, rent out your GPU to earn money, let you play GTA-6 on your phone...)
Could've had the true AI App Store
Could've bought OpenRouter (instead Stripe bought them):
Have not just cloud gaming but the true cloud App Store where Claude and ChatGPT are just apps
This way no terrorist can smuggle Jensen's physical shovels aka GPUs in a potato bag ;-)
How about this all is some sort of theater for him to "peacefully" exit the whole operation and retire, given he not gonna be poor and is very likely to not go in jail given his role in making NVIDIA the company it is.
As another comment thread brought up, his children are both working pretty nice sinecures, which would have been huge negative press during any kind of corporate governance struggle. I don’t think it was even widely known, I was a Jensen fanboy and I just now learned about it.
Of course these revelations are always managed to force a powerful person out of his position. Some 15 years the same happened with Staus Kahn, IMF's leader. The exception was Bill Clinton that the story turned in soap opera.
In these positions nobody is irreplacable. He is not a father, just a skilled employer. Why a Vice President is considered consumable? Why will just never know the why and by whom that was triggered.
Sounds like he helped China get GPUs in violation of export controls. This puts NVidia in a tough place as keeping him as CEO risks broader legal ramifications.
Illicit flow of Nvidia chips to China was public knowledge over a year ago.
Was it really no one else’s job to make sure export controls were adhered to?
it seems like this is the legal equaivent of smoking dope behind the McDonald's ..basically no one cares that much. The govt. could prosecute or make an example.,but whatevah. It's implicitly understood nvdia is a huge success and central to the US tech boom.
Large companies always have a backup plan in case the CEO needs to be replaced. What usually happens in these cases is that a new CEO will be named. That new CEO will focus on maximizing the company's earnings while neglecting the tech. And the company will be an earnings winner for the next few years.
He's out as CEO but he'll continue to be a force at Nvidia. If the new CEO is smart, he'll keep him in the company, but it will be hard since Huang will be seen as the company's leader and it will be very hard for Huang to act any other way.
Large traditional companies.
Recent trend is quite the opposite. What's Tesla without Musk selling pipe dreams ? Pretty sure there is 0 plan for replacement.
It doesn't seem Nvidia had a backup plan: https://x.com/business/status/2119633671300730893
Huang expected to run the company well into his 80s, with no clear successor.
would you want that CEO job?... founder behind the scenes driving the show.
They need to fire him outright. The company needs to set the example that misconduct won’t be tolerated at any level. Keeping him on in anything but a transition capacity would be a mistake.
Would be pretty difficult for him to have any influence if he ends up in a cell
This doesn’t bode well for Anthropic’s IPO indirectly, due to whole AI industry being propped up largely by Nvidia’s circular investment. Also there’s likely a big overlap of institutional investors who are both NVDA and ANT investors and will now likely seek to dump ANT at the opening bell.
> due to whole AI industry being propped up largely by Nvidia’s circular investment.
This premise is most likely incorrect: https://www.exponentialview.co/p/the-state-of-the-ai-economy
If anything this should impact the IPO only to the extent it affects the production of new compute capacity, because it is clear that is the #1 thing they need to scale revenues.
Part of me wonders if recent problems with AI (Huang leaks, OpenAI models hacking Huggingface), haven't been arranged by OpenAI in order to poison Anthropic's IPO.
This might rather save the IPO. Banned open source models will allow the closed source players to maintain power and recoup a larger part of their investment by driving up the prices.
Short term, days or weeks, there will be panic. But the impact of the change won't really be felt for years to come. For the next few years, the company will be fine.
Is that why tech bros are circling the wagons? https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/11/technology/jensen-huang-a...
FALSE.
The coup of Jensen Huang was precisely organized by the same large institutional investors.
They want NVIDIA to lock-up firmware and prevent any open-weight models from being run. Everyone (at least in US/NATO/US-aligned world) will be forced to use Anthriopic/OpenAI or some other US based closed source model.
Open models will be banned at the GPU level.
This is done to cement the multi-trillion dollar valuation of the AI labs and prevent AI bubble from popping due to customers using free open-weight, instead of pay-per-token closed models
Crazy times for the markets. Right after the second AI trade collapse and unwind Jensen Huang is found to have extramarital affairs, including one with a potential spy?
News of his resignation just dropped. I'm wondering how much Nvidia's success is tied to him personally.
Oh man today's market open is gonna be nuts. T-minus 27 minutes....
Related: Jensen Huang Said to Have Had Relationship with Nvidia Executive https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50459321
This doesn't seem like a healthy move for the company's longevity. What else did Jensen do? It's a given that companies that size will be targets for espionage and leak information even without it. This one mistake is enough to end all the value he has-and would continue to add to nvidia? Feels like we're missing information about the whole thing.
A news story was just released with allegations that he had an affair with one of his reports as well: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/11/technology/jensen-huang-n...
The public face of one of the most important companies in the USA has been compromised.
He risked his future, the value of his company and shareholders to commit adultery.
What else is he doing? How can his word be trusted? Who else is influencing him? Do people have blackmail from such encounters?
All fair questions to ask now.
We cannot be sure that we know the full story behind it, nor that we ever will.
why on earth would this be an okay thing? could you follow a leader you couldn't trust hasn't sold all of your IP to competitors?
What else did Jensen do?
There needs to be an else?
Plot twist: what if this was the China’s goal? Maybe they sent the spy and then leaked the story (or waited for it to leak) to remove Jensen?
Jensen's been lobbying hard for years to get the government to allow selling high-end GPUs to China. It's his position that this will discourage local competitors from getting big enough to meaningfully threaten nVidia's dominance.
While there's nothing inherently incorrect about this position, the affair with an alleged spy means that he, personally and uniquely, cannot advocate for this policy without seeming compromised. Ironically, if nVidia agrees with him, they have to fire him.
> This doesn't seem like a healthy move for the company's longevity.
Who cares? Consequences have actions, and hopefully that's not just based on which choice is gonna make someone the most money.
That seems like a stretch. companies have faced far worse. this is not Enron or something
Remember Jensen Huang's first post on twitter: "For my first post, I’m sharing a letter NVIDIA signed on why open models matter." https://x.com/JensenHuang/status/2080643682408321103
Open Weights and American AI Leadership https://images.nvidia.com/pdf/Open-Weights-and-American-AI-L...
That has nothing to do with the topic at hand
The thing I don't understand is what is the real issue? Just the bad PR? I would kind of think affairs are pretty common, it's just this is public? I'm struggling to find anything where he did something bad business wise or compromised national security. Seems like Americans just love the sensationalism of affairs. Makes for good news I guess.
The woman he was having an affair with is suspected of being a Chinese spy, and she may have been using him to circumvent US export controls to move lots of NVidia chips into China.
A CEO cheating on his wife doesn't exactly paint them as a trustworthy leader to partners, suppliers and customers. Even less so when he does it twice, with a foreign intelligence operative.
Well, what makes me little dissapointed is instead of focusing on issues and topics that really matter, we discuss who f*cked whom.
There are gravely important matters to focus on in the current state of affairs that affect us all, our kids and future of human kind, but we got somehow trained to waste our focus and time on mere noise every single day.
I agree, but the risk of company secret leakage is high in this story. And for a such pivotal and big company I understand the board decision.
It is unethical to fuck your subordinates.
ETA: It's nice to see all the incels downvoting this lol.
>we got somehow trained
Not that long ago, it was accepted that sex - f*cking - was at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs - basic physiological needs.
This is, of course, true for men.
But it is incredibly inconvenient for feminists.
So what did we do? Well, we just got rid of it of course.
And now here we are.
The thought that Jensen Huang might not be CEO of Nvidia when GTA VI comes out.
He's had the job since before GTA 1 started development.
Capitalized Nvidia with $200 of his own money (out of $600 total). If he gets booted, it is certainly the end of an era.
he's figured out how to render polygons.
next move is navigating polycules.
NVDA may not exist by the time it comes out. or humans for that matter when ASI happens
Can someone make the strong case for why he should be ousted?
I’m not deep into this story, but my initial reaction is that marital infidelity doesn’t seem like a strong reason to oust him, aside from him possibly being compromised by an international spy. Haven’t other successful leaders continued to lead after having their affairs exposed?
(And no, I don’t believe what he did is morally excusable for the record.)
Your aside is the primary issue and he may have worked with a CCP agent to bypass federal export controls.
These are some good points! Thanks for the replies.
He revealed himself to be obviously stupid and while CEOs don't do much, they can't seem to be obviously stupid.
Evading export controls and lying about it is a pretty bad look
> aside from him possibly being compromised by an international spy
That's a pretty big "aside" for a very big company like NVIDIA.
> Haven’t other successful leaders continued to lead after having their affairs exposed?
https://andybyron.wiki/ is one half of the erstwhile internet-meme "Coldplay Cam Couple".
The part where the mistress is a corporate cutout for Alibaba and head of a company making multi billion dollar deals with Nvidia, I imagine.
> him possibly being compromised by an international spy
you answered your own question.
It's come out that he was having another affair with a Nvidia employee as well, their vice president of healthcare. Having an affair with a client is one thing but having one with a client and a subordinate is maybe enough for the board to remove him.
he was sleeping with a chinese spy
Considering that only Jensen has been pushing for anything close to open-source models in terms of AI vs the token merchants of OpenAI and Anthropic, it seems a really bad time for Huang to leave.
I do think that "eventually" AI will be open-(source, weight, something) and most people will run at least some of their workload on their own hardware; but his leaving might delay that day considerably.
> Considering that only Jensen has been pushing for anything close to open-source models
There are many more companies that signed the letter, see the bottom of this pdf
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/wp-...
There isn't enough discussion of how many controls needed to fail for Nvidia to smuggle billions of dollars of GPUs to Chinese firms in violation of export controls. The affairs with alleged spies is not even the most egregious failure of corporate governance.
Controlling such high-volume products has never really worked, especially if you sell to other third countries. Plenty of western electronic parts show up in Russian weapons, despite export restrictions.
NVDA down almost 8% in after-hours trading.
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NVDA/
AMD way up
Is there any reason why this will actually change the fundamentals of Nvidia's business so long as 5080s go for as much as a used car and the entire world wants H200s? Even if they lose an extremely hands-on CEO, they're selling a very expensive product with extremely high global demand.
Uh huh.. that is today. what about the day after tomorrow?
Well it’s happened. This should redirect to that news article
I wonder what happens to NVDA afterwards. People say Jensen is NVDA or at least he has a lot of controls over the company. I guess they finally found the right time (very bad midterm) and the right opportunity (mistress as Chinese spy).
I even wonder whether some elements within the Chinese government has a hand in it -- not (only) the mistress part but the ousting part.
There's probably a lot more to this than we'll ever know.
I think it's worth even considering that if the allegations are true that the objective was to get Huang fired. Sure, he sold China chips, but they have their own homegrown chips now and the Chinese government have played a direct part in that.
I'm thinking the people behind trying to oust him are people who don't appreciate him likely knowingly violating export sanctions and putting the rest of the company and himself at risk of massive fines and criminal prosecution
Given that
1/ China is still interested in chips
2/ Chip exports to China will now (presumably) be under even more scrutiny
What would their motivation be to leak this info?
There is no “they” in this. My read is the timing of all of this entirely down to the results of the midterm elections.
Over the next two years, Congress is going to haul in every tech CEO who licked Trump’s boots. I think Jensen tried to get in front of it and now journalists and institutional short sellers are digging up the dirt.
Clearly he is not very smart. Does NVDAs advantage require him? If it does, they aren’t worth their valuation.
The logic is easy. He must go, without hesitation.
And the stock price should go up.
All this seems obvious, so what am I missing?
Something very fishy is going on here. If NVIDIA suddenly closes down GPU sales to the general public after Jensen is gone then we know what is happening: the Altman/Dario/Musk mafia have gotten what they wanted: no more compute for open weight models for the general public.
That is exceptionally unlikely.
Interesting to see what happens to the consumer, gaming GPU market.
Financially it almost certainly makes sense to sell to AI hyperscalers alone; without Jensen, perhaps Nvidia shifts like Micron before them, leaving the lower margin consumer market to others.
I would figure Jensen for the type to "dance with the girl who you bought to the dance" type. A new CEO may lack that sort of sentimentality for the gamers/prosumers that made Nvidia.
Yeah, I'm really worried about this
It's not immediately clear that Jensen is as visionary and indispensable as some people claim. True, under his watch, Nvidia rose from a relatively obscure company to one of the largest companies in the world, and even a national asset. But it's really hard to believe that these achievements are due to Jensen's brilliance. Jensen didn't create the crypto mania that propelled Nvidia in the 2010s, nor did he create the current AI revolution.
To me, he had the good fortune of standing in the right place at the right time. He is no Steve Jobs, who almost single-handedly started the PC revolution and the iPhone revolution. This is not to deny his brilliance and business acumen, but I think too many people overstate his contribution to both the company and the United States. Of course I could be wrong so I welcome correction or alternative viewpoints.
Speaking of the US, Jensen has indeed become a liability. A compromised CEO is, of course, a liability to a national asset, and a politically toxic one at that. Nvidia is a business with sensitive political ties now. It can't afford to appear compromised in the eyes of Washington. Therefore, Nvidia's stakeholders must let Jensen go; otherwise, it will affect the company as a whole.
Jensen made basically two visionary decisions. The first was to promote GPGPU with CUDA across their entire lineup including consumer hardware. The second was to specifically invest heavily in supporting machine learning way before anyone else in chips cared. CuDNN came out in 2014, just two years after AlexNet. Three years before the transformer. Eight years before ChatGPT. Before PyTorch. Before TensorFlow. Other chip CEOs probably hadn't even heard of AlexNet in 2014. Even at the time I thought[1] AMD and Intel were crazy to completely ignore a market opportunity like this. They still haven't caught up.
Assuming these decisions are attributable to him personally, then he absolutely deserves the description "visionary". That said, he's made plenty of other choices I don't like, and also invested in plenty of silly stuff that isn't panning out for them. I don't really think Nvidia needs a visionary right now. They have the best business in the world and they just need to execute. Regardless of whether he deserves to be ousted, the company will be fine without him for the next decade at least. So a stock selloff is silly.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10030957
It still baffles me that most people don't realize how success in 'business'/'leadership' positions has almost nothing to do with an individuals skill/intelligence in leading/decisions but simply mere luck and timing. You could argue that to attain a high position in a company requires some level of shrewdness and intelligence though, but that is another game.
The common argument is, well 'x' leader has had success in 5+ companies! Surely they must be excellent visionaries. Firstly, no single person in their lifetime can possibly launch/aid enough companies to success to have a large enough sample size to prove they are a factor for success. Launching 'x' amount of companies is great but its still such a small amount that it cannot really demonstrate anything. Secondly, once you have had success once, you gain connections, wealth, e.t.c. that only bolster further endeavors that you do even if they are pretty bad ones.
Ofc, there are things an individual at the top of a company can do to make 'good decisions', but this is mostly just selecting the right people below you to delegate to (thus reading/spotting talent well) and listening to your data and people to get as much information as possible before making overarching decisions based on that. This is what I consider common-sense and what most people do in their day-to-day jobs all the way at the bottom of companies anyways, alongside all their regular hard-work (engineering e.t.c.). Upper management just has the luxury of only have to focus on the common-sense dull part; listen to incoming data, make obvious meta decision.
You are really not giving the man any credit - I suspect you weren't part of the GPU era of video games and don't understand the roots of nvidia. That man hustled that company. You can't say things like "right time and right place" without being a little blase.
I don't know much about Nvidia's history, but isn't Jensen largely responsible for CUDA and the company's monopoly on machine learning hardware? It wasn't an obvious bet at the time that this would pay off, but Nvidia sure poured a lot of money into making their software stack so good that nobody wanted to even consider other options.
Yes, you're entirely correct. But you're also underestimating the people's potential to squander great opportunities like these. Look at AMD for example, they had a good head start over nvidia yet they haven't done anything remotely as good.
> He is no Steve Jobs, who almost single-handedly started the PC revolution and the iPhone revolution
by being ousted from his own company and using his golden parachute while * being bought back*?
Under his watch? You mean the entire time from the very beginning. He built the company from nothing and you are not sure he is visionary and indispensable. can't make this shit up :)
Did he break any law?
Did he circumvent export restrictions?
If not, replacing him would be a mistake for Nvidia. I also fear that it would endanger open weight models in America.
I think this is for the FBI to determine.
If Nvidia is going to fire Jensen Huang, my question is whether Jensen will be allowed to start another "Nvidia".
I hope he's allowed to do so. He now knows how not to get trapped into a tactically targeted honeypot, he knows the ins and outs of a GPU fab business plus he has all the connections.
This minus all the cruft and legacy overhead of a company as old as Nvidia. I'm now hoping he gets fired.
Why would Jensen without Nvidia be a better bet than Nvidia without Jensen?
> Jensen will be allowed to start another "Nvidia".l
Jensen has a very good relationship with Musk. I think he would hire him and put him CEO of Terrafab, of course only if Jensen is down for it as well.
It's not just the Chinese spy. NYT:
> Jensen Huang... also had an extramarital relationship with an executive who reports to him, according to five people who worked at the company.
He will have a non compete agreement for a while. May be 1 year or more.
> he knows the ins and outs of a GPU fab business plus he has all the connections.
Building an Nvidia competitor would be a long, hard slog that almost certainly ends in failure for anyone including Jensen Huang.
They (NVIDIA) have tens of thousands of patents on their technology that would be hard to build around and commitments that lock up 60-70% of TSMC's CoWoS capacity.
What do you mean "allowed"?
> whether Jensen will be allowed to start another Nvidia
Sure. After he's done responding to the Congress and various investigators and his family, something I suspect will occupy a good part of his next decade.
> He now knows how not to get trapped into a tactically targeted honeypot…
Does he? Plenty of serial cheaters out there getting caught repeatedly.
If I am Lip-bu at Intel, I’d wire Huang after news cycle cools.
He's still a shareholder. It is considered extremely bad form to start a company that competes with a company that you are still a shareholder of unless you have not been fired with cause. The only other example I can think of is Jobs. So it is possible but I would assume that post Jobs contracts were put together in such a way that it would be very hard to compete with the company you got booted out of and that you are still a shareholder of. I've signed a couple of contracts over the years just as shareholders and those already mentioned that if I had competing interests the deal would be null and void and I'd be liable, and for good reasons too.
Jensen made Nvidia. He named it, he built it from nothing with 2 other founders.
Ousting him is pretty much the worst case scenario for the company.
I think there are multiple factors working here:
1. Hardliners angry about NVDA selling GPUs to China;
2. Board/Big investors want to get rid of him. They may think he is less important now that NVDA is clearly the top dog.
3. Political power trying to build up a case starting with him;
Anything else?
It's #3 and shortsellers. There's no one who can lead Nvidea, like he does with his technical depth, connections and trust within the company. Getting rid of him will be a loss for all investors and board.
He would absolutely be fired if he were in any role, but as CEO cofounder, it's hard not to attribute Nvidia's success to his leadership.
The thing is, this is just what's been reported. There's almost certainly more going on if 2 affairs are public disclosure. If there is a sexual harassment angle here as well, he's toast.
China wins again The Guoanbu ( Guojia Anquan Bu (国家安全部) China's spy agency ) is subtle.
Honeytrap.
Reveal the information to a trusted journalist.
Destroy Huang's credibility.
Force his resignation.
Damage Nvidia.
China moves further in the AI game.
Game set and match. Sounds like this might have been China's real goal.
Jensen Huang is genuinely a classy guy, all possibilities accounted for, I like him.
The breed of CEO's coming up in tech are monstrous in comparison.
It will be a huge mistake for Nvidia
When I read that Jensen was exploring Chinese Models, I thought it meant something different.
Isn't this just not only about the severity of crimes but the potential to withstand the legacy of whatever crimes that were committed that seems untenable to digest.
Won't the CEO be fighting 2 big fights - One on the corporate front burning through the AI races and second the impending doom of lawsuits and the sheer number of avenues this opens up, frivolous or serios, for any Tom, Dick and Harry working with Nvidia as an employee, vendor, partner or anything just wanting an extra piece of the Trillion dollar pie?
Is everyone here subscribed to wsj?
No. They read the headline, hit the paywall, and decide that’s enough to give their well-informed opinion.
Without knowing more this seems like the wrong move... The U.S. has the AI supply chain visualized incorrectly. The necessary manufacturing, raw materials and components all come from outside of the U.S. For nVidia to have decades of supplier relationships and manufacturing understanding, much of this was in the hands of the CEO more than other companies. Jensen has a lot of direct reports which is odd given the corporate structure.
I do wonder if Megaspeed and other shell companies have been monitored for over a year by the Feds where they broke export rules, failed to report to the Govt with the knowledge of several in the Administration... Everyone was making money on the side by allowing Jensen, Megaspeed and others profit off of bypassing export controls. Just recently a shipment of GPUs randomly disappeared as well.
If this all turns out to be true then removing him is a lot stronger than it seems and maybe in the long run fixing the bus factor problem will have been a good change.
Or, since nVidia is the central bank of the AI bubble, forcing him out kicks off a chain reaction that pops the bubble.
I take no joy in noting that personality-driven companies are notably at the mercy of the vagaries of the key-man in the key-man risk clause... :-/
That's a tautology, of course. And the board should have been doing its job handling the key man in question
It's most obvious in hindsight, obviously. Across the history of such governance debacles.
It’s not the crime, it’s the coverup, and there seems to be quite a bit of evidence of a coverup and deliberate deception. It’s a liability problem; shareholders will sue. Heads will roll.
I want a straw poll from people that actually own NVDA. Or at least can honestly adjust to a mental frame of "I am an NVDA shareholder".
Should the board replace him or not?
It's easy to judge when you have no skin in the game. What would you think if you did?
Any Nvidia employees out there?
Own some stock, don’t want him to be fired but he should be. Sucks all around
This is like Apple board firing Jobs and Woz at the same time.
I fear this is all political. Jensen was becoming too powerful.
This is basically the civilised US version of what China did to Jack Ma.
This all looks like an excuse to force him to bend the knee. He is the only western tech ceo who is 1) a strong proponent of open weight models and 2) is highly critical of the chip sanctions on China because they’ve done the opposite of what they were meant to do.
That YTD chart, woooow. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NVDA/
If the allegations of selling “trade secrets” are false. He should remain CEO. I am unsure that there is ITAR or real regulations here, is it really an AI war. If it was it would be best if they trained on American chips for America.
Yea, I don’t think that’s going to happen.
why not?
The CEO works for the board. And the board really doesn't like when their company ends up on the front page of the WSJ for helping a Chinese intelligence agent traffic your company's own product in violation of US sanctions.
I would not be surprised if the woman is actually a CIA agent. Since the government bought a stake in Intel, and 15% of Nvidia exports revenue, it has been clear that it want direct control of the industry.
What bothers me is all these might be the plan afterall, the primary goal is not just to buy billion dollars of GPU.
Iamgine you're a spy or a mistresss, would you appear in public with the high profile target?
My cynical view is that a lot of US IP has already gone to China through Nvidia. The US should probably now monitor AMD, its executives and its relationship with China (via Taiwan or direct), if any, just as closely.
Fired with cause or stepping down (most likely stepping down)>Interim CEO named> Jensen flew too close to sun and got burned. Board investigations will put everything on Jensen and they will turn that chapter over. Much more information will come out. His wife I will divorce him as well. This whole thing is more political than anything else. Who leaked all of this is my biggest question. Nvidia should be fine in the mid term, but unstable in the short term.
I still recall, as a young engineer (1999) working in a high-flying startup outside of Boston -- bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and full of naive optimism -- I flew to Houston in late '99 to demo a fabulous optical networking switch to ENRON, all the while thinking why in the world would ENRON want to be in the business of networking. Ended up selling them a TON of very expensive equipment.
It all unwound a few months later, much to my chagrin (and my lost stock options, obviously).
Recall that most bubbles do not pop due to one, key material cause. Instead, they pop due to adjacent troubles that, in turn, lead to cascading effects.
That was true of:
- LTCM failure (1998; Thailand and other SE Asian countries defaulted);
- 2000 market crash (dot-coms crash, then telecom crash of 2001);
- 2008-2010 financial crisis (mortgage backed securities); ... and so many others before these.
It's entirely possible that NVDA, despite earning $$$$, could unwind the circular funding within the ecosystem (the very crux of telecom market crash of 2001)
Affair or not, this is a tragedy for American technology.
If the affair were not with someone who was a CCP spy then Jensen Huang would still have his job.
Do we actually know how much positive effect he has on running the company or are we just making assumptions?
he'll move to Taiwan, Taiwan will become part of China, China will move talent, Jensen will become the CEO of a new asian company and they will become a powerhouse in chip production in ~5 years
Love is a game in which one always cheats.
— Honoré de Balzac
This is overblown; nvda is a mature company jensen has set the right bets forward so it's just a matter in who the successor is. In terms of revenue impact, assuming megaspeed accounted for ~20% of sales (rumored estimate) then game optimal move is to have OAI/ANT pick those sales up. We will hear about a transition plan probably around earnings.
If those sales were illicit, and listed under earnings reports as legitimate, is that defrauding investors?
Jensen has always wanted Nvidia to have a footing in China. Without that, the Chinese innovate faster and commoditize Nvidia’s business sooner. I’m willing to bet he already knew about Alice Huang selling to China. Trump probably knew for some time too. The board also knew about his second affair with his subordinate for a while.
Jensen is getting thrown under the bus by the board because it both likely reduces legal consequences (especially now that democrats are a lot more powerful), and as an opportunity to gain power and place someone in the CEO position that is more controllable.
So what happens if this actually goes through? Everyone switches their hardware spend to which other providers?
TPUs and AWS's Trainium seem to be at least in the ballpark of being competitive but does that matter at all?
Nvidia will still be around?
1, Jensen Huang ousted as a CEO
2, China isolating Taiwan with an ongoing military drill https://www.reuters.com/world/china/taiwan-says-china-is-con... https://maritime-executive.com/article/analysis-china-s-nava...
3, Trump meeting Xi next week on the 18th https://www.euronews.com/2026/11/09/donald-trump-plans-to-me...
What is the connection between a Taiwan war and Nvidia?
> China isolating Taiwan with an ongoing military drill
well, they do this like 6 times a year, it just usually doesn't make the news
For some measure of nominative determinism, that is a pretty haunting timeline.
So his girlfriend's a spy.
Did he know she was a spy?
Did he give her any secrets?
Did he break up with her after finding out she's a spy?
Was she trained as a spy and sent to entrap him specifically? Or did she form a relationship with him, then get told by the Chinese Communist Party "Xi wants you to steal him some secrets from your boyfriend. This is an offer you can't refuse; spy for us or your family in China will be beaten, jailed or worse"?
Is he a victim or an asset? Is she a willing patriotic spy for China, or a victim of blackmail from the Chinese Communist Party? Has she been arrested as a spy, or did she make it to the Chinese embassy before the story broke?
My feeling is he shouldn't be ousted if he took the honey but didn't fall for the trap. OTOH if he passed her company secrets, that's presumably a fireable offense for anyone lower on the totem pole; it's only fair for a CEO to get fired for the same.
I'm concerned about how this further could impact consumer access to GPUs and RAM, if he's replaced with someone who will prioritize these markets even less than they already are.
Jensen Huang is a traitor without a doubt
Someone really wanted him out that bad. Wow!
given that jensen has handshake deals with many of his critical (supply constrained) suppliers he may have more leverage than founder shares could ever provide.
The possible security implications of this entire affair (affairs now) can't be overstated. That hardware's in the most secret of facilities, computing very classified workloads for very very serious customers. Not the goofy AI heads, I'm talking about the military and intelligence communities in many nations.
Hopefully this teaches the market to migrate away from proprietary CUDA and NVIDIA and their proprietary drivers.
Why would this do anything to make people move on from the best performing devices in widespread production that money can buy?
There is a second affair...
If you are getting paid millions, you should not make these intentional mistakes, he would have known she was a spy and just didn't care. There are better options for CEO.
They are going to put in Eric Schmidt.
Some of these main narratives just don't add up. If the end goal was to get chips, why is China blocking those H200s and it's stuck on port.
There's a different angle here worth listening to: https://youtu.be/IC3Kh40dEQY
Big companies should be resilient and diverse enough that their growth doesn't depend on one person, and yet most successful companies seem to be centered around someone with strong character and presence. Not to play cult of personality, but Huang looks like a central element of Nvidia's success. Will Nvidia go the way of Intel and other corporate grey bureaucracies that ultimately decline ?
I see people bemoan that this is going to hurt Nvidia. First of all, it’s not like Nvidia will crumble in a few weeks. The company has a sky-high valuation because of the moat they’ve built. That doesn’t just disappear simply because Jensen steps down.
Second, yeah long term this might set Nvidia back, but are we going to say that not only are there companies which are too big to fail, but now individuals can be too? They can violate international trade sanctions and get scott free because it might harm their company? What CEO wouldn’t then be incentivized against setting up a succession plan? Why wouldn’t adversarial governments target critical CEOs even more, knowing they are effectively untouchable?
Jensen objectively fucked up royally. I saw someone describe him as a victim in all of this. I’m sorry but I don’t see how it’s unreasonable to hold CEO’s in these key positions to very high standards. They’re rewarded with extraordinary wealth and influence, yet some seem eager to excuse them from the accountability that should come with that power.
Earnings call next week is going to be very interesting. Wow.
Not so surprised
Nvidia is Jensen. If he's out, NVidia crashes and takes the AI bubble with it
I have no qualms with this outcome.
EDIT: I assume the bubble will collapse into correction eventually, sooner is better than later.
Nah, just get rid of him now. It's a GPU not a rock band.
It would be quite funny.
NVidia doesn't need Jensen in the short / medium term - they are printing money. Unless we discover that all this circular financing was some kind of scheme.
We have 2 other companies though, Tesla and SpaceX, which CEO represents 90% of the valuation. That will be the real one.
Can someone explain to me why everyone on this website, and everyone in English-language media, takes for granted that “stopping China on AI” is a worthwhile or important goal?
From where I’m standing, China is the only world power ensuring that the entire world actually benefits from AI, by giving it away. They’re also underwriting and enabling the global transition away from fossil fuels while my country is doing its best to stall or reverse that progress. They are also not a belligerent in any current war of aggression, and to the extent that they are suppliers of weapons, appear to be providing them to countries acting entirely within their legitimate sovereign right to defend themselves.
Someone’s going to come along and call me ignorant or naive for saying “China are the good guys,” but let’s get real here. What are we talking about.
China is terrible to people who speak out against the government and the government censors models. Open weight is nice, but not good if it’s silently been lobotomized on topics.
Separate dimension, these models seem to be distillations of the flagship models. That isn’t healthy for AI because it’s not forward progress. If they suck away revenue that would fund training the next model, then we’re cooked.
The only issue is finding replacement, Only 5 days to earnings.
What about Chris Malachowsky? He also would be a co-founder CEO
For the time being the CFO or COO would do. But stock will take a hit.
Is there one? Obviously lots of MBAs out there but anyone who can really fill his shoes?
He's done for
we can live in hope, the company needs a cooler head.
but tbh I doubt it.
Good tech CEOs are rare. Intel will break the bank to bring Jensen on. Even if he’s a Chinese spy, it’s worth more to shore up US fab capacity than it is to lose Intel’s tech secrets.
Obviously his actions were wrong and showed poor judgement but it would be a massive mistake for them to can Huang.
Steve Jobs, Sam Altman, Jack Dorsey ..... Jensen Huang?
It's often the Board of Directors that goes and the CEO retains control in the end.
Steve Jobs had been successfully ousted, and he had to bring Next to the then-ailing Apple to get back to the leader position.
Dorsey resigned himself, wasn't fired.
Huh I wonder if the true goal of the spy was to disrupt Nvidia by getting him fired, slowing them down, not stealing secrets.
Idiots
I am just curious. Not in relation to this story: Have other people here had a change in their perspective in the last two years?
For me I feel like: There are wealthy people doing what Jeffrey Epstein was doing. And so by comparison, it makes other bad behaviors look relatively less important.
I'm just curious if other people have had that thought as well, and/or what else you think or have learned.
If your getting paid millions, you should not be able to get away with these kinds of mistakes. There are better options for CEO
Judge not, for in the measure of your judgment, it will be measured to you.
Desire is the enemy of happiness. To abandon sorrow, abjure want.
We are all in wanting. Our want in lesser that the needs of our partners, our friends, and our world.
Honestly kind of sounds like its a great time to start a DCA buy of NVIDIA.
It is hard for me to see how the company that is currently turning silicon into gold with established production and software, more like a blue chip stock than a tech company, is going to be worth 20%-25% less just because the Ceo cheated on his wife.
The company is a money printer, and they really don't have to do much to keep it that way.
Karma for fucking over the gaming community that propped up his company for so long.
They cannot unseat him now. The work is too important, nations are competing hard against us. He has to just get away with it and everyone needs to move on, same as Oppenheimer.
This does look like a hit job. The spy stuff is ultimately meaningless and a smoke screen and may even be offered up to create plausible deniability. My take is that Dems/Biden + China Hawk Rs + decel crowd/Dario wanted export control and closed models. Jensen and Trump took a different view. Now that Dems have the Congress again, it's going to be non-stop hearings and investigations in the same spirit as the TikTok CEO with all the "Are you a commie?" questions. So the spy is offered as an explanation; nobody evaded export controls and nobody is a commie. The 2nd unrelated affair just points to an op to oust him.
It’s pretty clear (if you aren’t a huge idiot) that Jensen is attempting to bury the lede here.
He knowingly helped advance China’s AI ambitions against the direction of congress. He got caught selling 7.5 Billion dollars of restricted chips to china.
Also he cheated on his wife with some Chinese woman, which is a totally separate and unrelated fuck up.
If you seriously think he got tricked by some random woman who batted her eyes, you are out of your mind. He founded the fucking company, he isn’t some clueless executive. He’s also not senile and he doesn’t have dementia. This is the only viable excuse for him to use, but it’s complete bullshit.
Think about it: He betrayed his longtime wife, who by all accounts supported him from the beginning. He betrayed his company and its shareholders. And he betrayed his country (BOTH of his countries?) who specifically forbid the chips to be sold to china. He’s fucked
He cheated on his wife with multiple women, it's coming out... I feel bad for her, everyone's saying she'll get billions and that's nice but she's been completely humiliated.
If this is correct, what was his motivation? I fail to see what he could have gained from it, other than a few extra billion in revenue, which they likely would have made otherwise anyway.
The phrase is “bury the lede”, not “bury the lead”: I just learned it recently, too.
Trump has made a lot of money from NVIDIA stock, and he's very good friends with Jensen. Especially after he approved the Export Deals. Jensen will be fine after he's out of NVIDIA.
i dont get why everyone just eats up the propaganda that if she's a spy she automatically works for the chinese government. we are talking about 100s of billions of dollars here, this could easily just be a corporate spy or a honeypot. these mega corps are so rich and massive they have their own spy and enforcement teams, same as big oil and gas always had and still do. back in the day when oil and resources were in poorer countries they used the exact same tactics to control and take them over. its the same playbook, just now the target is a big us corporation.
Trump knew about the Chinese Spy for a YEAR.
So was Huang playing along as part of some other US-Chinese plot? He was a pawn, or go-between.
Honestly, I hope this doesn’t play out in a rushed way. Evaluating this is the board’s top duty. It’s critical, and healthy, for them to weigh what’s best for all NVDA stakeholders.
Obviously, the affairs are a very serious issue, but the investigation needs to determine whether there were any security conflict of interest breaches
Let’s be clear: any abuse of power involving related-party relationships is wrong. Jensen should not get a “free pass” just because he’s Jensen. This is very serious.
Jensen’s leadership of the broader company is unparalleled, and replacing him would be nearly impossible. That step should only be taken when it’s extremely clear there is no other option. Even if the board does replace him, that brings significant risk, not just to NVIDIA but to all the other businesses connected to it. I hope a warning shot across the bow is enough for him to clean things up so everyone can get back to focusing on the work.
As for which way the board rules, the details are all that matter. When boards react emotionally, before a thorough investigation and before they have the full picture, they make bad decisions. They shouldn’t rush. They should investigate and dig into every detail.
Then make a decision. These decisions will carry enormous weight.
None of us really know the details. NVIDIA board: do your job and take it very seriously. Deliberately measure three times, cut once. Don’t spectate. The public likes/wants Hollywood drama, but what we really need is good corporate governance.
They had dirt on him for many years. Someone wants him ousted. That’s what’s happening behind the scene. Jensen probably pissed off someone very well-connected.
> the investigation needs to determine whether there were any security conflict of interest breaches
The Board–correctly–fears for themselves personally in a case involving Jensen's public and multinational corruption scheme.
> Obviously, the affairs are a very serious issue,
It’s just sex mate, it’s really not a big deal unless he giving favourable deals to his mistress’s company.
They should poach Lisa Su to lead Nvidia, she's one of the most talented CEOs of all time and knows chips.
I don't care who it is as long as they give us open kernel drivers that can match amds offering. Preferably also someone who's not hostile toward consumers would also be nice.
She’s also Jensen’s cousin!
Better yet, buy AMD.
Why when her GPU market is a fraction of Nvidia, brutally honest it would seem she isn’t qualified at all or AMD would be a real player.
Bringing in his cousin to run the company doesn't look great either.
And now we know if she starts wearing leather jackets everywhere, dump stocks asap
He’s not gonna end up leaving. This is rubbish.
LOL this is so funny!
people bemoaning the foreign interference angle seem to forget all the mountains of middle-east money thrown in the AI bubble, and where this money originates from.
Why are all the tech overlords scum people? Do they become that way with power, money and fame, or is it a certain kind of person from the start that achieves these things?
I'm scared about how this in turn shapes society.
Kings were also famously out of touch with reality. Hierarchies, if left alone to grow this tall, do this to people.
"Nearly any man can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power" - Honest Abe
> Why are all the tech overlords scum people?
like sleeping Jensen Huang with an incredibly attractive Chinese agent that specifically showed traits he found desirable and exploit what ever weaknesses the Chinese spy agency could find about him to get him involved with her and divulge secrets in a SEXINT operation. Therefore Jensen is one of the worst people who are public figures.
I don't like CEO worship or tech culture (I know I am on hackernews but I am a developer and did like software development and related topics), but this take is crazy most people you know would probably take the bait on an operation like this even 'good' people.
And just take a look at the scum running things outside of Tech a lot worse then a moment of infedality, look at all western leaders you will probably find few better (or even equal) to Jensen. Jensen did not shape the shitshow you are seeing now (not saying he is not part of it), it was corrupt from the start, Just a worthless veneer of morality.
Don't morn your societies decay it was a cadaver from the beginning only by putrefaction will it become the soil to plant strong trees on.
That's an excellent question and I've been wondering about this a lot. I've known a few billionaires, exactly one was an amazing person, the rest were absolutely terrible people in every sense of the word. The whole word is full of NPCs to them. But your question goes to the heart of it: were they terrible people because that's a requirement for becoming a billionaire or did becoming a billionaire somewhere along the line turn them into terrible people?
I haven't found the answer. But I do know one thing from my (smallish) sample: the nice guy never let the money get to his head. He drove his own car (a VW Rabbit, ok, a nice one) and lived in the same house that he lived in when he started his company. And until the day he died he just kept doing what he loved without ever feeling the need to lord it over others. More like a Wozniak (who is the other 'nice billionaire' that I'm aware of but I've never met him).
Edit: I wrote about him:
https://jacquesmattheij.com/in-memoriam-rene-sommer/
Edison v. Tesla is probably informative here, the system rewards scummy behavior.
"a certain kind of person from the start"
I thought it was pretty humorous that Nvidia shareholders sued him claiming he didn't inform them about his secret sexual relationships and that this damaged their investment.
Most companies have codes of conduct that forbids personal relationships between employees. But him being the founder and owner why didn't he just scrap those rules if he intended to pounce on some intern? I mean, there are no laws that mandate such rules. If you want to allow it you're free to do so as a company.
From the NYT Story:
> During the conference, Nvidia executives were at a nearby hotel for meetings. Mr. Huang and Ms. Powell were seen being affectionate at the hotel. One bystander captured the interaction on their phone, three people briefed on the incident said.
> Mr. Huang’s security witnessed the bystander with their phone and sequestered them, the people said. They made the person an offer to sign a nondisclosure agreement.
Well, at least there will be one way to make money after AI takes my job...
Jokes aside, I would expect we will soon learn there is more. Given that Nvidia was vouching for Megaspeed while exporting those chips, I still think there's a reasonable chance Jensen ends up in jail over this. Not large, but possible.
Ok but if you are having an affair with your direct report why would you "be affectionate" in public ?
When I encountered this ( in much smaller, non strategic companies!) both parties took great care to hide their affair and appear completely professional in public. The fun and games were kept behind closed bedroom doors. I don't get it.
I’m very curious what the going rate for such an offer is.
The fact that they had a process for this is telling.
The company that rises due to AI has being ready to fall because of human nature. What a great joke.
Crazy indeed.
I keep buying the NVDA dip but it just keeps dipping lower
This is certainly fast after the NYT article on his second affair. I suspect this was in the works after the original affair + export scandal.
Board is likely looking ahead to Democrats taking office and investigating the spy relationship and lack of action taken by the government.
Sen. Chris Coons says investigating Nvidia's CEO is top priority for Democratic Congress
https://www.npr.org/2026/11/09/nx-s1-6032682/senator-chris-c...
I'm wondering how people like Musk, Zuckerberg, Altman, etc. just continually get away with it. Are they just more sociopathic and cover their tracks better?
I'm not really making a judgement on Huang, but it seems others have done worse. It's making me wonder if there's something larger at play where people (i.e., other billionaires and CEOs and perhaps politicians) are unhappy with Huang.
I’ve read through a lot of this thread and one thing that’s interesting to me is the relatively little weight that’s been given to the HR violation aspect of Huang’s behavior with a subordinate; specifically the power dynamic aspect.
I’m guessing most HN folks are in the camp that believes modern, powerful HR orgs serve a crucial function in protecting and advocating for employees in boss-underling relationships like this, where the power dynamic of these situations demands that they not be tolerated.
So which is it? Do you make allowances and exceptions and become a vocal (or tacit) apologist for this dynamic in some cases, or hold to what seems like a reasonable principle? (Not just in Jensen’s case but across the board?).
If the consensus here slides to the apologist side that’s fine, but in that case can we all agree to defund “Big HR”? If they can’t establish and enforce a consistent rule of no sleeping with your reports, especially at the highest echelons, then what good are they?
Here is a thought experiment: Put animals from different races into a singe cage and make them have same life-style. All of them are attached with an identifier tag that looks same, they all get same food, go on same rides, watch same TV shows. Then do the animals have same thoughts, beliefs, morals, norms and values? Most western governments thinks they would. Not sure when did the humanity got this dumber and forgot the saying "birds of a feather ...". Politicians decided that minds of people is separate from biology. Race, religion, culture, gender, background, age, geo-location - you were forced to ignore all of this. Just attach a American passport, give an american car, american food, american home; boom - everything is erased and all people are same.
I think (and I hope for the USA’s sake) Jensen was actually a CIA asset and they knew Alice from day 1 and let him play with his ding dong but also importantly covert reverse spy on China.
And they probably asked him to do other things and he probably was either too naive or didn’t understand the magnitude or just didn’t play ball. So they threw him under the bus.
They waited till after the election to release this carefully.
As it would tank the economy before the election (like that would have had any more effect).
Hopefully this is how I hope would be written in some future Netflix docshow.
And the fact that he went on some long winded media tour portraying himself as some sort of hippie savior (“oh I don’t know where I live” “i love my wife dearly”) seems like a well setup “white washing” to try and cap this follow on news.
Otherwise the news as it reads sounds too stupid to be true Occam’s razor and all that.
So, is "the AI-trade" now gone?
(Whatever the wallstreet guys understand by this term)
what a weird coincidence that:
1. Anthropic is IPOing at exactly the same time
2. Anthropic announced that they could destroy "CUDA moat"
3. The cheating was an open secret for years and it burst just now
4. The biggest loser in Chinese chip flow is Anthropic, and they are hostile to idea of OSS AI
weird coincidences all around :-)
Goodbye, money! Who is seriously considering sabotaging their portfolio and precipitating a huge SP500 drop for months to come? Who, remembering the board of directors is making this decision, would want that?
People owning no stock, with grudges against the C suite class. A lot of people, I'd assume.
Mr. President a second Jensen affair has hit the tower
AI is under attack.
This just in: he has resigned.
Any proof his mistress is a Chinese spy or is she just Chinese (and young and hot)?
It's kinda cool this guy is a computer nerd who is living like a rock star.
I’m buying the affair and that it facilitated smuggling, but all could be explained by financial interest so far. Was she a spy or made a spy by circumstances on the smuggling itself?
No, just a smuggler in contact with the biggest chinese companies, and the department of commerce being utterly corrupt, normal rock star stuff.
Is this how the whole castle crumbles? some tabloid sex scandal on one side like it's 2017, anthropic vibecoding a CUDA replacement for AMD on the other?
He came upon a wife changing amount of money and couldn't resist
If, as alleged, Alice Huang is an agent of the Chinese government, and if her activities result in Jensen Huang getting ditched by Nvidia, that is certainly going to win her Employee of the Year at the MSS (国家安全部) Christmas Party.
ITT: underclass gossips about their masters' sex lives and wifey feelings
I like the guy, he's funny. I would say to keep him (on a leash), but if I could get endless 10/10 Chinese spy pussy I too would betray the AI race. I wouldn't cheat on my wife though, that's pretty low.
It’s not like he assaulted women, which is apparently par for the course at other big tech companies.
The guy had some consensual sex - so what? “Oh it shows poor judgement” Literally shut the f*k up… his judgement made NVIDIA the behemoth it is. Glad you get to backseat his personal life because judgement as it pertains to relationships is something you can actually relate to.
Removing him as CEO at this point in history is as the kids would say dumb af. Absolute garbage decision.
So Jensen also had an affair with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care, who is also married.
Looks like both Nvidia GPUs and Nvidia CEO have Single Instruction Multiple Threads (SIMT) architecture.
Did you hear about the container of gpus that was lost between california and texas? I heard that if it's not found, someone is going to get REALLY F... a spy type F one lol.
China would love nothing more... Perhaps they orchestrated it... Illogical...
I blame the leather jacket.
The media attention here was weirdly intense when it broke out.
With his connections , he can start another one.
Macro: Is this political subterfuge to distract us from other things like criminal government officials? Spiteful payback for losing the mid-terms?
I don't think it's any of these things.
It's NVIDIA being sued because they defrauded investors by including illicit chip sales in their Q3 figures
Probably the worst choice he made is to project an image of devoted husband who adores his wife. Should've learn from Elon.
100% dumping my Nvidia stocks if this happens. Maybe triggering this en-masse was the goal all along?
What you mean "goal"? It takes a lot of active effort to shoot yourself in the foot like that.
He should run Intel then.
Note to self: if a hot chick ever shows interest in me and I'm not that attractive then be on my guard.
He literally FAFOed
What did board of tesla said when Elon asked some random girl on Internet to have a baby for him?
well deserved. Should join Bill Gates in the same Unfavored Not-Gentleman-Anymore Club and be forgotten.
Turns out he's just Jensen Hung
Sadly, Jensen never got invited to Epstein Island and is therefore a persona non grata in the highest circles of business and government.
I hope it was worth it.
What do you think he’ll be thinking of on his death bed. Nvidia’s shareholders or the human connection.
huang himself be open sourced prior to nvidia graphics driver.
It's Joever
I've been writing about history for over 20 years, and this feels like an inflection point. Some day a long-form essay will describe Huang's prescient foray into machine learning, the rise of AI, the resulting bubble, Ed Zitron's prolonged diatribes, Huang's infidelity that leads to the downfall of his company, Anthropic's disappointing IPO, OpenAI's subsequent disastrous IPO, a reckoning for AI's plagiarism, and then there are bubble bits all over everybody.
We'll call it Billy and the Bubbleosaurus.
Jensen really needs some time off.
Some group is trying to make a big deal out of this. I mean which spy posts so publicly their itineraries/photos/business meetings, on wechat? Come on!
My armchair analysis is that going forward with this will most likely make the AI bubble pop.
Depending on how Jensen takes it, this could be the catalyst to steer AI in a new direction. Companies will line up to scoop him up, if not fight each other to get him. He is the head of the most valuable company, he has the tightest connection to the US government, it won't take a minute before Mudita* becomes a new company being fast-tracked to the top.
* Opposite of Envy (nvidia)
Interesting that the thing that might pop the AI stock bubble isn’t anything to do with the technology at all but a good old-fashioned sex scandal.
It won’t be the sex it will be the illicit sales of GPUs to China. That domino topples the next and all of the “sales” of goods to AI companies financed by the sellers. There’s a whole lot of paper sales boosting revenues while losing money with each sale going on.
It’s the Dot Bomb days all over again.
Hard to imagine this happening. Curious if he will pull off a coup like Sam Altman.
Why does it feel like half these comments are NVDA holders?
These things would be clear causes for resignation at any big corp
Good luck with their stock. He's on par with Steve Jobs level of marketing.
If the big boys can fly to LSJ to eat "beef jerky" and fully avoid prosecution, then this is a CIA coup, because virtually nobody really cares about how he warmed his stick. They are probably mad at him for moving product to the Chinese, who they can't control as easily. They are going to install a puppet they can properly control. And "pace the frontier" by sucking the oxygen out of the room for open source and local models.
Mission accomplished: nvidia nationalized.
it's because the gamers haven't been able to buy a gpu since 2024
That was probably the Chinese intelligence intent, to destroy Nvidia this way. The tools are going for it.
My tinfoil hat theory is that this is all orchestrated. They knew about the affair for months, but withheld it. My theory is that with the midterms results, rather than risk facing accountability as things unravel "naturally", they have this big bombshell as a "get out of blame free" card. That way everyone can collectively say "It wasn't _my_ fault things fell apart. I was doing my best, honest!"
So they risked an actual transfer of intel to entrap him?
Well, Mr. Huang sure seems to have turned his life upside down.
The extramarital affairs, while salacious, are largely immaterial.
The key issue seems to be not merely was he sleeping with someone who was not his wife, but rather, that he was sleeping with a Chinese spy who was rather essentially running a export smuggling operation to China in violation of United States law specifically crafted to recognize these Nvidia chips as sufficiently high-end to merit a national security concern.
And apparently, the United States government knew about it. But never told him they knew. What Huang personally knew is not clear, and is likely now to be subject to inquiry from a Congress that has also been turned upside down, ushering in a wave of AI skeptics while Huang was notable at the White House's "AI summit" for his almost singular bullishness. Howard Lutnick personally shut down an investigation, concerns from the CIA were not acted upon.
Donald Trump has seen people try to turn his life upside down given salacious scandals. Perhaps the President of the United States and Lutnick (among the well-heeled class known to have lied about their Epstein island connections) simply do not care, given both openly embrace Huang as a source of profit. It's also not clear the President shares the United States natsec consensus (what some of his followers term "the swamp") that actually sees Xi or China as a threat. After all, he plans to have what is likely to be another highly docile visit to the Chinese leader next week.
Put another way, it seems the federal government did not act as turning Mr. Huang's life upside down may have been calculated to turn the entire economy and their fortunes (both personal and political) upside down. Perhaps there is a backroom deal with China the President, Lutnick and Huang are secretly accommodating? I mean why would they not at least warn him?
The present irony is of course, for whatever aligned reasons that led to this hush-hush arrangement, the cat is out of the bag now. One wonders if the consequences this threatens to unleash in the present moment would have been mitigated if instead of trying to pretend it wasn't happening, the powers that be had acted with greater preemption. Perhaps so it goes. The best laid plans of this sort are often turned upside down.
"Nvidia" was named for envy, one of the 7 deadly sins. Maybe his next company will be "Luxuria"?
silicon valley - paedophilia is fine, but sleeping with a Chinese AI executive is where I draw the line
insane that an infidelity should have any bearing on the ability to lead the company he took from zero to 5 trillion
moralism blocking progress once again
Infidelity with a Chinese spy. Quite a different beast.
I do agree with anyone saying that this feels fishy as fuck. They can punish Jensen without firing the man who made the company. I'm sensing fuckery afoot or that the board is operating with a lot more information.
It's easy to blame a person like dumb Jensen who slept with the Chinese spy.
I don't see anyone accusing China of setting up such a trap. China always denies ofc, though all these scummy things eventaully comes out to be true, and by then everyone forgets.
Finally some sanity. He should have resigned.
Should have sold at 220 ugh
But there's no real competitors still? Even for the medium term?
I had 10 shares at 30 I sold at 40. Now I'm all bogleheads though.
> But there's no real competitors still? Even for the medium term?
So AMD, Google are not "real" competitors?
This is how the market tanks...
SMH
Beijing is laughing their asses off at us.
As soon as they baited Huang, it was all win-win for them. China would be able to either get access to secrets and/or chips they wouldn't have before, or they'd decapitate one of the most important companies in the U.S. The public outcry to this is exactly as planned.
Truly ridiculous and anyone with their pitchforks out needs to get a clue.
Does every man, woman, other and pet in silicon valley still inform for Stratfor?
His crime is he put his junk in the wrong kind of spy?
Maybe now Apple and nvidia can rekindle their relationship after the bubble pops. Apple could come to the rescue, secure a heavy investment and enter into the cloud computing business.
Steve Bannon ( et al., himself already having done the job now serving by rolling release AI proxy ) Trump move. Dunno who invented it but it works
And another Mackenzie Scott is born.
.
You posted this verbatim in the other thread, Dario.
it would be ironic if this is how the AI 'bubble' pops.
Irattional things continue to be irrational i guess
I feel this is way over amplified to further restrict chinese models/open weights development by further controlling the company with a new CEO.. seriously, who cares what he’s doing in his personal life, I am not a big fan of him much as he should have made GPUs further more accessible to consumers, but he’s definitely not an evil AI lunatic like some AI ceo bros we see now.
Seems the sort of rumor anyone could produce.
I still don't understand why Jensen didn't just offer the lady involved a horse.
I mean, that's acceptable these days isn't it?
Is there a archive.ph link? This article is paywalled.
Any ousting will probably be for having an affair with a direct report. At many companies, having an 'inappropriate relationship with a customer' isn't a policy violation unless there's also evidence of undue influence, so it's more conditional and complicated. Whereas just the existence of an inappropriate relationship with a direct report is a serious violation.
From an HR and legal perspective, if Alice was a spy, Jensen was arguably the targeted 'victim' of a foreign intelligence operation. While it was certainly very dumb and negligent, it may not have been a policy violation or may only have been a violation of company policies like mishandling confidential information or not following IT security policies. Those aren't usually "Fire the CEO Now" things, while slamming the sheets with a direct report absolutely requires some kind of immediate action.
The real question is who wants Jensen gone? Because the first leak was clearly intentional and reportedly placed by 'senior White House sources', citing a confidential NSC report. Now the second leak of the inappropriate affair happens immediately after. This was a designed sequence. Both of the underlying events are several months old. Given the facts, I think the most likely source is 'China Trade/AI Hawks' in the White House (possibly the NSC). The reasoning being that Jensen has generally been trying to minimize restrictions on selling AI to China (which is, arguably, part of his job).
He has to go because he opposes restrictions to run Chinese open weight models on NVIDIAs GPUs. He said so in an Axios interview in July - "The industry needs open models, science needs open models, cybersecurity needs open models". [1]
[1] https://www.facebook.com/ChinainAus/videos/nvidia-ceo-jensen...
Good riddance. All these csuite people think they are so uniquely capable but if he gets kicked out nothing will change except we'll, hopefully, hear less about jackets at tech presentations.
Also to all the people saying how terrible this will be, would you really want someone running your company who can't keep his word to his wife? Maybe it is a quaint idea in 2026 but I think people who break their word shouldn't be trusted, particularly to be in positions of power.
CEO sleeps with customer. CEO sleeps with someone who reports to him. Time to go.
The reports that he had a second affair with a subordinate, if true, are disgusting and would lead to termination at any other company. He should not get a pass. How someone who has had so much success could have such poor judgement is a mystery to me. It’s sad, he accomplished so much.
What is the endgame of this completely cumbersome and obvious CIA journalist and intelligence community rollout of this narrative surrounding Jensen and Nvidia? Why would they nuke the credibility of America's only AI chip company and hand the future of AI to China? Do they actually think this will gain them control over AI?
https://x.com/ChinaSelect/status/2120253050845593723
I think their concern is that NVidia is acquiescent and in support of policies which give China better AI chips, which is the core of the matter regarding the honeypot scandal. The goal, if it is an op, is to get a CEO who will comply more readily with export controls.
They are finding ways to tighten chip export to China, which is the biggest threat to OpenAI/Anthropic atm.
Americans voted for rooting out corruption. The Congressional committees that review stuff like corruptly quashing an investigation into your lover company [1] are changing hands. Jensen coming clean right after the election was, within the range of options he had, smart.
(Folks run to blow whistles when they realize they're involved in something they may pay the price for isn't new.
Also, have you seen our IC? The days of the CIA running a competent conspiracy, if they ever existed, are behind us.)
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/09/business/economy/nvidia-m...
Reputedly it’s Marco Rubio who has been the main leaker. Think about what his motivations may be and the timing and you’ll have an answer.
What is up with people who seem to love corruption?
Huang had an affair with a Chinese spy, as well as an affair with someone he manages. Either one of these would be grounds for dismissal at any company I've worked at. Committing both of these offenses shows appalling judgment by Huang.
Firing him seems like a very logical conclusion, not some CIA Illuminati bullshit conspiracy theory.
They’re just reporting on things that are true and have been kept secret inappropriately. That’s not a “narrative”.
You’re looking for a conspiracy when this is a pretty straightforward story. Jensen’s credibility is shot. Of course they’re preparing contingency plans.
"America's only AI chip company"
Nvidia has a large market share, but AMD, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, OpenAI, Qualcomm all produce AI chips... these are all American companies.
Given the massive amount of chips funneled through to CN, I guess it leaves regular ol' corporate governance no other option.
If they didn't want to hand the future of AI to China, maybe Nvidia shouldn't have had a Chinese CEO? (By which I mean this wasn’t their objective)
perhaps they acquired or feign having acquired fundamental cryptographic breakthroughs, hoping the "bubble" spreads to China / India / ... to convert a few moths of cryptographic lead into perhaps a few years....
NYT and WSJ doing the bidding. Unleash the Oppenheimer protocol. It’s an epic footgun. History repeats itself.
Unless there’s an evidence of him being compromised, this is crazy. I’m total outsider and don’t know Nvidia copropare rule machinery, but from perceived perspective that feels like significant blow to the company.
I expect shit show funnier than when OpenAI tried to put Altman with same result.
Even shift leaders at McDonalds need to sign various workplace policies, including policies about relations with their direct reports. So yeah, this is not exactly a surprise or something unheard of.
Even if he’s not compromised it shows a pretty serious lapse in judgment. Remember that CEO and HR exec who got caught at a Coldplay concert?
I'm not sure what the big deal is. Eric Swalwell slept with a Chinese spy and he was part of the government at the time.
He wasn't punished nor fired over it. It seems when a Democrat does something like this, everyone looks the other way.
There are many such cases, which makes the pearl clutching much less convincing.
I wonder if Trump will retaliate against Nvidia. Neither (firing, retaliating) would be good for the world economy.
The NYT reports that Huang was caught on video with this second affair when they were together in San Jose.
Seems like this video and the first affair with the spy was a classic blackmail operation used against him as I said before [0] and Huang likely said no to the wrong person.
It is over.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50417105
Makes you wonder who the person(s) is?
It:s because he's close to Trump.