I think a lot of people here seem to underestimate how much of a CEO's job is perception.
"Oh who cares who he slept with, he's been great for Nvidia. Nothing has been proven."
He's one of the most visible CEO's in the most visible industry in the world, and the entire AI economy is dependent upon them. The perception of him as stable is incredibly important.
Merely the suggestion that he is having affairs with people with close ties to China's government, given export controls, is a huge PR problem. Adding in an additional affair with someone under him. And the likelihood that there may be even more out there.
I doubt the Board wants to get rid of Jensen Huang. He's done incredibly well for them. But right now, there's a huge PR shitstorm swirling around the company.
Maybe in six months it all dies down and he comes back, who knows. But right now, you really can't just ignore the problem and hope the media doesn't care about the whole "well she was only sort of a spy" situation.
There's an increasing agreement about how big of a deal AI is, that if misused it has potential to be more dangerous than nuclear weapons. This calls for careful and measured advancement... it also calls for some level of coordination with big players, including China.
Jensen echoes similar sentiments in Emily Chang's interview.
I rue that nuanced opinions are going to brushed aside amidst the nationalist fervor in current ongoing media cycle.
Many leaders and engineers at Nvida are multi-millionaires many times over, they don't need to be there, they love the culture, vision and leadership. With Jensen gone, that could all change. I'm sure many employees are looking at the exit now.
Not if there is much more scrutiny on American GPU exports going forward. I remain very surprised Nvidia has enough of an advantage that primary nation states cannot replicate it.
Wosrst case scenario in my opinion is that this leads to serious financial troubles for Nvidia to the point that the US tries to take it over.
Both parties have toyed with a sovereign wealth fund and government takeover of the means of production. Doing so in an industry considered a national security concern wouldn't be the out of the question, but it would be a very, very bad turn of events.
Right, it's alleged spy. We don't even know if she's actually a spy yet, but people are already talking about it like it's a definite thing. What happened to innocent until proven guilty? Places like reddit are notorious for putting heads on a spike on just allegations (eg. Depp v. Heard)
Not sure Reddit or HN is putting his head on a spike.
He admitted the affair and now it turns out he's had affairs with two subordinates.
If Nvidia had not told him to resign, it would have no viable way of enforcing its own regulations about sleeping with reports.
Her being or not being a spy isn't the issue. He was at the wheel and admits to infidelity. Now everyone has to second guess his statements retroactively.
What are you talking about? Dude built one of most expensive companies in the world, that enabled huge advancements in AI. If anything he proved that he can do things and his judgements in this area were right.
Not hardly. Look if you entertain the position of leadership remember that you are a collective representation of your entity. Jensen was exposed as saying:
Oh come on. Everyone knows these tech CEOs are distasteful humans, people just buy from them because they have little competition (from fellow evil tech CEOs).
The CEO's personality is irrelevant if they're selling something that's in high enough demand. Money matters more than anything.
This particular scandal is an issue for Nvidia because:
1. Actual espionage, national security, etc. is potentially in play - criminal charges cost money.
2. Liability from potential lawsuits around in-office affairs - civil suits cost money.
Interpersonal relationships at companies are quite common, at all levels up to the C-suite. It depends on company policy whether it's permitted or not and Nvidia had no policy barring it. It becomes a legal problem in the event of coercion or favoritism, but otherwise, it happens.
> We avoid situations where our actions might create a conflict—actual or potential—between our personal gain and our obligations to NVIDIA. If such conflicts arise, we immediately remove ourselves from any decision-making role in the matter
That's the question, isn't it. It's easy enough to armchair quarterback and say that, as a man, I'm not that distasteful, and that I wouldn't do that, but I haven't been put in that position before. I can pretend to be the most pious, on the other side of my keyboard over the Internet, but, honestly, I haven't actually been sitting in that (bed)room as a billionaire against a woman who's motivated to get me to do her bidding. I can say all I want about what I would do, but that's all just hot air.
As a person with some social skills and what I'd like to consider ethics, I have gotten clear indication from beautiful women that they want to sleep with me. But if you're already at the point where you're in the bedroom with them and you find them attractive and know theyre willing, you're already losing. You're better off not getting to that point at all and cutting it off waay earlier.
> I think a lot of people here seem to underestimate how much of a CEO's job is perception.
What a load of crap. Elon Musk is deranged and nobody bats an eye. Zuck is proven to steal and sell data illegally for political gains in authoritative countries with Cambridge analytica and nobody cares. This guy has 2 affairs and is out.
Obviously in context GP means nobody in a position to make Elon's behavior negatively impact his companies has done so to any meaningful degree. Customers, partners, and advertisers have not really fled from Tesla, Starlink, SpaceX, Cursor, etc.; Most kinds of antisocial behaviors can be overlooked so long as there's money to be made.
>Researchers estimate that Tesla lost between 1 million and 1.26 million U.S. vehicle sales through early 2025 due to this backlash—meaning sales would have been 67% to 83% higher without the negative perception effect.
It's not that it is overlooked. It certainly have some effect. But he is so rich that he doesn't really care. When Tesla was something new, when it was product for "better people" image was everything. Now it is not that important because it's a everyday ordinary car.
I think Musk controls enough of his companies' voting stock that random people's feelings about him aren't as impactful.
I say this with complete neutrality on whether Huang got a raw deal or is not... actually tbh I feel like he's been a massive jackass, brought this all on himself and has only himself to blame, how could you be so reckless, etc... AND also he is getting a raw deal and an undeserved lynch mob. If that makes sense.
I can see the point. It's not really about ethics as such, but, it is bad publicity.
In trillion-dollar companies any bad publicity can have huge financial percussions for its investors. HUang himself must understand that, and he is a major investor in NVIDIA. He probably saves a lot of money by resigning.
I am sure lots can be said on this topic (what the hell was Jensen doing!); others will say it, but I want to add that expectation management and posturing is very important in this age.
You mean the age where Donald Trump, a known liar and felon, was re-elected, on the promise of lower prices and no more wars, then proceeded to do implement the opposite of those promises?
You and I both know that they have very different groups of people they are supposed to please, and the moral expectations exerted on the two are far from the same.
You are basically saying it's ok with Trump base, because Trump is acting according to their expectations. If Trump shot someone on 5th avenue I think it would be truly bad, but not so in the eyes of Trump supporters. At least that's what Trump himself thinks, and has said.
Not sure why you're being downvoted. This shit is so commonplace and well-known regarding the elites and CEO's. It should've been priced in anyways.
My theory is the rest of the oligarchy was getting scared of NVIDIA's stranglehold on AI development and the broader economy and felt they needed to knock Huang and the company down a peg or two. Maybe install a bit of a crony CEO (a la Tim Apple).
Not sure was he forced to resign, or whether he just thought doing so would keep the stock-price from falling, and thus save Huang himself a ton of money.
And Elon sleeps with every woman possible going so far as building a Texas compound for these women and children. If Musk were to sleep with a Chinese spy his excuse would simply be she was ovulating at the time.
Musk and Zuck both have far more voting power in their companies than Jensen Huang does in Nvidia. Zuck specifically has effectively unilateral control.
When the share price is at max max any slight crosswind is going to knock it hard too. And this is a big one because a trifecta of scandal, the spy thing and him being ousted and so that brain and leadership and image being lost. Wouldn't be so bad on a value share probably (I invest in another scandal ridden CEO stock so I know the drill!)
With the recent midterm / AI crash, I'll leave this stock well alone. Might buy at sub 100 if panic sets in.
If it were a female CEO being ostracized for having an affair she would clamor that "men do it all the time" and how sexist "society" is obsessed with controlling women's bodies.
I hope people understand that the affairs are not the reason he is being fired - NVIDIA has supposedly been skirting the export ban put in place by the previous administration. This was put in place for national security reasons. Whether you agree or disagree with the ban, it exists and Jensen&NVIDIA are in a world of trouble if this comes to light.
From all the reporting I've read, it is hard for me to avoid the conclusion that NVIDIA sold to China despite the export ban. I'd love to be wrong
>I hope people understand that the affairs are not the reason he is being fired - NVIDIA has supposedly been skirting the export ban
If you dissect the timeline of the events and various statements, I think the 2nd affair with a subordinate employee K Powell was the reason to fire Jensen Huang -- more so than the allegations of secretly selling to China.
This is the timeline:
Nov 8 : Jensen issues apology. NVIDIA allows him to use nvidia.com for this
Nov 8 : The Board of Directors publicly backs him up with a "vote of confidence" by stating: *"no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised" and that "The Board has confidence in Jensen and his leadership team."* -- from https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/statement-from-nvidia-board-of-directors
Nov 11 : 2nd affair gets exposed in the news
Nov 11 evening : emergency meeting of Board of Directors is called to fire Jensen Huang
Before Nov 11, it looked like NVIDIA might try to ride out the storm and keep Jensen at the helm especially if they saw that the China accusations and evidence wasn't strong enough to be a problem. Again, it was totally unnecessary for the board to publicly back him up if they had plans to get rid of him because of China allegations. However, the Board of Directors emergency Nov 11 meeting is inconsistent with the Nov 8 statement affirming Jensen's leadership.
Nov 8 was coordinated with carefully crafted communications showing that Jensen and BOD were aligned. Contrast with Nov 11 being chaos and an emergency meeting convened.
Reading between the lines, what probably happened is that Jensen didn't come totally clean with the board on Nov 8 and tell them about the 2nd K Powell affair. Instead, the board got totally blindsided and lost trust in him. (Is there another 3rd secret affair he's hiding from us?!?) It was impossible to keep Jensen under those circumstances.
> Reading between the lines, what probably happened is that Jensen didn't come totally clean with the board on Nov 8 and tell them about the 2nd K Powell affair. Instead, the board got totally blindsided and lost trust in him. (Is there another 3rd secret affair he's hiding from us?!?) It was impossible to keep Jensen under those circumstances.
Exactly my read as well. "If you find two ants in your kitchen, the best estimate of the total number of ants in your kitchen is not two."
Lawyer here - I actually would bet this is not the case. Whether he came clean or not, the 2nd affair with a subordinate is basically always a firing offense under the sexual harassment and/or code of conduct policy, whether you are a CEO or not.
The lies may be part of it, but if you didn't fire them for the COC/SH violation, you would be in for near infinite liability because it ends up as evidence that the culture from the top was tolerant of violations, etc. THis is not conjecture, it's what has basically always happened in the legal realm when companies try to work around it.
> the 2nd affair with a subordinate is basically always a firing offense under the sexual harassment and/or code of conduct policy, whether you are a CEO or not.
In my company, it's explicitly not forbidden, but the relationship has to be disclosed to HR early on (source: yearly training). That being said, I'm not sure what HR is going to do with the information.
HR will use the information to ensure the two are not subordinate to one another. Example: A is dating B at the same company. HR will make sure that A is not subordinate to B and vice versa. This will reduce conflict of interest.
You have a high opinion of HR. Often one or both are dumped for violating employment agreements.. making HR and the company's life easier with the least effort.
Not fire you. It gives them the ability to fire the others who aren’t forthcoming.
I suppose this way they can warn you to date people who are not direct reports… which hopefully you are not doing. Or offer you options (being transferred).
Knowingly allowing ongoing misconduct or consciously ignoring resulting harm is considered bad faith
Protecting the CEO for the directors’ own interest is considered a loyalty problem.
Both of these things would make them personally liable in a shareholder derivative lawsuit.
California permits personal liability for directors perpetrating harassment and prohibits aiding or abetting prohibited conduct.
That's the directors.
Company wise - actions by the CEO are generally imputable directly to the company. This leads to potential hostile-environment claims even by employees who never had a relationship with the CEO, and those claims have been particularly cognizable in California.
Non-termination is also likely to lead to punitive damages, because it will be seen as "malice" or "reckless indifference".
Value wise - sexual harassment verdicts - depends who sued, but probably <150 million to start, long term cost maybe a billion very worst case.
Shareholder derivative lawsuits (where directors are personally liable if they end up with a finding of bad faith) - insanely more - hundreds of millions to billions.
Isn’t musk a clear counterexample here? He has had numerous liaisons with subordinates. Yet I haven’t seen either SpaceX or Tesla (who actually could) move to fire him.
Or is he the exception?
Some people get to have affairs with subordinates, others don't. It's a question of if they have the support of the people pulling the levers or not as to whether it's considered acceptable. Universal rules are for little people, once beyond a certain position they are merely tools for selectively shutting out opposition.
Generally I don't most handbooks have affair with a customer as being an offense. Arguably, that is just good business. On the other hand, having an affair with a vendor would be a problem.
My understanding is that the legal protections for the board of directors can quickly evaporate if they know about such lies and do not take actions. This is a major point of contention in the Oxford LLC bankruptcy proceedings per my understanding after the founder was found to have been persuing several kinds of fraud.
After they caught him in a lie, they may not have been able to not fire him.
They can't legally not fire him. But they can legally re-hire him after firing him. So ironically the ONLY way he can continue at nVidia is by being fired - we just have to wait a few days and there will be an Altman-like resurrection.
This is a paraphrase of the less technical-sounding: "if you find two ants in the kitchen, you don't have a two-ant problem" which I definitely heard my mom say in the 90s (about actual ants, not metaphorically).
I have a feeling this one falls in the same category as "sweet summer child", which, while technically as old as the hills, only hit critical mass after game of thrones popularised it
I don't think this has anything to do with trust. It's absurd not to trust Huang as the best possible CEO for the company that he brought from zero to 5 trillion dollars in value. It's about being afraid of public opinion, and especially fear of being blamed for not taking the expected decision.
He's clearly not the best CEO for the company if his leadership has opened them up to a tonne of liability. The thing with Powell is problematic enough on its own, and yet it looks like a misdemeanor compared to the fact that he was sleeping with a Chinese spy and potentially knowingly sold chips to China in the face of a US-government-imposed ban. I just don't see why this is so hard. The best guy for the job is the one who doesn't risk the company and investor's money by overstepping into the geopolitical arena because he wants to poke some strange.
Given that a third woman (another coworker) has just been alleged, I'd say that Jensen was the best fit in a few other ways too. I'd be furious if I were an investor.
Yeah, I'm wondering this too. Jensen's damn good at his job, love him or hate him. I genuinely am struggling to understand why they'd remove him unless there's more they know that we don't.
They know that media and politicians were asking for his head, and that it was riskier for their own asses to resist than to concede. It's that simple.
I don't think there is anything more to it than self preservation. All humans and I'd say living beings are good at it.
This is why martyrs are so praised. You have to overcome this instinct of self preservation to give up your life. I suspect most people can't do it in the heat of the moment.
Basically what others have said, it doesn't matter if Jensen is good at his job or even if nVidia prospers under Jensen. I don't think the board members care one lick about that. What matters to them is their own self interest and it takes a lot of experience to realize that executive leadership and even the board does not instinctively value the goals of the organization above their own self interest. I submit this is true because of the massive amount of bribing err I mean incentive alignment that the organization gives in terms of like stock options or bonuses for meeting certain targets.
He got honeypotted by a rival superpower and appears to have actively helped to circumvent national security concerns and export controls to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.
My god, how much more spectacular could his mistakes be? Does he have to eat a baby live on TikTok while proclaiming "transistors are dead, we're going back to vacuum tubes" or something?
There are very few human beings in history who could have taken nVidia from zero to megatrillions like he did, but the idea of him continuing to run the company after this is absolute absurdity.
if you think getting powned by chinese intelligence is 'stupid mistakes' you are extremely missinformed about the lengths they will go through and the resources they will deploy.
you really dont understand or know how such a placement works. They can very easily do it to you regardless of how paranoid you are.
everyone can be fished.
the simple fact China had to deploy an operative to get yo him means he and Nvidia are well secured. its an expensive and risky option, not the first by far and intelligence agency would take to get to someone.
He produced a one-in-a-zillion success, and he certainly did it the hard way -- he was apparently unusually hands on. The word "genius" gets thrown around a lot, but I think it's apt.
But.
He put together a string of frankly insane mistakes that are now endangering that 5 trillion dollar company from both the inside and outside. There's no chance in hell that they're going to go from $5T back to 0, but you are not understanding the trouble they're in.
Internally, boinking your direct reports (who also happened to have a string of recent promotions) is incredibly ruinous to a company's internal culture, destroying notions of internal meritocracy. How would you feel if all your hard work was apparently not as important as putting out for the CEO? Do you think that would make you eager to do your best work for that CEO? And that's even before thinking about the insane legal liability.
Externally, he got honeypotted by a foreign government and managed to simultaneously mess with national security and, it seems, circumvent export controls to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. nVidia is in some extremely serious shit, and will have the government breathing down their necks between now and the end of time.
Next to the Nvidia chief was a woman named Huang Le, or Alice Huang, an executive of a Singapore-based data center company called Megaspeed, which was poised to buy $2 billion of Nvidia A.I. technology over the next year.
Though Ms. Huang and Megaspeed are little-known players in the A.I. industry, their association with Nvidia and its chief executive has recently become a preoccupation in Washington.
Commerce Department officials have been investigating whether Megaspeed, which has close ties to Chinese tech firms, is helping companies in China sidestep American export restrictions, according to more than a half dozen current and former officials and other people familiar with the companies, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an examination that is not public.
The inquiry, which is active, calls into question how closely Nvidia is tracking where its A.I. chips end up and highlights the possibility of American export laws easily being sidestepped. Megaspeed is also facing scrutiny from Singaporean police, who told The New York Times in a statement that they are investigating the company for breaching local laws, without elaborating further.
It's absurd to suggest that Nvidia would need to secretly ship a handful of chips to some sketchy actor when Nvidia chips have a a mile a line long for sales.
Jensen can sell his inventory 10x over. You have to have buying power just to get a hold of them.
Anything is possible but it would be extra stupid for one of the smartest people in the world to risk everything for literally no reason at all.
I think you missed the point. An average person may hold their alcohol and operate, but we don't approve cops being drunk on the job.
Huang betrayed 38 years of trust his wife put into him and recently betrayed the Board by lying to them. That's already admitted, no ifs or buts. He clearly had reasons, as he is a sane person. His reasons were romantic engagement with (alleged) spy. Since he is a sane person, he must have weighed pros and cons and still engage in an affair, even though it jeopardized his marriage and his job. The Board needs to do bunch of "what ifs" in such situation, including paranoid ones, such as "what if this woman had such access to NVIDIA tech stack that each cheap is infused with some form of Chinese virus". We simply don't know how far this goes, but this firing certainly shows much further than just a consequence of a romantic fling.
Also worth noting that in the event his wife doesn't stand by him, this immediately becomes the second largest divorce settlement in history (behind only Bill and Melinda Gates). That's not the kind of headlines the PR department is love with either.
> Instead, the board got totally blindsided and lost trust in him. (Is there another 3rd secret affair he's hiding from us?!?)
That seems to be the most natural guess based on public information, but it's equally plausible that the board knows more than the public already, whether because they drove investigations, received disclosures from Huang, or received insider tips once the heat started rising. Trust aside, they may already might know worse and more materially or legally impactful things.
That's the kind of thing that a healthy class of professional journalists can help uncover and trace in a way that our post-journalism world is losing the opportunity to do. Even still, I wouldn't be surprised if further scandals for Huang or Nvidia started being reported in coming days and weeks. You might be right that it was just too many sex scandals and general loss of trust, but we just can't expect to know yet.
We need to be careful not to equate the two affairs as being countable apples-to-apples. An affair with a customer executive that generates several billions dollars of revenue has a much different risk/reward profile for the board than an affair with a direct report employee within the company. The former also has much lower legal risk: bribery laws aren’t properly calibrated for this circumstance and sexual harassment laws are less applicable. As far as the board is concerned, I imagine they’re fine with him having an affair for every single $5B+ signature as long as he’s delivering the goods and doing so without getting caught so overtly that sales are impacted — thus the vote of confidence! — but that internal affair suggests bad judgment rather than greed-driven judgment, and exposes Nvidia to harassment discovery claims and/or exposes that he lied to the board about not having internal affairs, so he’s out.
Assuming that federal law is enforced neutrally and uniformly, your point is completely correct.
That assumption has not held to date in this presidential cycle, and Jensen Huang has openly had the backing of that president. From a financial perspective, that would considerably lower their financial risk estimate of either having to pay a fine and/or hand over one or two C-level executives for some rich person prison-vacation time. I would assume the board is competent and has verbally, off the record, discussed how many billions of dollars they expect to be fined in the worst case and accepted that as the cost of doing (corrupt) business, but we could get lucky and find they did so with a paper trail that’ll come out in court someday :D
No, I’m assuming it’s not an applicable coincidence here in this specific instance, since the Board wouldn’t have made a statement of faith on November 8th if it was; they are likely an amoral entity but definitely neither an irrational nor oblivious one, and the elections outcomes were well understood by then.
> Jensen Huang had an intimate relationship with a second employee, according to two people familiar with the matter, Reuters has learned... Reuters is not naming the employee.
So to preface, I do not condone adultery / office affairs, etc.
But in the big picture, isn't it crazy that a relationship between two consenting adults is a bigger deal, and of larger impact to the economy, than an action that is supposedly unlawful and threatened national security?
Right, and to make it explicit for some people following along who are wondering why companies have that policy... It's to prevent predatory and abuses of power. There's a power imbalance that can easily lead to exploitation.
Adding on to that clarification: The leverage the boss has over the employee creates a rational pressure for the employee to ignore any boundary they might have otherwise had in order to avoid any chance of the boss using that leverage against them.
The reason companies care about this so much is more practical than moral. Bosses having sexual/romantic relationships with employees leads to irrational decisions that are bad for the business.
Because it's likely sexual harassment. In two ways:
1 - did she feel pressured to have a relationship with him? It's hard to have genuinely free consent when he can make or break her career; and
2 - sexual discrimination towards every other employee. Did she get benefits from the relationship? It's more than fair for the rest of the employees to wonder if they'd also been eg sucking his dick if they would have gotten better raises, faster promotions, etc.
> isn't it crazy that a relationship between two consenting adults is a bigger deal, and of larger impact to the economy, than an action that is supposedly unlawful and threatened national security?
The issue with workplace relationships with subordinates is that the degree of consent is often not clear.
First, his actions were alleged to have impact on national security, but that is not for sure. It is for sure that he was acting inappropriately as a boss, though. Second, I suspect that it is both events which led to his firing. If the affair with the subordinate had come out first, and then the affair with the alleged spy, I suspect he still would've been given grace for the first but not the second event.
Once I worked at a company where the sales VP got caught embezzling by setting up (large amounts of) fake affiliates.
It boosted the overall revenue numbers, and I think they were impressed at how long he had gotten away with it, so they let him be ‘stolen’ by a competitor (who didn’t know the circumstances) while they swept it under the rug.
It's about lying. The proper procedure is to disclose consenting relationships with a subordinate so that HR and the board is aware of conflicts of interest
If an exec is lying about this, what else might they be lying about? Embezzlement? Corruption?
It’s a kind of corruption; specifically that the senior may have coerced the junior. And once it’s done, the junior can blackmail the senior. Since you can’t reliably determine that it was all mutually agreeable, you have to rule it out by policy. Same as emoluments.
you make it sound like hes the only person working at nvidia. he did good things but the company will continue to do good things as countless talented individuals make up the company.
Indeed. The world operates on trust. Once trust breaks down, there's no choice but to deal with it directly if you want to remain effective. Unfortunately for Jensen Huang, that meant NVIDIA choosing to not have a leader they can no longer trust.
I've not fired very many people before, but deception removes any ambiguity as to whether or not someone should be fired.
I’d love if that were true. But actually what the world operates on in selfish money grabbing.
Nobody trusted Trump yet he had the loyalty of all the tech giants because they needed him to make money.
And likewise, AI, and thus the global economy, are dependent on Nvidia. So there was no financial incentive for him to leave if it were just a matter of trust over his inability to keep his penis in his pants.
And let’s remember, this isn’t new news. Nvidia have been aware of this for a year already and it wasn’t a problem until recently.
So what’s changed? The obvious big thing is American government. The Democrats have made it very clear that they’re not going to tolerate any more shenanigans. So removing Haung is a great way to reduce the risk of any financial penalties for Nvidia’s deals with China et al.
> what probably happened is that Jensen didn't come totally clean with the board on Nov 8 and tell them about the 2nd K Powell affair
This is the right line of thinking, but I don't think a second affair is enough. To me, it says there is more we don't know. Possibly a lot more, and a lot worse than a second affair. Apart from anything else, that is the only reason to act this fast. You don't fire a CEO like Jensen in 24 hours over an HR indiscretion.
So I think both you and the parent are correct, but its a combo: he didn't come fully clean, but there is a non-public part that probably looks a lot more like treason that the board knows and we don't.
> I think the 2nd affair with a subordinate employee K Powell was the reason to fire Jensen Huang
Hasn't Musk done this multiple times (including having children with subordinates)? He's still the CEO of a few companies. Bill Gates married one!
Boards don't care about this kind of thing unless they are already looking to get rid of someone. Worst case they pay the person off, and the cost will probably be less than a principal engineer earns in a year.
This doesn't pass the smell test. My guess is damning evidence was discovered which incriminates several high-level individuals at Nvidia with willfully bypassing the export ban. The second affair was leaked as a cover for why they were letting him go.
It may be that, but I feel it's more about managing public perception. Potentially leaking secrets to a literal (stated) enemy of state feels much more catastrophic than infidelity (obviously his wife may not feel that way).
If someone has been:
1. Managing the company well
2. Attracting and retaining good talent
3. Making money for shareholders
4. Building strong company fundamentals
Then forcing a resignation over this seems... odd. I was under the impression that barring this infidelity, Huang was one of the more sane tech CEOs. I feel like I could to literally any other CEO (Zuckerburg, Bezos, Musk, Ellison, Gates, Jobs) that have done something equally bad or worse, and haven't had to resign.
> Reading between the lines, what probably happened is that Jensen didn't come totally clean with the board on Nov 8 and tell them about the 2nd K Powell affair. Instead, the board got totally blindsided and lost trust in him. (Is there another 3rd secret affair he's hiding from us?!?) It was impossible to keep Jensen under those circumstances.
Yeah, this seems likely. It's also quite possible that he not only "didn't come totally clean" but outright lied to the board i.e. "this was a one-time thing"
Many times, a board will maintain that they have full confidence in a CEO right up until they actually fire him. Their non-binding vote of confidence means nothing. Just as one example:
- July 25: Amid the Deepwater Horizon disaster, BP publicly stated that Hayward had the board's full support.
- July 27: BP formally announced that Hayward would step down as CEO, with Robert Dudley replacing him.
Similar situations with Bob Chapek, Travis Kalanick, the Boeing CEO in 2019 when all those crashes were happening, Carol Bartz, Bob Diamond...
What about a board that says: "We think the CEO is a bit crap, but due to how the business is structured we have no actual power over him"? cough meta.
Jensen's PR strategy with his open letter was to draw attention TO his affairs. It's a "limited hangout" strategy.
If we're just going to be purely speculative anyway, it could be the case Jensen is the one who himself leaked the 2nd affair, in order to continue this distraction strategy.
I wouldn't be surprised if 100% of the info we have on this is Jensen's PR. 1) Anonymous "leak" tweets are all PR agency slop -- real jouranalist scoopers would take credit to draw attention to themselves. 2) Any Federal investigators aren't going to say 1 word to the public. Ergo, it was always Jensen trying to keep the narrative on his affairs.
And if you want to be TRULY conspiratorial about it, perhaps one or both of the affairs never existed, only the smuggling.
I have seen a weird number of posts/responses trying to say "this isn't because he had an affair" and like, I guess it's not, it's that he had multiple affairs that have confounding effects on the business (with subordinates, with people who got chips to China).
So no, it's not literally about his sex life, but pretending like that doesn't factor into the whole things seems like a very strange point for people to keep making. It may not be that 90% of the cause is "he had sex out of his marriage" but it's also not 0% (it surely doesn't make him a "good leader(tm)" if he's having sex with subordinates)
Sex with spy of country actively tariffed and greatest active threat to US. Billions in tariff bypass. That puts you in jail for decades territory. People magazine cares about who he is banging. Legal and possible company nationalization care about bypassing tariffs.
Selling chips to China is pretty easily provable. Who cares what pussy he is diddling, it matters that such a large company might have their assets seized due to such blatant shenanigans.
All of this is based on leaks, mainly from the US government. So the November 8 board decision might've been the cause for the November 11 leak, because the original leak failed to achieve the goal of removing Huang. Remember we're talking about stuff that's over a year old. None of this is an evolving situation.
This was my original read of the whole thing. The timing on this, happening immediately after the Republicans lose big-time? This all seems so incredibly convenient and weird.
I sincerely believe this is retaliation for something that he did or didn’t do.
The Dem plan for AI was to work with Anthropic and lock down GPUs to prevent running open / unapproved models. Basically limit AI development and inference to a handful of regulated companies.
Jensen Huang wasn't on board with that so now he's gone.
Getting downvoted, but if it's not a deliberate outcome it's certain an interesting and relevant one.
Huang was famously loyal to the gaming GPU markets, and there's been a subindustry of people running open inference on high-end consumer GPUs.
If NVIDIA kills those product ranges that subindustry will die, AI hardware will be limited to corporates and the small number of individuals who can drop five figures on an AI rig, and open models will become less valuable/dangerous.
Meanwhile I find it hard to believe the board had no idea what was happening and they're suddenly shocked - shocked! - to discover that Huang was plugging his CPU into the corporate motherboard.
What could he have done to swing the election in their favor? I think it’s more likely that with Democrats in power, NVIDIA can no longer count on the Trump administration’s corruption to prevent investigations. There may be a lot more left to uncover, and they now have a convenient fall-guy to pin everything on.
Nvidia’s Board is not a list of power players. They were, until now, largely pliant to Jensen. They flipped because they saw what everyone outside Silicon Valley did—that they personally, and Nvidia broadly, would pay the price for Jensen’s failures and potential crimes if his brand wasn’t severed from Nvidia’s.
This is the same sort of timeline argument Noam Chomsky gave me regarding why he thinks that Zelensky stopped negotiating with Russia after Boris Johnson’s visit. After the firefights in Bucha he was still saying they’ll have to make a deal, then Johnson arrived and said Putin is not a man to make deals with. And then Zelensky stopped saying it. I asked Chomsky about this explicitly (whether the discovery of bodies shot point blank in the aftermath of the Russian withdrawal from Bucha was the decisive factor) and he pointed to the timeline. I don’t know if I fully buy that argument:
Would love to hear more about this - is there a timestamp within the video where the relevant discussion is? Other sources? Ukraine shifted pretty dramatically to offensive operations within Russia in late-2025/early-2026 and I'm curious why.
Chomsky has pretty terrible track record on ascribing motivations in the conflict, going back to Khmer Rouge. Should have really stuck to formal languages.
It's absurd that they're going to drop a guy that build the most profitable company in the world over 35 years of working every day, and is basically beloved by his own staff and the industry.
Something stinks to high heaven here.
Elon Musk has multiple allegations of sexual assault against him - he's had sexual relations with at least 4 of his staff including children with one of them while he had children with another women.
Elon solicits young women over social media to have children with (which is also soliciting sex).
He attacked his own regulators during DOGE, has direct meetings with Putin several times since 2022 (still ongoing), he's taken $100's of Millions in investment from Chinese state banks, special deals re: factories and data capture and sharing rights.
And more.
The difference is that Elon has 1) and iron grip over the board and 2) is an aggressive, spiteful person who will attack anyone and everyone - and everyone lives in fear about saying anything negative about Elon.
Jensen is paying the price for being a nice guy.
Apparently he should have been dragging the board over the coals, and threatening the press and industry to keep quiet, to quash the stories, to kiss up to Trump and make sure there's nothing but love from the government etc. etc..
" It was impossible to keep Jensen under those circumstances"
I'm sorry but this is very not true and ... I don't want to be mean but it's effectively naive.
Elon tells his board whatever he wants to tell them including ridiculous fabrications about products, roadmaps, and handles them with total contempt.
The fact that someone's sex life would factor into the decision at all is so backwards.
First, polyamory has been gaining popularity. But a lot of poly people I've met keep that strictly secret, because their friends and family wouldn't understand and would judge them harshly.
Second, the problem isn't that he slept with someone other than his wife (we don't know what kind of agreements they have in place, and ENM is a thing in 2026). It's that he slept with a subordinate. And that's a real problem due to the power differential that exists between him and his employees.
So it's not the second affair per se, but bad judgement. Dating at companies should only happen parallel in the hierarchy, not up or down.
What I'm pushing back on is the notion that someone should be judged simply for fucking someone who isn't his wife. There's a reason people keep ENM agreements a secret, due to the judgmental attitude from the public at large.
Hopefully alternative lifestyles will become normalized to the point where our descendants in 30 years will look back on us with the same disappointment that we look back in 1996 gay marriage laws.
ENM among older couples is particularly common. But sure, it's always possible that Jensen was just cheating on his wife without consent. The thing to watch for is whether his wife has expressed unhappiness publicly about the situation. Notice that in articles like https://archive.is/Ubg4k they'll do everything but ask her how she feels. Or if they have, it's possible she's refused to say anything on the topic. That silence means something, and we don't know what. So hold off on the judgments until we have confirmation that she's actually unhappy with it.
The spy was also a customer. This is two pretty broad violations of your usual HR policies at minimum even if you remove “spy” from the equation and ignore all the sales to sketchy parties.
From the article's first paragraph: "Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang resigned Thursday, capping a spectacular downfall for a poster boy of the artificial intelligence boom whose exit following reports of extramarital affairs now thrusts the chipmaker into an uncertain future."
For a lot of people, it's about the sex. In fact if you only read the first paragraph, you'd come away thinking it was solely about the sex.
At least on HN the sentiment is more nuanced though, which is good.
There was a comment yesterday that suggested this was either a Chinese intelligence to destroy NVidia, or CIA operation to get Nvidia under control of a friendly puppet. [1]
My money is on the CCP, simply because they have more of a motive for it. From all appearances, NVidia was playing ball with the Trump administration. He was a frequent ally of President Trump, Trump supposedly knew about this information for the last year and sat on it, and even the CIA leaks that started it stressed how much Huang had praised the Trump administration. Reportedly they had already voluntarily stopped exports to MegaSpeed [2] as of June 2025. China, however, has a lot more to gain from his departure. It's going to harm NVidia very severely: reportedly he's very hands-on, "the conductor that makes a very complex operation work", and as a founder the whole knowledge pyramid that the company is based upon rests with him. If they want their domestic hardware industry to surpass NVidia, the easiest way to do that is to take out NVidia leadership.
I suspect that he was compromised by both the CIA and CCP, and with tensions rising between them, eventually found a situation where they each wanted him to do different things, and he couldn't satisfy both. Likely the CIA got wind that the CCP was going to move with their leverage, and published to stave that off. This also has the nice side benefit for U.S. power of letting the other side know the extent to which the CIA knows what you're doing, and showing that even the CEO of the richest company on earth is not immune to U.S laws. But it's still a net negative to U.S. power to have Huang out as CEO of NVidia, simply because it's such a net negative to NVidia. This is only a desirable outcome if he's going to be ousted anyway, or if he is otherwise compromised to become a Chinese puppet.
I suspect the role of the second affair was to show the board just how deep the kompromat goes. First affair, okay, it could be an indiscretion that happened in the past, cut ties and do damage control. But if there's a second (and third and fourth and many others?) affair and everybody knows about it, it becomes impossible for Huang to lead the company because everybody has so much leverage on him.
> My money is on the CCP, simply because they have more of a motive for it.
No they don't. They just lost access to Nvidia chips that they still rely on (even if not said out in the open). Alibaba's stock tanked on the news for example.
> I suspect the role of the second affair was to show the board just how deep the kompromat goes.
The role was to get the agenda off spying and export (the things you'd go to jail for)
They would prefer their companies buy local, as it will advance their local semiconductor infrastructure.
However, these companies would prefer Nvidia if they are allowed. All the advances in the past few years are due to advanced chips being restricted, so they had to step up.
It's interesting, the second comment I linked to was about the divide between Model Hawks vs. Hardware Hawks within the state department, and this comment thread is a great example of that.
Some people believe that the key moat for AI is the model, and under this model (hah) torpedoing NVidia would be bad for China and good for the U.S. because they won't have access to cutting-edge NVidia hardware for model-training. Other people believe the key moat for AI is the hardware, and under this model torpedoing NVidia would be good for China because it'd allow Chinese hardware makers to catch up and bad for the U.S. because it destroys our key competitive advantage.
Interesting that a policy decision depends so heavily on a question of fact, but that isn't unique to this issue. (I suspect that left and right would agree on abortion if they could agree on whether personhood begins at conception or birth, but they don't, so). There's also an element of time preferences here too: it's likely that model training is dominant now, but hardware will be dominant when you project out a few years, and so both factions could be right but on different timescales.
There are certain lines CEOs of this level absolutely cannot cross, and a relationship with a subordinate is one of them. Hiding it, putting the entire company at risk for it, a board can’t trust a ceo that puts their extramarital dalliances ahead of the company’s interest.
Chips to China, on the other hand, is in the company’s interest. That’s what lawyers and lobbyists are for, and when they behave enough, that’s also what “rockstar” CEOs are for.
Jensen got too big for his leather jacket. Simple as.
The image of Nvidia advocating for exports of GPUs to china while compromised by an allegedly Chinese agent is the real issue here. Endless congressional hearings on that topic starting in Jan. The Nvidia corp still has to answer for that even when Jensen is out.
Yeah but Dwarkesh is completely wrong and the fact he couldn't see this made me think differently about him.
Money is like oxygen. If you deny oxygen/money to the Chinese chip market, they can't grow as fast. By supplying China with chips, all the money will go back to the US and not enough money will go to Chinese chip manufacturers to help them advance the way Nvidia can.
This is what Jensen was saying and he is 100% correct here. The chip ban to China will really help them catch up because the money will recirculate since they have no choice but to buy Chinese chips, and in the end it will make them much stronger.
I'm doubtful of this hypothesis. Maybe for a few years, sure. But China has proven time and again that they do not need foreign supply constraints to incentivize the growth of their own competing domestic industry.
The fundamental contradiction of the AI maximalists like Huang is claiming that AI does not need regulated while simultaneously supporting chip exports to China. The supporting claim for the former is that we need to compete on AI with China and move as fast as possible and every day matters, while the latter implies that slowing down their compute is inconsequential.
If this was the case, the Chinese government would have placed import restrictions on US chip manufacturers. Currently Chinese AI companies are constrained on compute. This is why they go to such great lengths to use Singaporean straw purchasers of NVIDIA cards. Merely having strong market incentives to succeed is not enough. Sustained, time-consuming R&D and technology sharing is necessary to catch up to competitors.
If this principle were true, then autarchies like North Korea would be the most advantaged since they never have to worry about international competition in their domestic market.
Your confidence is not backed by any data or observation, it's just an unfounded inference.
> the Chinese government would have placed import restrictions on US chip manufacturers.
OT but one thing I didn't realize until reading this comment:
Those used CMP 170HX 8GB were advertised in front of crypto server rigs. Those were probably spread across South Asian scam malls(shopping mall buildings built in literal sovereignty contested areas of non-China/Japan/Korea/Russia non-India non-African non-Muslim Asia, under guises of Chinese tourist destinations, that are literally rented out to local Chinese-speaking gangs engaging in all sorts of gang crimes from tech support scams to human and organ trafficking, straight out of the fictitious Chiba in Neuromancer), and they would happily sell or rent compute to Chinese AI firms if only those were more valuable than 8GB VRAM they have, which they all had all along.
GPU export to China must have become significantly less meaningful since the 170HX unlock became a thing. That alone must have provided petaflops of unsanctioned untraced junks for parts priced compute to Chinese AI startups.
> If this was the case, the Chinese government would have placed import restrictions
"About 600,000 of Nvidia's advanced artificial intelligence chips are stored in Hong Kong awaiting shipment to mainland China, two people familiar with the matter said, as Beijing withholds approval for large-scale imports despite demand from tech firms" [1].
> "If this was the case, the Chinese government would have placed import restrictions on US chip manufacturers."
I do not know full details, but China did exactly that. There were articles about limiting Nvidia chip imports more than a year ago. It really highlighted the absurdity of the export ban.
To my non-expert knowledge, the reasoning behind the export ban has never been explained beyond a vague assertion that China would do some sort of evil with AI if they have bigger GPUs than some arbitrary number of transistors, and also some silliness where paying a 15% tax made some of the GPUs safe to export. It has been pretty great for Huawei.
IMO that ignores the decades of investment the Chinese government has made in its semiconductor industry. It’s literally been written into their five year plans at the highest level with tons of government pressure to buy domestic when possible across industries. With the biggest captive consumer market on the planet, there is no universe in which China doesn’t get its own cutting edge chip industry. They have been determined to do it since at least the 90s and have invested hundreds of billions in a concerted effort to pull it off.
This might make sense in a pure free market. But as a state planned economy, regardless of export bans, China is going to continue to heavily invest in cloning EUV.
Both China’s geopolitical situation and technological history point towards them cutting any reliance on a foreign tech stack as soon as they can.
As I see it, giving them chips just means they have less of a gap to close when their own EUV fabs come online, it can’t have any delaying effect on their plans.
One can have good argumenta against a specific law (personally I am very much pro free trade), but as long as the law exist, breaking it comes with consequences.
You say this, but there is already massive scarcity in the domestic market for any 16GB+ GPU. We can't get enough and it's bottle-necking scale out. Even if Nvidia diverted their entire supply to China there would still be a global shortage and an economic case for Chinese companies to build chips.
The Chinese chip market is exactly like any other market in any other country, except it's run by the largest and arguably most successful autocratic organization in the world, one which views reducing reliance on external suppliers who can turn the taps on and off at will/whim, to be of existential importance. I mean, aside from them being autocratic despots and control freaks, I can't even blame them. Your main adversary's president (and we all know how high-quality they always are) can wake up any day and decide you don't get to buy a critical part of the AI tech stack, good luck with all your future endeavours!
Yeah, no. No one in Beijing will let Nvidia or the White House have that kind of power in the long run because the free market knows best and golly gee where will we get the money and whatnot. They will buy whatever they can to bridge the gap to a time when they own their own tap.
It's not a completely dissimilar argument to selling them the nukes or F-35s because "it will deny oxygen/money to the Chinese nukes and fighter jets market".
I'm not sure if this is true or false, but as an observation: this is the exact opposite reasoning people use to criticize isolationism and market protection.
The best way of hampering China technologically has always been about keeping them completely dependent on foreign chip supply chain, e.g. ASML, TSMC, NVDA, ARM, AVGO, INTC, etc.
If you simply ban them from getting any western chips or chip tech you simply light a viciously hot fire underneath them to develop their own TSMC equivalent and their own chip designers, and we are now seeing them catching up rapidly. In fact, they are pretty close to catching up now, basically within one or two years...
Supposedly, one of those half-billion-dollar ASML EUV machines has found its way to China somehow.
The best reason to NOT ban exports is that it really doesn't work against a peer state, and China is close enough now to count. Given the significant economic trouble in the PRC (youth unemployment, unwinding the property bubble, overproduction of EVs) the US could definitely have played this better instead of creating a vibrant full-stack domestic AI sector in China.
How would they obtain one? These kinds of industrial machines come in pieces and need to be assembled, commissioned and maintained by OEM personnel. The only thing I can think of is ASML sold a machine to a compromised company who secretly shipped it to China without ASML knowing.
Still, it’s not like an off the shelf product with an 2 pager quick installation and first steps manual. Training, and maintenance, and repairs, and configuration,… I doubt you can simply ask your friendly neighbourhood LLM
This would work in a fully capitalist economy where supplying them with chips would remove funding/investment from the local alternatives. This is not China. China has been and will continue to pour billions upon billions of dollars into their native industry because they too believe that having their own chips is important, so they will take all the cutting edge chips they can get and they will continue to develop their own at the exact same rate.
They do not need a ban to light a fire under them. The fire is already lit and burning and nothing the west can do will even slightly dampen it.
You yourself claim they are within a couple of years. If that's the case you think they will stop developing if we sell them chips? That's laughable.
Yeah, Jensen sees the whole hw/sw ecosystem as a package. It isn't just chip n+1 on process n-1.
Keeping adversaries X-behind discourages adversaries from developing a new ecosystem since X-behind is better than building new. If an adversary with tremendous resources must recreate the ecosystem, it will be adopted by US+global companies since it will be lower margin.
Watched the interview and as far as I see he was getting 'heated' because he was speaking the obvious truth and being frustrated by poorly informed questions.
This is entirely expected from somebody like him who has a long history of being on the right side of technical argument.
He is a huge loss to Nvidia and the US - replaced by a ex-CFO.
The US had put an export ban, and he clearly skirted it while at the same time banging a suspected Chinese spy. The company he ran like a fiefdom broke the rules set in place by the same country for which he's supposedly a loss.
I don't see it. Nvidia has a lot to answer for, and the fact that Jensen was very successful as a CEO does not shy away from the cracks in the structure.
Are we saying he was skirting the ban because he was having an affair with a Chinese spy? That seems like a stretch. Jensen was ideologically opposed to a ban, he didn't need any coaxing in that regard.
It was illegal, and I'm sure if this comes to light there will be (major) repercussions, but I don't see it as an immoral move.
Sure, why not? Morality and law are not always aligned. I'm not sure I would go so far to consider these sorts of trade sanctions "immoral", but I wouldn't fault someone for believing so.
In this case, though, I think Huang just believed these sanctions were the wrong move, and would end up long-term helping China and hurting the US. Which is fair to believe, but believing a law is counterproductive doesn't give you immunity if you break it.
The thing about that Lord Moulton said is that there are a bunch of things that are wrong that are not illegal, and we have to do that because people have to be capable of self-control. Patrick Deneen, in . . . The Failure of Liberalism said that he thinks liberalism is failing because it has come to the view that anything that is not illegal is moral.
It’s something you are not equipped to judge. You don’t know much about his private life and the private life of the people around him. Having sex in itself is not the problem, and so far what was demonstrated was that he had sex, at least one with an alleged spy evading trade sanctions, and once with a subordinate. Either are improper and ground for firing; both together are untenable (plus the possibility that there are other skeletons; we don’t know for now).
The relationship with his wife is neither here nor there, unless she wants to make it public. If she feels betrayed, wants a quick buck, or otherwise wants to for any reason, she will sue for divorce and, considering the publicity of the cases, she should get a favourable judgement.
It’s easy to impose our morals on others. But more than half of republicans believe that gay sex is immoral just as strongly as you believe that adultery is.
>>But he did not have an agreement with the justice department
Neither did conscientious objectors? I don't think you mean to claim that the justice department is the final word on morality? Just that on this topic, you agree with the justice department (which is fine), but they will do things that you disagree with. They are no final arbiter and have helped enforce plenty of immoral laws in the past.
There is even a case to be made that flooding the Chinese market with advanced GPU's will hamstring China's ability to build their own, just like they have done to our ability to manufacture. In fact that is exactly the case Jensen has made plenty of times. By holding back exports you are actually creating the market conditions in China for building advanced GPU's indigenously, CCP doesn't even have to do much, the market is responding. Who's immoral and unpatriotic then?
Isn't the specific trade law being broken related to arms control and dual-use technology?
IMO it's not a terribly strong case to make while Boeing sells whole jetliners to China, but the law was put in place for both moral and practical reasons.
It would depend on the reason for the sanctions...
If the sanctions are to prevent buying the products of slavery, that's a moral issue, and violating the sactions is also a moral issue.
Same deal if the sanctions are to prevent selling things that will be used to carry out genocide/etc. That's a moral issue, so violating the sanctions is a moral issue.
I don't think there's an alegation that the GPUs will be used for immoral purposes, just that the US government has national security concerns. Those concerns may or may not be valid, and may or may not be served by having trade sanctions applied effectively, but I don't think that's a question of morality.
It's not de facto immoral to violate the law. It could be immoral to violate the law and conceal it.
I think you can make a case that breaking a rule intended to prevent immoral activity is in and of itself immoral, even if breaking the rule didn't result in the immoral activity.
It's arguable either way, morality isn't a formal logic. There's no right answer, and it's mostly judged by popular consensus... If there is a final authority, they don't publish their notes. :p
However the fact he was having an affair muddies the waters on the two. At best, the optics look bad to someone outside. Yes, he could have been opposed for money reasons, and that’s a position that needs no more explanation.
But how do we know he wasn’t being whispered to by the smoking baddie he was trying to impress? Maybe he’d not have taken the risk were he not having this affair but we know what men do when their ego is on the line. Case in point: Musk paying people to play PoE for him and losing his shit when he was caught.
Do I think money is a good enough explanation? Yes. Could I believe that what’s in his pants also played a part? Also yes.
People at this level get intoxicated with their power. They think they are invincible and can do whatever they want. Often they can. Sometimes it all comes crashing down, here for example, or the case of Eric Swalwell. But they never think it will happen to them.
Sure but that's not the point here: he was getting frustrated in the interview because he was getting second guessed by someone who doesn't have as much insight has he does. Dude is the founder of Nvidia by the way.
You're getting downvoted for this, but it has some merit. It could be argued that NVDA's flat structure is what led to the company's success - Jensen himself greenlit the development of CUDA from the anecdotes I've heard. However, in the last 2 or 3 years the board should have pushed for more redundancy and a succession plan.
Since NVDA had such a flat corporate structure with Huang having ~60 direct reports, I expect that the company will be lost for a period of time as they try to get their bearings. This is an opportunity for AMD, INTC and others.
At the very least a succession plan. Just insane that there wasn't someone ready for this in case he keeled over one day (for some definition of keeled).
This is a $5T (well, I guess $4T now) company we are talking about. What is the board being paid for?
Both of these things can be true. He can be the best founder in the world that we want to be there forever AND we need to have someone just in case that is 100% up to speed.
You say that as if a lottery assigns companies what product they shall make. Or that they found their product designs in a kinder egg.
They had an idea which they thought will be valuable. And they worked bery hard on making that idea a reality.
People complain that companies don’t have leadership with long term vision. The leadership of NVIDIA heard the idea of GGPU computation and put the resources behind the idea to make it a practical reality. Here the gap between “nerdy idea” to “product sells like hot-cakes”, is measured in decades. That is not just luck.
Finding yourself making matrix multiplication machines for computer graphics, then suddenly an unrelated technological revolution requires that exact hardware?
This take is crazy; NVIDIA not only built the GPU, *they created the demand.* For a very long time there was nothing like CUDA. They're working on an open-source self-driving car. Back when they were a gaming company, they sponsored the gaming ecosystem.
Jensen Huang cheated on his wife AND conspired to evade arms control regulations, but he's still a genius.
I am curious which questions you found poorly informed? Jensen Huang started with "China could have trained a Mythos level model" because the resources needed for that were "mundane". Maybe you believe him on that or you know that to be true but maybe mundane is not the right word. Also the rest of his answer did not age well. I think Dwarkesh genuinely wanted to have a deep conversation and not to be a troll.
The uninformed part was a rather dismissive attitude to Chinese capabilities and the assumption that access to NVidia chips was the only important success factor.
Jensen has two core points:
- stopping selling NVidia chips to China isn't going to stop China developing AI
- stopping NVidia selling to China will ultimately ceed US leadership in chips as Nvidia's commercial edge is as much about the dominant developer ecosystem as it is the chips per se.
ie the real risk is the default world tech stack shifts to open models on Chinese chips. End result Chinese lead in both.
He has spent his entire career competing and winning and he is being told he has to stop competing in order to achieve a goal that he knows won't actually be achieved by sacrificing NVidia.
In that scenario, where somebody is suggesting you throw away your life's work for nothing - I think anybody would be animated.
>the real risk is the default world tech stack shifts to open models on Chinese chips.
As someone who isn't based in the US/EU and whose job is to deploy LLMs on premises, I can't wait for the moment when China starts selling its GPUs globally en masse with a proper CUDA equivalent. It's going to be cheaper in the long term and without all the export control drama.
It's refreshing to see a podcaster push their guest to defend their positions, after having had the displeasure of listening to clips of Lex Fridman just accepting even obvious bullshit from his guests without any follow up. It sounds like Dwarkesh did the same with Dario, who argued the other side.
The questions weren't poorly informed just because you agree with what Jensen was saying. He seems pretty obviously to have made drastically poor judgement decisions that potentially affect national security of the US. I don't know if I would consider that to be a huge loss to the US.
The poorly informed part is the assumption that if Nvidia doesn't sell chips China AI dev will stop.
It clearly didn't - don't you remember the Deepseek launch where it came as a rude shock that the much vaunted concept of a compute capacity moat was blown away?
He kept repeating that while he made the best chips, computer science was more important.
Interim. They just need someone to crisis manage. I’m sure they have veteran capable executives other than Jensen. Maybe the AI focus wasn’t all Jensens idea even
All of the sudden people care about keeping Nvidia around? Theyve been jerking people around for decades, screwing customers, shitty drivers, exploding power connectors, anti competitive practices for miles.
those are mere gamer issues. perhaps more relevant ten year ago, but these days, the only question is the rack-scale products (and in that market, Nvidia's driver game has been pretty OK, though unfortunately closed-source).
We used their GPUs at scale before there was AI, and nvidia has always been a hostile vendor to deal with. I'm so ecstatic that at least huangs reputation is now in the trash, and I hope nvidia suffers severe consequences for all the decades of crap they've put us through
Yeah, you always want someone sacrificial to be the immediate next person in the hot seat. Too much emotional expectations will be attached to whoever is next. Let the next person take all of the crap long enough so that the person you actually want has a clear path. You see this in sports franchises as well.
Let's be clear, she is just the interim CEO (primarily because Huang neglected to ever even start a transition plan) while NVidia searches for a permanent CEO. The names I've seen floated are Rene Haas, CEO of ARM, and Ian Buck, the creator of CUDA.
I'm not sure what to make of the idol worshipping going on here. He was an average CEO and the train will continue right along. NVIDIA doesn't exist because of some inherent greatness of a single person.
He also fostered shifting the product line to enterprise- dominant and therefore fostered the acceleration of decline of personal computing. There’s no nuance that I can see reflected in his actions; big money AI spenders come, he jumps in feet first. If “democratization of AI” is even a concept, it’s pretty insulting that the personal consumer is cut out (but let’s make sure China is still getting hardware)
He has poor judgement but I’ve yet to see any of the major consumer hardware companies that understand both hardware and software in the way he did. Or really the value of a fully vertically integrated stack.
Nvidia thrived because it paired great hardware with great software.
AMD and Intel think hardware is enough; it’s not. There’s a reason neither has ever been able to compete with Nvidia.
They have a giant ego, but I’d argue it’s probably well deserved.
Apple is/was similar. They also see that hardware without great software is useless. Spend as much; if not more on software to make your hardware shine.
Intel has some good compilers that take advantage of their hardware don't they? I think AMD now understands the software side of things, and is trying to fix it. Wonder how long it will take for them to get close to Nvidia's software side?
According to you, in comparison to the current competition, hardly Microsoft Google, Amazon, Nvidia, AMD, the Koreans, the Chinese, the Linux world, they don’t add up not when it comes to hardware and software and the ability to create an ecosystem, you’re actually dead wrong.
Another thing is wrong was thinking that Apple should run in and build some type of AI model that’s proving to be well wrong the only thing in Apple’s way right now is memory. certainly isn’t money, and they certainly have the talent and house to fix the memory problem. The question is whether or not they have the will to do so.
No one equals Apple at this point in time when it comes to seamlessly integrating multiple devices in a useful way. Be it a desktop computer, laptop a smartphone, tablet, smartwatch, Apple Vision, AirPods with each iteration, once again in comparison to their competition, they seem to have the best hand at this time.
Memory cost is the biggest problem Apple has right now and it’s not like they don’t lack the money and with the Apple Silicon design group they certainly have the capability to fix it, or I should say design around it.
Yes, it might take 2 to 5 years to do it, but it’s not impossible, the main question is, do they have the will? And they’ve certainly shown it when it comes to processors, GPUs, modems, and other support chips that they can execute over time.
They may not execute on what you want or what I want, but in comparison to their competition, who is out there right now that can combine both the software and the hardware at a high level across the board?
Yes, we’re gonna find out how important he was. If he is on the level as some of the other great CEOs Nvidia gonna have trouble, this little flare could be the beginning of the AI bubble bursting. Because I don’t see Intel or AMD rising to the same level as Nvidia. Microsoft seems to be having bad luck with their team-ups.
I can't say it was solely his choice but Nvidia continually made fantastic market moves. CUDA, then their positioning to ride the crypto boom, and then the AI boom. all of that required deliberate planning with a strong long term vision.
Not true. The decisions always come out of the person at the top. See what happened to Intel recently when they had a succession of MBA bad CEOs…
Nvidia is a highly technical company we’re gonna find out how important Jensen really was to that company tech wise?
And if you look closely at their company, what have they really innovated on over the last five or six years? from a distance, like Intel, it seems like they just turn up the juice/Wattage in short, they are just cruising along.
Definitely not average, but Nvidia is the definition of one trick, and that one trick long-term will be their downfall, Intel is in the same position and so is AMD and Microsoft.
Due to sanctions there’s one Chinese company that seems to have become a multi-dimensional company we won’t know for sure for another two years.
Being a vertical computer company appears to be coming back in style bring on the 1980s. early 1990s.
NVIDIA doesn't exist because of some inherent greatness of a single person.
Yeah, it pretty much does. CUDA is why they are positioned where they are. Other players like AMD and Intel could have done that, but they didn't, and if they had, they wouldn't have persevered for 10+ years with essentially nothing to show for it.
Whether CUDA will continue to maintain dominance is less clear. It may become a literal victim of its own success, as CUDA-based models gain the ability to migrate themselves to new platforms.
It is because of his vision. And with him gone, we shall find out about Nvidia, when Apple computer went through a succession of mediocre CEOs, they were on the ropes if it wasn’t for the founder CEO coming back, Apple would’ve been history like Sun, SGI, Acorn, Commodore, Digital and a host of other computer companies from the 1980s and mid-1990s.
Western companies have had that problem. when the visionary CEO bites the dust. I think the Eastern companies are even more susceptible.
Note: Nvidia is the very definition of a one trick company I think they were in trouble long-term no operating system, Microsoft is in trouble in the other direction. No real in-house hardware ability. Long-term you have to have the ability of both in-house to adjust and iterate over the long haul with the changing conditions in tech.
He may not have 'invented' CUDA but he saw the potential and gave it resources to be created and continually developed.
How many "CUDA-like" ideas have be squashed at other companies by leaders that don't see the potential or are willing to take a multi-year loss?
IMO, it's like SpaceX vs other rocket companies - especially Blue Origin.
Bezos, at least at first, had just as much money if not more than Musk. So why did SpaceX do so much better than them and every other rocket company. I despise Musk personally, and he's generally not as smart as he makes himself out to be - but there is something there he does differently than others in his position, some with similar resources as he does as well.
Bezos is a genius and an another direction? a direction that is 180° different than Elon? and neither one probably will ever do well on the other person’s home field.
The temporarily embarrassed billionaires have swarmed your comment to remind you that success is based on a single person, which is why they should get to do whatever they want when they're running their own Nvidia-sized corp one day.
I'm not sure how long I should've kept watching but so far that looks like very good and knowledgeable answers, exactly what I'd expect from a competent tech CEO.
Unless it's like super far in, if this counts as heated then I just don't know what you expect.
Why are you posting random unrelated things? The comment you were responding to: "Jensen getting really heated when pressed by Dwarkesh over China during his interview". Jensen's push for China in some other interview where he didn't lose his composure is unrelated.
Is related to the subject of him being a chill for China. Anybody would guess the context, people dont need somebody to find the link to an interview being mentioned. But they will be interested in another similar one, and I posted it at the exact relevant second.
Now that I explained it in detail for you, shall we move on to addition and subtraction? Or do you need a short pause because your head is hurting you?
I remember listening to that and thinking, this sounds like a guy who is primarily focused on selling chips and is brushing away legitimate concerns in a way that, I just did not find very compelling. A little bit too much protest you might say. Not to say there isn't or wasn't validity to his arguments, but in light of the current circumstances it seems to me that those arguments are quite a bit less valid than they were, and I've certainly swung my personal opinion from being on the fence to a hard no to selling these chips to Chinese buyers.
If the Chinese Communist Party are going through such great lengths to obtain these advanced Nvidia chips, it further invalidates a lot of what I've been reading here and elsewhere about China "catching up" or that being the leading models isn't what matters (commoditization). You don't do stuff like this unless you really need something.
Talking to friends who worked in diplomacy - honey traps are extremely common and often tried quite routinely. It makes sense if you think about it. The failure rate on these is going to be fairly high and even if it’s a small success (ie a one night stand sort of thing) you can get a little compromat. The cost is probably fairly negligible, a lot of this will be fairly low risk as far as spying goes.
My favourite honey trap story comes from the cold war. A Russian diplomat in Denmark was the target of Danish intelligence. They tried to honey trap him at a party, but he didn't respond to their agent's advances. So, the Danes supposed that he might be gay, and sent a male honey trap to the next party, but again got no response from the Russian. They shrugged their shoulders and gave it up.
Unbeknownst to them, the Russian was actually at that time trying to make contact with western intelligence, as he was keen to defect! He was just a bit too awkward to respond to flirting.
He did eventually manage to defect to Britain, and died in 2025. His name was Oleg Gordievsky.
> honey traps are extremely common and often tried quite routinely.
WSJ reports that U.S. intelligence says Chinese intelligence approached Alice to become an asset after she met Jensen in March 2024. So, she was an opportunistic info source, not targeted in advance.
also, men are redickulous. And they can go in any number of beneficial direction from turning informant, selling GPUs to the chinese, or just a pee tape, etc. Just like a lottery of fun ways to screw with an adversary.
I think it's worth remembering that China isn't a monolithic bloc, and CCP doesn't drive everything, that there are tons of private enterprises there that would benefit, even if the Chinese government strategically would prefer to push Huawei to grow the domestic capability. There being a ton of private demand internal to China doesn't invalidate Jensen's view that it's a strategic blunder to let Huawei get a foothold in the market. Within the CCP, there's also a lot of inter-regional competition to show growth in their own regions, because that's the primary qualification for advancement within the party.
That said, I don't have any special insight into the specifics of who was driving the demand backing Megaspeed.
there's a good analysis that says Alice was a fixer and/or white-glove. those are common-in-China roles that have to do with obfuscating big financial operations, not necessarily with any political (CCP) involvement. obviously, CCP approves, if tacitly, everything that happens in China.
Which part? You find it hard to believe that there are private enterprises there that don't always do exactly what CCP wants? Or that there're conflicting incentives inside the CCP, so that "what CCP wants" isn't simple?
China catching up does not mean they are not still behind.
Also, China is a big country with many companies. While some may be trying to catch up via local development, others may still prefer getting western hardware right now e.g. in order to get a competitive advantage over those catching up.
I'm a bit out of the loop, what part of what he said is wrong? He said they have more power and the more capability to produce chips, so they can essentially just brute force things vs the US if they wanted to: is that not the case?
That's like asking why China is building nuclear and coal power plants when solar is so much cheaper. They are doing all of the above.
Let's assume for a second that the compromat story on Huang is true, how much would that have cost? It could be everywhere from 10k to 10m $, depending on how difficult it was to get access, but it would still be a rounding error for AI invest.
Chips aren't what maketh SI anyway. The US is ahead because of a trifecta of having the best (most) hardware, best data, and best talent. You might also throw in business culture. But the same way Google is leading from behind in the US AI eco system, China is behind the frontier on LLMs, but laying foundational work in robotics, multi-modal models and integrated factories that might prove a big advantage down the line.
No it's not the case because if they could do it they would already have done it. Selling them Nvidia chips doesn't change that.
But here's a link to the podcast episode if you want to give it a listen. It will inform a lot to the discussion taking place here and help you understand a few of the things he said that are probably now wrong: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/jensen-huang
But what’s the point ultimately? Delaying their progress by a couple years?
Not selling them chips virtually guarantees that they will learn how to make their own, very quickly. The end result of that is much, much worse for the USA.
(and could leave Taiwan in a much weaker position in the near future)
People are bending over backwards to come to try to find some deep reason, but I think the reason is simple - the people in charge are not particularly farsighted nor insightful. It's simply short-term thinking without consideration of long-term consequences - it's not limited to just businesses.
For another example, the reason Chinese are not allowed on the 'international' ISS is because of the Wolf Amendment. [1] The idea was that if we just allowed them onto the ISS they'd steal all of our elite tech or something. Within a decade they had launched their own space station and carried out various revolutionary space activities.
And of course all of that happened while the ISS itself continues to deteriorate with no replacement in sight. And when China did an unprecedented sample return mission from the far side of the Moon and offered the whole world access to samples, US researchers had to jump through a bunch of hoops to receive them, again thanks to the same law.
> Not selling them chips virtually guarantees that they will learn how to make their own, very quickly. The end result of that is much, much worse for the USA.
Are you proposing we guarantee access to avoid potential access?
This isn’t what China does though, the moment new tech crosses the border they reverse engineer and start producing it locally. IP protections are meaningless there. How many times does this have to happen to sink in?
What needs to happen is that the people who are getting wealthy from the offshoring of manufacturing and labor to China need to stop getting wealthy. Until then any and all excuses to pretend that China will operate in good faith will be levied to try and make people seem like it's in their best interest to hollow out the USA to hand over to China.
The problem is, the man in the mirror and it ain’t just the Chinese that have taken advantage, the Japanese and the Koreans are pretty good too, and so are the Taiwanese and it’s only a matter of time for one or two countries in Southeast Asia to rise up too, and if it wasn’t for Russia’s stupidity, both Russia and the Ukraine would have certainly produced what three or four very, very good AI models to the mix…
Soon, China, if they aren’t already, will be the premier developer of Thorium reactors courtesy of Oak Ridge, Tennessee and they also are now number one or at the least 1A when it comes to high-speed rail, and if the Russians and the Ukrainians weren’t fighting each other, that high-speed rail probably would be already built out all the way to eastern Europe.
Keeping them dependent upon you guarantees that they never surpass you and that you can milk the relationship for all its worth economically and geopolitically. When they have their own fabs spun up it's possible that you are the one eventually stuck with inferior tech, and you lose all sort of revenue + leverage you'd otherwise have from the relationship.
Huawei has become a super company basically because of all the sanctions, Wxmt will become the dominant memory maker worldwide in the next five years due to shortsighted thinking in the West.
It make sense. China had X amount of demand. If the demand is met they are satisfied, if the demand remains unmet they seek alternatives. That seeking of alternatives primarily means huge amounts of money, that would go to Nvidia, going to direct competitors of Nvidia to "chip" away at their competitive advantage.
The long term result is the same regardless of who makes the chips but the real strategy is delaying China's ability to surpass the US. It takes a lot of time and money to essentially copy the entire infrastructure required to build an Nvidia GPU. Nvidia has enough demand as is.
China is a trading partner but there is still a serious catalyst for war in the form of the South China Sea. If we went to war with China in 5 years time, why would we sell them the tech they need to match our ability now? Let them figure it out on their own.
If the US wanted to delay "China's ability," wouldn't the strategy be to give them just enough GPUs to keep them reliant on Nvidia (and make developing alternative tech locally seem less critical), but not enough to develop superior models?
It feels like Space Race thinking, honestly. If the US delays China and ends up with an AGI god a few years in advance, that can still be a significant advantage even if China can catch up. This especially would hold true if a theoretical AGI could maximally leverage RSI so the improvement curve becomes exponential.
If the US or China developes an AGI that can leverage RSI, the game is over. It is over in the same way that WW3 is over as soon as the missiles are in the air: it doesn't matter who has the fastest or highest yield missiles, because there is a finite amount of time before there is nobody left to care about the advantages of one side. Except at least WW3 is over in about an hour, whereas an AGI could take years or decades to complete whatever thing it has been misaligned to desire.
AI alignment research is still in its alchemy era, and global cyber security is underfunded and bad. As a species, we simply do not have the tools to deal with AGI that can self-improve.
What stops another power from developing its own AGI a year or two later? Or from catching up once there are two competing RSI AGIs? The Soviets were a few years behind on getting nukes but they still got them.
AI has been identified as strategic national priority for both the Chinese and United States.
NVIDIA’s commercial interest is pretty clear… it’s beneficial to them. to sell everyone to maintain the dominance of CUDA. That is not necessarily the national interest. And remember that espionage and infiltration is not a one-sided affair, the US may well have the ability to sabotage Chinese development efforts. You just don’t know.
End of the day, corporate CEOs are very powerful, but they’re not as powerful as the government. My guess is that Jenson truly didn’t think that this individual was a spy, and figured that the questionable legality of chip exports to Chinese proxies could be addressed by ingratiating the administration.
No, they haven't. They spent the first decade after WW2 repairing the damage left behind by the Japanese and their Civil War. Subsequently they managed to starve tens of millions afterwards in several missteps, and then righted themselves.
They then spent three to four decades lifting about thrice the US population out of extreme abject poverty, and then in the last 20 years catching up. And catch up they have; they are already the leaders in green technology and EVs, already manufacture some of their own chips, already have indigenous military aerospace capability, which they are now expanding to civilian use. They make almost everything in the average household.
Who says we won't just progress as well and they stay behind a couple of years?
Where is the evidence that China is catching up considered a fiat d accompli?
Do you presume that China is destined to always at least catch up in every sector or field ever? That stinks of Chinese Exceptionalism to me.
If they could just "catch up" they would, and whether we sell them chips wouldn't matter because they would want to create their own Nvidia and export chips and make money too.
> Do you presume that China is destined to always at least catch
> up in every sector or field ever? That stinks of Chinese
> Exceptionalism to me.
Suppose you want to build something that requires technical knowledge (a GPU, a fighter jet, ...). You have engineers, but they don't yet know how to build it.
If no one on earth has ever built this thing, you need to consider the possibility that it can't be done at a cost you can pay. Perhaps it violates some law of physics, or it can't be manufactured without knowing some chemistry/physics that we are 100+ years from discovering.
If a company in some other country is already building this thing, you can be sure it is possible to build it. That is a critical piece of information! It means you don't need to discover (much) new physics. It means you can buy/steal a working copy and look at it to learn about it. It means there are engineers you can hire/spy on to understand their design process. It means you can more easily convince a bank/government to fund development, as they have proof your goals are achievable.
Inventing a thing is much harder than inventing a clone of a thing. The idea that China doesn't have the people and organization to copy things other countries make is the opposite of Chinese Exceptionalism. It is the belief that the Chinese are uniquely incapable of engineering work. This is obviously not true.
> The idea that China doesn't have the people and organization to copy things other countries make is the opposite of Chinese Exceptionalism. It is the belief that the Chinese are uniquely incapable of engineering work. This is obviously not true.
Which broadly leads to two conclusions:
They can't do it. If they could they would. If you could invest and create your own Nvidia, ASML, TSMC, &c. you would do that especially if you are China due to its stated goals and actions it takes that we can all see toward those goals.
They can do it and so selling them the chips doesn't matter other than helping to speed up their ability to do it, so we don't want to sell them the chips and thus speed up their capabilities.
But your viewpoint also holds true for the United States and Europe. Anything China can do we can also do, otherwise you're just supposing Chinese Exceptionalism.
Models aren’t everything. You need physical infrastructure at scale for inference, which is where the economic power comes from. Chinese hardware makes double the heat and needs at least double the energy input.
Exactly. And we better keep it this way. The fact that we can block them from copying us today means that they will try that much harder to come up with their own answers. Remember, they are miles ahead in manufacturing hardware and the software is not a problem anymore. Whatever moat cuda represented is gone now.
This is good evidence sanctions don't really work. Critical sectors will find ways around them and it only punishes the rank and file working class. If China or any sanctioned nation wanted those nvidia chips, it has ways to get them. So the military and intelligence get them, but the people don't. Same with sanctions on Russia now, which has not significantly slowed its military machine, but in fact its military machine is coming out with constant innovations (new Gerans, better EW, more spy sats, etc). I remember seeing a post mortem of some Russian drone. It had a Jetson chipset Russia was not supposed to be able to get. I imagine the smuggling market is far bigger than we might think and sanctions far less effective than we think.
Same when you sanction food imports. The elites who make decisions will always be fed. Sanctions are almost always an attack on the working class who do not make the high-level political decisions the sanctions are trying to address. Not to mention the idea of "making life hard on them so they revolt" almost never works.
Sanctions should be a bigger conversation. They are almost never needed and especially trade tariffs and such are always used for the most corrupt cronyism.
> Same when you sanction food imports. The elites who make decisions will always be fed. Sanctions are almost always an attack on the working class who do not make the high-level political decisions the sanctions are trying to address. Not to mention the idea of "making life hard on them so they revolt" almost never works.
There’s also the minor quibble that restricting food exports to starve another country are illegal under international law.
Nobody is starving in Russia (at least unavoidably).
That sanctions only harm the civilian economy is not an argument against them. Kinetic sanctions agains oil refining are also primarily impacting the general population and the military have enough oil. But they still impact the ability of the Russians to fund the war. Civilian infrastructure and economic assets are used by militaries too.
I watched the interview. I think the arguments made sense. People get heated talking about the colour of an object they can both see. I wouldn't want to project reasons for heated behaviour.
For the record I think that less than half of the people who thought the dress was black and gold were being influenced by the Chinese government to take that position.
Yeah call me crazy but I don't see the need to sell the cutting edge chips to China if you're already a trillion dollar company. Sure more money is nice, but not living under the thumb of a global dictatorship is nice too.
If the sale is not about money or share price then maybe it's ideological.
> The image of Nvidia advocating for exports of GPUs to china
As a business, why shouldn't they advocate for export to a relatively huge market? It is an expansion for them and from a business perspective completely expected.
Because the government, empowered by the people, have decided it matters, as a matter of national security.
There's is no argument to be had about this specifically. You can argue whether this is true or not, but that's not relevant to this subject. If Nvidia still decides to ignore the government, it'd be not only completely, absolutely fair, to nationalize the corporation, but the country itself has a duty to its citizens to do such thing.
Now legislators demonstrated how much that matters. I don't have the knowledge to evaluate the national security concerns. But from the outcome, it's a matter they'll firmly push as a long term strategy, even at the cost of one of the world's most visionary CEOs.
They should and there’s nothing wrong with only advocating. The problem is that it wasn’t just advocating but (possibly) knowingly subverting the export controls
US congresspersons and international media outlets condemned the use of AI warfare against Iran, including the Department of Defense's (DoD) Project Maven—a target tagging system integrating elements of Palantir's Maven Smart System and Anthropic's Claude large language model.
There was the kerfuffle with Dario Amodei and Pete Hegseth, who declared Anthropic a supply chain risk to the US. IMO, yes. Killer robots don't run on one 5090 :)
There is more spelunking to that situation, but that's a different thread.
Turns out there are laws and regulations that restrict one’s ability to lobby for foreign interests as both a public and private individual. Read about NJ Senator Bob Menendez which is a particularly egregious example.
> The image of Nvidia advocating for exports of GPUs to china while compromised by an allegedly Chinese agent is the real issue here.
OK sure .. obviously sleeping with Chinese agent is a security issue .. very bad .. but Nvidia's position on the export ban was sound. The export ban does not make sense. In fact, it is counterproductive because it closes a huge market to Nvidia and makes China less reliant on US Tech - forcing them to accelerate development of homegrown GPU business.
> Nvidia's position on the export ban was sound. The export ban does not make sense
Jensen had the ear of the President. He could have lobbied this properly.
Doing so by obscuring Nvidia’s Singapore business, failing to apply for an export license to Megaspeed, corruptly quashing a Commerce investigation into Megaspeed, all while sleeping with its leader who turned out to be a Chinese spy, and then only coming clean when the Congress flipped…I don’t know how he could have flipped the bird stronger at the American people.
> corruptly quashing a Commerce investigation into Megaspeed
I'm squarely blaming the federal admin for this. Lutnick and Rubio both knew about this way ahead of time, and their negligence is what ended up screwing the American people over. Removing Jensen doesn't prevent this corruption, it just shuffles the blame around. Huang became the fall guy for corruption at a ludicrous scale, while Donald Trump ponders installing Tim Cook (?) as his replacement.
The whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. This is the Kardashian-ization of the American tech industry.
Everyone is. It's increasingly clear the administration helped Nvidia break the law [1].
But this is how corruption works. The mobster pays the mayor to let him break the law. That doesn't mean they aren't both breaking the law.
> t just shuffles the blame around. Huang became the fall guy for corruption at a ludicrous scale
Fall guy implies innocence and the end of the line for blame. Neither looks likely with this case. Jensen wasn't innocent. And there is is bipartisan fury starting with Lutnick.
> while Donald Trump ponders installing Tim Cook (?)
I think he got this idea from a joke Kara Swisher made. In the end, Trump would love nothing more than for a media circus around Jensen's succession to distract from the above.
If Nvidia was skirting the law, then they should held accountable for that.
If Nvidia merely held a position that the particular law is, say, counter-productive and lobbied against it (but followed it) - what's illegal about that?
Are we calling her a "Chinese agent" because her business smuggled chips into China or because anyone believes she was a trained intelligence operative? Does being monetarily incentivized to do business with China make her an agent?
Reported claims from officials is that she was working as an asset for China’s Ministry of State Security and providing them information... not simply doing business for her own company.
There is a lot of different ways that one can be an "asset" it could be as simple as giving information about who in east Asia is buying their legitimately purchased chips so that Chinese firms can try to buy or rent them. That would be very different from if as some have suggested she is a handler for Jensen.
>The export ban does not make sense. In fact, it is counterproductive because it closes a huge market to Nvidia and makes China less reliant on US Tech - forcing them to accelerate development of homegrown GPU business.
Could you tell China this? Because they seem to not agree at all, given what we are seeing
> The image of Nvidia advocating for exports of GPUs to china while compromised by an allegedly Chinese agent
I don't really buy that. China was already like Nvidia's #2 or #3 market. It didn't take a Chinese agent to convince him that he wanted to sell to China.
To me, the first "girlfriend" looks more like a chinese handler.
Jensen used his control of nvidia to forced nvidia customers to buy more hardware today that they did not need or they would be cut off from future orders.
That is how Jensen was able to increase nvidia production so he could increase the number of cards he could smuggle to china. I don't understand how jense is not in custody yet. He is a massive flight risk.
The only winners were jensen's bank account and chinese businesses that wanted nvidia gpus.
US businesses and consumers paid billions more for hardware because of Jensen's crimes.
We also need to investigate every CEO that partipated, because they likely are criminally culpable for their participation.
There's speculation that Trump knew about the Chinese spy and Nvidia donated $25M to the White House Ballroom in October 2025.
Even if this is just a coincidence, Jensen himself came out and said he donated to the ballroom, but kept the amount hidden. In internal documents, Jensen and Nvidia said to keep the amount hidden and it only came out due to disclosure documents from the government.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I think that the risk is not nearly as real as it-- as they talk. And I think the risk can be managed. And it's managed, you know who? By who? The DOJ. We had a situation where somebody was reported to us to be doing something bad with AI. We called them very strongly and said, "Get ready to go to jail. Please give your wife a kiss good night."
ROSS DOUTHAT: Who was this person?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I can't tell you--
ROSS DOUTHAT: Or this company?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I can't tell you. But we said-- "Do you like the color orange because get rid --" said, "Go home right now. See your wife and children. Give 'em a kiss good night, and--"
ROSS DOUTHAT: If--
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --"that's the story because--"
ROSS DOUTHAT: If the Democrats--
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --"because tomorrow morning--"
ROSS DOUTHAT: --wanted--
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --"you're goin' to jail."
ROSS DOUTHAT: If the-- if they--
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Let me tell you--
ROSS DOUTHAT: --wanted to make a deal--
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --this person--
ROSS DOUTHAT: --to put that (UNINTEL)--
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --this person totally changed everything. Totally. "Yes, sir. Yes, sir--"
ROSS DOUTHAT: "Yes, sir"?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Okay--
ROSS DOUTHAT: Was it a leader of a major AI company?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: One of the big ones. Yeah.
ROSS DOUTHAT: Okay.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: One of the big ones. And--
ROSS DOUTHAT: If the Democrats--
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --and-- and I don't think--
ROSS DOUTHAT: --said, "We wanna put th-- we wanna--"
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --I don't--
ROSS DOUTHAT: --"codify this into law--"
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --I don't think it was--
ROSS DOUTHAT: --would you work with them--
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --done maliciously. But it coulda been malicious, but--
---
This is what losing the Rule of Law looks like by the way. The sitting president is on TV saying that he found out someone rich and powerful is suspected of wrong doing serious enough to get a call from the president threatening him with prison, but that that's the punishment. Once that rich and powerful person bent the knee, said "Yes sir" with the right tone of voice, all was forgiven.
Equal Justice under Law means that we shouldn't punish people we don't like with harsher sentences it also means that wealth and power shouldn't be sufficient to skirt the law.
We often speak of a two-tiered justice system, but I've never seen the president go on TV and tell America in no uncertain terms, it exists, I'm a part of it, and it went very well, he said "Yes sir" just the right way and so you don't need to worry about it.
Thank you for the transcript, I can hear it in my head with all the inflections and combativeness. Douthat reads as "Doubt That" to me, chef's kiss to whomever is writing the script for this simulation, haha.
You're just NOW noticing that we have lost the rule of law?? The constitution has been continuously violated for over 100 years, we are clearly a post-constitutional republic? I guess? I think we entered full clown world in the 2000's where the currency, government and war systems started glitching out.
What I am noticing is that the high trust society we inherited has finally eroded to the point that we no longer tell ourselves that we have rules and laws that are equally (or sanely) applied.
Which is a good, scales dropping from eyes, innocence ending sort of thing. Makes me hopeful for change, in a way.
I’m aware, Apple and other companies donated too. What I found odd was the lengths Jensen and Nvidia went to hide the amount. Other companies came out and said how much they donated.
Oh! That explains why Trump was so sympathetic to Jensen : "He is suffering. Poor man. He is such a nice guy. And his family… but he is suffering greatly."
No, he doesn't. Congress has abdicated this power up to now during Trump 2 because the GOP are total lickspittle sycophants. The Democrats will be spineless cowards -- at least the older generation -- but they won't be total pushovers on this front.
The image is not a problem. That image has existed for months already. The problem is that Huang lost the tenuous protection that Trump and Lutnick agreed to give him so he could avoid jail. On that basis, investors are now scared the company might suddenly be under investigation for export violations.
> Nvidia advocating for exports of GPUs to china while compromised
As a public company its job is to sell as much stuff as possible to as many people as possible, they had every incentive, arguably a duty to advocate for exports to China. The incentive is there regardless of outside meddling.
Skirting the sanctions intentionally would be bad.
The Chinese government working hard to ban NVIDIA GPUs from the country [1][2][3].
How does it make sense that Jensen is compromised while advocating for exporting GPUs to China, which is something that primarily benefits NVIDIA (and arguably the US) while being against the Chinese interests? If he were compromised he would be like "well actually maybe I shouldn't export chips to China after all and give their domestic semiconductor industry a chance".
They obviously need/needed as much NVIDIA as possible short term, and locally produced superior alternative ASAP long term. So one hand rushes to secure all stocks of NVIDIA prosumer and enterprise cards, while another rushes to ban it.
Guessing Trump was talking about Jensen on 60 minutes this weekend when he said th DOJ called someone leading a major AI company and said "get ready to go to jail" 24:18 mark
And not that Nvidia is absolved of responsibility but it does make it a little easier if it's the new leadership in the hot seat for those things being like "yeah we did some naughty stuff but it was the last guy and we're working on hard on getting it all cleaned up."
This is dwarfed in scope of the compromise of NVIDIA by its shareholders, a shadowy group who some analysis believe have an interest in the sale of GPUs anywhere, a set of locations that is thought to include China.
> Nvidia advocating for exports of GPUs to china while compromised
I doubt it has anything to do with it really. China is a huge market and by not exporting to China they were missing out on tens to hundreds of billions in revenue. Any CEO would have advocated the same.
Considering the incredibly high demand for GPUs, they would have sold them regardless. All those sales do is increase demand and push prices up.
Particularly in the current political moment, saying essentially "we were using high demand in a market we can't legally sell in to increase prices for American customers" is not a good look.
(Yes,obviously, not all of this is Nvidia's doing, and demand at this volume through smuggling/front companies would still affect the legitimate market. But being an active participant in it is not a good look.)
Especially on the Trump admin having knowledge for an entire year, and not acting on that information in any significant way.
It's not just NVIDIA that's extremely weak on China, the entire Executive branch is both weak and incompetent on what they claim is a chief concern, and Congress has been completely absent on the oversight role that it should be performing according to the US Constitution.
The incompetence and/or corruption is inexcusable. Teapot Dumb Scandal.
The thing is China itself has no incentive to have their companies skirt the export ban. The whole saga is just completely ironic and incredibly unorganic. The alleged "spy" and her firm Megaspeed was doing export circumventing mechanisms to China not because the CCP was allegedly pushing her to do so, in fact it was a counter-reaction to how restrictive the Chinese customs became to importing Nvidia while the corresponding customers are hungry for that compute that is piling up in the ports. China is doing a zero-sum policy where every American chip that gets passed to their tech companies is one less domestic/chinese, which equates less money for R&D and catch up.
So something very strange going on here, along with the timing, in time where Anthropic is preparing for an IPO and briefly after the midterms where the median voter rejected AI wholesale. I suspect this might have been a long game to turn the man down that is standing for open-source and the freedom to build AI. Heck epstein was having a ring of elites diddling minors and nothing scandalous came out of it.
All the regulators that kickstarted this dumb export controls in 2022, which in-turn made the american AI-stack weaker vs China, while also using doomer-fud about safety must feel glorious right now.
I'm just exhausted, and I mean exhausted as in, I do not have it in me anymore, to presume interpretations like these are made in good faith, since for months we have been dealing with a barrage of comments that somehow always seem to justify, and often even praise, whatever, and I mean absolutely everything that China does.
This combines with the fact that it requires actual effort not to think China spreads propaganda regarding AI at this point, I'd rather err on the safe side.
You are writing this with the assumption that I'm chalking up alleged China actions or that I'm being their shill.
I don't, in fact it's the severity of this adverserial competition and why I want the liberal world to win this race that has got me peeling back the layers with nuance.
China is a legit adversary, with top electrical and software engineers. The chip layer in the AI industry is a constant and America is ahead in it, so it is in the best interest of all the global tech community and especially America to have its winners in it like Nvidia be ubiquitous and abundant. Unlike software, which is dynamic and has potential to do harm, that what should be regulated.
Honestly I doubt Huang seriously believed he could ride this out. He didn’t only jeopardise his own marriage, he jeopardised his company’s core IP, national security and possibly the entire global economy. That’s a tricky mistake to forgive.
I may sound arrogant, but I am not. Many people are a bit slow to catch on to these incidents or can't see beyond one layer, like this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50418215
they think ceos are one many armies and no one else at these companies has talent or does work. its incredibly stupid and franky disrespectful to all the other hard working employees there who make shit happen every day
Agreed. "Huang was right to advocate for them, China has no incentive to skirt the import ban, sad day for developers," are not takes I thought I would read today.
> the affairs are not the reason he is being fired
The second one -- affair with a direct report -- is what he is being fired for. This one is hard for the board to ignore as it directly violates HR rules.
As for the ban for national security reasons, the ban is not super useful because it only prevents hardware from being physically imported into China. If the hardware is physically located in Singapore and Chinese researchers use those machines remotely, the US does not ban that it. If so how meaningful is the ban?
The first can be objectively and quickly ruled as violating company policy. The second has to go through a process -- did Jensen knowingly violate national security policy, and if so how significant was it?
I think, among other things, Nvidia’s board didn’t want to find out if a Congressional committee agreed about that.
Mr. Huang, you’ve admitted that you violated Nvidia’s policy on relations with subordinates. Why should we believe you were faithful to Nvidia’s policy of compliance with national security export controls?
Did the investigation complete that quickly? I don't think he was fired a few days after an investigation was announced. He resigned in disgrace under pressure due to all of his choices combined.
I hope nobody in the presidential administration needs to resign because of their role in the largest scandal in US history but if so, that is what is best for the country.
oh come on, do people genuinely believe HR rules plays as a role here when it's regarding CEO, especially someone at the helm at the one of the most valued company?
Time and time we saw executives having affairs and dodging consequences. Elon Mask, Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos. All faced much less severe consequences. Definitely not something blow over like this just after a few days it's being reported.
This is a coordinated attack on Jensen and it was very successful.
Those are just your average CEOs. Jensen is the founder and CEO of NVDA for 30 years and has been seen as one of the backbone of this AI era. No one at this level ever faced this level of scrutiny and consequence.
Even Bill Clinton faced relatively minor consequences, considering presidents should be held to a higher moral standard
> The national-security cover-up is a far bigger deal.
Could be, but that requires time to investigate. Banging employee is different because the board would just have to ask Jensen if the reports are true.
> that requires time to investigate. Banging employee is different
True. The combination probably did him in. But I don't think he'd have been fired if he only slept with an employee. Or had a couple affairs. That's just speculation, though.
Not the _only_ reason, sure. However, it's quite common when executives have an affair they will get fired. I think that's just the reality. If you publicly humiliate your family and the business, you're out...
I was on the leadership team of a startup that is now public, during that build something like that happened (almost exactly the same as this NVIDIA situation sans the spy stuff), there were effectively 5 of us involved in what the outcome should be and it basically came down to: me and another guy didn't want to sit on a leadership team with someone who exercised judgement that way, to the point that it was me and the other guy or affair person, so affair person was out, even tho it was very painful for the business. Also, I don't think what I just described is particularly uncommon.
I have worked at a larger company where the CEO did something similar and across the company all anyone could ask was "why would you do something that dumb", which is not a great way for people to feel about the person supposedly leading the company.
Well, I'm not pro-affair, but I've seen lots of people say "why would you do something that dumb" about lots of executives, doing regular things like changing marketing plans, changing the color of the logo, choosing clearly inferior technology because of the caste of the chief architect, etc.
Yeah it's insane how many people are like "bro affairs are totally normal!" (they're not) or "affairs have nothing to do with the business!" (of course they do)
Look at the NVDA stock chart. There you go! That's why affairs are relevant to business! Business is always about trust, and someone who isn't deserving of their own spouse's trust certainly isn't deserving of anyone else's.
To that end, it's the secret and the reveal of that secret that's the issue for a leader. If a CEO is open about his socially-unacceptable behavior from the beginning, there's no shock to absorb.
Yep that's an even better point. Though I would say there's a distinction between socially-unacceptable and untrustworthy. Being forthcoming both limits surprise (per your point) and mitigates the trust component of deviance.
> Yeah it's insane how many people are like "bro affairs are totally normal!" (they're not) or "affairs have nothing to do with the business!" (of course they do)
Why?
I'm playing a bit devil's advocate here, but why? Because society think it's bad and a leader should be associated with positive views? Because if they got caught they are not smart enough to be the leader?
Why just this specific thing is to be considered? Why, for example, all the Musk's "extravagances" are not ground for a CEO termination? I'm pretty sure many other CEOs have many of those "extravagances" and manage to keep their position but yet, if you have an affair, you're 100% toasted.
> Why, for example, all the Musk's "extravagances" are not ground for a CEO termination?
This has less to do with the relative social morality of his behavior, and rather that he has more control over the boards of his companies, and his personality represents a larger percentage of the perceived values of his companies.
Meaning that the desire and leverage for shareholders or the board to actually punish him is significantly less. Shareholders would potentially be evaporating trillions in speculative market value that is not backed up by Tesla or SpaceX's actual business fundamentals.
And any shareholders who disagree with his behavior have had plenty of time to leave and take their earnings by now, which means that the remaining shareholders are a self-selecting set who is okay with his behavior as long as it keeps making them money.
Going through dating, marriage, having children, growing a family, co-parenting children is a massive time and emotional investment (for most people who take it seriously). A large part of, at least Western, society is built on this concept of spousal trust. It's part of the tax code, its part of the legal code (spousal privilege), it's part of our moral fabric, it's a cornerstone of many religions. Breaking that is a huge betrayal of our collective societal moral understanding.
Right, and because he was willing to break a commitment that serious it de-values other commitments he's made, including those more directly relevant to the business.
All this coming from a country that elected twice as President a guy that married three times, led a very sexually promiscuous life, including the notorious boasting, and was accused of sexual misbehaviours by almost 30 women. Hilarious.
The US system gives voters two options for president. Those options are chosen by parties, and parties make terrible choices.
In 2016, the choice was between Trump and Clinton. Clinton famously excused her husband's infidelity by calling the long list of women who claimed they were assaulted as "a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty".
In 2024, the choice was between Trump and Harris. Harris got into politics by being the mistress of a CA governor.
It would be interesting to see what would happen if the US presidential election offered a choice between someone who was moral and someone who was as immoral as our existing political class. But that has not happened in my lifetime, and I don't expect that to change.
One part trustworthiness, one part likeability, one part risk aversion. Some companies have very unlikable CEOs but they are otherwise effective enough to get by.
In this case, Huang hit all three. Changing CEOs is also a good way to get the media coverage over faster, or at least change the narrative in the pubic (and investors) minds.
If it were just an affair, I doubt he would have lost his job. It wasn't, though, and the other circumstances- potentially dodging export controls and abusing a role of power over a subordinate- came with far too much heat, so to speak.
Also, affairs make for much more entertaining gossip than the other items, so it's probably natural that that aspect gets talked about more.
It's not true that if you have an affair you're 100% toasted. And CEOs do get ousted for non-affair-like drama all the time.
But anyway a person's character is not cleanly separable between personal and professional life, so yeah affairs add (many) points to the "not to be trusted" column.
> Business is always about trust, and someone who isn't deserving of their own spouse's trust certainly isn't deserving of anyone else's.
It is a conflict of interest same as any other. If there is no conflict of interest then the company won't care. As the CEO of the company every other employee works for him and in turn he has power over them.
Society will not like you (in the US), but nothing more will happen.
Musk controls his companies stock and can't be fired. If that wasn't the case I think his situation would be very different - he's an outlier in most ways. But there's no board to enforce anything on him.
I think it often comes down to: do your actions match your words? In the instance above, when said exec joined our leadership team, they were well aware of the standard of conduct we expected, they agreed to them with their words, in fact. With us it was very simple, provided you're not a bigot, what you do on your own time is not our concern. However, what you do within our business is our concern. If you have intimate relations with anyone inside our company, even if consensual, you're no longer on our leadership team. Then, their actions did not match those words, when that is true, trust is gone. In society more generally I think this is true, there are people who we strongly expect their actions and words to match, and there are people who we know that isn't the case, and on some siding scale, we accept it (I didn't say acceptable). For example Fox News or CNN, marketing people, and to some degree apparently Elon Musk (in that people who matter to his success appear to believe they know where they stand with him). Groups typically have criteria/standards, if they change that, it may change the group to varying degrees, and that may be ok or not ok, depending on the group. I don't think this is an American thing or a European thing or anything like that, my understanding is this is a pretty human thing generally?
You cannot tell from the NVDA stock crash if it's because the CEO had an affair, or because NVIDIA illegally sold GPUs to China and is in huge trouble.
I can't see how the stock is highly inflated with a P/E of 20 and expected +100% year over year quarterly results expected in a few days. Normally companies doubling their revenue or profit (not sure which is what the expectation is here) are priced rather higher. A P/E of 20 is what I would expect for Coca-Cola, since it is going to grow at about population rate, since about everyone who wants to drink a Coca-Cola product is already doing so. (KO is currently 28, which I think is high, probably from people rotating out of tech)
Considering that extramarital escapades didn't prevent the current US president from being elected twice - and quite recently at that - I'm pretty sure this has nothing to do with cultural acceptance.
At the end of the day, it's also just too simplistic.
Humans don't have some kind of overall "morality" or "judgment" setting that applies equally to all areas of life, where a failing in one area translates to failings in other areas.
You can be an amazing CEO and a terrible father. You can have the best judgment in the world around mothering, and abysmal judgment in business. Most importantly, you can be totally trustworthy in the realm of business, yet not in romance.
The idea that there is this binary switch, where someone is either perfectly trustworthy in all contexts, or else you can no longer trust them in any context, is just not an accurate understanding of how real human beings work. It's not supported by modern psychology.
The affair isn't the issue, or at least not the only issue, it's who he had the affair with.
At the end of the day Jensen chose to have an affair with a senior officer of a company strongly suspected of bypassing trade restrictions and should have known that it would be a terrible look for Nvidia and himself. Even if he didn't suspect her of being an agent of China, even if he didn't believe the allegations against Mega speed, even if he had no intentions of passing confidential information or aiding in bypassing trade restrictions. He knew it would carry the appearance of all those things.
"you can be totally trustworthy in the realm of business, yet not in romance."
If you can't adhere to the terms of a voluntarily-entered personal contract with a person to whom you've promised utter faithfulness, why should I believe you'll be trustworthy with regard to some boring, impersonal business contracts?
It's perfectly possible to be trustworthy in one thing and not the other. If you can't trust a lion with your flock of sheep doesn't mean you can't trust it with a bunch of bananas.
yes, that exactly the point. i want my colleagues to behave correctly on the job - i don't care if they have 3 boyfriends or cheat on their partner. it's not the point. it can be fun to gossip around the coffee machine, but that's about it. nobody should be fired for having an affair.
This is more than an affair though. This is an affair with someone he has a business relationship with and thus it becomes the interest to the business. There are many many cases where someone give business favors to the person they are having an affair with.
My company is willing to hire my wife, but she wouldn't be allowed to work for me, nor I her.
If he’d had an affair with his physical therapist absolutely no one would care and he wouldn’t be out- it’s the totality of his actions and his extreme lack of judgement at issue.
All (or nearly all) fortune 500 company has a rule against sleeping with a subordinate, and it is one of the most common reasons for a CEO to be fired. If all we learned about was the second affair, I still expect he would have been fired. So every single successful actor has arrived at the same conclusion, but you don’t understand why. This is a great opportunity to learn something new.
One of the reasons this behavior is problematic in general is the potential for blackmail. It's not even really a statement about morality, just an acknowledgement that somebody who wants to keep things hidden is going to be beholden to the people who know the secrets.
Jensen went to many high profile parties with this woman. I don't see where he's trying to even hide it. Even the kiss was made out in public, not like a hotel room.
Also, an affair is only blackmail material in a society of prudes. I recall the story about a president who was confronted with condemning photos of his activities by CIA agents, and he pretty much encouraged the agents to publish the photos.
> Also, an affair is only blackmail material in a society of prudes
No? All it requires is for Jensen to want to remain with his wife and for his wife to be willing to divorce him if she finds out he has an affair.
Or, even if we suppose he doesn’t care about his wife’s feelings at all, he might be very incentivised by losing half of his assets in a divorce. It’s worth many, many millions to him.
> Also, an affair is only blackmail material in a society of prudes.
You don’t have to be a prude to think cheating on a spouse is condemnable.
In general, it also doesn’t really matter what society thinks. You can just threaten to reveal the affair to the spouse. And even in the case the spouse doesn’t really care it’s fodder they can potentially use in a divorce to get a better deal.
One thing worth pointing out is that in this case in addition to the affair with the Chinese spy he was allegedly having an affair with a subordinate, which is always problematic.
Apparently the KGB tried to honeypot him - and they were flabbergasted when he asked for copies of the photos. Apparently photos of him with multiple Russian women would bolster his machismo image back home?
Although if you read his Wikipedia page, he had many, many wives, some concurrently, and the youngest was 19...so it's probably true, lol.
Then you read about a certain EV company CEO and his escapades and repopulating the planet, and you don't know what to think.
Or Charlie Sheen...
I guess politicians, celebrities and CEOs are another world from us mere mortals.....
Reminds me of the Coldplay concert couple, which happened to be a CEO and head of HR. Head of HR! And what's more interesting is that they only got removed when the affair became public. At the same time the company was small potatoes so presumably less interesting to state actors.
It’s not just about humiliation. If your boss is sleeping with your coworker or someone on your team, how can you trust their decisions are grounded in fairness and logic. Sure, the world doesn’t work this way, and ceos are at a different realm than a mid level manager, but this is usually how HR defines things.
Several publicly traded companies have (or had) majority-owner CEOs, which makes it more than a little awkward for the board to fire them. I can't really see the board outing Zuckerberg under similar circumstances
> If you publicly humiliate your family and the business, you're out
There is no "* only applies to publicly traded companies". Hence, it is incorrect.
The bigger point I am trying to make here being that not everything is investor-driven. People can run businesses without that. It annoys me greatly that HN regularly forgets that.
In publicly-traded companies, the board is not the ultimate boss, though. That would be the shareholders. And, at Meta and many companies copying Meta's playbook who have IPO'd since (notably including Anthropic, though notably not including Nvidia), founder shares have so much voting power that the founders are effectively in complete control.
In theory, Nvidia shareholders, if dissatisfied with today's decision, could vote to oust the current board and replace it with people more sympathetic to Huang, who would, as their first decision, re-hire him as CEO, as would be their prerogative. This is... unlikely to happen.
Public companies in the US are required to have a board of directors. If they’re not a “controlled company” - i.e. no single person controls more than 50% - then a majority of the board are required to be independent, i.e. not employees, executives, or consultants to the company.
If you publicly humiliate your family and the business, you're out...
It's not entirely about humiliation.
Having an affair (or multiple, in this case) demonstrates poor decision making. You don't want someone who can't make wise choices running your company.
I suspect so many of us see examples of corporate crime or even of corporate greed (legally) causing an incredible amount of damage that an affair feels trivial in comparison. That is especially true when the private family life of a CEO is private. The damage of the affair could be anything from devastating to the family to they were all but legally separated.
That doesn't change that there is a conflict of interest here and any company should fire someone who has a conflict of interest that they are not carefully managing to ensure they don't become real.
Which is as it should be. First of all, marriage is a covenant. If someone cannot be trusted to keep his word on that, it's tough to trust him with power over thousands of employees and trillions of dollars. Second, I'm guessing the board asked Huang after the first affair's revelation whether there were more skeletons in his closet, and he said no. Lying to one's board is more than enough reason to be ousted.
That's a very narrow view that's a function of one's religion, culture, and values.
When I was in school, (US) my very Catholic French teacher explained that his uncle, in France, had a mistress. His uncle's wife knew and was okay with it. What my teacher was explaining is that the culture around marriage varies considerably through the world, and you can't take for granted that what we were taught (monogamy) is the standard that others live to, or even expect from you.
Yes, I can. The normalcy of a thing doesn't make it right. But this isn't really about whether absolute cultural relativism is appropriate or not. It's about a man who broke his word. Huang wed an American woman in America, not a French woman in France. Nothing about this situation indicates Huang's wife was remotely aware of nor alright with his philandery.
He is an immigrant, he holds dual citizenship in Taiwan, and regularly travels there.
I didn't go so far as to find out if he married in the US or elsewhere, or if his wedding was Christian.
What I do now is that in some cultures in that part of the world, it is acceptable for a man to visit a prostitute during a business trip. It's not something I condone.
I should also point out that in the US, there's no standard wedding vows! I don't think you know what vows Huang made with his wife; nor do I think you know what their expectations were in their relationship.
There's no major American subculture in which stepping out on your wife is "a good thing" or even "an okay thing". A vast majority of Americans poll consistently against adultery and it's often the most universally condemned action in surveys. Here's one example: https://news.gallup.com/poll/692801/adultery-cloning-seen-im...
> There's no major American subculture in which stepping out on your wife is "a good thing" or even "an okay thing".
No, there isn't.
There is a significant part of American culture that separates personal life from professional life. IE, an affair is treated as a private matter to be handled by the married (or committed) couple. (IE, this is why many people in this thread focus on Huang's job performance over the affair.)
And I agree with the latter: The affair is a matter between Huang and his wife; it's a signal of his trustworthiness and honesty, and raises concerns about national security. But beyond that, it's not my place, or your place, to judge.
My mother had gotten "two wrongs don't make a right" through my head by about age four. It's still true. I don't know nor care what they're doing in San Jose.
Seems like what they’re doing in North America kind of undercuts your assumptions.
Perhaps it’s you that is out of touch?
Both partners in this case know and/or participate, you don’t want drama at your games night after all. There is no wrong here, it turns out that many partners like seeing their partner have a great time.
From a religious perspective, sure. From an earthly perspective, you don't know what the other side was doing. Have you ever been married to a menopausal or a post menopausal woman? A marriage in which there is a permanent refusal to have sex can be annulled.
> A marriage in which there is a permanent refusal to have sex can be annulled.
That’s not quite true. A more accurate statement would be: A marriage may be annulled in some U.S. states if one spouse entered the marriage with a concealed, permanent intention not to consummate it, and that intention constitutes fraud going to the essence of the marriage.
If the couple was having sex after marriage, and then one partner decided to cease having it some time later, that is generally not grounds for annulment.
If it were permitted, this would make many, if not most, late-stage marriages subject to annulment. People get sick and injured or just incapable in old age.
Seems like some weird fundamentalist take. On its own it's purely a private matter between him and his wife (obviously the GPU smuggling stuff is a separate thing). Given that the affair has been semi public for years it's hard to imagine his wife didn't know about it anyway.
If it's fundamentalist to hold a man to his word, then I suppose you can count me a fundamentalist. If he'll shatter trust with the person he purportedly loves most in the world, just what might he do to you, the customer or shareholder?
> shatter trust with the person he purportedly loves most in the world
Well we don't know that, you are not legally required to love someone you are married to and I have no clue what their relationship is like or whether they have any sort of "arrangements". I could hardly care less really since its their private matter.
> just what might he do to you, the customer or shareholder?
I don't really see a correlation between those things. All sorts of immoral degenerates (e.g. Musk, (potentially) Gates and I assume plenty of other lesser known CEOs) have generated massive amounts of value for their shareholders.
This is the kind of story that makes me think most critical leadership should be held by women. Grossly generalizing here, but I think women are inherently less corruptible than men in this manner, especially older women.
It’s unambiguously a good thing that the next NVIDIA CEO (even if just an interim CEO) is a woman, and that the AMD CEO is a woman.
Famously, Mark Hurd made dubious expenses that were perceived negatively by the public (there were sexual harassment allegations) and was ousted as CEO from HP. Then Larry Ellison mocked HP and hired Mark as Oracle's President. So, some companies are worried about that, others aren't
It's entirely possible that the board just wasn't that warm on Jensen in the first place. Not cold, not looking to be the tall poppy that gets cut down... but at least willing to give Jensen the boot if given the right push.
This is how things change. Slowly and then all at once. If the board were more in love with him, they'd probably have been willing to turn a blind eye for just a little while longer. No such luck for Jensen, but we make our own luck in these things.
They can when they reveal poor decision making. If this guy is so stupid that he's willing to stick his dick in anyone, including a Chinese spy, what does that say about his ability to make rational decisions elsewhere in his life? He's clearly not making decisions that benefit him personally in the long term so can he even make good long term decisions at his job?
There's a reason why government background checks looks at financial records. Someone that has trouble paying their bills due to a gambling habit might be easy to turn by the enemy with some cash. Or someone that regularly cheats on their wife might be willing to do some favors for a pretty girl if she lets him sleep with her.
Maybe people are tired of that bullshit. The most powerful guy in business clearly felt empowered to let that facade go. I guess he just got a check for his experiment.
Getting obviously played so hard that it makes you, your wife, your children, your company and your entire country look like idiots surely should humiliate your business no?
100%. While I do not condone his actions, publicly we do not know anything about his private life and the dynamics. Until there's a statement from his family, for all we know they may have been separated.
It's clearly the CN link and/or the cosying up with a customer that is the problem; the board would not care about his private life (and neither should the public, tbh).
And the open letter sounds more like it was written the way the public would expect a CEO to write.
If he was in an open relationship or had a girlfriend while separated from his wife, that's not really something to be embarrassed about. His letter talks is him apologizing to his family and asking for forgiveness. He got caught in a Chinese intelligence honeypot and knows he fucked up.
> His open letter about his infidelity seems to imply he has embarrassed his wife and family, have you read it?
He has also said so very many times in so very many ways that Nvidia was absolutely not involved in violation of export control laws regarding the export of its products to China. That -in fact- there was absolutely no smuggling going on and claims to the contrary were utterly baseless and without merit.
I agree with ohnnyApplePRNG's assertion that we know literally nothing about the private life and situation of Mr. Huang and his family.
> So because he lied when he denied certain allegations, you don't believe his admissions of guilt?
He repeatedly and aggressively lied about violating export restrictions. "Our chips aren't potato chips. These GPUs weigh two tons. [So, how would you smuggle those? It'd be impossible!]" is an especially memorable deflection of his. He's obviously very willing to lie about very serious things when doing so is beneficial.
> He "literally" wrote about how his actions hurt his family...
He also spoke and wrote about how it was impossible to smuggle Nvidia hardware into China, and that everyone who was claiming that smuggling was going on were liars. CEOs will often lie when issuing Obligatory Standard Statements, whether they be brusque dismissals of accusations of the company's wrongdoing, or assertions of how shameful they consider their behavior that lead them to do whatever it was that they've been caught doing. CEOs make the expected public statement and get on with their lives.
Plus, given how most folks are -at best- confused by and -at worst- enraged by things like polyamory, why on earth would he publicly reveal it if his family was actually totally okay with regular extramarital sex and romance?
No, situations like this get the Standard Admission of Deep Shame and Regret For All The Harm Caused, regardless of whether or not what's said has any resemblance to what the family feels about the situation. The only folks who know how the members of the family feel about this are folks who actually know the family.
> We know literally nothing about Jensen's private life or if he humiliated his family here.
Uh... but we do!
---
I owe my family and all of you an apology.
I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry.
Throughout my life, my family has given me love and support. They deserve my honesty and loyalty. Instead, I let them down and damaged the life we built together. I take full responsibility for what I did and the hurt I caused, and I accept the criticism that comes with it.
To my wife and family: I love you. I know an apology cannot undo what I have done. I hope our family will heal and that, over time, I can earn back your trust.
To my colleagues at NVIDIA, including those I have worked alongside for decades, and to our board, partners, and shareholders around the world: you deserve better from me. Leading NVIDIA is the privilege of my life. My responsibility is to serve you and be worthy of your trust. I have fallen short of that responsibility. I am fully committed to NVIDIA and will work to earn back your confidence.
Regarding the national security concerns raised in news reports, NVIDIA’s Board of Directors has initiated an independent investigation. I support the investigation and will cooperate fully. I love our country and our company. I am committed to protecting NVIDIA and supporting America’s national security. I am proud and grateful to be an American.
My family bears no responsibility for my choices. I do. Please give them privacy.
If he is actually a bi-furry with an understanding with his wife on 'affairs', do you think he'd say that? Or would he maintain the straight, family-friendly, investor-friendly front expected of him [by some people] in his position?
Don't get me wrong, I'm very much a promoter of monogamy.
I think it is naive to assume that such public statements are the whole truth of a matter.
People who fuck up a company (or have an affair, or get caught snorting drugs off a sex-worker) aren't really 'stepping back to spend more time with their families'. Historically the classic example of executive public statements.
Perhaps, but it's also more common than not for affairs to hurt families, and the statement confirms that applied here.
If you have stronger evidence that the statement was untruthful when it said he hurt his family, you may present it.
Until such time, the statement strengthens the bayesian prior, which is that his affairs hurt his family, and thus that is what we can conclude. We need not be 100% confident to conclude this absent further evidence. >50% confidence suffices.
Tell me you have no clue how corporations are run without telling me. Furthermore Jensen wasn't some random executive otherwise this wouldn't be now top news all over the world.
Let’s be real here. Everyone making money out of NVIDIA was more than happy enough to go around the restrictions and see the prices go up due to Chinese demand.
Having these people saying otherwise is pure hypocrisy.
In what world is the modern US Congress a good regulator of these kinds of things? Half the people in the Capitol have a literal vested interest in the very companies they claim to be trying to keep on a leash (and I recognize that some of these are inverse instruments, my point still stands).
Public service, especially at the highest levels, is both a realization of civic responsibility, as well as an immense material privilege.
If you've had a career in congress, parliament, whatever, you can live comfortably off of the various media appearances you're likely to have for much of the rest of your life.
Representatives in government should be able to keep it in their pants when it comes to investments at least while they're in government, and have a thick, thick wall between their jobs running a country (or state, or whatever) and the management of their investments. Blind trusts should be the bare minimum.
What I'd prefer to see is that while actively sitting in government, representatives must keep their savings invested in funds so diversified into low-risk instruments that almost no regulation can benefit them significantly more than it would an average passive investor.
My money is on the congress members - including the greatest stock trader of all times, Nancy Pelosi - having just sold their NVIDIA shares right before the spying was uncovered.
This link you posted, doesn’t work like you think it does - well, except on the part where she is shown to be beating the market by double digits every single year for the past decades.
She is up 934% since 2014. This congresswoman is the greatest financial genius in the all history of mankind. She was beating S&P steadily, every year and since 2014 she is up more than 600% compared to the S&P.
For context, the probable next best investor - after all these great financial minds in congress - is Warren Buffet, and he is actually down 34.8% compared to the S&P since 2014.
You will only know that Nancy Pelosi was up to since the beginning of October next January. Congress members only have to submit their trades (their SEC fillings) every 3 months. [1]
This link I posted, doesn’t work like you think it does. It shows trades which happened. It shows trades as recently as November 6th, which is after the end of the prior quarter.
It doesn't, however, show sales of nvidia stock prior to this release. Thus no such sales happened, unless you have any further evidence.
It is, however, looking like JH's fellow philanderer donald knew, and kept it under wraps for personal gain. Probably insider trading. I mean, just look at how much donald and his family's wealth has increased compared to the S&P500, or Warren Buffett.
No, it doesn't. You are either being purposefully obtuse in the argument, or now trying to go after the tail of it.
Congress members are not mandated to fill a trade as it happens. If Nancy Pelosi latest filling day was Nov 6 (as you are pointing out), it means that she is only forced to show trades up to 30 days before (and that is mostly what she does as her median filling delay is of 24 days).
Also, as you are so keen to bring Trump into the discussion for some reason. I must sadly tell you that the chap is only 4.4% up compared to S&P during all his history as a member of the government/representative. The guy is not nearly the same financial genius as Nacy Pelosy.
The thing you're missing is, the evidence doesn't have to meet your standards. It just has to be better than the nothing which you've put forward in the opposite. And it is! Pretty much anything beats nothing.
So now, the onus is on you to convincingly back up the allegations you're making regarding sales of nvidia stock, and you haven't. If you have some sort of evidence that Nancy made the trade alleged, and is delaying reporting, whether allowed or not, please share it.
The evidence is, however, looking like JH's fellow philanderer donald knew, and kept it under wraps, probably insider trading for personal gain.
I already proved that by pointing you to the numbers in your own link, that show that Nacy Pelosi is up 934% in her stock market trades since 2014, beating the S&P 500 by more than 600% in the same period.
The first affair was possibly survivable, although the cost of survival would be high for all involved.
The second affair was fatal to Jensen Haung. An affair with a direct report is generally a no-no in modern business and would have opened Nvidia up for all kinds of liability issues if they knew in any capacity. If he stayed it would have made a mockery of their code of conduct rules and opened Nvidia up to further legal issues.
It's also possible that after the first affair news broke, the board asked him questions and he didn't disclose that there's a second affair too (and maybe more??). The board only realized that he'd not been truthful/fully forthcoming when the second affair news broke yesterday. That's when they decided to boot him. Because if there's more and more affairs going to keep breaking, that would be a complete media spectacle distracting from the company.
Musk controls 19.9% of voting power at Tesla, and more than 80% at SpaceX. Huang has about a 3.5% ownership stake in of Nvidia and that’s jointly controlled with his wife.
Musk's companies have low quality boards, which is by design to make it almost impossible to fire him and the legacy of that should serve as a cautionary tale
Possibly, I am a bit tired of the national security argument with hand waving vagueness. It’s generally unfalsifiable because details would be a national security risk. Meanwhile we have seen National Security concerns that were pure lies once we get sufficiently far past it.
Yes you see there are various types of national security. For example, there is the national security when a country that touted capitalism and free trade for years suddenly finds itself beat at capitalism by someone else, that's a big national security issue. Then suddenly free trade is evil and a danger and a national security issue.
> There are some things more important than stock valuation.
Given that the economic growth of the USA during the last few years was entirely due to this man and his technologies, I'm going to say nah.
China having access to GPUs is not a national security threat. It's an economic threat. Not sure why people treat China as some enemy nation. It's just a competitor.
Or maybe he just simply wanted to make more money by increasing demand for Nvidia's GPUs by tacitly allowing for them to be exported to China though Singapore.
>NVIDIA has supposedly been skirting the export ban put in place by the previous administration.
That's not the reason either.
They never did it in a way that was technically legal iirc.
And the new administration allowed the exports later anyway and lifted the AI ban on July 2025.
Even she was a spy, the idea is that what? I can understand her snooping for fresh confidential info, in that, case, but what would her role be the sanctions? That just because he got her as gf, he made nvidia evade exports as a favor?
As if it was his personal bypass and not what the nvidia board wanted for the $$$?
They're likely worried about the optics of it, and what a Democrat administration, or increased power, would do to Nvidia stocks with such scandal as leverage.
> They never did it in a way that was technically legal iirc.
If Jensen knew that Megaspeed was a Chinese front, then he willfully engaged in a criminal conspiracy to circumvent US export controls. That is very serious felony.
I know it's just speculation, but the fact that Nvidia hasn't tried to scapegoat some random compliance officer strongly suggests to me that Jensen did know, and that the board has seen the paper trail that proves it.
I’d also note that being complicit and not entirely aware of sanctions evasion -but being in a qualified position that should have been able to discern it- is sufficient for criminal charges and conspiracy. I spent a long time in trading and money movement, and this was the scared straight things our former federal prosecutor internal counsel would lecture us on. The bar for prosecutors in national security, sanctions, conspiracy, etc are very very low and this sort of relationship is a perfect foil. It exposes Nvidia to extreme risk, and Jenson even more so. And being cutoff from Nvidia now makes him prey without the support a major employer and driver of the economy could provide him.
I said this on the thread this morning/yesterday. It is impossible for JH to speak about China with any credibility going forward. That alone made it impossible for him to remain CEO. Add to that, everything he's said about China in the past will now be scrutinized and questioned if he was influenced in some way.
If it was just affairs, he could likely have survived this.
Why can't it be all of the above? I'm disturbed by the number of posts I'm seeing around social media downplaying the affairs as if this is normal behavior that should be encouraged or allowed. He slept with someone who worked directly under him, under what universe would he be allowed to stay at Nvidia? That's absurd.
Cheating on your wife may be despicable behavior, but it doesn’t warrant firing the founding CEO of one of the most important companies on earth, especially considering how much is at stake economically, including how reliant the U.S. economy has been on AI build out spending. On the other hand, cheating on your wife and endangering national security at the same time is a different story.
It'll be a relative slap on the wrist. The US is not going to destroy one of the companies keeping it competitive on the AI landscape right now. Worst case, it is a heavy slap and some individuals go to jail, but the company will be fine.
But yeah, the affairs are probably just a last straw.
I hope you understand the affair with the spy does not strictly matter, but he is in fact being fired because of the affair with a subordinate.
Like everyone, they have a COC/sexual harassment policy, and that is basically always a firing offense in practice.
They cannot place him above it, or else they would be in for infinite liability.
This is why literally nothing mentioned firing until that was discovered, and then it instantly became about firing him.
To me the fact that it was known for a year that the affair was happening, and nothing changed implies that this is more a publicity move rather than anything else. They had to make a change, improve their brand image. Probably nothing will change in how they sell their product, the rules they skirt.
“Sold to China” can mean a lot of things including legitimate entities in Malaysia/Singapore selling cloud computing to companies in those countries that then resell compute to entities in China. Export bans on gpus are inherently impossible to make work unless you police the eventual destination of every byte exiting a datacenter.
Why? Because the government want to maintain the American advantage in GPU chips and AI? This move tips the scales in favour of China. Right now there is tens of billions of dollars of Nvidia GPUs sitting on the dock in Hong Kong because China government blocked them. They think it's more important to support their new domestic GPU industry than to have the best models today trained on nvida.
There does seem to be a sway in the reporting towards his relationship with an employee and not the whole trade ban and spy stuff. I'm not sure why that is
Think of this current fracas like this: Americans have a strange penchant to define themselves by sexuality. So, they are easily distracted into a trance by their hormonal and prurient interests for extended periods.
A famous guy had an island and it was extrajudicially a place where alot of powerful people internationally could come to his island and interchange info and ideas and make deals and things could occur and he collected up all that kind of stuff, including arms deals and the sex stuff.
But Americans are only right now aware of the sex stuff in what he collected up.
The sex stuff is essentially a distraction, the oily film on the deeper ocean of truth.
The fact that Nvidia was skirting the export ban was an open secret. So many outlets like NYT itself, Reuters, WSJ, etc have published reports about it starting over a year ago.
He was also favoring local open weight models in a world where frontier AI companies are lobbying the government for control. Could be one of the reasons why he was ousted.
I'll plug our Pretrained episode from Monday here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N97DW8gfCnI - this chip export goes back years, through shell companies that are very easily traceable to Alibaba.
If it were just about the export ban, then why leak the affairs? US intelligence (which serves US corporate power only) has decided to put this guy out to pasture by any means necessary. That's the reason for this faux moral outrage. They want to make sure there's no chance he makes it out the other side.
Presumably his replacement will be subservient "enough".
Allows the influence of selection of next CEO that is more aligned with long term Chinese goals. Or punishment for not going along with the plan.
Im not much for conspiracy theories, but if you think about it, in the state that US is in, there is absolutely zero chance US will do anything retaliatory to China if they do spy shit on US soil. China is basically free to play spy games. My guess is that they have their fingers in Anthropic, Amazon, OpenAI, SpaceX, and AMD, and probably other agents within NVIDIA in high places.
Their game is basically rearrange the pieces so eventually China becomes the world number one superpower, while keeping the status quo as much as possible
He committed what looks like some light treason. The fact that he had an affair with a Chinese intelligence asset who helped the CCP bypass import restrictions is why he had to go.
This comment yesterday [1] indicated that Megaspeed was not on the blocked entity list, but that NVidia voluntarily hasn't sold to them since June 2025.
History will look back at this and see Jensen was right to do this.
Underestimating China under this export ban is a huge historical blunder of epic proportions. China will develop all their own chips and put everyone out business eventually.
> Nvidia has supposedly been skirting the export ban put in place by the previous administration
I want to add some nuance to this statement. There is a difference between:
(1) actively assisting/violating the export ban. There is no evidence, nor any ongoing gov't investigation regarding this accusation.
(2) buyers redirecting legitimate, legal purchases to mainland Chinese companies. There is evidence and multiple ongoing gov't investigations by (a) Department of Justice, (b) Federal Bureau of Investigation, and (c) Department of Commerce.
I cannot find any senior Nvidia executives that have been charged with crimes for directly assisting/violating the export ban. That said, there may be ongoing gov't investigations, but I could not find any public press about them.
I think thats correct, I was at GTC in berlin a couple of weeks ago, a number of Chinese firms that are on the export control list were present and had booths… so perhaps this was all rather blatant.
dark ops [well, maybe these are really very bright out in the open ops...!!!] may have taken an opportunity and now the operation is at its close, the data is reduced, and the devices utilized are being obsoleted, and operatives burned
we US citizens should not let naivete overrule the gravity of this technology race, on the order of the nuclear arms race
I've heard rumours that 20-40% of Nvidia's revenue was coming from sanctioned chips that make their way into Chinese data centres. If true, it's not small potatoes.
The thing is China itself has no incentive to have their companies skirt the export ban. The whole saga is just completely ironic and incredibly unorganic. The alleged "spy" and her firm Megaspeed was doing export circumventing mechanisms to China not because the CCP was allegedly pushing her to do so, in fact it was a counter-reaction to how restrictive the Chinese customs became to importing Nvidia while the corresponding customers are hungry for that compute that is piling up in the ports. China is doing a zero-sum policy where every American chip that gets passed to their tech companies is one less domestic/chinese, which equates less money for R&D and catch up.
So something very strange going on here, along with the timing, in time where Anthropic is preparing for an IPO and briefly after the midterms where the median voter rejected AI wholesale. I suspect this might have been a long game to turn the man down that is standing for open-source and the freedom to build AI. Heck epstein was having a ring of elites diddling minors and nothing scandalous came out of it.
All the regulators that kickstarted this dumb export controls in 2022, which in-turn made the american AI-stack weaker vs China, while also using doomer-fud about safety must feel glorious right now.
What is inorganic? China banning GPUs ≠ China not wanting the GPUs. It is not unreasonable to imagine China not wanting to shake the sanctions boat, so offloading the crime into another country allows them to still have their cake and eat it too. They get to develop technology locally, they have undeniable regulations on the books that make them compliant within the expected framework of US-China trade, and then still get to have their MVPs rent restricted hardware from gray market dealers in Malaysia. 20% of NVIDIA's FY26 was channeled through this framework. The point of the system is what it does.
> Whether you agree or disagree with the ban, it exists and Jensen&NVIDIA are in a world of trouble if this comes to light.
Law has to be enforced by human beings to be meaningful. Donald Trump, who is the one who put the export control in place and has the power to make any legal trouble vanish, has very loudly signaled that he does not care and Jensen/Nvidia will not be in any hot water.
China doesn't even want Nvidia chips. They're holding up hundreds of thousands of smuggled cards at Hong Kong customs. Many Chinese companies want to take the easy shortcut of using Nvidia, but the Chinese govt wants Chinese companies to go through the pain of helping the domestic chip industry develop.
Plus the fact that there's absolutely no evidence that the lady is a spy. All media report anonymous sources but treat the allegations as fact. Singapore said their investigation of the lady is not due to spying, but no western media picked up that story. The lady traveled to Taiwan with her Hong Kong passport, and the Taiwanese govt also said they have no evidence she's a spy. The Chinese spy agency just started investigating her due to all the commotion (likely for smuggling chips, which China also doesn't want, see above), and also has no idea who she is. Despite all this, the public still treats the spy allegations as a fact.
Jenssen Huang is a victim. Those who wanted to get rid of him and set this up, have succeeded. But everyone is under the mistaken belief that this hurts China somehow. China doesn't give a damn. In the mean time, all Chinese Americans lose. Jenssen is not the first such victim, and won't be the last.
I think the affair with the Chinese CEO is a considerable factor. Jensen cannot possibly maintain any plausible deniability over Megaspeed's alleged diversion of chips to China and his role therein.
The second affair with an employee likely just dealt a death blow (if it hadn't already been dealt) to Jensen in terms of his ability to ride the crisis out.
Being compromised kinda does seem like a reason to be fired. It seemed well known he was doing it since there are plenty of photos over a few years? So it’s more she was a honeypot.
If they really did, I hope they at least go to prison for a while. I say at least because they actually should be court martiall-ed and spend their next 30 years in a military cell.
It is legal for Chinese companies to buy US neocloud time. These toothless restrictions were poorly constructed and unenforceable law. The extent to which nvda was supposed to self police is unclear. I find it hard to believe any binding evidence of direct sales will be found.
Eric Swalwell was not punished and committed something worse than Jensen Huang, because he was a government official. He even ran for Governor and the only reason he as forced to resign was because of a different sexual abuse case.
If our own government officials can't face justice, why should the CEO of a company?
Are they still in Trump's good graces? Sure, they gave him money before. But can they promise him more money again? He's pretty quick to dispose of people when they're inconvenient too.
I am not sure I can agree. Perhaps this was the underlying reason. Perhaps others wanted to frame him and launched a media campaign. But from what I can see, at the
least on the surface, to me it looks as if he was fired for liking too many women at the same time, at the least one of which might be a possible spy. This may all be fake-reasons on top to cover underlying real causes, but to me right now it looks as if the girls cost him the job here.
Jensen is Taiwanese. Nvidia's chips are made in Taiwan, as are all the most advanced chips in the world -- including the chips in Apple and AMD products -- by TSMC. China wants to re-absorb Taiwan into itself, partially because they cannot match TSMC's geometries and they desperately need those geometries.
Speculation here, but it's conceivable that China gave Jensen an ultimatum: Give us your chips and we'll delay invading your homeland for a little while longer. Of course this would have been implied since China never says anything so direct.
Unlikely, but not implausible, and should have been reported directly to the FBI / CIA if that was ever implied. But, the whole affair business means he probably wouldn't have handled hearing something like that responsibly either, which is part of the problem.
Abuse of power in the case of the second affair to the extent it could've easily turned into a rape scandal and is a big reason why it is a big HR no-no, and in the first case, the affair not being public is exactly the kind of thing a honeypot wants in order to keep you quiet about the kinds of threats that may end up implied.
Either way, the dude is going to be getting investigated and will not be able to effectively lead NVIDIA in the course of what's coming.
As though the Board had no idea of this, and are suddenly acting oh gosh this is the first we've heard of the phantom SG revenue! Time for Jensen to go. Nah, not buying it. Many of the board have been w JH since the early 1990s. This is because his reckless disregard for the company and his years-long relationship with a Chinese spy.
China is a gigantic market. A company that profit hungry will find it supremely difficult to resist doing business with China. It is almost guaranteed, that they did in some indirect ways sell to China. It's also not like people like Jensen care one bit about the USA. What they care about is pure profit of their own kingdom. Uhm, I mean company, of course.
With a strict ban of chips to China, Chinese companies will not have enough compute. Without enough compute, they are not going to be able to release new open weight models.
That means American companies will have to rely on Anthropic. And interestingly, Anthropic loves to tell users what they can or can not do, such as "The training of Fable 5.2 and Mythos 5.2 included measures to limit advances in a narrow set of capabilities that could most directly accelerate AI development, like accelerator kernel optimization".
> ”it is hard for me to avoid the conclusion that NVIDIA sold to China despite the export ban.”
Nvidia sold to companies in Singapore, and then “somehow” the chips got redirected or forwarded on to China.
It’s been known/suspected for years that this was happening, but this Chinese spy scandal does suggest that execs at Nvidia might have known more about what has been going on than they’ve previously admitted.
Him taking the stance of "we should be allowed to sell all the GPUs to China" was bad enough in itself.
Now that the possibility of him being compromised by an actual Chinese spy AND the possibility of Nvidia actually sanction-busting to ship to China regardless are on the table? Both at the same time, no less?
Yeah, that kind of liability is bonkers. Jensen might be too vital to load him into a cannon and fire him into the sun, but I'm not at all surprised that Nvidia wants him gone from the big post.
China was already "developing a fully domestic stack" either way.
So the only thing selling to them accomplishes is give Nvidia more margins. At the cost of boosting the Chinese AI sector - possibly to the point of parity.
China at the moment has the capability to do infrastructural rollouts far faster than US or Europe, but doesn't have the chips to stuff new datacenters with. So it's easy to see why China would want the chips. But it's not like Nvidia is having trouble selling their AI accelerators outside China - and they can't ramp up accelerator production on demand. More demand for accelerators would push the prices even higher, and that would reflect in the margins, but the benefits for Nvidia weren't even that large.
So it was a questionable push all around - even before the spy scandal.
> From all the reporting I've read, it is hard for me to avoid the conclusion that NVIDIA sold to China despite the export ban.
I thought this was like, basically an open secret? Like... I'm sure they stayed within the technical letter of the law? Except if any of the laws required them to not be grossly negligent and not be cartoonishly naive. So that they can later argue that they couldn't possibly have known that chips going to South East Asia were being resold to China?
They were literally allowed to sell chips to the US branch of sanctioned Chinese companies. Same pattern as the tariff nonsense, not really opposed to any products or companies, just wants to bring all the production to the US instead. Plain protectionism, like the same car made in Germany is badly unfair, made in China is a national security risk, but once it's made in the US it's perfectly fine.
I dont think its more soo about the ban as China itself has 'officially' blocked the chips that were being licensed as exportable. I think its more of the asks that were being made by the NATSec and Amodie aligned actors (see the pod he had with Dwarkesh ), to ho tighter and more aggressive. Basically Jensen was sort of the brake on the impulsive ideas getting thrown around on how to 'win' AI and create a moat against all latecomers.
In any case pushing him out allows a freer hand for their shenanigans , so well know shortly what the asks were that he pushed back on (kill switches in chips?) if they get announced.
Also his role will be difficult to fill , seeing as hes had biz/gov relations going back decades with all relevant players in the semi industry from design ,litho,fabs to packaging etc.
I would be so, so surprised if the US government / CIA / etc wouldn't know at all that NVDA was selling to China and skirting the export ban in a meaningful way.
In 50 years from now, some declassified documents will maybe shed light on this specific incident.
I would imagine it being a form of "So, China, we'll let our Jensen guy sell you X in chips, and in return, you do Y in relation to Russia, and Z in relation to Taiwan. Oh, and we need to use one of your spies, in case someone f*cks up".
Well the only thing super weird is the timeline - USA bans exports, China (very soon after) bans IMPORTS! And then there's a company which keeps doing trade under the nose of the potentially two most powerful nation-states and their secret service sources. This is super fishy, really I don't buy nobody knew nothing, only for a "lucky" journalist to figure out the whole thing...
Is this remotely believable, that one CEO can surreptitiously work around both the government and his own company to sell restricted goods at volume? If this were real you'd have to lobotomize the entire management structure, because there are a lot of people that would know and know better and that they'd face jail time. And maybe merge it with some other company quickly so it doesn't completely collapse because of the immediate mass firings to try and sway prosecutions toward individuals and not the destroy the entire entity.
I'd be more inclined to believe the spy thriller narrative if he sent the RTL of their top designs to China. Selling goods is not a one chief op.
Very much agreed, the second this became clear his position was untenable. He will surely have launched his unicorn by the end of December regardless, I’d be surprised if this had any tangible repercussions outside the divorce court.
Very much dislike that this in large part is overshadowed by his adultery, which should be considered separate and treated totally private, at least for the sake of his family.
Biggest valuation ever will turn into biggest investor lawsuit ever. The music on the AI circular deals is about to be broken by a feminine spell. This has Lord of the Rings all over it...
NVDA at $151 right now...I never expected to see the day...
Yeah, this has to be related to the export ban. It's too much of a coincidence that the woman happens to run a shell company that funnels NVIDIA chips to China.
It's just unlikely that an affair would nuke his CEO's position.
The reality is a lot of people want to ensure only approved “safe and aligned” models are trained and executed, and nvidia were, by far, the biggest promoter of the idea of freedom. This will be done by forcing you to rent capacity from approved providers that monitor and watermark everything.
Huggingface are almost certainly next in line for a push to lock down. For child safety, obviously.
The strange situation, however, is that the current administration, specifically Trump, loves Jensen for he thinks that they're kindred spirits: both incredibly successful businessmen at the top of the world and at the top of their game (this is from Trump's perspective).
It's an odd situation where, yes, they're breaching national security mandates, but they're also being protected by the man at the top of the organization that makes those national security mandates.
We're living in a comedy film, where the outcome of said comedy film has an effect on the world economy, so we're actually living in a tragedy film.
That's how corruption skews the reality that the powerless are forced to live within.
Oh, it's not the repeated violations of sexual conduct with an employee, and a spy, and likely more? A CEO who is that dumb to risk his and the company trust isn't worth it. Look, a trillion already wiped out. When employees say "how dumb could he be", you know the board and major investors are saying that too.
Did your TV tell you that? I hope you realize that there is absolutely no proof of the import ban having been skirted. The FBI has been investigating Alice Huang and Megaspeed since 2024 and all they have is a few GPUs still being unboxed at their Malaysian data center.
NVIDIA's latest chips were also on an export ban for several Middle Eastern countries ("security" theater). That's about the time the UAE's sovereign fund invested a large sum in Cerebras. They were still able to get the chips by way of Kuwait, which is a friendly Middle Eastern state.
Of course, not a year went by before the UAE and Saudi invested heavily in the Trump crypto fund and, very coincidentally, the ban was lifted.
Fear not, Cerebras managed to get another investment from OpenAI!
The timing is politically important though; shifts headlines from
"Trump/GOP lost their ass in midterms!" and "Dems intend to investigate GOP/Trump!"
Also provides news channel attacks on Dems; Congress should be looking into national security issues over here in CEO land! Not dividing Congress with partisan hackery!
Important to call out the social engineering going on among all the tribal groups.
Well, you say that, but the perception is he hasn't got sacked for circular financing, nor for the providing of sanctioned components (supposedly they went to third countries, not China, so legal). But he got sacked for two affairs.
This seems very silly.
In all likelihood he got sacked for all those things, the affairs just were a convenient excuse.
What board would admit two thirds of their revenue is imaginary money. It's much better to sack a CEO for being "unfaithful to his wife".
We've really run this term into the ground, haven't we? They don't even bother to try to convince us that China wants to hurt us anymore before making our lives shitty for it.
There is a wealth of reporting out there, it is harder to ignore this story than to read about it. My statement was couched and is clearly just my opinion, I'll leave the reading to you and let you form your own conclusions
A lot of people in this industry have gotten it into their heads over the last 25 years that if you create enough value, you get to ignore things like "rules", "laws" and "common sense".
Part of me is hopeful after this. Huang did something that was, at the very least, profoundly stupid, and just short of treason at worst. However, I'm also filled with dread, because I know that this means that there will be even more of an effort by founders to make sure they're immune from consequences from boards if they go public. You already see this at Meta and with Zuckerberg.
We need real reforms on corporate governance that make this sort of situation - a board able to control the C-suite - the norm, not the exception.
TBH, I find the manner in which this was done to be pretty distasteful.
The US government initiating action against Nvidia for breaking the law, causing the affair to come to light? Yeah, that'd be fine by me. Somebody inside that government tattling tales to the NY Times, possibly with tacit consent of their superiors? That I have concerns with.
I've seen a theory floated online that somebody inside the government, who was part of the faction advocating for stricter sanctions on China, leaked this in a way to cause maximum damage to the anti-restrictions faction. Whether Huang (female Huang) was actually a Chinese spy in the first place is also up in the air, keep in mind that while the affair has almost certainly occurred, given that Huang (male) has admitted to it himself, the Chinese spy allegations are still unverified. It could possibly have been a "grain of truth in a sea of lies" play.
> The US government initiating action against Nvidia for breaking the law, causing the affair to come to light? Yeah, that'd be fine by me. Somebody inside that government tattling tales to the NY Times, possibly with tacit consent of their superiors? That I have concerns with.
Everything only comes to light with the New York Times reporting on it. It would be fine if the government did it, but... they didn't.
If nothing else, this indicated to the board that JH is capable of thinking with his dick and that can be a problem for business.
Its a threat to their own companies and whatever amount of democracy is there. Maybe ego is like some cancer that kills/self-ded
structs its host/person if it gets big enough. Which is good. A persons etreme wealth gets them political power and also advantages before the law. We've seen this with big corporations.
> A lot of people in this industry have gotten it into their heads over the last 25 years that if you create enough value, you get to ignore things like "rules", "laws" and "common sense".
That's literally how the world works? And has worked for many centuries or longer. By "value" you mean wealth, and wealthy people can get away with murder. They buy and write the law and have the best lawyers in the world.
We won't have billionaires/trillionaires/kings AND rule of law for /everyone/ equally - the world doesn't work that way.
It could in principle though, and things certainly have not been improving in those respects. I'm not going to straight up say they are for sure getting worse either though. I mean, worse compared to when?
That being said, I think resigning yourself to this sort of behavior because "muh power and world works this way" is just kind of stupid. It is not in your best interests, as a regular person much like the vast majority of HN posters (besides the AI shill bots), to just be content with that state of affairs, if there are little things that are relatively effective at reducing those kinds of corruptions of social systems.
One of those things happens to be general distaste of an authentically Christian society against hedonistic behavior, but that has been on a noted downtrend lately, and I don't think that's been a very good thing. Similarly, I think Protestantism is to blame for a lot of nutty justification for the rich and powerful getting away with stuff like this, but I'm going to be vague about what I mean by that because it would be an essay length post.
Our President literally diddled kids on a Carribbean island, cheated on his wives several times, and is probably a closeted homosexual, but richest man on earth having an affair is where we draw the line.
> if you create enough value, you get to ignore things like "rules", "laws" and "common sense".
Hmm... I wonder why that is. Could it be because a bunch of CEOs, prominent politicians, and business people were found to have taken multiple trips to an island where the had sex with children and nothing happened to them? No, it couldn't possibly be that. I'm sick of the pearl clutching against a man who had consensual relationships with adult women his own age, while we excuse pedophilia.
> I'm sick of the pearl clutching against a man who had consensual relationships with adult women his own age,
Do we have evidence that his legally-recognized other half consented to these relationships? If so, fine. That still doesn't remove the problems with those relationships, like the possibility of Alice Huang being a PRC intelligence asset, or the fact that one of the affairs was with a company employee, which can, in a roundabout way, place potential penalties on her career if she doesn't consent.
>while we excuse pedophilia.
Excuse me, where the f*ck did I excuse pedophilia???
You don't have to censor 'fuck.' Anyways, we excused it by not rising up. There was the token online outrage and then the story blew over. Unfortunately the individual is part of the group, so we're all guilty by association.
> That still doesn't remove the problems with those relationships
In this day and age of no-fault divorce, co-parenting, etc, where is this moral outrage coming from for a man cheating on his wife / girlfriend? I'm just so confused TBH. 'Legally-recognized other half'.... in no jurisdiction is it illegal to cheat on your wife.
> like the possibility of Alice Huang being a PRC intelligence asset,
The sole evidence that she is a Chinese intelligence asset is that she is Chinese.
> he fact that one of the affairs was with a company employee, which can, in a roundabout way, place potential penalties on her career if she doesn't consent.
Forgive me for not feeling sorry for a likely deca, probably centi, millionaire. This is not some secretary intern.
> Excuse me, where the f*ck did I excuse pedophilia???
Because, if we're going to be witchhunting CEOs for their personal lives, there are a helluva lot worse people than Huang that need to go.
> In this day and age of no-fault divorce, co-parenting, etc, where is this moral outrage coming from for a man cheating on his wife / girlfriend? I'm just so confused TBH. 'Legally-recognized other half'.... in no jurisdiction is it illegal to cheat on your wife.
If Huang had just slept with someone other than his wife, it wouldn't be a story. The outrage here isn't from the fire-and-brimstone perspective. I'm a single guy in my mid-30s; even here in Middle America there are plenty of people who practice ENM, no-fault divorce, and coparenting. It's now widely recognized that people aren't necessarily monogamous as soon as they get married.
At the same time, it's still an expectation that one should not do that sort of activity behind a spouse's back. It could result in other issues that could cause them issues, like STIs, or planning life around a child they didn't expect, or estate planning complications. Being open with your partner in life about the feelings you have on the matter is important, and puts the "ethical" in "ethical non-monogamy".
We don't know what the Huangs' arrangement was. I hope it was understood between them, and that all of that was sorted. If not, well, Jensen's going to get to deal with the fallout with that. Which brings us to the problems with the relationships themselves.
> The sole evidence that she is a Chinese intelligence asset is that she is Chinese.
Let's be honest here: that's not enough to get a story going in 2026. There's the fact that she set up a company in Singapore that had revenue figures that far outpaced what's expected for a company of its age, and the fact that they may have helped Chinese interests dodge US export restrictions on Nvidia's products. This was important enough that it was known to Nvidia corporate and the US government. You don't get attention like that just by dating someone from China.
> Forgive me for not feeling sorry for a likely deca, probably centi, millionaire. This is not some secretary intern.
Cultures like this impact everyone. Do we know if the executive was promoted or otherwise benefitted because of her relationship with Jensen? No, but it immediately opens up a conflict of interest for any request she has of the c-suite.
At worst, Huang was operating a Weinstein-like casting couch for roles within the company. If you can make an executive have to perform those sorts of actions in order to advance in her career, what does the secretary intern have to put up with?
> Because, if we're going to be witchhunting CEOs for their personal lives,
This isn't a witchhunt for the reasons stated above. It's SV, bud. People do all sorts of non-traditional relationship arrangements. Hell, even the Alice Huang affair was probably passable once the next news cycle hit. When he's sleeping with people who report to him, it's a problem on its face. It's unprofessional and it makes everyone at the company wonder just what they'll have to do to get ahead.
> there are a helluva lot worse people than Huang that need to go.
We can actually take care of both groups of people. That is actually possible, believe it or not.
I'm sorry this is insane. Why is it moral to divorce your partner unilaterally (which by necessity is behind your partners back) while cheating is somehow worse. This is retarded pearly clutching to think one is good and the other wrong. Bunch of hypocrits, the lot of you.
Fuck no. Jensen did no such thing. He actually hasn’t been charged with a single crime. You’re outright hallucinating here.
The board is voting him out because they can AT any TIME.
If the board liked him, they would wait for the charges to go through. But they don’t like him. Tons of people cheat on their wives and husbands and I’m sure even the fucking board has people that have.
The board doesn’t like him and has been waiting for a way to oust him while not looking incompetent. Why they don’t like him I don’t actually know.
Maybe because he’s Asian? Maybe this is an internal op by the US government to get someone else up there? I don’t know. But I can guarantee that everything your reading is a cover story. There are underlying forces and motivations here at work that we are not able to know.
Can you imagine if it were a female CEO fired for the same thing? Oh how the accusations of sexism and double standards and how she doesn't have to report to the board what she does with her body. The argument writes itself.
Trump knew about this in late 2025 and decided not to act.
The reasoning is believed to be because of the idea that if China didn't get Nvidia chips, it would just develop it's own chips faster. So holding the belief that China would end up in the same spot no matter what, it would be preferable to get them to pay Nvidia along the way.
Delving a bit deeper into conspiracy
It's also possible that Trump saw it as a silent favor to Jinping, who took the opportunity to return the favor months later by cutting Chinese oil purchases. One hand washes the other and all that.
And yet from the reporting Trump okayed the sale so Nvidia argues they had a license to export from the President. Lutnick was okay with it too apparently and State didn't get a vote. If the reporting is accurate, then I think Nvidia gets zero blowback from the sale.
Elon Musk has an AI bot generating explicit images without consent, regardless of age, yet nobody's firing him.
While Jensen seems like an egomaniac who deserves what happened to him, there's a part of me that feels some China hawks had fingers in his firing, it must not sit well with them than America's most valuable company is not in the hands of the old guard.
That is simply not true, Grok refuses to make explicit images, and with uploaded media it refuses to do even mildly enticing ones. *
* — We did a test of it after similar claim a few weeks ago, and what pushed us to do a research is because my friend who works in a hotel industry was getting moderation blocks on Grok left and right — they now use only AI images to not bother with copyright trolls ever again who threaten lawsuits for things like improperly credited bought stock photo — and in their case moderation was a serious hindrance for creating images.
Instead of blahblahblahing endlessly you could just go render an explicit photo on Grok and post it here to prove your point.
I'm rather confident that you would not be able to do that.
However, I'm also confident that instead of doing that you'll continue spreading information that is now obsolete and incorrect: in your original post you said that Musk has a bot, but when confronted with the current state of affairs continue to cite Wikipedia about what Musk had a year ago.
There is zero possibility than Jensen Huang faces any serious consequences for this. NVidia is too big and Huang is too wealthy. This administration in particular would never prosecute that. And, even if they did, a pardon is only $1-3 million anyway.
I believe it was the affair with the married subordinate that was the real problem. There's a huge amount of legal exposure for NVidia with that. With the Chinese spy he can portray himself as the victim. As I've said elsewhere, with billionaire corporate security and the support of the US government, It's astounding to me that this happened at all.
Also I'm 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
It's not. That's a strange statement to make, particularly the emphasis on "married". It seems that person is implying that if a married woman participated in the affair, it was due to coercion. A sexual harassment lawsuit would mainly be a liability in the court of public opinion.
> I believe it was the affair with the married subordinate that was the real problem
You really think Nvidia would let Huang go (without a replacement matching his skills, experience and knowledge in the field) because he cheated with an employee? It is the spy affair while Huang promoted an open export policy.
Plus thanks to Huang, Nvidia is now under investigation by federal agencies.
None of them care about a CEO cheating.
Also, being fired from the company you founded is a serious consequence.
Let's cut the crap, it's a coup because he is in favor of the open-weight ecosystem and doesn't want to restrict models at the firmware level. Anthropic is in large part behind this.
The midterms seem like the most obvious timing. Trump has a little less power and everyone is starting to plan for what happens after him - jockeying for being able to say they didn't support this and that. If it was only being ignored because Mr Huang could donate a lot of money to Trump's ballroom that deal probably isn't as important now.
> What changed now compared to 2 years ago to make Trump care?
We all now know that Trump knew about it, that's what has changed. It was fine when this was private, but now his administration is starting to get questions around why his Commerce department punted the initial investigation to DOJ where it ultimately died as the opposition party is about to retake Congress with investigations top of mind.
Likely there was at least a feeling of mutual understanding between Jensen and key people in the administration. Now the wind has turned in a big way and none of that is on paper. And in fact what is on paper points in the wrong direction.
Probably the only thing protecting NVDA from prosecution right now is that nobody in the White House wants to pop the AI bubble. That might protect Jensen too because he would entangle the company. There will be an interesting tension with congressional oversight. Buy popcorn and NVDA vol.
Yeah, over a year ago the likes of Gamers Nexus was able to follow the clues to figure out how Nvidia was skirting the export ban.
It's hard to believe the US government was so incompetent that they didn't do the investigation a YouTuber did (But not impossible).
The export ban was always BS. Unless you are going to do a total ban and all parts are manufactured in the US, then it is just 1 additional hop to get stuff into China.
NVIDIA is important and Jensen's a billionaire ... we're talking a little bit of media scrutiny for a few weeks, a little embarrassment for Jensen, some heartache for his family, and that's it. This will then be consigned to the footnotes of history.
His PR company right now are just saying, say nothing, lay low, we'll handle it.
I still think it would have been far easier for Jensen if he'd given the lady a horse. I understand that's the going rate in the US right now.
It may well be that it's his private life and it doesn't have much to do with things, but it is a contributing factor. The skirting of export bans was the reagent, but the infidelity is the catalyst that is making it much bigger.
CEO is supposed to be a high integrity position despite most tech CEOs trying to pretend that is not the case. If this person cannot be loyal to those closest to him, how can he be loyal to the company or shareholders?
So many HN folks defending Huang's actions as "just an affair" - what an epic reading comprehension fail. Yes there is an affair, and that's what grabbed the initial headlines. But just read a paragraph or two and you'll find the espionage story.
For reference, the US has sentenced violators of export laws to decades of prison or even execution in extreme cases (when the Rosenburgs leaked nuclear secrets in 1953, they were sentenced to death). It's just shy of treason, legally. This is maybe one of the largest and most consequential intelligence breaches in history. Anyone who thinks this about an extramarital affair really isn't paying attention. Buckle up, its gonna get bumpy.
Everybody should be against the export ban. It's laughable to claim that it is for "national security", it's blatant protectionism to cover US AI companies for the fact that they operate at monumental losses. Any country in the world should be allowed to buy the hardware they need to run AI, if they need it, and if the roles were reversed the US should also be allowed to buy tech from other countries. Graphic cards aren't nuclear bombs, and AI is a multi-use core technology every nation on earth should have access to. So far, China has made a far better impression in that respect than the US. At least they have published open weight models.
The future will be commoditized local AI anyway, so it doesn't matter in the long run. I just needed to rant a bit about the US hypocrisy in that matter.
Basically every technology is dual use, but still I basically agree, there is an incredible level of anti-China rhetoric in the US right now, not just on the right. The Chip export ban is incredibly tricky reason the outcomes of. For one thing, doesn’t it change the China Taiwan relationship?
I hope this won't change NVIDIA's refusal to block inference for unsigned and registered open-models in the firmware of modern GPUs. Anthropic and others are pushing hard on this. First the hardware export ban, eventually the software one via hardware-enforced execution controls like IETF hinted at
There are two (very disjoint) opinions that both land in the same place (banning/restricting open-weight models).
1. "We want to own it and be the only megacorp that exists in the future", and
2. "Proliferation of open-weight models is like giving everyone a nuclear reactor in their home: it is extremely dangerous to the world"
Anthropic has previously stated (or, at best, implied) that they believe/have-reason-to-believe the second.
Some other organizations, well the public has every reason to believe they believe the first.
The end result of "hardware shouldn't be capable of running non-validated models" is the same between the two.
I can't comment on which of the two Anthropic is (because I have literally never in my life talked to anyone in an influential leadership position there). Just keep in mind that even people who are diametrically opposed can have matching recommendations (again, for polar opposite reasons).
Either through technical means, or simpler: by law for American providers.
It's hard to believe the administration was not aware of Jensen's affiliations all this time. And time is pressing for Anthropic and OpenAI.
Not really tbf, it's an extrapolation. As far as I am concerned, there is growing concern, with Anthropic coordinated lobbying against open weights. The point I am making is we need strong Hardware actors consistently standing for hardware neutrality and integrity. Historically, NVIDIA has been very pro open weights. But at the same time, in-silicon guardrails seem to become the new thing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49879883
Makes you wonder what would happen if the US ever wanted to enforce "certified US AI" on its chips
The entire article that thread references never mentions any hardware, at all, only their software platform. The "Watchdog" referred to in the (editorialized?) title is literally never mentioned, and it is not really a piece of "hardware", it is a piece of _software_ called "Sentry" that (clarified in the Nvidia blog) they run on Bluefield-4 hardware (the "chip") which is their network card. It only exists in $10mil+ clusters. Just an awful and misleading article and headline, and an awful thread filled with people who know nothing about how hardware works arguing over nothing.
Most of the hardware functionality from a GPU that models need is generic and used every time you use a GPU for any compute. You can implement language models in a GLSL shader; modern GPUs have been programmable for 20 years, that's the point of their existence. The best thing they could do is just literally nerf the consumer hardware substantially to make tokens unusable or stop selling consumer hardware. They don't need spyware to do that. It would also make their products dogshit.
More broadly, "Compute" is basically a resource that our economy relies on to a large degree, it has been that way for decades. And it turns out it's very bad when you just destroy the thing your economy relies on. And doing so doesn't solve problems like "Current computers exist today" or "Other people make computers". So who gives a shit about Jensen? Comments here talking about "taking him out"? What's actually more likely is just that really powerful people today are often corrupt and also really fucking stupid. He played a stupid game and lost.
None of this stuff is putting the current open weights genie back in the bottle IMO. Amodei using RoboStormtrooperGruppen9000 bots and going door to door to take peoples GPUs at gunpoint is a more plausible method of doing so.
Yeah, even setting aside the impact and implication on the AI-tech-driven stock market of such a mandate, I don't think it's technically doable to implement either. What if you modified/wrote your own inference engine which uses a somehow slightly modified version of model weights, how would you want to detect (at a firmware level) that compute to be an "unsigned" model over, I don't know, a video game?
Open-weight models, at an absolute minimum the ones that already exist, are here to stay, and will continue ([0]) to get drastically cheaper to run.
I'm curious how effective something like that would really be.
Nvidia can certainly put up some guardrails that will sound impressive to the dinosaurs in Congress, but can it really stop China from using those GPUs anyway?
This is a simplification, but is this not in some way similar to how the Switch 1 has hacked due to a design flaw on Nvidia's Tegra chip?
In the same way, even if their GPUs get this protection, wouldn't a state actor figure out how to get around it?
Of course it's about building an oligopoly of frontier companies controlled by the deep state.
It's sad that people talk here about some personal affairs when it's clearly about governmental control, but it's not the first time a scandal is used as a weapon.
Jensen has created more shareholder value than nearly any human on earth. Significantly more than Elon, with the key distinction that Jensen has distributed much more of that shareholder value than Elon has through stock options to employees and appreciation of public stock (it’s one of the reasons he’s worth 150Bn vs 1Tn).
I think the real risk for the economy, the AI industry, and the US is that Nvidia becomes JUST another company. Nvidia losing 50% of its value from its peak means it’s still a $3 trillion company. What if it loses 90%? Then it’s the size of Intel which we generally agree is an important part of the industry.
Nvidia can afford to invest in companies because the stock is so high and capital is incredibly abundant. Those companies buy Nvidia products at the 50% NET margins. Nvidia gets a ton of cash. Earnings are crazy. But if this cycle stops and efficiency wins in the market (lower margins, more competitors, more options), then Nvidia goes back to where they were which was a Tier-1/2 supplier battling for margin and market share. That is not a $6T company.
It would be a great thing for the economy. So many sectors are underinvested right now because capital has been stowed away into these companies valuations. Imagine 6T dumped in any other industry and it would be a generational step change event. For reference that's ballpark like 3x the valuation of the entire American biotechnology industry, all in one company. Talk about opportunity cost.
Suppose NVIDIA ceased to exist today. What would happen? AMD would step in. Huawei would step in. Maybe even Intel eventually. More fab capacity would go to these companies accelerators.
At worse, progress stalls for a year or two.
NVIDIA was at the lead and took most of the revenue and valuation because of it. But the same process would have happened with or without NVIDIA.
Now go back five years and substitute an NVIDIA collapse. Do you think that we'd be in a very different position for AI? I don't think it would be far off at all.
There were many game accelerator companies when NVIDIA started, they were just slightly better than the others, and the efficiency gains of consolidation resulted in those other companies being sold off.
ASML is definitely a one off though. And perhaps TSMC is a unique one off, but they got there by taking the most customers. If it wasn't them, then somebody else would have done it.
The key selection function was "this is the best option at the time" and if the best option hasn't existed, somebody else would have been chosen path that time, giving that other company the capital to build somethjng.
In addition to all that, other investments would be made in other sectors. I'm sure a huge bulk of investment into NVDA in particular is strictly because of the five figure percentage growth it has enjoyed over the last 6 years after all, with the whole chip argument being the fig leaf over the rampant greedy pumping. It has exploded like some lucky shitcoin and that's enough to drive investor action on massive scale after all. We are in the world where shitcoins are listed along with the blue chip tickers on bloomberg news. Everyone is greedy right now. Gambling on every scale from every direction. Most corrupt president in history to boot openly insider trading; water is full of chum and blood right now.
More people, more awareness about how money works, and more dependence on global investors.
Everyone invests so they can have more in the future, so yes, it's not crazy to imagine people will invest in a company that's growing without knowing any other details.
Why did it grow so large is the question. Why do some of these companies attract all the talent and grow so large and dominate the future is the question.
It's because we're all limited on time and greedy.
In part, because money is going to these other ventures instead. Where would money go if there weren't an NVDA is the 6T question. What would this world look like with more balanced investment across the SP500 sectors instead of money dumped into this one industry in particular? I don't think it would be more chip companies on a 1:1 basis of NVDA investment. The fact that it is going to a single ticker in this case makes it more likely to suck the other options out of existence. If it were say 100 chip companies, more likely on an individual level than an investor might instead say, maybe this time I would invest in some other industry. Mutual funds that investors buy into to hedge into many sectors are also heavier than ever in tech companies like NVDA sort of perverting the whole concept of these funds in the first place. Sort of unprecedented times between how overlevereged things are, and the constant uninformed pumping of air into these stocks thanks to these packages such as these mutual funds that people automatically contribute their paycheck into, again believing they are probably getting much more broad exposure vs how leveraged these packages are currently.
He gave his employees some of the wealth. And his employees seem to like him, or at least they did a few days ago. Maybe he's not selfless but he certainly wasn't completely selfish.
There must be something redeemable about him that makes people want to work for him. That's all I meant by selfless.
Company valuations aren't a sum of the cash flows invested into a company or the available cash flows out of liquidating it either. These aren't uncorrelated numbers but you can technically get a six trillion dollar "valuation" from one person paying $1 for a sixth of a trillionth of a company.
No they aren't, but it is an example of relative scale of investment. Especially when much of that market cap growth has come just within the last 5-6 years or so. Money could have flowed to other ponds collecting off the river of investor cash flow instead of this one massive lake. This might have lead to a different growth trajectory in our economy and technological development than one so focused on the ROI of chip production in particular, to the exclusion of much else. The fact that much of that demand is brought up by circular investment is another aspect. Two lakes backfeeding into eachother eating more and more of the flow off cash flow river, drying up other ponds along the way. Much is lost with such unitary focus of investment.
I would go a little bit further and just say that American workers haven’t been the main beneficiaries of investment for at least a decade now. It “used to be” (some rose tinted glasses but still big kernel of truth) that if a company was making a lot of money or sitting on a big cash war chest, eventually it would make its way back to the employees for expansion, R&D, etc. It would be used for something! But ever since companies started to divert those flows to stock buybacks (and now, the equivalent which seems to be mutual stock purchases) less and less of those profits have been functionally reinvested - the reinvestment mostly happens on paper, and the already-wealthy owners of the stocks get wealthier without expanding the stockholder base as much.
It would be really interesting to get a snapshot of the actual dollars spent on ownership at any one point in time. Stock market volume can be a lot of froth and slosh of a small-ish subset of all shares.
Does it work like that though? I agree that AI may be crowding out other industries, but I'm not sure you can just take apart a company and redistribute that money elsewhere.
No, it isn't measuring the velocity of incoming investment. But it goes to show just how outstandingly large the pile of money on one ticker in particular is, relative to other high tech industries that are even favored by investors for their 10x potential (maybe moreso historically than today albeit).
What's the downside of that for the economy? It seems like it would be the market becoming more efficient, cutting down on margins and so on. Bringing Nvidia back to earth might open up cheaper hardware for other companies to work with and accelerate AI anyway.
Efficiency is a great thing and long term what’s needed so we can buy laptops again at a reasonable price. There will be a pretty large blast radius across ANT/OAI/ORCL/SPCX/TSMC/neoclouds. Prob 15T of market value at risk and the flywheel of investment which is conditioned on investors and the economy believing they have durable appreciation locked up in AI stocks (“if my basket of investments is safe, I’m willing to invest my next dollar in more of it” vs “the sky is falling and I need to tighten the belt / pull money out”). I’m trying not to be a doomer here as I think it’s somewhere in the middle it’s just very frothy and the upside scenarios generally envisioned NVDA to be stable
I will be honest, my personal opinion is keep the blood flowing until RAM prices return to Sept 2025 levels.
This whole saga has been a ridiculous waste of everybody's time and energy. There's no compelling argument that points to these new innovations not otherwise happening if RAM prices weren't artificially inflated by the fever dream of private equity.
How is nvidia crashing out going to reduce RAM prices?
The demand for high-ram consumption applications is higher than ever and rising. That demand is not created by nvidia, but nvidia's customers. nvidia's customers are buying nvidia parts built with other's ram because they have customers renting the compute.
Whoever nvidia is buying ram from will simply sell to the next highest bidder, and the ram will still be sold out through the coming years.
Because Nvidia is personally investing in a huge amount of those customers, enabling the hyperscaling. If half of the circle breaks, the other half does too.
And those customers still have the demand to keep wanting more.
Contrary to the AI-bubble-doomsayers - most hyperscalers and neoclouds seem to be at capacity for current demand and even have already booked future demand.
RAM prices are not artificially inflated. Everyone wants to run models that require 1TiB of RAM locally. AI agents utilize RAM on every computer more than ever before. The fever dream is imagining these prices are ever coming back down without serious fab investment.
There is blatant and open collusion between everyone that can invest in fabs in order to "slow down" the investment and the supply in order to maintain the prices as high as possible, as long as possible.
"The lawsuit also points towards similar collusion between the companies in the past. In 2005, SK Hynix and Samsung were fined $180 million and $300 million respectively after pleading guilty to price-fixing DRAM pricing. It is suggested that the same occurred between 2016 and 2018 when prices spiked again, ..."
> if RAM prices weren't artificially inflated by the fever dream of private equity.
RAM prices are a result of skyrocketing demand. That's hardly a fever dream.
You can hardly blame RAM suppliers for taking the money of people who are coming to them begging to pay more than the person before them in line. It's not like they are squeezing the market in some cartel price-fixing racket.It's the customers who are willing trying to pay more for better access.
The innovations and the price of RAM are so non-sequitur at this point; I can't understand what point you're making. Sure, if RAM were as easy to get as the circuit boards they're being put on, innovation would be the same (or accelerated!) but that doesn't have anything to do with the fact that RAM is incredibly supply constrained and ramping production to meet the demand of a seemingly insatiable market takes a long time for a product this complicated and specialized.
If any of the manufacturing companies could have seen this coming, they'd have started ramping production to insane levels 5 years ago, and they'd be taking in just as much money as Nvidia is.
Companies (CRWV, etc) are borrowing at 10%+ interest rates to buy NVidia GPUs that NVidia makes 75% gross margin on. I repeat, companies are selling junk bonds to buy GPUs at a 300% markup. Cocaine dealers probably don’t even make 75% gross margins.
Other companies (OpenAI, etc) are also borrowing at 10%+ interest to rent the GPUs to train LLMs.
All of these GPUs need a ton of RAM. There is a fixed supply of RAM. There is insane demand for RAM.
What in the world does a 20-year-old scheme and prosecution have to do with it?
Besides, when demand outstrips supply you don't have to fix prices. Why would you? They cannot deliver all of the RAM people want. Think about it for a minute: how would price fixing even work?
(and don't get me started on the ridiculous "they're switching from DDR3 to HBM" part of that wikipedia article...)
It’s not a given that markets are able to navigate the risk between massive capital investment and unknown future revenues. Everyone is trying to figure out the long term value from AI. For a made up numbers example the path might require $1T investment to unlock $10T revenue in 10 years from now. But if no one can put up the $1T it stalls and doesn’t happen next decade
The hardware is expensive because it's supply constrained. Demand far exceeds supply.
Harming Nvidia would only make us more compute constrained, and raise prices further.
It seems it's impossible to get a certain type of person to understand this regardless of whether it's housing, education or chips.
Harming the producers of [thing] or disincentivizing profits will not make [thing] cheaper if demand remains the same (or if it is growing, like in all of the areas I mentioned).
Doesn't this situation demonstrate how bonkers it is to pin the fortunes of the stock market and potentially the entire economy on the behavior of one person?
> pin the fortunes of the stock market and potentially the entire economy on the behavior of one person?
"We" don't. Media narratives over-focus on individuals and personalities because that's what humans focus on.
Markets can overreact emotionally on daily headlines and weekly narratives but tend to correct quarter to quarter. There's lots of data and examples: Apple after Jobs, Microsoft after Gates, etc. Even after losing iconic, long-time leaders, most industry-leading companies continue to make even more money, more profitably than ever over the following decade.
I struggle to understand what narrative you're correcting here. "We" in this context seems to collectively mean "humanity". Markets, media narratives, etc. are all run by humans. That's "us", whether or not you personally want any of the blame/credit.
I was disputing that financial markets "pin the fortunes of the stock market and potentially the entire economy on the behavior of one person" at least beyond emotional reactions to daily headlines by retail investors.
I agree that markets shouldn't do that, and further, I believe they don't do that in any meaningful way. NVidia's price drop of ~20% is short-term volatility. Tracked against the NASDAQ, NVidia will likely post new all-time highs within the next 100 days.
The company should have plans in place for what to do when something happens to the CEO. Situations like this, death, or just deciding to leave. I've read reports that Nvidia didn't have this, which would be irresponsible if true, but it's not the norm. The founder leaving is likely a bit different than some other CEO coming in later, but any good CEO should be thinking about what happens to the company when they're gone so people know the company is still in good hands.
Right, but then he resigned. So the question on all our minds is if NVIDIA should be entirely written off since losing Jensen's irreplicable talent, or if some of those skills are transferable.
Since he apparently also arranged the company so it revolved around him and no one else was in a central position to know cross silo information, how would those skills transfer?
As a shareholder I want a leader who knows how to let other people run the company also, so it doesn’t die with them. (Eventually we’re all headed there, right so…)
I feel like your argument is just "Jensen Huang was Nvidia, and without him the company is doomed", and that's a very strong claim that needs a lot more explanation, because it's certainly not an argument that any shareholder is interested in considering when the company continues to exist, its products remain important and in-demand, and there's a CEO vacancy to fill.
What skills, specifically? I can't imagine he's the only one who knows how to set up an incomprehensible corporate structure, nor do I think that's what people value about NVIDIA.
I cannot and that question is irrelevant to the situation. The dude is going to be getting investigated and spending the next couple of years doing interviews and legal stuff (there's already a securities lawsuit). He literally cannot run the company even if he wanted to. He's also no doubt going to be under congressional and DOJ and Department of Commerce investigation for sanctions violations.
It should not be a job - that's the whole point. Kings demonstrated how bonkers is having a single point of failure like this so it's insane people still don't get it today.
I really dislike the cult of personality the rich set up around themselves. The entire company is not just one guy. NVIDIA hires a lot of smart and talented people who contributed to its success and many other CEOs would also have been successful given the same parameters.
Jensen might be the best person to lead NVidia at the moment, but that doesn't mean that NVidia dominating the market and being able to demand gigantic margins is a good thing for the overall economy.
You and I and many of the commenters would be on there. People think these CEOs are wizards performing black secret magic we'd fail to understand.
No. They have the same 24 hour day as you and I. They think at the same speed and talk at the same speed. Their "workload" whatever it may be, is finite, evidently finite enough to juggle several romatic relationships at the same time, with much actual work and decisionmaking delegated and informed by domain experts who will be there no matter the CEO.
So yes, you or I could in fact be CEO of NVIDIA. It would be easy. Reports would be made for us by the worlds experts in the fields on what is going on. Departments would be ran by the best available talent on earth. My emails are being read and written by a dozen plus secretaries. Every presser I make I have an ivy league grad writing me the speech making me look like Hemingway out there. Every decision I'd make informed by a team of experts. Every plan thought of already by a hundred people smarter than me. All we'd have to do in the role as NVIDIA CEO is smile, waive, and read the lines handed to us on the sheet of paper by someone else. The ship runs itself even though we all pretend it's the CEO paddling 24/7 making it possible.
Really, that's all any of these guys are doing. Very similar to say the job of a pop star. Are you charismatic? Can you read lines? You'd make a great CEO then.
That's a fairly hysterical reading. It's a company, no one is irreplaceable.
He has no magic, but he did make some good strategic decisions.
Everyone is a god and a genius (in retrospect) if they found a multi-trillion dollar company, but the causation seldom runs that way.
Jobs founded Apple to great success, left and failed then returned to Apple to great success, then he died and Apple was fine. The company is more important than the individual. Nvidia will also be fine.
And clearly the US economy doesn't rest on the shoulders of Nvidia or AI, no matter the level of hype.
Huang was also well know in industry for awful decisions, which is why most companies that ever worked with Nvidia, worked with them once (with some exceptions tbf).
Huang has served as CEO for a whopping 33 years - hard to argue he wasn't crucial to NVIDIA's success, and how many of the board members are the original from when he was first chosen-selected and continued to be hired as CEO over the crucial early decades?
What nuanced knowledge-understanding does he have that no one else can have?
Maybe sleeping with spies was a necessary part of survival, perhaps if he wasn't prone to that then he'd have been assassinated and potential replacement CEOs who are toeing certain lines may have been attempted to replace him after his murder?
> Maybe sleeping with spies was a necessary part of survival, perhaps if he wasn't prone to that then he'd have been assassinated and potential replacement CEOs who are toeing certain lines may have been attempted to replace him after his murder?
How do you know it's outlandish? You made a claim but provided no supportive arguments. Is it not a logical conclusion? You do know assassination occurs, right? And if less violent methods don't work then strategy escalates towards eliminating people in positions?
You're really going to need to explain this crazy take. I can't even begin to see the parallels between Jensen Huang being ousted for sleeping with spies and subordinates and the rise of Communism.
they think there are no other hands on leader types. this is fairly normal. just that most of them exit early because its not needed to work all your life if you do this well. early retirement with few million rather than going for billions which is greedy as fk.
Not the fact that he was fired but the reaction of the ideological bent, where statements like "Doesn't this situation demonstrate how bonkers it is to pin the fortunes of the stock market and potentially the entire economy on the behavior of one person?" highlight that's not actually the reality, but this surface shallow narrative is what people are believing - in part driven by fear, but still misunderstanding - and so also prone to false and shallow narratives.
> Maybe sleeping with spies was a necessary part of survival, perhaps if he wasn't prone to that then he'd have been assassinated and potential replacement CEOs who are toeing certain lines may have been attempted to replace him after his murder?
Respectfully, I don't engage with conspiracy theorists
Ironically you just did, so you lack self-control and needed the dopamine hit. P.S. I'm not the one who downvoted you, I don't downvote anyone's comments.
This could've been said of Cisco in the telecom bubble days. Or Nortel. Or a handful of other key players who were all inflating that bubble and playing games with their financials that made the bursting of the bubble worse.
Pumping billions of dollars, the source of which is obscured, into it looks like a cut out, is not just a national security problem. It undermines confidence in the numbers that you claim are the basis of shareholder value.
the stock value just represents what people think the company is (or will be) worth, them selling products at 50% margin is what brings the money, the stock value doesn't give NVIDIA extra cash (unless they're selling or leveraging their own stock reserves to get even more cash?). And definitely shareholder value is not the economy.
and also, how is the efficiency bad now? surely that allows for innovation and other companies and people to get cheaper hardware (assuming they somehow have to lower their margins because Jensen left, still don't get that argument)
Counter-hypothesis: It wouldn’t be that deep, but it would fix inflationary pressures pretty quickly especially for assets.
Also you act like those bets were group / government decisions. They weren’t my bets. They were NVIDIA’s bets. Equity holders should lose value if the bet fails - that will not be most of the economy by a long shot. The stock market is not the economy. The Casino should not have existed in the first place at the scale it did. This is the correction everyone has been talking about when discussing “bubbles”
Giving Jensen credit for creating literally all of the value from Nvidia seems really over the top. He happened to be running the biggest GPU company during the biggest GPU boom ever. Sure he had an impact on the numbers and the timing, but if Jensen had never been born someone else would be heading a giant chip company around this period of time that saw it's stock take off like a rocket ship. This would happen even if the counterfactual CEO was incompetent.
Isn't he the entire reason Nvidia invested so heavily in tensor cores before AI even became a massive market mover? He definitely deserves credit for setting Nvidia up with a massive lead in this emergent industry.
It isn't like he is the one who did the research to lead to that decision though. That just isn't his job. He isn't an analyst. He is CEO, who reads reports or sat in presentations made by his analysts, whatever their specific position titles, who are really the ones who did the work weighing and making this decision. His role was to say yes to these people whose job it is to actually figure this out.
So indeed, if he was not CEO, likely whoever would have been would be given the same information as Jensen that lead to him saying yes on tensor cores. And in all likelihood, the same exact decision would have been made, or at least a coinflips odds chance if it really were a matter of "yes" or "no" with no clear winner.
My experience in corporate America is that, no - it would NOT be likely that a different CEO makes the same call.
Many, especially the "non-founder" CEOs, are risk-averse.
There's likely many CUDA-like ideas from internal engineers shot-down or ignored by leadership at companies like Microsoft, Google, etc.
While Tim Cook certainly drove the valuation of Apple up during his tenure, one of the most common criticisms was that Apple stopped innovating and more recently their quality bar has been dropping.
I feel like it's worth repeating that he gets credit for the decisions he has made, while it's also true that someone else would also see this demand, maybe earlier maybe later, and that the economy and shareholders would benefit. The point I'm making, and I think the one you're responding to, is that he didnt do something so magical that wouldn't have been done otherwise. It's a counterpoint to "this guy did so much, we would be nothing without him" and using that as a way to excuse his bad decisions.
Again, credit for putting yourself in the position to capitalize. Credit for executing. But it's pretty likely that the world would not be substantially different if Nvidia has been another company and Jensen was some guy working at MS.
I think the Tensor decision was very impactful to both the direction of AI tech and Nvidia as a company, though. I can't judge how much of the decision to invest in that technology was his but assuming he had a significant proportion of influence in that decision, he deserves a significant portion of the credit. A different person in the same position might not have seen the potential of machine learning at scale and not been willing to point their GPUs at the problem.
They basically invested in pickaxes a decade before the gold rush, and people only found out about the gold because pickaxes were pretty convenient
Not really. Nvidias gpu architecture was tensor.. It is useful for other things like AI. That wasn't a decision to create AI other than it was what they had. They landed on their feet. They didn't invest in pickaxes, they had the right pickaxe at the right time.
Revisionist nonsense. Turing introduced tensor cores which were largely useless on launch, but massively increased transistor count and die size. It was entirely a bet on future and emerging applications.
> Giving Jensen credit for creating literally all of the value from Nvidia seems really over the top.
He was the cofounder, president and CEO since 1993. Nvidia hired/created CUDA in 2004 and made it central to its strategy. That’s almost 20 years before the current AI boom.
GPUs, as you know, are just Graphics processors and there is no reason to use them for AI. The only reason for their popularity in AI is CUDA. Because in 2012 Alex Krizhevsky, along with Sutskever and Hinton trained AlexNet to win the ImageNet competition and started the current AI revolution. One of their secrets was using a graphics accelerator (GPU) as a supercomputer to train larger neural networks. This was only possible thanks to CUDA. After 14 years CUDA is still the industry standard for training neural networks.
That strategy converted the 90s 3D accelerator startup into the most valuable company of the world today. But after today, they’re just a standard chipmaker with no vision.
Can you please make your substantive points without swipes? Your comment would be fine without the "Bruh", "You are making it sound as if", and "This is ridiculous" bits.
> Jensen has created more shareholder value than nearly any human on earth.
Nonsense. Nvidia's employees created that value, not Jensen. Jensen personally is all but certainly responsible for almost none of the value created, just like in every other company. CEO worship is absurd.
Like it's an extremely common sentiment when working for a large company to look at the SVP or CEO and go "that person is a dumbass, everyone in charge is a dumbass". Yet when looking at other companies somehow we forget about that and put the companies success on the CEO or top level execs. Instead of remembering "no, it's probably the small army below them figuring out how to manage upwards to prevent the idiot in charge from tanking everything"
> Jensen personally is all but certainly responsible for almost none of the value created
That's a very limited view of value creation. Have you ever lead a team of people? Coached someone? Raised a child? Written a technical architecture?
A lot of people play crucial roles in a company. HR, accounting, leadership, PM's, engineers, support, etc. All of them contribute to the value creation.
If you've ever been in a company with poor leadership and one with great leadership, you'd see the impact of it on everyone working there and on the value being created.
>> Jensen personally is all but certainly responsible for almost none of the value created
>That's a very limited view of value creation. Have you ever lead a team of people? Coached someone? Raised a child? Written a technical architecture?
I can assure you that the people you are targeting the question at, have never/rarely done any of the things you asked. I call them the socialists. They sit in judgment of people who do things while they lead their petty lives and all they look forward is the next Superbowl game, or next Netflix series.
(p.s you might like the writings of author by name Ayn Rand, Disclaimer: I'm no worshiper of Rand)
This is hilarious because Jensen’s idea of leadership is petty authoritarianism. I’m not sure if this is just HN being emotionally bought in to great man theory or financially bought in to NVDA, but most of their value creation is on the back of gamer chips being useful for crypto and later AI.
> That's a very limited view of value creation. Have you ever lead a team of people? Coached someone? Raised a child? Written a technical architecture?
Yup, all of it. And at no point have I considered myself as 10,000x more valuable than any of the team members I led. Yet that's exactly what is done to billionaire CEOs.
You'll notice I did not say Jensen didn't create ANY value.
Sorry, what hard decisions did Jensen make, exactly? "Hey team, I'm going to make the tough decision here to propose that next year's GPU is faster than last years"?
Do you know for sure that Jensen personally was involved in recruiting Ian Buck and starting up the CUDA project? A project that's largely attributed to John Nickolls? What other major decisions did Nvidia even make over the last, say, 15 years?
The decision to support CUDA and include it in retail GPUs so that he could create a massive installed base, even in the face of criticism and loss of stock value, for years. Sort of like Tesla building superchargers to cause BEVs to become viable.
If the origin of the people who created value is the metric, aren't his parents and ancestors those who truly are responsible for creating all that shareholder value?
I prefer the view that the engineers that made GPUs have a bigger hand in the value creation.
This tendency to credit an entire technological breakthrough to the top of an org chart is such a bizarre cliche from a systems perspective. Breakthroughs are not conceived from whole cloth within the corner offices of isolated autocracies; they are the product of horizontal networks of social capital as engineers continually circulate across firms.
Besides, individual contributors aren't incentivized to innovate insofar as we're not structurally positioned to capture a windfall.
I recognize the narrative that an army of world-class engineers is essentially inert until an executive visionary breathes purpose into them, but that's a structural property of the firm. It's a choice to route all surplus through the board and major shareholders, and to starve out any innovation that happens outside of those venues.
> Those employees didn’t create it when a huge number of them worked at AMD, Apple, Qualcomm, Intel, or TI.
I agree: we must do everything we possibly can to aggrandize the already wealthy and powerful. The glory must accumulate in their account, and the less that goes to their subordinates, the better.
You can’t convince these people. A large portion of the population is hardwired (by DNA) to be subordinate and hierarchical, for better or worse. Probably best to simply let them believe in Superheroes.
I mean Jensen even said that he does not mind the California billionaire* tax. To believe that CEOs and Founders are not replaceable is hyperbole but so is to believe that they are totally replaceable. NVIDIA clearly has a moat and are the belle of the ball, of the world economy
I agree that CEO worship is absurd but it’s a big stretch to say they are responsible for none of the value. Jensen AND the employees. And he probably created a disproportionate amount of that value compared to the average IC, I don’t think that’s in question. But is he responsible for most of it, or even 10% of it? Unlikely.
They should fall first to AI replacement as they're the least useful people in a company and most susceptible to ruining the company's reputation by screwing a Chinese spy and a hot local chic.
Tell me you know nothing about running a company without telling me. Just because one CEO got caught screwing over a Chinese spy that doesn't mean all CEOs are useless people. That's just lazy generalization.
This sort of empty bitterness is a very pernicious thing. It reads as knowledge / experience, but really it’s nothing more than angry drivel. It doesn’t say anything that hasn’t been said before a million times.
You're right, it takes a company to deliver a value. With that said, you are *seriously* underestimating how hard it is to organize and run a large company. Jensen is not perfect by any means, and I don't even particularly like him. I just hate this anti-billionaire narrative being thrown around a lot lately that leaders don't matter.
Nvidia losing 50% of its value from its peak means it’s still a $3 trillion company. What if it loses 90%? Then it’s the size of Intel which we generally agree is an important part of the industry.
This seems correct because of the proportions, but a company that's valued at say 600 million isn't the same as a company coming from being valued at 6 trillion and landing on 10% of its value, because of the direction of the valuation. While the former is at 600 million ascending, the later is in a descending trend, which affects trust and momentum.
If efficiency is a risk for the economy then the economy is of course. Hopefully the correction can be soft and not a catastrophic pop. Maybe a slight cooling of Nvidia, caused by isolated factors, can help without crashing the whole sector.
Sounds like a perfect fix for inflationary pressures to be honest - at least when it comes to assets and equities. Takes trillions off the board, stops the money machine cycle, and only impacts equity holders. Probably missing something here but that seems about right to me.
My “history of technology 101” course was pretty clear that this title lies with the invention of the bowl. Be that pottery or wood. Something to store excess food in for tomorrow.
Jensen created some shareholder value, but in reality it's the AI labs (and crypto before that) that led to the huge valuation. None of this is his making, he just got lucky.
Any other idiot in his place would have made the same amount of money.
Don't worry, it took Intel a decade to fall from dominance. Nvidia probably has another 10 good years left. This gives us just enough time to see if China's Huawei is all talk or actually has what it takes.
I'm a normal person with a beating heart and conscience, so I don't give a damn about how much shareholder value someone has ever created, and I never will.
So you are not planning to ever retire? You never buy anything? You dont have a job?
Unless you are a subsistence farmer, everything you have in your life is thanks to the economy and "shareholder value".
Its strange to me how many people will say stuff like "who cares about the economy, I care about people" when the economy is the thing that ensures people have food and shelter and dont starve.
>> everything you have in your life is thanks to the economy and "shareholder value".
No it's not, shareholder value as understood as owning a piece of a publicly traded company doesn't produce anything on its own and it's definitely independent of the economy of a society. Could even be argued that the wealth stuck in the shareholder value is reducing the investments that could be being made in the interest of the rest of the economy.
I can easily make something and sell it to you without creating shareholder value.
Huh? Who's talking about that? OP argued that everything we have is because of shareholder value. That is false.
No one is talking about anything being easy or redefining a market (which, since you bring it up, has been done infinite times by private and state funded companies as well)
It's just that "Jensen has created more shareholder value than nearly any human on earth", to many people, sounds a bit like "McDonalds has created more calories than nearly every company on earth". Sure, you need calories to survive, but that's not exactly the issue people are having here.
That's incredibly unlikely. NVidia and Megaspeed's relationship has been under constant separate parallel investigations by the Justice and Commerce Depts going back to the Biden administration. There have been no charges and Megaspeed was never even added to the blocked Entities List which would instantly ban all sales, despite the US govt being free to do so at any time with no justification or explanation needed.
It appears two things are simultaneously true:
- Thousands of banned GPUs were diverted to China.
- NVidia meticulously verified export licenses and complied with every U.S. law, export control and KYC regulation.
The under-reported fact is that while the US Govt chose not to add Megaspeed to the banned list, NVidia voluntarily placed Megaspeed on their own blocklist and stopped selling GPUs to them in June 2025. This was because the law requires NVidia to block any company they "know or reasonably suspect" is violating export controls. There is an extensive framework of Red Flags a supplier is required to check and certify are 'cleared'. The penalties for failing to do so are the same as violating export controls on cruise missiles (up to 20 years in jail, $1M per GPU ). And they can apply personally to each employee who knew. So, NVidia cut off one of their largest South Asian customers ~18 months ago, despite Jensen banging the customer's board member.
No, I can't explain it either. But those are the facts per WSJ & NYT reporting. The meta-subtext here is there have been two opposing factions on China policy inside the White House, NSC, and U.S. intelligence community since the Biden era. They are each constantly trying to sway Trump, who vacillates between them (as seen by inconsistent US policy swings). One of those factions leaked the 6 month-old Alice story a week ago in the hope of blocking Jensen's influence and access to Trump. It worked (probably better than expected). Now that Jensen is both out of NVidia and politically toxic, neither faction cares about him.
Yeah, I was disappointed too. I think there's an increasingly large part of HN that mostly just wants to get (or confirm) a simple 'black hat' / 'white hat' morality tale and then move on. Really understanding nuance is hard and when all the hats are varying shades of gray, it's a lot more work for an unsatisfying outcome.
And this mess around export controls on GPUs is an especially confusing and conflicted situation with layers on layers. Since posting that I've been reading and cross-reference papers written over the past year by foreign policy and trade analysts and gained a lot more detail and insight on the dynamics. The one thing in my post above I now know was incomplete is the part about NV banning Megaspeed (MS). It's true they did but there was an exception (the "Affiliates Rule") enacted by a one-year waiver on 9/30/25 which expired on 11/1/26. But the U.S. extended it for two more months three days ago. That waiver permitted NV to keep selling to Megaspeed affiliates. That exception was not a mistake. So NV blocked MS but the rules allowed them to legally keep selling to MS affiliates - and they did (and probably still are). With the full knowledge and approval of the US Govt.
That seemed crazy to me but it got clearer once I understood how the US government is split on this issue. The Commerce Dept, White House trade policy desks and external advisors are aligned on one side and State, Treasury and Defense Depts on the other. The forcing function for why the leaks of ~6 month-old intel about Jensen happened now, is the H200 waiver extension and the Trump–Xi summit in Shenzhen on November 18 where the U.S. and China will negotiate whether to extend that waiver after January.
The Commerce Dept side wants to include extending the waiver as possibly 'negotiable', if China is willing to give enough value for it (like rare earth metals and major trade concessions, limiting oil purchases from Iran, etc). The State/Defense side wants it 'non-negotiable' for any price. NVidia's interests are obviously aligned with the Commerce Dept/trade policy desk faction and Jensen's personal relationship with, and ability to potentially sway, Trump was a wildcard variable. The leaks have taken Jensen off the board before the negotiation. I actually hate how much this sounds like a 'crazy uncle' conspiracy theory but serious policy and trade analysts all agree this is the basic dynamic that's been unfolding over the last year. Just ask your favorite LLM to give you a list of links on this and look for yourself. It's really complicated but my takeaway is no one related to this mess looks remotely good. The perverse thing is I'm still pretty sure NVidia fully complied with every rule and reg. Yet thousands of GPUs were diverted because the regs were designed to be swiss cheese-like and then got waivered on top of that. NVidia made billions but that was intended to happen and explicitly made legal.
[Edit to add: ... and WSJ just posted 3 mins ago that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is "Fighting for His Job Due to Blame for NVidia Fallout", so looks like the leaks not only took Jensen off the board but now the leakers are trying take down Lutnick too. No way the B200 waiver extension happens now. Marco Rubio's gotta be dancing on his desk. God, this really should be a movie someday. ]
Jensen has created more shareholder value than nearly any human on earth.
A) He never made a single product himself, and B) surely we can see in hindsight that this is a pretty goofy metric for success...? Like, "shareholder value" isn't exactly what we need at this pivotal moment in the terran story.
I think the real risk for the economy, the AI industry, and the US is that Nvidia becomes JUST another company.
...
But if this cycle stops and efficiency wins in the market (lower margins, more competitors, more options), then Nvidia goes back to where they were
Even if we accept capital as the most important thing, this seems pretty openly counterintuitive. You're lamenting the spectre of efficiency.
This is demonstrably untrue. Jensen is an engineer through and through, and contributed significantly to Nvidia's early accelerators: from the NV1, at least to the earliest GeForces.
Ha, I was wondering if someone would bring that up! Pretty funny. How much of the shareholder value of NVidia is represented by his share of the NV1 and the earliest GeForces?
> B) surely we can see in hindsight that this is a pretty goofy metric for success...? Like, "shareholder value" isn't exactly what we need at this pivotal moment in the terran story.
In the slow evolution of the human race into the Ferengi, it is absolutely a milestone!
Long term we want efficiency. The market is SUPER inefficient right now. People are buying GPUs and stacking them up in warehouses so that they get their allocation. Companies are taking retired jet engines, and turning them into very expensive generators. SoftBank just defaulted on a bunch of power generation orders (increased cost for everyone, but didn’t create the value). My point is that it will be a painful road to get to the efficient market which will likely be a recession because of a massive slow down in spending
A is a reddit meme-argument. It assumes that the labor-theory-of-value is a fact and implies that only fungible IC's add value, whereas irreplaceable great men who organize multi-trillion-dollar companies from scratch contribute nothing. It's a way for them to advance for their silly worldview while obscuring its absurd foundational assumptions.
Your argument sounds like a satire of itself. Surely it's begging the question to say that CEOs are great men who are irreplaceable and individual contributors are fungible.
What on earth are you talking about. The exponential growth in the 1990s, percentage wise, far outpaced the AI bubble. Go look at Intel, Microsoft, lucid, etc from the dot com boom. This is the problem with 20-somethings’ hot takes on the market: no history.
The '90's bubble is what the AI "bubble" would be if everyone you spoke to was glowing with excitement about AI, and a few niche analysts were raising concerns about capex.
Instead this "bubble" is packed with people who detest AI and have extremely bearish views on it's future. If this "bubble" does pop, I think it will be the first one in history that every single person saw coming.
Almost every bubble ever had its detractors. Yet they still happened because those who actually had decision power and market shaping power didn't care about any downsides from popping a larger bubble so they just wanted to make money.
not necessarily. One athlete's performance can be the difference between a team winning and losing. One general can make the difference between winning and losing a war. No risk also comes with the downside of no reward, artificially constraining high achievers so we dont become too reliant on them just means everyone is equally low achieving
Par for the course on HN, unfortunately. I once thought the stereotypes about "tech bros" were overblown, but HN users seem dedicated to proving them right. Something's gone wrong if you're making comments complaining about how ethics don't matter at all in life and money is the only thing to ever be considered.
Totally agree. And that's late-stage capitalism for you. For a site named "hacker news" the hacker spirit is noticeably absent here. Instead you have simps for billionaires.
If anything Jensen Huang is the exact embodiment of the hacker spirit. An engineer who singlehandedly created one of the most valuable companies on earth by creating the chips that AI runs on.
I dont get how you can talk about the "hacker spirit" but then talk about "late-stage capitalism" (essentially the flat-earthism of economy) and tech founders.
> I dont get how you can talk about the "hacker spirit" but then talk about "late-stage capitalism" (essentially the flat-earthism of economy) and tech founders.
Can you elaborate on why you think not a single aspect of late stage capitalism is true in any capacity, like flat-earthism?
3 employees. That was 33 years ago. If you seriously think he is solely responsible for nvidia’s success I am willing to bet that you also voted for Trump.
The thing to remember every time you see the orange, so you don't forget, is that you are posting on the promotional website of a multibillion-dollar private equity firm.
This is of course true that YC provides this platform but, tapping in to my religious upbringing, it's a bit like confusing a church for the building it's in. Ycombinator owns the building that the community meets in, but the community is bigger than the landlord. The landlord can set some rules and influence what happens in the building, but if they impose too much on the community it will find a different building to meet in.
If you think that the values of a church have nothing to do with the discussions that happen inside of the church, I'm not sure what to tell you. If you believe the opposite, that's exactly the same point that I was just making.
I think we almost certainly agree at least about the nature of YC, but I didn't make my point clearly. A church is a community that meets in a building; the building the community meets in is not the church. Many smaller churches meet in neighborhood centers that are state-owned, if the state imposed a no prayer rule on meetings in the neighborhood center, I suspect the community would find a new building to meet in.
By analogy: the amoral VC nitwits that own the HN servers could try to enforce their values on the discussions here, but doing so with a heavy hand would quickly drive the true 'hacker' community elsewhere. Dang has a very light hand, especially when it comes to topics around YC that get discussed here.
Sure, there are no shortage of bootlicking CEO cargo cultists here looking for the right turtleneck/leather jacket combo to ascend to their rightful place at the top of the pile with PG and Sama... And being associated with the HN community's ethos certainly gives an undeserved glow to YC, which like all VC accelerators really is just a predatory tool of the wealthy investor class to maintain control of capital (a poor kid that grows up and founds a company that creates a ton of wealth could have dangerous ideas, best to capture them early and give them an approved board and structures to constrain them...)
That said, I frequently come across things here that subvert the platform's owners. For example, I think pretty much every member of my anti-VC founder alliance [0] found it through my own comments here. I get personal joy from promoting that here, subverting YC's own platform to challenge their golden goose.
So yes, know whose house this is, but stay aware of who has the power (us).
Nvidia stock price is now lower than it was a year ago. Has been declining for about 6 months, highly volatile, with a step sell off starting a month ago.
Cisco's stock price was similarly very high during the dotcom boom, but then collapsed, and took 17 years to build back up.
The thing people keep forgetting is nvidia makes graphics cards. Not CPUs, not a range of different products. Graphics cards. With a software moat. Their only business advantage is that people currently want a lot of their graphics cards and are currently dependent on their software. All that can be competed against. China is already putting out their own cards. Google has TPUs. AMD makes both CPUs and GPUs. The memory prices will soon fall as more capacity comes online.
It's practically a certainty that this stock price will keep falling. They're valuable, but in a competitive market, likely not 10x more valuable than their $17 stock price in 2022. When they fall harder so will the AI economy.
Everybody has a responsibility to uphold rule of law in any democracy. I'm tired of the narrative that U.S. companies are helpless entities that can only seek profit at the expense of everybody else. Ok then, if it was profitable to wipe out the entire planet with a nuclear war (Vault-tech) would you be fine with a company doing so?
No, that's literally how it works. Companies are amoral and the companies that compete the hardest within the bounds of the law (or outside of it when corruption is allowed) will win over time. They have an advantage and it's why you see most companies are that way. Any of them that did not take those advantages lost.
There is a MASSIVE graveyard of companies that flagrantly broke the law and didn't "Win" over time. Just because you can name a couple of companies that broke the law and still exists today speaks to survivorship bias, not a universal conclusion. Even Silicon Valley Bank, which didn't break laws but played "fast and loose" with customer funds did in fact, not get out ahead of other banks.
It's not really "Just a narrative", AFAIK it's based on two rulings: 'Dodge v. Ford Motor Co.' and 'eBay Domestic Holdings, Inc. v. Newmark.' One legally enshrined answer to this is Benefit Corporations AKA B Corps. I'm not saying they're without their own flaws but they are a step in the right direction.
This is often repeated on HN, but it's a popular myth. [1] Executives have a fiduciary dury to act in the best interests of the company, but "maximize profits" is not something enshrined by law or legal precedent.
When I registered my single-member LLC I had to come up with the by-laws and in the template I used it said I "have a fiduciary duty to maximize the benefits to the owners of the company" or something like that. I think that is based on some US Law.
Ever since then I have tried my best to abide by my fiduciary duty to myself. :-)
If you read dodge v ford, it doesn’t say you must maximize profits but you can’t defraud your investors.
The profit maximization myth needs to die and maybe less people will act like they should try it
But it is "just a narrative". Example from this year: Warner Brother's shareholders voted against an excessive pay package for David Zaslov, CEO. For you "corporations have to maximize profits for shareholders" nitwits, that's the shareholders voting against pay package to save the corporation money and add to the profits of the company.
The board gave him his pay package.
Corporations are not always obligated to maximize profits. They just say this to justify unpopular things they do. They ignore it when it reduces the pay of people in the C-suite.
Whilst I agree with the idea and sentiment, what do you suggest as a mechanism to enforce such responsibility? How do we handle companies that do not act responsibly?
We throw the leadership in jail? They either knew or they were negligent.
If I, personally, were to ignore international trade bans, I'd almost certainly go to prison. We can't send companies to prison, and companies are designed to spread responsibility, so we send the ones who have symbolic responsibility to prison instead, alongside anyone who can be shown to have engaged in individually incriminating behavior. If you're steering the ship, you are responsible for what ship does and what happens to it.
Change the wording of the law so companies that sacrifice long term value for short term gain can be sued for securities fraud. Make the law so "fiduciary responsibility" means over a long term time horizon. Judges are already making best effort rulings on if they think a company's actions were positive or negative for shareholder value in current security fraud cases, so this change would not add additional subjectivity.
This is Adam Smith's invisible hand - not only that self-interest leads to community interest, but that normal people are "forced" to do evil by the logic of the markets.
Laws are not sufficient for a society to survive. There have to be shared norms and morals layered on top. If we are a nation only of laws, we are doomed to extinction.
I don't get this line of thinking. What is the point of profit. Why do we pursue it? And what good is it if the society in which it is useful no longer exists or cannot function to let you benefit from such profit?
There is something really wrong with all these "extrapolate a single part of society to the max because law allows it". Systems don't work this way, every single system requires balance and that balance does not depend on law. Law was created so we could strive to achieve balance in the system. It's imperfect but somehow we think the imperfection is intentional. It's backwards.
It's the people who protect the law, not the law that protects the people. If your entire country consists of sniveling profiteers who use laws as an excuse to abdicate their own judgement you don't have a nation and you don't have laws.
The company can do it because the law said so, the CEO can do it because the company said so I can do so because someone else said to etc. Responsibility isn't a game of musical chairs
I cannot condone this blithe abdication of responsibility. Even agreeing with xenocide?! I hope you wouldn’t be pushing the button when it actually came time to launch.
So we're potentially looking at a much different story, where the government took a bribe to ignore or enable an end run around an export ban. "CEO had affairs" is a far less damaging story to the United States than "our laws and national security are for sale".
The question isn't whether NVIDIA skirted an export ban. Companies are permitted to sell certain quantities of certain chips to certain Chinese companies.
The issue is that the _optics_ look suspicious if newly formed companies without proper vetting were able to receive very large quantities of these chips (either directly from NVIDIA or routed through shell companies linked to Alice Huang).
Where there's smoke there may not be fire, but the prevailing perspective I see is "needs more information"
Right, because MegaSpeed is a Singapore-based company. Now that company may have channeled those chips to China, but officially Nvidia was not responsible for that unless it is proven that they knew about it. Investigations are ongoing but seems there is no concrete evidence for either the first or second part yet.
* Megaspeed was evading US sanctions against China
* Megaspeed CEO was a Chinese state agent
* Huang was sleeping with Megaspeed CEO
Therefore, one of the following must be true:
(1) [Unlikely] Huang knowingly supported the evasion of sanctions. If so, he should be fired for breaking the law.
(2) Huang was tricked. If so, his judgement is now suspect.
Huang's argument is (2). In this case, the evalaution of his judgement is:
(A) Is this a one-off mistake? If so, he should be retained - he's human.
(B) Is this a pattern? If so, he should be fired - he's an ongoing risk (e.g., via regulatory action).
Huang resigned because the second affair indicated (B) - he's an ongoing risk.
As a result, the question of "who knew what when" is actually beside the point. Retaining Huang risks ongoing, overwhelming government action for evading sanctions - and the board members want 0 personal liability in that investigation.
(1) [Unlikely] Huang knowingly supported the evasion of sanctions. If so, he should be fired for breaking the law.
(2) Huang was tricked. If so, his judgement is now suspect.""
No - it's absolutely not a choice between those two things and neither are likely.
A company bought some chips from Nvidia - and illegally moved some to China.
That's it.
Jenson knows many of Nvidias customers. Probably thousands.
He's not 'tricked' because he doesn't have some magical 'judge of character' - the insinuation is preposterous.
--> Companies do illegal stuff all the timee; this one was skirting export laws.
That's it.
He's not a mind reader, and she's probably not a spy either, I'm sure she told the CCP some things because that's how it works in China, just as US citizens tell US gov a lot of things as well.
Ultimately he bears some responsibility, and there's enough concern to look into it, but this is Occam's Razor - the lady was back door shipping gear, just as thousands of business do.
Just as more than 50% of the materials in Russian cruise missiles are 'made in USA' - and illegal 'smuggled' into Russia, and by 'smuggled' I mean sent in the regular mail.
From three allegations, you can't say anything is true. We do know that one of the allegations is true (they were having sex), but that doesn't really tell us much.
He should be arrested for evading billions in sanctions and the companies leadership arrested as well for enabling the behavior. This is far beyond just being fired.
US sanction law seems to be really scary. Everyone is scared of it.
I used to work at a company where the sanction was around something mundane like Excel or something, and we had to make it an urgent priority to ban all users from Russia to access ... spinning the wheel ... our spreadsheet functionality.
My co-workers and I found it funny that US decided to ban Russia from using an online Excel-like functionality.
If Huang is compromised, a national security risk and must go what are the implications of knowingly flying said national security risk on AF-1? Is it a pattern?
Passing a law against selling a chip to China is no different than prohibiting a farmer from selling food to Chinese soldiers. Neither seller is giving China munitions that could kill Americans.
I would agree, and even Nvidia if it can be proven that they knew about this. But my point is that so far it hasn’t been shown, yet people are assuming it as fact.
> Now that company may have channeled those chips to China, but officially Nvidia was not responsible for that unless it is proven that they knew about it.
It is almost adorable how naive this statement is.
For export controlled items like weapons, nuclear materials, GPUs, etc. you have to file for an export permit where you attest that you have performed sufficient due diligence and KYC that you strongly believe the person you are selling to is the end user.
You are literally accepting 100% liability for the items until they are returned to the US or irreversibly destroyed.
Your allegations are unfounded.
No one but a few people really know what was going on, and one certainty is that the current us administration isn’t going to take the blame for it.
He used his influence to get the US government to do this. It's not like profit maxing takes priority over national security and laws. It's a vector of attack properly used by China.
I encourage you to browse some of the BIS settlements and court cases to learn how these things go. Simple diversion is quite literally the least sophisticated approach to circumventing EAR. This entire scheme was blatantly obvious, and under a different administration it wouldn’t have happened at all.
What do you expect Nvidia to do, post armed guards in Asia to make sure the GPUs don't move around? He sold to an eligible entity. Unless he had foreknowledge they were planning to smuggle the chips, he shouldn't have any responsibility for what happens to them.
That would be a much more convincing argument if he didn't have an affair with an executive there who is also a spy. My guess is he did know, the board knows he knows. At least. Helping facilitate the smuggling wouldn't be totally crazy either given these circumstances and his public positions.
> What do you expect Nvidia to do, post armed guards in Asia to make sure the GPUs don't move around?
Yes. Some companies that deal in export restricted items will have entire teams of US citizens that regularly do inventory checks in foreign customers facilities. If a single item is missing and it can't be located within 24 hours they pack everything up and put it on a cargo plane back to the US.
It is a trivial amount of money when you are talking about $100m+ deals.
For real. And if the US government assumed MegaSpeed's executive was a Chinese spy for the past year, then why didn't they do anything to stop this or add MegaSpeed to export controls? The whole thing wreaks.
I have a pretty easy answer for that. I bet all the money Jensen donated to Trump might have something to do with it. And my suspicion is that someone that doesn't like to do look the other way when someone is colluding with China might have blown the cover on this, let's say Marco Rubio that has presidential ambitions (it will never happen, but still he really wants to).
Believe it or not, companies are legally required to do due diligence on such things. For example, I work for a huge bank and when there's even the faintest hint of money possibly being funneled through an intermediary to a sanctioned state/person or a company on the Entities List they will absolutely send someone to investigate. Physically, if it is deemed necessary.
A multi-billion dollar deal in Singapore would absolutely require some folks to physically go out there and do some inventory at the very least. It needs to be in the realm of, "We walked the data center and counted how many of our products were installed and we were shown their yet-installed inventory" documentation. "It matches what we sold them." A great big, fancy report. With pictures.
How much would that cost? Basically nothing compared to how much trouble they could get in for not doing that due diligence. Compare how much it would've cost against how much their stock just dropped.
There's still no evidence I've seen that the chips ever left Singapore. I believe the Singapore company rented out compute to some entities in China. What then? You can't expect nvidia to enforce draconian controls on the usage of the GPUs once they've been delivered.
> What do you expect Nvidia to do, post armed guards in Asia to make sure the GPUs don't move around?
I expect them to follow the law, which, in this case, appears to be a bit more complex than "you can't sell to china but it's okay if you sell to someone else who sells to china."
Not to mention the fact that he was sleeping with the Megaspeed exec makes it all extremely suspicious.
There’s a thing called know you customer (KYC) law. You can in fact be held liable if you can’t prove you sufficiently vetted a customer before engaging in a transaction with them. Saying that you’re right there’s only so much they can do after vetting.
But like is Huang supposed to personally vet every customer, seem preposterous. The only real culpability angle is if Huang influenced the process to not vet this specific customer due the ongoing relationship not if nvidia compliance office was systematically undervet companies the disenfranchised is subtle but the framing is important because changes the kind of proof the market will expect
Ill bet my life savings, and all future earnings that nobody spends a day in jail over this.
Even the DOJ refuses to acknowledge this lady was a spy.
The journalist in question at the NYT that broke this story has done many stories on AI and all their sources for all their scoops have been from founders/employees at Anthropic.
Anthropic spent $40mm getting some select politicians elected who would do their bidding. They're calling in those favors day one.
Westerners are so one shot by Hollywood that the NYTs can just show a pretty chinese women next to a tech CEO, accuse them of being a spy and everyone instantly believes shes the equivalent of a Chinese Bond women. Literally zero evidence presented she's a spy.
The only suspicious link of Megamind to China is a random website that has their same design for a random company based out of Hong Kong. Anyone could have staged that website.
There's literally zero evidence presented but the public has already convicted all these people based on a few anonymous sources from articles written by Authors with ties to AI labs.
The whole thing reaks top to bottom as a political hitjob.
Lets be a little more level headed here and not let media outlets think for us.
Jensen's job as a CEO was to generate revenue. He was doing "sales" using the reverse-honeypot strategy. He got the chips sold, they were permitted by Lutnick, he came home, shook hands with daddy Trump. My god, what a way to create shareholder value. The revelations of the other indiscretions were the 2nd and 3rd wave assaults in case he was withering the 1st attack of the classic tried and true "alleged spy lover" offensive. The drip drip leaks (NYT+WSJ+FT we see you) were timed after the midterms when it became clear that Trump had no more linebackers to defend the line. Jensen had no fighting chance at that point.
With Jensen's reputation and tenure at nv, I was sure they wouldn't fire him. I also think that the new political climate has some influence on this decision.
Affairs don't take down CEOs of major public companies. It's kind of assumed that they all do it. Like, how many subordinates of Elon supposedly had one of his kids?
Everyone involved has to be CYAing. It's pretty likely that a whole boatload of people were involved and none of them want to be the scapegoat that gets to go to jail for it. If they can sell this as something as simple as Jensen getting tricked by a cute spy, then everyone involved can sleep easy and Jensen will probably keep controlling things behind the scenes for a while.
Affairs with direct reports will absolutely take down a CEO. Add the spy to this and the fact that it's multiple women and it's easy to see why this happened - and it should. Public company CEOs don't get to do whatever the hell they want, including break all company policies and ethics because the stock price is up. Especially not when it has all been made public.
My guess is that someone knew this and leaked it because they also have insider information that Nvidia is about to be forced to write down the AI trade anyways and they 1) don't want Jensen walking away with a golden parachute and/or 2) want to use the spectacle of Jensen's infidelity to color the narrative or distract from something.
lol reading comprehension isn't your main skill is it? maybe you can readmaxx or learnmaxx or trymaxx to understandmaxx what the fuckmaxx your talkingmaxx about
It's bizarre to me how many people here seem to seriously believe this is actually about cheating on his wife. It seems pretty clear that this is related to the glaringly obvious, continued export of GPUs to China, expressly violating an export ban. Combine that with having an affair with a woman who just so happens to be integral to the smuggling operation. It just looks too bad. Opens Nvidia up to a world of hurt once the dems take over in January, and Huang himself to serious criminal charges. And that's just the stuff that's public information. We have to assume the board knows more than us.
This stuff has probably been going on behind the scenes for a while. The leak about the affair is just the catalyst that accelerated it all.
>>> seem to seriously believe this is actually about cheating on his wife
Sleeping with subordinates exposes the company to risk from employment-related lawsuits. He'd be in just as much trouble if he'd done that while single.
As in they’d have to let him go anyway, same as the Coldplay concert guy. The dollar value of the legal liability is not as relevant as the reputational and stock price hit they’d take
I doubt any GPUs were sold to China because of this woman.
China just needed her to sleep with Jensen, so they could get him fired. Nvidia is at a loss without him. Knock Nvidia down a peg.
If China wanted more Nvidia GPUs you really think sexy spy was their strategy? You think China is upset right now they lost their sexy spy? No, this went all according to plan for China - Jensen is gone, and a weaker Nvidia remains.
This is like Apple losing Jobs. The company remains, but the vision is gone.
With thousands of subordinate and a board of directors above him - you really think Jensen could sneak thousand of GPUs anywhere? You really think an old billionaire in a fast paced industry has time for those types of games?
I think this just confirms that he had knowledge of gpus going to China and the board wants to minimize the damage now. His infidelity does not help but I doubt the board would have ousted him for that
I think the point is that whether he did or didn't, there's so much smoke now, that Nvidia is going to be spending the next few years getting drilled by absolutely every law enforcement agency and government. Even if it genuinely turns out that nothing even slightly bad happened, it's quite damaging the amount of scrutiny Nvidia is going to be under for the foreseeable future.
> Nvidia is going to be spending the next few years getting drilled by absolutely every law enforcement agency and government.
Sounds like this was known or suspected at the highest levels of the administration (Rubio was discussing it per recent reporting). So the question becomes: did Nvidia use a cut out to knowingly avoid the export ban, and if so, did the administration know this?
Yes, they did. Trump talked about an AI CEO committing a crime in the 60 minutes episode, and it is speculated that he was referring to Jensen. And Marco Rubio was frustrated and kept flagging it, but Trump and Lutnick squashed any investigations into it.
It’s not the infidelity part, it’s the undisclosed relationship with a subordinate part. That’s covered in HR training and is a fireable offense in every company I’ve been part of.
While it's a fireable offense, my experience with senior management has been that the company is more than happy to help cover it up for them... until they do a bad, and then it becomes a quick ticket to can them without having to admit the real reason for canning them.
That's what everyone keeps saying. INAL but that would give any fired executive hella leverage when the board finally decide to unveil what they've been hiding. I mean, they'll go to discovery and ... perjure themselves? Really?
What claim would the executive have? They can be fired by the board for any reason (except for a few explicitly prohibited reasons), so "they lied about why they fired me" doesn't work as a claim unless you're alleging the real reason is because they're racist or something similar.
It makes absolutely no sense to fire him strictly for the relationships. So it's either deeper legal concerns or the board has other grievances and is using this as an excuse.
If the reporting is to be believed, they ended up selling around $7.5B to China through Singapore.
They did ~$90B in revenue last quarter.
I sometimes can't imagine the avarice it takes to do things like this. Could you imagine having a $100 bill in your hand and going "Yea, I'll break the law and possibly destroy my life to steal $7.50"
>"Yea, I'll break the law and possibly destroy my life to steal $7.50"
It's worse than that. Much much much worse than plain greed.
Supply of manufacturing capacity for this kind of hardware is severely limited. TSMC can't produce enough to meet all that demand.
NVIDIA not selling 7.5B worth of chips to China does not mean they would lose the 7.5B worth of chips. They could have sold them to American companies, which are all in a frenzy to build datacenters.
No, this is just a classic case of treachery. Jensen Huang, whether bought, blackmailed or because of tribalism, has decided to support China. In an interview, he was getting very angsty when someone asked him why sell chips to China, and said "victimizing them, turning them into an enemy, likely isn't the best answer":
People refuse to believe it when it's a billionaire, but they too can be very tribal, even if they lived most of their life in the so called melting pot of the United States of America.
It'd be so funny if he started actually sharing knowledge to China out of spite after all these. I know he is way too rich to do that, but one can dream.
The number of people here who don’t take sexual harassment in the workplace by the CEO of a world-leading company to be a serious, fireable offense—and the fact that so many of you claim to care about things like women’s rights and social justice—is mind-boggling to me. This is a man who could be fired just for OFFERING to have sex with a subordinate. The fact the he did it, and that she got promoted seals his fate as a predator in my mind. But we live in an age where the only truth people believe is the one that makes them feel a certain way, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.
Which most company policies allow in some form. Peer-to-peer is straight forward. Supervisor-subordinate (relevant here) is less tolerated. You just have to disclose it and maybe sign a "love contract."
Parent is oblivious to this and has already made up their mind that these policies don't exist
> The fact the he did it, and that she got promoted seals his fate as a predator in my mind.
I'm very aware that these policies exist, and I'm certain the CEO of Nvidia was also aware. That he decided to circumvent them says all you need to know, really. Even if it's consensual, what happens when she decides she wants to move on from the relationship? What about her peers that didn't receive promotions while she did? This is why these laws exist.
The implication here is that they didn't follow company policy or else this wouldn't be an issue. HR would have said, "Yes we're aware of the relationship, all of our policies have been properly followed in relation to it." The fact that we're not hearing that means the answers to all these questions don't have pretty answers.
> The implication here is that they didn't follow company policy or else this wouldn't be an issue.
I see your opinion. In MY opinion, this wouldn't be an issue but for the spy scandal. Now, anything that comes up (complying or not complying with policy) triggers more urgency by shareholders and the board to make change. They don't care about HR due process.
To be honest, even with those policies, a supervisor-subordinate relationship can be problematic. There is an undeniable power dynamic at play, so even when it looks consensual it's hard to be sure. I'm not saying it wasn't consensual in this case, but when person A can impact the future of person B, person B might feel coerced to "consent".
Anyway, not sure if that's the case here but it's hard to rule out entirely.
yall got it backwards. pussy is the power dynamic. men need it, have to have it, totally controlled by it. man not using woman for sex. everyone like sex. woman use pussy power to get promotion
These policies are intentionally narrowed to workplace conflicts of interest. HR doesn't want to manage morality clauses or stuff outside the workplace.
There is zero nuance in a boss sleeping with someone who is a subordinate which is why every company very explicitly forbids it. Companies don't even allow people who are already married to be put in a situation like that.
Once one person has the ability to get the other fired, ruin their career, blackball them from the industry, etc. you can't know if they actually freely consented or not. Once you have coercive control over someone how could you even know that's not why they "consented?" Even if they initiated you can't know if at some point they wanted to stop but now felt they couldn't because of fear of retaliation.
Yes, you can extrapolate, and our society does. This is why ministers aren't supposed to have relationships with their clergy, therapists are not supposed to have relationships with their clients, lawyers, doctors, etc. The list goes on and on.
Can become, yes. Depends a bit on what exactly the nature of the power imbalance is. Which is why there are usually strict rules about relationships with your reports and how to resolve the situation. Like reporting it to HR so the work positions can be shifted in a way to move positions so that there is no longer a reporting relationship between the two.
Exactly. At every place I've worked or consulted at, bosses dating subordinates is not permitted. I have seen multiple instances where people have to move teams/managers because they start a relationship.
These restrictions exist in most workplaces. Boss/subordinate relationships can result in extortion and bad behavior, regardless of which party starts it.
You mean infantilising adults and denying their agency to feel better about yourself.
Obviously it depends from case to case and there are certain lines that shouldn’t be crossed but otherwise consenting adults should be free to make their own decisions.
In attempting to be intentionally obtuse you almost wrapped around to getting it again.
The strength differential is why the domestic violence procedure is what it is and the financial differential is why asset division and alimony during divorce exists. You made a joke and then basically described the foundation for an equitable marriage.
I've never worked at any company that used them or heard about them. Instead we take yearly training saying that even flirting with the idea is a cause for immediate termination.
Do you have stats on how common these are? Is it more popular in some non US country maybe?
Your companies had zero tolerance for consensual relationships at the office? Not even married couples? Possible, but the exception because that really constrains your talent base.
Good idea about stats. Please share what you find.
Do you suppose Jensen had a love contract with his subordinate, when the breaking of the news of their extramarital relationship led to a 20% drop in stock and the removal of Jensen as CEO?
Considering he was fired it's the other way around. This at most only applies to very small companies or to people at the very bottom on the totem pole.
Yeah. It’s not like being an ultra chad billionaire with great biceps and confident personality is NOT attractive to women. Maybe her husband wasn’t doing it for her (legit feel bad for that man, whoever he is, today).
In any scenario it’s not appropriate. Among peers, everyone knows about the “special relationship” and it directly attacks any perception of fairness and enables others to justify similar or worse behavior in the org.
Not sure about the sexual harassment angle you're pushing... it's about trust isn't it? If you have consensual affairs as a CEO, you are still liable to be fired if it becomes public, that's my opinion anyway.
It doesn't matter, he was in a position of extreme power imbalance where he could show her both favoritism or fire her depending on how things went. It's improper and inappropriate at best, and illegal at worst.
This whole thing is making me question whether I should continue reading HN. It's not just this story either, it seems a sub-section of the HN community has taken a hard-right swing in the last couple years.
People in these threads are pretending that 75% of the story doesn't exist and it's just about an affair... insane.
EDIT: Is this just X infecting HN? I don't go on X so I don't know what it's like.
People here are so weird now about AI. Bizarrely sensitive to even the slightest criticism of AI or the associated companies. I don’t know if it’s bots or what, but it’s legitimately scary.
Yeah, the election made it pretty clear that people on X are in an insane bubble world (rather than some of the other online communities X accused of exactly that), and that the venn-diagram of HN and terminally-online X users is basically a circle.
The Demographics of HN are coming very sharply into focus the past few weeks, and it's awful.
It does sort of explain a lot though.
A shocking amount of these comments are very loudly ignorant of basic concepts of consent, and some seem to be rather proud of it.
A good point and the line of thinking you're describing implies that power should override anything else. Rather than rules that apply to everyone, what level of power within a company should no longer be subject to firing for engaging in a power-abuse sexual relationship?
Misbehavior without consequences seems to have become more noticeable in politics within the past ten years, with mainstream news outlets reporting on insider trading and potential bribes for favors. This ethos of power over accountability seems to be having a trickle down effect on general sentiment.
This is really dependent on the company. Musk, Brin etc. have not been canned due to some combination of corporate culture and stock ownership structures.
Famously, Mark Hurd was fired for this, but immediately hired by Larry Ellison at Oracle because he didn;t give a shit.
Any company that wants to pass one of the many audits I'm sure Nvidia is subject to has policies around this. They would both know that not only do all employees need to disclose such relationships but that such a relationship is not appropriate if one is above the other on the org chart. Since the CEO is above everyone, that pretty much means if he wanted a relationship with an employee they would need to resign first.
HR policies around these things have never at all cared about which direction the relationship goes and it really shouldn't be hard to understand why. It's entirely irrelevant who initiates.
What's very "Cut and Dry" is that so many of you are very obviously not paying attention to the yearly training, which isn't exactly complicated or difficult material.
Of course not. They have sex, wake up in the morning and decide what to do about it. Instead of going through the appropriate channels they decided to keep it secret. Big mistake.
I agree there should be equal accountability. The response to that shouldn't be letting everyone do whatever the hell they want, though, in my opinion.
> The number of people here who don’t take sexual harassment in the workplace by the CEO of a world-leading company to be a serious, fireable offense—and the fact that so many of you claim to care about things like women’s rights and social justice—is mind-boggling to me.
It's mindboggling that you describe an apparently completely consensual affair as "sexual harassment". That's absurd.
The term already has a well-established meaning; we shouldn't change our understanding of it. If you mean something else then use different terminology.
Also, I don't think there was an "extreme power imbalance". If anything, she had far more power over him than the other way around, since he had much more to lose and she could blackmail him with making the affair public or other allegations.
I am referring to the meaning established in the law. Many things fall under the legal umbrella of sexual harassment. If you want to describe it as something else maybe you should be the one looking for a new term to coin.
Obviously the situation isn't that simple, and neither is the law. If you really want to have a relationship with a subordinate there are legitimate ways to make that happen. He chose to circumvent those (ostensibly repeatedly, and while paying off people who found out about it), and the set of reasonable explanations that don't involve some form of harassment is vanishingly small.
I mean I said in 2016 Hillary basically behaved this way with Bill in regards to others (notably monica lewinsky) and against basically anyone else (i.e. say whole democrat party field) except Trump that should have been a disqualifying thing (and worse, if the republicans put up a decent person, I suspect Hillary would have won!)
At the end of the day, I wouldn't bash everyone here too strongly when everyone who lined up early behind Hillary basically acted in the same way. (And yes, even though Bill did the act, Hillary lined up easily to defend him, much like the people you mention here)
Even if it were about consent (and it's not), it's difficult to show that a relationship with such a power imbalance is consensual. If it were consensual it should have been disclosed. And as a CEO he has a greater responsibility to follow these kinds of rules. He knows it, and he did it anyway, and then he got caught doing it. There's really no other action to take besides removing him.
Maybe it's a generational thing? The younger generations seem to have some sort of anxiety with respect to consent and power dynamics, where even something as trivial as a modest age difference is viewed with suspicion. The movie Obsession can be seen as that anxiety translated into the horror genre.
To be fair though, a CEO having an affair with a subordinate should be seen with at least some suspicion...
IDK, if you look at the messaging around Clancy where women are completely subordinate to hormones to the point it excuses chasing down three children and systematically murdering them, or the Cornell 7 case where a woman can willfully engage in sex with multiple men and then only decide it was rape retroactively after explicitly negotiating with the men what was ok during and after with text messages where she defended her own actions but then when rumors started she decided she didn’t actually give consent…
The people saying you can’t trust women… are mostly coming from women.
Wild time if you are dating! Yes could mean No if later she decides she didn’t like something about it.
The imposition of "sexual harassment" upon a woman who has not made any such allegation or claim is just dripping with paternalism. Let her decide whether she has been abused or harassed. She doesn't need you for that. I know you think you know better than she does, but most of us consider her to have agency of her own and do not feel the need to substitute our own baseless opinions in place of her own.
It’s not necessarily about her. How fair do you think her associates feel they’ve been treated after finding out Huang and Powell have been skulking around romping in hotels? And how many affairs does it take before it goes from “he had a mistress” to “he is using women to fuel an addiction”? We are up to 3. I’m just saying where there is smoke there is often fire, and I can’t imagine writing a comment on this website defending the man.
money before principles. Not to be crass but this is the ycombinator forum, not bluesky. do not expect principles before money, this is the absolute opposite of trying to preach to the choir.
Who do you work for? Curious whether they have annual sexual harassment training or not. I'm not pushing a narrative. Based on the facts that are public alone this is pretty cut and dry sexual harassment. You may not like the connotation of those words, but they contain a pretty broad set of improprieties.
Cornell 7 would like a word. That’s just the latest. The facts of that case so strongly outweigh the narrative of “poor drunk unconscious college girl rapped by men for hours” that it’s comical that somehow innocent until proven guilty is now “misogynist rape culture” or something.
Let's dispense with the theatrics. Having a relationship with someone in your chain is not even close to sexual harassment. Yes, it can lead to it but generally it doesn't. It's not at all illegal either.
When I entered the workforce not so long ago most companies didn't even have policies against it. My university didn't make a policy about it until 2012. I know a very happily married couple who got married this way (a little earlier - perhaps around 2006 or 2007). I don't think they'd be happy if I referred to their behavior as "sexual harrasment".
I think it's a good policy and it's fair they enforce it, but equating it to sexual harassment is nonsense.
They may not think about it that way, but if one of that couple got a promotion from the other then every other person on the team pretty much has grounds for a law suit. There are reasons these rules exist, and the CEO of a high profile company has no excuse not to know them all.
> but if one of that couple got a promotion from the other then every other person on the team pretty much has grounds for a law suit.
Extremely rare (winning such a lawsuit). Prior to these kinds of rules becoming the norm, how often did anyone win such a lawsuit? It's a rounding error close to 0.
There are plenty of publicized cases where one party openly stated she got promotions because of her affair with a senior. No lawsuits were even filed in the ones I know.
I'm in favor of such rules precisely because it's hard to win such a suit.
You can't prevent people from having relationships. It's not realistic. My company has specific rules about this. Typically, "problematic" relationships need to be disclosed to HR and leadership, but they're not forbidden per se.
I'm... not shocked. Politically, HN skews pretty heavily right. Some of them will claim otherwise, putting rainbow flags in bios and such, but here is where the rubber hits the road. I also believe that the affair with the subordinate was the big problem. He can paint himself a victim of a Chinse spy.
Consider the case of Regina Santos-Aviles [1]. She committed suicide by setting herself on fire and had revealed that she'd been having an affair with her boss.
The power dynamics here are insane. Huang was the CEO and a billionaire. The legal liability that NVidia has or could have because of this is huge, particularly if they did nothing. Now there are big questions about who knew what when.
The reporting says somebody say them in a San Jose hotel and was basically hushed with an NDA, and probably a big payment (I'm guessing; I don't know). Was that from NVidia or Huang personally? What NVidia staff, if any, authorized that?
If the board wants to really clean house they should authorize a thorough external investigation of that and any other possible affairs.
DOGE was less popular than most of the admins stuff, and more scandalous at various levels (the stuff they did cut was fairly popular, they didn't manage to cut the stuff people might have really seen as wasteful, they went about accessing data in strange ways, some of the employees were quite young and looked unqualified).
I don't think you can assume much just by knowing somebody disliked them.
That's totally fair, nobody is happy with DOGE at this point and a lot of people were skeptical and nervous as it was happening. I just don't recall anyone popping in to say "damn it, they're doing it wrong!".
The things they got the most attention for like USAID weren't really core dc money. if anything I think they failed to really touch federal programs much in the end, but they did wildly swing at other stuff (like infamously just word searching to cancel research grants etc).
One may interpret this as the Overton window having shifted quite a bit over the last several years. As in "HN skews pretty heavily right" can be correct *and* it can also be true that the wackadoo faction of the right has dominated the discourse for a while.
To spin it another way: if we ignore the rise of the faux-libertarian (you know, the more typical brand now, libertarian but all for a strong military and christian nationalism), I'd argue that the typical HN skews more old school small-l libertarian on the right wing spectrum. That's quite a bit different from the MAGA, christian nationalist, style of right wing politics that has been in vogue lately.
But DOGE (as conceived) is the wet dream of a libertarian from any era. If anything it's a bone that Trump threw to libertarians. It's not especially MAGA imho.
On paper yes, but anyone with half a brain saw that the opposite was true in real life. They went in, made things worse, didn't save any money, and absconded with a lot of private data. My recollection from that time period was the tenor here shifted rapidly from generally positive to generally negative.
If you truly believe this, you're living in a bubble. Economically it might be pro free markets, but socially it's heavily "progressive" -- see any discussions about Omarchy, LGBTQ, Elon, or Trump.
Leftism begins with anti-capitalism. This is so far beyond the American (or even European) Overton window. The American political mainstream is a choice between center-right and far-right.
Politics is about economics. All of the so-called "culture war" issues (eg LGBT rights, bodily autonomy, etc) don't make you left wing if you are still an avowed capitalist. The success of the Republican Party hinges on the success they've had in propagandizing culture war issues to avoid talking about economics. And the establishment Democrat Party is complicit because they have the exact same paymasters.
On this issue you see a ton of people in the comments saying "yeah but Jensen made so much money" as a reason why he shouldn't suffer the consequences. If making money has primacy in your decision making well... you're right wing, definitionally.
As other commenters have noted, every time Elon comes up there are a ton of HN defenders, despite him being a complete fascist (in technical terms, not a pejorative) and doing the Nazi salute on national TV (twice).
> Economically it might be pro free markets, ...
Well, first there's no such thing as "free markets". Second, you're basically saying "capitalism". As I said, right wing.
I'm socially progressive but economically conservative. That's why, whenever there's a tough situation where compromise is needed, I always compromise on the side of "let the free market run amok".
I’m entertained by how far left one must be to think HN “leans pretty heavily right”. Even the most die-hard socialist should be aware enough to find that funny.
I think media, social and traditional, has really done a number on people’s perspectives. I’m not sure why ideology replaces self-awareness.
Die-hard socialists often consider "liberals" to be soft-core right wingers. I'm not sure there's an objective center, it's all a matter of perspective.
That means he can’t have any affairs with anyone who isn’t a billionaire without it turning into sexual harassment due to the imbalance in power?
> basically hushed with an NDA, and probably a big payment
So depending on how big the payment the alleged victim might be pretty happy with the outcome?
I mean if the board believes that the actions of the CEO resulted in financial damage to the company it’s up to them to investigate and deal with it. I just don’t get the whole morality police angle as long as the affair was between consenting rational adults.
Jensen, even after decades, remained deeply involved in many operational decisions with 40+ direct reports. He had a long-term mindset, investing heavily in Tegra and CUDA in 2009-2010, even as he was plagued by write-offs from faulty chips.
This is a terrible decision for NVIDIA and the broader economy. Jensen gets to retire with $100B+ and not deal with the crap.
I doubt there is anyone close to his caliber that he can be replaced with. Engineers with strong leadership skills are hard to come by. Airhead CEO's with no clue when it comes to engineering are easy.
Case in point: The new interim Colette Kress is a finance MBA. China is laughing at us right now. Many engineers at Nvidia are looking at the exit.
He should be thankful he's not in prison. Even without the spy and affair scandals, his lobbying to sell chips to China is treasonous due to how geopolitically critical AI will soon become. (That alone is not criminally treasonous, but with the MSS influence operation, it might be.) He should've resigned days ago.
I'm no pro-US nationalist or anything, but I am very very much anti-CCP.
Him doing that is not criminally treasonous (although if influenced by a spy there might be some sort of crime; if he knew she was a spy then it might be criminally treasonous). I say it solely in non-legal, subjective, moral terms.
By the way, do we actually know if Alice Huang is actually Chinese spy, or just merely sees good money in reselling NVIDIA chips to them? Because you don't really need to be the former to do the latter.
> He should be thankful he's not in prison. Even without the spy and affair scandals, his lobbying to sell chips to China is treasonous due to how geopolitically critical AI will soon become. (That alone is not criminally treasonous,
He should be thankful he's not jailed for advocating something which is not even declared illegal yet? Is that the famous "rule of the law" I heard so much about?
The jail part is assuming the woman is in fact a spy and did in fact influence him to do this. Neither are proven.
The other part is me subjectively calling him treasonous, unrelatedly; not in a criminal way.
I should've said "depending on the results of the investigation, he may end up just being thankful he won't get a prison sentence". (Or maybe he will get a prison sentence, depending on what the investigation finds. We'll see.)
> Is that the famous "rule of the law" I heard so much about?
We're in the find-out phase of the merger of the corporation and the state, where everything is permitted as long as you send some considerations to the dear leader...
Did he? A singular CEO with 40+ direct reports and no succession plan... that alone feels like a very short term mindset to me. He could have been hit by a car tomorrow, what's the contingency plan there? Not to mention the whole 'violating export restrictions' thing, that's typically not great for the long term viability of a company either.
Not sure it’s as much “short term mindset” as it is power consolidation. He doesn’t own a big voting share (only 3.5%) or a special share class like Zuck, so it’s in his interest to not have a clear #2 lest they and the board get any ideas of collaborating on a coup.
He spent a decade supporting CUDA despite much criticism and share price losses only to ultimately be proven right. If that isn’t a long term bet, what is?
Without naming names, as that would be too identifying, the issue there is actually that Jensen was a bad and weak manager. Part of the reason for his accumulation of direct reports was not straightening out interpersonal issues amongst his reports - he has multiple sets of multiple reports each where they would naturally have a single owner but because they hate each other he couldn't have any of them report to any of the others (looking at you, Mellanox). This is a basic failure of managerial skill.
Jansen was once an engineer and a solid evangelist, but he doesn't really appear to have any skill at managing people.
> He had a long-term mindset, investing heavily in Tegra and CUDA in 2009-2010, even as he was plagued by write-offs from faulty chips.
He didn't seem to have a long-term mindset when he knowingly violated export control laws (the feds are, in general, super serious about export controls) and securities laws (the feds are also, in general, super serious about whatever they consider securities fraud) over the course of at least the last six months.
It's frustrating because it was so easily avoidable. Just don't do crimes with nation-states.
Thousands and thousands of employees played a more direct role. And in fact, many would've done things different, like not violating export controls and having affairs with reports. Don't simp for a CEO, you're weird
I have to imagine that Jensen is under an enormous amount of stress right now. I hope whatever he's going through he's got support. This all seems to be happening way too quickly to be just.
Like, maybe him stepping down is the right decision. But it feels like a hit job and something that was pushed through, rather than something that was properly considered as what is actually best for the company.
I'm dying to know how other tech CEOs rank on your "historical figures ordered by importance" list. Like, do you think Steve Jobs was more or less important then Harriet Tubman?
Globally? Honestly he probably was. Hundreds of millions of people have access to heath and finance resources they wouldn’t have got without the modern smartphone form factor and forced negotiation of unlimited data plans.
Ask someone in Bangladesh who the fuck Harriet Tubman is.
AIUI, the rise of mobile telephony in the Third World was driven almost entirely by feature phones, not the kind of smartphones that Jobs helped to drive.
Screw the stock price. If you looked into the history of how the company survived you know the company is now Intel. The US has probably lost yet another industry to China. Wonder if the Taiwan investments into the US fabs will now slow because a lot of them were relationship based...thanks to Jensen.
I hope I am wrong but I am starting to think the US left is about to walk into a historical economic collapse that they are inevitably increasing the chances of by 'doing the right thing'.
I wasn't referencing shareholder value - but it sounds like you have an Overton window dismissing the value that AI CPUs have provided-facilitated, if you weren't able to understand what I was referencing holistically; so you seem to have a bias.
Maybe but their conclusion(s) points to they're not including the full picture, and most people on here don't actually engage - or not in good faith, or I-you'll find quickly they fall for logical fallacies, etc.
I agree circular financing is a problem - but the CEO will have practically zero to do with that, and that they have to play the game everyone else is playing.
There's far more serious financial fraud strategies being use, that even Elon was afraid to specify on Joe Rogan podcast awhile back - afraid it'd get him assassinated, which he said in half-jest.
And you don't think US intelligence agencies knew immediately the CEO of Nvidia was being courted by a spy - but allowed it to continue? Who knows, maybe this has all been long-term pre-planned, all part of theatre towards what end - God only knows.
What’s the revenue target I need to hit to get a free pass for sanctions avoidance? What other rules, regulations and laws do you think he should be absolved from considering NVIDIAs quarterly profits?
He's no saint, of course. That being said, he is human and he's going through a lot right now. Its easy to dismiss someone's struggle because he's wealthy and powerful, and because it is his own fault, but somewhere buried in this story there is a human person who is suddenly the center of a lot of very negative attention. It is not wrong to hope that he is okay.
To call it a hit job is absurd. He is smart enough to know his actions could have severe consequences. He took a massive risk on behalf of millions for his own momentary pleasure.
Not a single inch of empathy for his wife and family, nor the misled investors and staff.
I think you're misunderstanding - I think the suggestion of a hit job is because of the timing of all this coming out.
His affairs have been going on for months or years, so much so that various places knew about it, did nothing to stop it, and didn't leak it.
I think it's a fair question to ask "why is this all coming out together now?" Nobody seems to know. In the absence of any other explanation, suggesting "hit job" isn't absurd.
> I think it's a fair question to ask "why is this all coming out together now?
1. Got too well known to hide
2. Republicans just badly lost the midterms. There is a lot of info that the President and head of Department of Commerce also knew about all of this the entire time and did nothing. They won't be able to stop investigations, and they don't want to be seen as getting in the way of them.
If that's true, the bigger story is not just that Jensen did all this, but that the administration likely knew he was guilty of Espionage and actually helped facilitate it by knowing but not acting. That is a real possibility.
To clarify, there is a possibility that the President of the United States and members of his team knowingly concealed and aided Conspiracy and Espionage against the United States.
I'll tell you what's absurd: Believing the Chinese government sent a spy to honeypot Huang into providing chips to Chinese companies, while everything about their public policy has been designed to prevent exactly that.
The Chinese government wants Chinese companies to buy Chinese chips.
Indeed it seems absurd, but maybe the Chinese government sent a spy to honeypot Huang into destroying (indirectly) its own company instead - knowing how western culture react to such events.
I think the "formal apology letter" wouldn't have existed if this was some sort of open-relationship situation. In that case, Huang violated an important agreement, and cannot be trusted to not violate other important agreements.
Ah. So you know their relationship? Whether it's an 'open marriage' or not? Whether the wife cheated first, or not? You're of course, in the know, so you can judge, yes?
He could have done a wrong thing. Or the affair could have been perfectly fine with his wife. Or the marriage could have been on the rocks for years, and they both agreed to not divorce, with all the drama and media attention, and just live their own lives.
I agree with your sentiment in general: we should not make assumptions about the parameters of others' relationships.
But in this case, Huang himself explicitly mentioned the hurt that he caused his family. I don't think it gets much clearer than this.
I owe my family and all of you an apology.
I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and
our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am
deeply sorry.
Throughout my life, my family has given me love and
support. They deserve my honesty and loyalty. Instead,
I let them down and damaged the life we built together.
I take full responsibility for what I did and the hurt I
caused, and I accept the criticism that comes with it.
To my wife and family: I love you. I know an apology
cannot undo what I have done. I hope our family will heal
and that, over time, I can earn back your trust.
He wrote himself a press release saying he was unfaithful and because of his actions he hurt his family... it sounds pretty clear that was not a consensual non-monogamous relationship. https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/a-message-to-our-company
If it was an open marriage, why would his first statement have been an apology to his wife and family? I don't see any reason to start assuming it was actually fine. In any case the affair becoming public in such a way would still be hurting them - the media attention you're speaking about. Much worse than a divorce, right?
Because the public sentiment towards open marriages is even more negative than towards infidelity? One is seen as a mistake that one can atone for, while the other is seen as a rejection of the institution itself in a country that has strong beliefs in it. Still only 65% of Americans support gay marriage, for example. Marriage following strict rules remains deeply important to a lot of people.
Absolutely it is performative. Writing a public "apology" for spending time with another person in their free time is also performative. Nobody actually cares what you do with your life. They aren't thinking about you at all. But when performing, the performance has rules of engagement.
Bond: I doubt if she'll remember me.
M: Remind her. Then pump her for information.
Moneypenny: You'll just have to decide how much pumping is needed, James.
I think finding humanity in our villains can help us gain perspective so I’d agree on your first point.
However let’s hold both thoughts at once, this was no hit job. Nvidia was forced to act quickly to mitigate business and legal risks. The eventual fallout they’ll face is still not fully known.
There is no support for people like him, CEOs of such big companies, or even any respectful CEO. People would only use him. That's human nature for you.
The public fall may seem quick but from my read of the timelines this has been ongoing for a lot longer.
The idea his fall is related to his affair also seems more like an attempt to minimise the fact that NVIDIA have been covertly selling to China when they were not supposed to.
Such a bizarre take to me. Yes, it's a quick fall.. but can you really trust him after he's been caught having an affair with a supposed Chinese spy, _and_ potentially another one with an employee? There is zero chance any normal business would keep a CEO after this...
Normally this would never come to light, the admin has known about the Chinese agent since 2025, and there is an extremely high probability that they know of any other affair partners as well as what he had for breakfast and how he’s doing with the fiber in his diet.
If you think that billionaire execs of highly strategic companies don’t have the CIA nonconsentually implanted in their colon you are extremely naive. He misstepped politically.
I’ve known a lot of execs, and I can probably count the ones that were highly successful and never cheated on their wives on one hand. The temptation comes with the territory, and the opportunities are endless and disarmingly charming. It takes a man of outstanding moral character to be unfailingly perfect under those circumstances, and unfortunately outstanding moral character is often not what gets you into the c-suite. It’s a lot like rockstars in the 70s, actually, but with more boring clothes.
I think the external event maybe moved quickly, but I read there was an internal event as well.
I’m sorry but this shows wildly inappropriate decision making. Say what you will about honeypots (I received specialized “warning” early in my career, but I recognize that is abnormal), but we all are forced through training every single year about how relationships at work, especially with imbalanced power dynamics, are inappropriate and should not take place.
I don’t care about the infidelity, but he represents the company at its pinnacle. He had to go.
You can agree or disagree with his position on exporting to China being good/bad for nVidia or the US. But actively working closely with a company (Megaspeed) where, from a thousand miles away, it was clear that their primary goal was to get around and/or bend US export controls... that's a bad idea. Megaspeed was clearly working for the direct benefit of the Chinese government.
Add onto that having an extramarital affair with the representative of that company? Come on, it's extremely likely she's an agent of China, and if not it's a gigantic business risk.
Then, on top of that, you have to remember that he's married. A divorce results in half of his shares going to his wife, who would then have a grudge, probably not in the best interests of the comapny.
It is as much of a mistake to anthropomorphize billionaires as it is to anthropomorphize LLMs. People with resources greater than nations are .001% human and the rest is closer to a lovecraftian god. Consider that he can shatter markets or send massive trading companies under simply by having an affair. The empathy is misplaced.
Absolutely not. The value of empathy is not "have empathy because empathy is good", it is in the pro-social outcomes. Empathy is wasted, and counterproductively so, on the non-empathetic, especially on the powerful and destructive. It is a peace treaty, much like tolerance.
He jumped in front of that bus himself. If the investigation turns out he was definitely orchestrating defying export controls then it's more like he drove one bus into another. He deserves every bit of embarrassment and ridicule no matter how impressive his business accomplishments were up to now.
Are you and I looking at the same thing? Huang is a human, in every way you and I are. If he took a DNA test it would say he's human. Right now he is a human having what is probably the worst week of his life. A pretty good life? Sure. But empathy isn't about weighing what he "deserves" or making arbitrary judgements about how he should feel in regards to the level of wealth & power he wields. The fact is he's a human being who is experiencing a lot of pain. You should feel empathy for him and for the people he's hurt. If you don't, maybe you're more like an LLM.
> I have to imagine that Jensen is under an enormous amount of stress right now. I hope whatever he's going through he's got support.
Jensen, if you are reading this and need support you can try looking into BetterHelp. You can even get 20% off using certain partner links. No one should have to go through the stress of loosing their job from Chineese spies alone and with BetterHelp you're just one click away from your very own personal therapist.
Sympathy for the guy having multiple affairs, including with a direct report, including with a spy and credible allegations of doing an end-run about valid export controls imposed by his country?
I have a lot more sympathy for the victims, not the arsonist!
Money is not that helpful when a 40 year old intimate relationship dissolves. Being able to buy things does little for memories that can no longer be shared.
Which country? The country of Taiwan where he’s from and where all his products are made? Or the USA whose diva in chief has had a fit about selling said chips to the country who produces all the USA’s stuff?
Some very harsh words being thrown around for Jensen’s very human failings. Try walking in his shoes, or at least having some degree of understanding and empathy.
Try walking in his shoes? He has an easier life than 99% of people lol. People always quick to jump in to defend the shittiest behaviour, maybe have some empathy for his wife?
Really shows you how much we need to kneecap these CEOs for societal good. The idea that they are hard workers is laughable. Everyone working in retail or a restaurant or in a call center is a harder worker than any executive on the planet.
Well conversely you’re labelling and attacking what you consider the shittiest behaviour, when you only have a sliver of detail. Try pondering what it’s like to create a $5trillion company leading the 21st century’s biggest boom, and consider what weird and unthought of and irresistible demands that might come with. The guy started in Denny’s.
All of this sounds easier than everyone’s life. He has no consequences possible in his life. So many people, even in western countries, live cheque to cheque. Why would I feel bad for someone who chose to do what he did? Irresistible demands? Not cheating on your wife?
Won't someone please stop and think about the poor guy who will face the terrible consequence of never having to work again and still having enough money so that the next 10 generations of his family will never have to work either.
Crazy talk. I’m sitting on a beach in Italy right now. My life couldn’t be easier. The stress and pressure of running a company like Nvidia is off the charts.
Nah, not a bot. I do abandon my account here after a week or after I get a few hundred karma though. I hate this site, but I haven't found a spot better for the sorts of things that come through. So I abandon my account once I find myself checking karma, only to make a new one once I see insane shit being posted. In this case the insane shit was people white knighting a billionaire serial cheater who sold products illegally and ripped off consumers while simultaneously fucking a direct report.
Pleaze. Even relaxing on the beach one can read the news and gauge sentiment for their investments. And you’re right, maybe I’ll see Jensen hanging out in Taormina next week. Good place to hide actually.
> This all seems to be happening way too quickly to be just.
Oh know, the consequences of my own actions have found me!
> But it feels like a hit job and something that was pushed through, rather than something that was properly considered as what is actually best for the company.
BUT THE COMPANY WON'T SOMEONE THINK ABOUT THE COMPANY
It is baffling to read comments that this is excusable or he should be retained 'in interest of the shareholders'. Setting aside the obviously poor judgement, the appearance of impropriety has serious ammunition behind a situation that already looked weird. More practically, he's compromised now. Whether it's further scandal or the impending criminal investigations, there might be further hooks people have on him.
The quote about succession planning is also a little out of context, he phrased it more that there should be continual information and responsibility sharing such that succession planning is effectively redundant or unnecessary.
I always wondered why investors were ok with not having any control due to dual structure shares and board composition. A "Great Men" theory of the world is a convenient and satisfying narrative, but it's usually not the best at explaining things. As the saying goes, "The cemeteries are full of indispensable men".
Which is exactly the right attitude to have. He's not a hollywood celeb, nor is he even a politician. He was involved in a private scandal, that doesn't compromise his ability to lead a company to profitability, no matter what I think of him a a person.
The market has reacted this way for a reason - Nvidia share prices fell a lot over the past few days.
If the espionage probe was serious (and it was known about in intelligence circles going back as much as a year), it would be handle much differently, with charges brought agains him or his company being sanctioned.
Person A having an affair with Person B when Person B is a direct report or directly within Person A's power in the company is a disqualification for leadership. Full stop. It is an abuse and shows that Person A is willing to abuse their position for personal gain. They cannot be trusted any longer.
You're entitled to your opinion, and I'm not saying I disagree, but you should be aware that it's just an opinion. You're stating it as if it's some sort of objective fact.
Many people could just say the exact opposite of your sentence, i.e. "not a disqualification" and "can still be trusted". Furthermore, These people could supply many historical examples of leaders who did similar things and went on to remain great/effective leaders of the things they were charged to lead.
>> You're entitled to your opinion, and I'm not saying I disagree, but you should be aware that it's just an opinion. You're stating it as if it's some sort of objective fact.
It may not be a fact per se, but in the United States it is widely agreed upon that romantic relationships with subordinates is a big no-no from an ethics perspective (due to power dynamics and high potential for abuse), in addition to being a serious liability for the company.
When a manager has a romantic relationship with a subordinate they could, theoretically, show that employee favortism and/or make their work life miserable. Now any promotion or raise or privilege or punishment the employee receives is under scrutiny. Did the Manager have any say in it? Was another employee dismissed out of hand for the position because they passed on the manager's advances? All of this is a problem when the romantic relationship is known and on the level, when its an affair it is VERY problematic. The employees involved in the affair may sue for retaliation due to some circumstance, or another employee may sue because they feel they were passed over for a promotion or position. Others might have suspected something and been made to feel their job was in danger if they asked questions.
Also irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Another powerful person wasn't punished while the woman he took advantage of was. That doesn't make this okay. It is a thing that happened and that we should strive to eliminate.
> If the espionage probe was serious (and it was known about in intelligence circles going back as much as a year), it would be handle much differently, with charges brought agains him or his company being sanctioned.
My pet theory about why it was leaked is because the very serious reports were sent to the White House and they then did absolutely nothing about it. Just because this, wildly corrupt, current administration has not brought charges does not mean it won't happen in the future.
The current DOJ is not a serious organization, so them not pursuing charges doesn’t really say anything
It’s also absurd that you’d think this is totally fine when the smart shareholders will be suing Nvidia for their malfeasance in evading export controls and incompetence in making sure their CEO doesn’t violate sexual harassment laws
I don't get it; why would shareholders sue for evading export controls? That was a profit-chasing move, that lead to a higher share price. It was not illegal either.
Also dating your coworker is not sexual harassment - sexual harassment is when you make unwelcome advances
> with charges brought agains him or his company being sanctioned.
With a sane administration that hadn't possibly looked the other way due to emoluments (allegedly), maybe. Who knows what the response will be from the current mob (gentle pun intended).
Spoken like someone who puts all his eggs in something he has no control over. It's crazy how oblivious you are to this insane situation "investing" has become in this country. It's gambling. You don't control anything. You just hope for the best. It's all a house of cards.
I dont understand this argument, its either a shareholder concern or a criminal concern? a "conflict of interest" is a term used when a 3rd party needs to be unbiased ex government or law. You wouldn't say its a conflict of interest if your favourite sports team trades their best player
We're taught in school that ad hominem is a logical fallacy, but you know, sometimes it's not.
If someone holds NVDA, nothing out of their mouth about NVDA matters to me. Even if they're stating a fact, cool, I can find those from someone else. The only exception is if they're willing to double down after, then I'll listen.
People have a lot of net worth tied into the economy. Nvidia is a lynchpin in the economy. People are biased towards keeping their net worth up. It’s not that deep, people want the tendies to continue printing.
Yeah it is that deep. The second money is involved so many people are willing to look the other way. If you don't see an issue with that then you are clearly part of the problem.
I find it interesting to see so much blame being directed at the act of removing one person who may have been holding up trillions of value in the stock market, rather than at the market and industry conditions that led to so much value being supported by one person in the first place.
> baffling to read comments that this is excusable or he should be retained 'in interest of the shareholders'
If you want Exhibit A for the moral corruption of Silicon Valley’s culture, this is it. And it’s not tied to shareholdings. It’s the quasi-monarchic strain of worship that has been poisoning Valley culture for at least a decade now.
I mean the guy had an affair. Or two. Or more. Not cool and that one turned out to be a Chinese spy makes it quite impactful. But from a pure "moral corruption" standpoint this is not worse than your average college frat house.
The affair(s) were tied to skirting export bans. The moral corruption is bigger than Nvidia because it seems Trump administration was involved. Laws shouldn't be applied selectively like this.
One of the greatest fallacies of modern times is that people are not human. There is this expectation that people will be perfect and flawless and make zero mistakes. That is incongruent with human nature. The dude had two consensual relationships outside his marriage. To err is human... this is all so overblown.
Meanwhile we have a felon in the white house (sexual assault) among an immeasurable number of other supposed crimes
This isn’t a unique situation. When your error is sleeping with a subordinate, you get fired. That’s universally true in the corporate world. No reason this should be any different from the countless times it’s happened before.
I do believe a lot of people in here will be selected to be the kind who sees themselves as the next billionaire ceo (some might even be) and want it to be ok to have affairs with anyone they want. Want the CEO to be infallible and super special as this would apply to them too.
This guy had a cult of personality I did not know about until this comment thread.
"He created so much shareholder value."
"Unlike Elon he shared the wealth with the company."
"The US is worse off without him."
I'm sorry but a patsy who is this gullible, or a CCP-friendly traitor that is this slimy (the jury is still out), should not be in this position of power.
Cool for all he accomplished so far. This isn't a situation that deserves a second chance.
Not everyone believes in the idea of nations or national security.
I don’t care one whit who he sells chips to, or who he’s fucking when he’s not selling those chips. The US government’s geopolitical agenda is not my geopolitical agenda.
"Appearance of impropriety". Fuck all you puritans.
Ah yes. Being gay disqualified you from security clearance. Why? Because if you are gay, then you can be blackmailed. Why? Because you might lose your security clearance.
Being gay is not a choice. Sleeping with your subordinates and clients is kind of a choice. A bad one, easily avoidable and pretty sure well known as the wrong move.
Employees can be fired for tweeting something bad. The ceo should be held to some standard.
The board was even backing him on the first affair, got a big problem on the second, Reuters is now reporting a third (also employee).
A company is not required to maintain a look of propriety. A company is not required to not look fishy. A company is not required to care how it is observed by the public at large. It is required only to maximize shareholder value.
There is no doubt that his sexscapades were stupid, but at the same time there is only one question that should matter for the board. Will the shareholders make more money with him or without?
“Modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not.”[0]
Supreme Court disagrees that a company is required “only required to maximize shareholder value”, do you have any evidence to support your claim otherwise?
This person does not have any evidence to support their claim. The notion that shareholder primacy is enshrined in settled law (when in fact, as you point out, the opposite is true) is widely believed in the HN comments pages.
Maybe the board knows more than we do, but so far there is no public substantiation of these points. Obviously if he’s convicted, he can’t be CEO from jail, but why make company decisions a day after a new story broke?
Sure, of course they know more in the banal absolute sense.
But do they know more material information that we would all agree makes this not a hysterical witch hunt I don’t think we can be so confident about that.
Even if their information comes from American security personnel that should still be taken with the grain of salt.
Shareholder primacy at the expense of everything else is a ridiculous and relatively new idea. There is no reason that it has to be that way other than that Milton Friedman thought it was a good optimization problem.
Can't help that it leaves a bad taste in my mouth that the China hawk fraction of the US government and associated entities (i.e. Anthropic) obviously brought the hammer down on Jensen here, even if he arguably brought about his own downfall with the affair.
I assume leaning on Nvidia to integrate chip verification and tracking to not let any unmonitored compute exist in the world is next, which is also in line with what the leading US labs want.
There might have been no such intervention. Put yourself in Huang's shoes for a minute, or a board member if you prefer, lick your finger, put it up to see how the winds are blowing and think of what you'd find. No need for pressure, just glance at the news and realize that the pressure will be forthcoming, and it won't/wouldn't just be "the China hawk fraction" (sic) but widespread.
But the valid decision is voted by board of directors, 10 individuals in total. To intervene, the gov practically needs to persuade some of them to change their vote.
I don't think the hawk fraction holds actual leverage on any of them to intervene.
I think the situation is just the board gets overwhelmed by journos, panicked, rushed to a decision, and Jensen resigned knowing he has to leave.
I'm actually surprised at this. I figured everyone would justify keeping him because he made Nvidia (and investors) so much money. Money > anything else
I'd go as far as to say the second leak helps him a bit, by reframing this as a cheating scandal rather than it being more about him knowingly evading an embargo.
Having an affair with your direct report also wildly increases the risk that Nvidia would be embroiled in high-profile lawsuits, either for sexual harassment or favoritism
A CEO admitting to an affair with a customer after previously denying it, seems like a sufficient reason for removal, even before you add the geopolitical intrigue.
Because the customer in question raises questions of the CEO's judgement, plus the possibility of knowledge that the target was violating sanctions. We don't know. That's why it's a bad situation for the stock.
The stock seems to be responding more heavily to the potential loss of Jensen than it does to the potential continuation of Jensen given new knowledge.
It also seems like there’s a high potential for half of Jensen’s position to be granted in a subsequent divorce decree, meaning there could be enormous selling pressure in the next several years.
I don’t think she’s likely to sell it right away, but I do think she’s a lot more likely to sell it sooner than they would have together as of last week.
That change is still material to the future outlook as the price is the intersection of supply and demand and the predicted supply of $NVDA shares for sale just increased by scores of billions of dollars worth.
Morality is not a straight line, once someone has cheated they sort of accepted it for themselves after feeling guilty but that doesn't transfer to other places where someones morals are challenged.
Relationships and stock price are built on trust. An affair, a relationship with a customer/subordinate, and an attempted cover-up are all breaches of that trust.
> Why is an affair with a customer grounds for announcing a resignation that caused an instant 10% stock price drop?
OP said
>A CEO admitting to an affair with a customer *after previously denying it*, seems like a sufficient reason for removal
It's not the crime. It's the cover up.
In this case Jensen either 1) lied to the board about the affair, 2) directed the Nvidia PR to publish a materially false statement about it, or 3) both.
From a company governance standpoint it's incredibly hard to trust Jensen when he's either lying to you, using the company to protect his personal life, or (again) both.
Admitting to the affair with a customer is a nothingburger. Directing the company to release a false statement about it, and that customer turns out to be a Chinese asset if a BIG fucking deal.
Lying about it served no one's interest but Jensen's, and ended up hurting the company significantly.
Nvidia's previous denials are a significant issue from a board of directors position. He either lied to the board about it, directed the company's PR people to make a false statement about it, or both. And that lie turned out to be material (in a SEC sense of the word material).
It would be very difficult for the board to regain trust in his ability to make choices that are correct for Nvidia, rather than himself.
Two back to back including one with a subordinate and one involving a person violating export controls though are pretty tough to weather. And I doubt that's the end of the affairs too, I'm not a Huang is months away from having dated every woman on earth extrapolationist but I also doubt he's only had (or has) 2.
I don't know why you're getting downvotes. The parent comment, "Most likely the internal findings from the investigation point to something more troubling/illegal", is comical. The information on the public record already points to something troubling/illegal, as you just pointed out!
Plus Jensen Huang is an immigrant from Taiwan. And this administration does not like people who haven't been born on this geographical soil (being not born on US soil, I am obviously not against it, just pointing out obvious animosity of current US administration towards immigrants in general)
you mean financially successful right? Otherwise both are terrible parasites and recently we just seeing tip of an iceberg when it comes to Vivek (I know 2 people that worked for him, but I will leave it at that).
This is what I keep coming back to. The board is not some random board. They know Jensen is their golden goose, there is no NVIDIA without Jensen. What they saw must have been company-existentially-illegal for them to throw their golden goose under the bus as a survival tactic.
edit: btw the board has a director that’s ex-Cooley, no greenhorn I imagine to congressional investigational scrutiny. It had to be something that made them realize cutting ties with Jensen immediately was the only way to survive.
That certainly won't be the conclusion of the board as less surprising firing Jensen - stock-wise the best-performing CEO of this decade so far - affects the stock way more negatively than sex affairs with spies and employees made public because shareholders don't care about your sexual moral or code of conducts for regular employees (of which neither Jensen nor Kimberly were). So there is more to it than the public will be let known.
Wouldn't this open him up to blackmail and espionage? The people he cheated with whether they exploited it or not had kompromat on him. Not only that but the new allegations show he has a pattern of acting a way that would let people get kompromat on him, and investors were probably not previously pricing in that the CEO himself was a huge insider risk, and now that the cat's out of the bag, they are. Even if he leaves now that wouldn't undo one of his affair partners stealing proprietary info.
If the Huang has a secret relationship with a report then he's in a lot of trouble and the company is in some trouble. If the companies response to that relationship is to do nothing - now the company and Huang are both in a lot of trouble. Heck the problem with the first affair isn't the is she or is she not a spy - if Huang could convincingly argue that he didn't know then he's a victim - the problem is having a relationship with a customer, that's actually not much better then with a report.
I think they go spooked because he's been a proponent of relaxing export controls to China and it turns out it's because his mistress/gf is a chinese spy who is influencing him. And NVIDIA is making what currently is probably a product of national security importance.
If I was them, I'd be worried that the government invoke the Defense Production Act (DPA) or impose National Security Agreements and Clearances which would require NVIDIA to isolate sensitive R/D, restrict foreign nationals from accessing specific chip designs, and place government-vetted compliance monitors on its board or security teams. ALSO there definately will be subpeonos and probes and those are never fun.
Easier to say we cut out the guy responsible and hopefully that lessons the troubles
After the news about a potential foreign compromise, disclosure of an affair with a subordinate is pretty damning. One can be discounted as poor judgement. Two is a pattern that's hard to dismiss. I wonder if we'll learn of other shenanigans or whether kicking him out stops future (possible) disclosures.
Poor judgment? He was larger than life persona, many times compared to Musk (minus huge Twitter follower) who is also very well known for his extramarital affairs.
Its like saying: I mean, molesting children is not nice and not morally great, but who cares for a priest? He isn't hired for being a good person, he is hired to conduct worship services during Sunday mass.
An adult woman being wronged by infidelity is not remotely like a child being molested. Wth is wrong with you?
No one cares about the sex life of a ceo of a company that big except their own direct family. Investors don't care, customers don't care, vendors don't care, the government doesn't care, and that's the entire list of people that matter. His wife and other immediate family care and that's it.
The only reason anyone (of any relevance or significance) cares in this case is becsuse of the embargo & national security angle.
Just a sad state of affairs. Jensen was by far the biggest voice pushing for open weights and keeping the Anthropic / OpenAI doom narrative from getting out of control.
Now without him there will be a vacuum for the ideologies of Dario / Elon / Sam to fill the void.
Only because it benefits NVIDIA to have more potential customers in the shovel market to mine gold individually versus consolidating within a few providers (where the backend tooling becomes irrelevant to the consumers, and OpenAI & Co could freely change GPU manufacturers on a whim or move things in-house).
Yep, it's kind of the old "if you owe the bank $100, it's your problem. If you owe $100M, it's the bank's problem." NVIDIA would love to diversify its customer base.
I've consistently seen Jensen as a transparently self-interested shovel salesman while we dig our own mass grave.
For a person in his position, he has been exceedingly slow to wake up to the prospect of AGI - he seemed genuinely surprised by arguments from informed layperson Ezra Klein, for example, like he'd never even heard of it before.
There would be another smear campaign, sexual assault allegation or shady dealings.
It's easy to find dirt on everyone and coordinate the media to take them down.
He had to go because of geopolitics due to US/China relations and the AI race.
It has nothing with his "dick", that's just a story they sold to public.
> He had to go because of geopolitics due to US/China relations and the AI race.
Why? By all accounts everyone in the US loved him and thought he was the "le face of AI" or whatever. Would he have been ensnared in this scheme to smuggle chips to China if he hadn't slept with a Chinese spy who just happened to be a top exec at Megaspeed? If he didn't have this proclivity for affairs in the first place? The world may never know, but it can speculate.
If you want somebody removed at that level, and you actually can, you can invent reasons. Jensen having an alleged affair makes it easier for them, and that's it. It's also probably less bad for Jensen that it's only an affair that Jensen is going out on, as invented reasons could be worse for him (like sexual assault allegation by three different women, for example). Just saying, I have seen it happen.
Stop with the gaslighting. This was nowhere close to an "invented reason."
He fucked a communist spy and he admitted he did it.
Not only that, everyone in his orbit was running interference for months before that on a DIFFERENT affair with a subordinate[0]. Why was everyone covering for him if there really was some conspiracy to "railroad" him? Or maybe Sam Altman's coordinating with China to honeypot CEOs because reasons?
No, you misunderstand me. I am not saying it was invented. I am saying, had Jensen not provided an easy ramp, reasons could be invented. I have seen it happen.
I am saying it here:
> Jensen having an alleged affair makes it easier for them, and that's it.
That’s not what that guy was saying; you’re taking hypotheticals literally. He was saying that even if he hadn’t had an affair or sold chips to China, a reason to oust him could have simply been fabricated if his rivals wanted him gone badly enough.
“Show me the man, and I will show you the crime”
I don’t think he was even making the case that his rivals were involved in this, only that if they really wanted him gone for advocating for open source models, it’s not like they needed this specific scandal to pull it off.
>He fucked a communist spy and he admitted he did it.
The communist spy is the invented reason. There has been zero evidence presented that Alice Huang is a spy for the CCP[1], and if they did have evidence it would have been more appropriate to charge Jenson last year when the Trump administration was made aware of the relationship.
Everything about Alice being a honeypot has largely been hearsay.
To me, it's far more likely that someone in the state department did not like that Jenson was circumventing export controls and manufactured this to bury him.
Appeal to conspiracy, the deep state didn't make him have an affair. Who, exactly, was trying to oust him? To what end? It's surely not China since he was helping them get their hands on chips. It can't be the Trump admin since Trump likes the guy and invited him onto his trip to Beijing despite Rubio's memo noting he was probably already compromised at that point.
It seems like the two things are pretty tightly interwoven. Would he have funneled those chips if he'd never had an affair with a Chinese spy who happened to be a top exec at Megaspeed?
Interesting that 18% of Nvidia's revenue comes from their 2020 Mellanox buyout. Might rank among YouTube as one of the most profitable corporate buyouts ever.
About their new interim CEO Colette Kress:
>'She starts her day talking with Israeli execs because Nvidia's major Israel operations (post-Mellanox acquisition, ~6k staff, ~18% of revenue via networking chips) are business-critical'
Jensen bought Mellanox for $7B in 2020. In Q2 2026 it generated $17.5B in revenue or ~18% of Nvidia's total revenue.
He wanted to have the cake and to eat it at the same time. I've seen CEO's who handled this in a much more orderly way, such as: getting a divorce, then announcing internally to the company that he is getting a divorce, then announcing he has found new love with a certain person at the company and in the same sentence announcing that the certain person effectively no longer answers to him, but to the board or something like that.
Still icky, but this person still enjoys success as a CEO of their company. Huang not anymore.
The apologists in this thread are absolutely shocking. Jensen is a ruthless CEO who clearly lacks moral fiber. Why do we idolize and "feel" for people like this?
The most importance sentence from your report is this one from the top of page 6:
> We believe that despite essentially no direct compute sales into China after April 2025, Nvidia continued to service Chinese demand via sales to non-restricted intermediaries and diversion.
That’s not at all breaking export control laws. In fact it is the government’s responsibility to identify these non-restricted intermediaries and make them restricted. The government has done this plenty of times in the past and it should again do so here. It is not a company’s job to infer what the government wants it to do. The difference between selling to China and servicing China-originated demand is huge.
And then in a massive game of telephone many people on this thread actually believes that Nvidia allowed direct sales to China, which is how they conclude Huang is breaking the law.
I did skim all 40 pages. None of the remaining nuance is as important as this sentence in the context of this thread. I made this importance judgement myself. You are of course free to read the whole thing too and point out which other nuances are pertinent to the current discussion.
Whether or not there's proprietary information espionage going on, there are no other explanations on the table for Megaspeed being able to buy billions of dollars of Nvidia chips other than that they are cut out and smuggling channel.
I'm not even that bothered about those chips going to China. But, like a lot of other aspects that leave us wondering how big and how fragile an AI bubble exists, the fact that billions of dollars of Nvidia revenue is from a reportedly priority customer that isn't actually using the chips is the problem.
I have NVDA stock, I think this is neutral at worst. Obviously bad short term, but the fundamentals are what they are. They are gonna print money for at least the next 5 years no matter what happens.
The reality of the situation is they can be guilty as fuck, but they are so important to the world and us economy, that any sanctions they have will be symbolic. Nobody wants to kill the golden goose, even democrats.
There will be a lot of noise, it will be embarrassing, but I just can't imagine a situation where it significantly impacts their bottom line.
The bear case here is pretty much that you think AI is a bubble anyway, and this just accelerates it.
He sucks but even if I take the worst interpretation of what it looks like this guy did and assume there's a bunch of other affairs I just don't have enough energy to get worked up about something so comparatively small potatoes. I don't idolize or feel sorry for him, but he was a competent leader of his company. Nvidia will be a weaker company without him and I think the fears of an inference lock on GPUs to prop up slime ball American AI companies is more likely to come true with him gone. The next CEO is more likely to accept a bride to make it happen.
So you think quid pro quo sexual harassment in the workplace is no big deal? People should be able to fuck their way to the top, and bosses should be able to demand sex from you to keep your job?
In order to see this as a bad thing you have to first agree with the export controls. Like Jensen, HN loves chinese models, that's why the outrage does not resonate.
It would be hypocritical to both use DeepSeek and also be outraged at the (alleged) mechanisms through which China acquires GPUs.
I wonder if people haven't seen his interviews or public appearances in the past 1-2 years, especially when anything to do with Trump came up. I don't find CEO interviews particularly interesting to begin with, because they're performing a role and can't give honest answers. Jensen took that dishonesty to a pretty high level.
Ezra Klein interviewed Jensen about 1.5 months ago and I had an off-putting feeling from it, and thought a lot of his answers were laughable. He sounded like he was obviously lying. A few days later, Klein interviewed Bill Gates and sort of anonymously brought up the arguments that Jensen made. You could see a visible disbelief of the arguments in Gates' face and posture, even saying "I almost can't believe you're asking that". (Not that Bill Gates is some paragon, but it wasn't close to a respectful disagreement.)
You could tell Ezra was frustrated in that interview. I thought his first two questions were pushing for a real answer from Jensen and he just sort of let it go because it was clear he wasn't going to get one. The notion that societal shifts were going to be fine and we were just ignoring human ambition, end of answer, was intellectually pretty wild. I also thought the subsequent Bill Gates interview was the perfect follow up.
In other contexts we expect some transparency if you have a stake in what is happening. This thread is full of tech workers, and would look very different if each comment was prefaced with some sort of 'Hello, I am John Doe. Nvidia represents 35% of my retirement portfolio, and the semiconductor industry overall represents over 70%. This is why I do not care to rock the boat, and think he did nothing wrong...'
It's insane. I bet none of the commenters here would spare a thought for a manager at a 7-11 who got fired for having sex with one of his subordinates and ended up on the streets because he couldn't pay his rent.
But one of the wealthiest people on the planet gets fired, suffering zero personal hardship as a result, and everybody's up in arms. How could you do this! They all do this, how dare you single him out!
I think that there's a pervasive idea, especially in the tech/startup space, that making money is a moral good. Not merely that making money is compatible with being a good person, but that it makes you a good person, and the more you make the more good you are. Firing an ultra-rich person is therefore basically an affront to a saint. Never mind that it doesn't put them under any hardship, that they and their heirs will still be wealthier than any of us can even conceive of. It's morally wrong to do anything bad to such a good person.
You're asking why posters in a VC forum, in an industry that is despised by the public for its wanton greed, societal destruction, and complete disdain towards humanity would want to protect one of their own?
Bro, this is what the tech industry is all about: fucking over society to make a dollar.
I don't think there is a more hallmark visionary CEO than Jobs, and Apple isn't exactly doing poorly today.
Maybe the veneer isn't there, but it's very hard to make the case that Apple has in any way failed following the loss of him. Cook was pretty mediocre, and it shows that when you have a strong ship sailing, you just need a "not total idiot" to keep it going.
The counterpart is the state of Apple after Steve Jobs left in 1985. Apple was in dire straits when Steve Jobs returned in December 1996. Granted, Jobs wasn't CEO in 1985, but as co-founder, he had tremendous influence over Apple, though he didn't have absolute power; he left due to losing a power struggle against John Sculley and Apple's board.
I'm also reminded about the state of HP once the founders retired. My understanding is that John Young and Lewis Platt preserved the HP Way. However, Platt's successor, Carly Fiorina, moved the company far away from the HP Way, and HP hasn't been the same since.
This is a sad time for NVIDIA. I hope NVIDIA is blessed to get a Platt and not a Fiorina.
I think you are not giving enough credit to Cook. He trained under Jobs and is a world titan when it comes to supply chain. He is not some mumbo jumbo marketing/sales guy. Yes under his leadership Apple released some bad bets but he deliberately invested in a vision that Jobs created and spent years teaching him. This couldn't have been sustained post Jobs death unless Cook continued to instill the culture Jobs had created. Else you wouldn't attract the people needed to create marvels like their CPUs.
If someone else that wasn't directly trained by Jobs for years was hired, i'd argue that the culture would start to falter because one thing slides somewhere, then another, then another an soon enough 'A players' don't want to sacrifice their core years at a company that isn't instilling the values they want to work under. Cook himself almost went down that path with his budding career at Compaq. His family thought he was nuts to leave the growing company for Apple of all places. They didn't see the values that Cook saw in Jobs.
I don't think that Nvidias board will have any problem though finding an A tier CEO to run the company.
They probably will not get an S-tier visionary, but mature companies with deeply established roots don't necessarily need that like nascent companies do.
Hard disagree. Jobs polished things that already existed. They were never on the bleeding edge of hardware design and manufacturing when it comes to actual performance and capability.
Right, and he had the knowledge to know that consumers don't care about that stuff. So we got iPhones with excellent usability instead of windows phones with HD displays.
Building products for consumers and building products for engineers are seemingly not the same endeavor. I loved having physical buttons and a keyboard on the early smart phones. They were proper communication devices. Now they are consumer devices.
Yeah there is probably more to the story. Like evidence he actually did something very damaging to NVIDIA/National security. Knowingly helped smuggled chips, divulged trade secrets, etc. An affair and unknowingly selling chips to a company smuggling into China would not be worth the risk of getting rid of him. He must have already caused pretty large damage that is has yet to metastasize.
That's not a useful defense. I think everyone here knows that Tesla and SpaceX without Elon would trade at a third or a fourth their current valuations. People are invested in breathing Elon's gas. But if it's bullshit, like selling chips to a cut out, and making that cut out a priority customer, that undermine's confidence in all the reported financials having to do with AI.
Obviously, only him could have great visions about NVIDIA. I am expecting a 'we are going to stagnate, at best, without Jensen' worded admittance now from those poor folks remained in the organisation, with all those visionary thoughts taken away from them so abruptly. CEOs are the one taking the companies forward!
Lot of comments here stating with absolute certainty that China wanted Nvidia chips (they've previously ordered Chinese companies to not buy Nvidia chips https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-17/china-age...) and that Alice Huang is a CCP spy (zero public evidence of this).
People who have worked in the national security sector in the US know how China operates. Any Chinese tech personage who is not a CCP spy but who somehow rises to a position of international influence will be recruited to work for the CCP by being made an offer they cannot refuse. In a typical case, there is plenty of evidence but most of it will never be made public for security reasons.
Of course China always denies this, but the evidence for this behavior over thousands of cases is such that the burden of proof is on those who claim such a person was not a spy.
This does not imply that the Chinese people or even its government are "evil" or that we shouldn't do business with them. It's just something that everybody who deals with China needs to be aware of.
I think my pedantic gripe here is that I don't see the people who are made offers they can't refuse by China and are Chinese citizens as "spies" as conventionally defined - they are generally not pretending to be anything other than Chinese business people, and business people passing info along or being asked to do things for/by government don't really make them "spies" IMO - at least not until they've changed citizenship or are working directly in something sensitive. Starting a business in another country to serve the interests of the home country with home country money is more akin to the British East India Company or something like that than being a secret agent as I see it.
My understanding is that NVidia's organisation is very flat and Huang has his fingers in every pie; he's not the hands off type. Moreover there was no succession plan. I get that having an affair with a spy is not great but isn't it risky to replace him now?
I'm going to guess the 2nd affair with a direct report who rose quickly through the ranks is from the board's perspective the more egregious of the two failings.
And: the public only knows what's made it out. Who knows what else has come out in private.
Oh come on, having sex with a coworker is rape now? This is getting ridiculous. Why not just go the whole way and require all sexual activity to come with with a signed and notarized consent form?
No? Having sex with a coworker is not rape, and no one said nor insinuated it was.
Go forth and consensually bang your coworkers. Knock yourselves out.
When you have the ability to fire or promote someone, however, you hold significant power over their life -- potentially impacting their ability to eat, house themselves, etc. In those cases, it's valid to ask, "Is there a possibility someone is being coerced into sex because they can't afford to say no?"
This is question of consent. It's not an allegation of rape. It's only a question and there are probably times the answer is no.
You don't have to knee jerk react to someone pointing out an obvious potential conflict of interest and go "so everything is rape now?"
You don't think the board of a listed company care about the CEOs bit on the side is being promoted? That's really not a good look for a company to admit that.
It's one thing to happen and another to put that out in the open.
Officials are corrupted? CEOs sleeping with other women including his subordinates? Snow is white? What's the deal? People at that level are basically playing politics, not laws.
However, the fact that someone decided to release all those information as PUBLIC, and followed that up with ANOTHER scandal, means that they are determined to get rid of them. As you said, it is indeed serious matter.
As the Chineses say: "Something weights as light as a quarter of pound if it's left alone, but can weight a thousand tons if put on the scale".
Because reality deems that this is not really the problem, I was about to mention the Epstein thing -- everything in that file is 100x worse than what Jensen did.
If we (the common people) really want consequences, we will need to do a LOT more and put things in our own hands instead of relying on our representatives -- oh but that's too populist for HN's taste.
> we will need to do a LOT more and put things in our own hands instead of relying on our representatives -- oh but that's too populist for HN's taste.
I'm with you on the first half, and see the second half changing. The fever may have broken in the US electorate.
I feel like "not having a succession plan" should be a fireable offence on its own.
Otherwise you end up thinking "should I start an affair with this Chinese spy I've been breaking US laws with? What are they going to do, fire me? They can't, I've got them trapped so I'm untouchable, I can do whatever I want. And if I'm in a helicopter crash then it sucks to be them, I'll not care when I'm dead".
Imagine having to explain that line of reasoning to Congress in four months. "Yes, Senator, we know our CEO was facilitating chip smuggling to China while in a relationship with a Chinese spy, but we figured that it would just be too risky to replace him at this time."
For all his faults, I do feel for Jensen. He built this thing from an absolute scratch. He had a lot of luck on the way, from crypto to CUDA. And who can forget his spat with Jobs all those years ago.
Apple used nVidia GPUs in most of its computers. Around 2008-2009, nVidia produced a line of faulty GPUs that were used in the Macbook Pro. This led to widespread hardware failures, and was known as "Bumpgate" because the problem was caused by faulty solder bumps inside the GPU chip. nVidia refused to fully reimburse Apple for repairs because it wasn't contractually obligated to do so. In response, Apple switched away entirely from nVidia GPUs.
I think it was well into 2013 because both the 2011 and 2013 MBPs I had suffered from it. but I thought that was an apple issue (ie not soldering the dicrete gpu well enough to save money on it)
after the 2 faulty products in a row, I haven't bought an apple product since.
You are missing out, the M series laptops are insanely good. Now wondering how the field of ML would have developed if Apple had had Nvidia chips all the way...
And that's kidna funny because now Apple Sillicon has pretty great graphics on their own.
Maybe that's the lesson he learned and why he _supposedly_ was making sure his GPUs were still getting to China. Because he knows that the alternative would lead to good Nvidia Chinese competitor later on
Nvidia eventually had a spat with just about any corporation it has ever worked with. Their only partnership that stood the test of time is probably Nintendo.
> Their only partnership that stood the test of time is probably Nintendo.
But even then, the original Switch 1 homebrew relied on an oversight in NVIDIA's Tegra chip that blew open the whole platform due to the ability to execute unsigned code. The Switch 1 was actually pretty locked down. Nintendo worked hard on securing it properly, only for it to all be for naught due to their SoC vendor making a massive blunder.
I wish I could have seen what was said in the meetings between the two companies when the first Switch exploit was released, considering it was fully on NVIDIA.
It remains possible to feel sympathy for people who have done wrong. He's one of the richest men on the planet, he's acted with hubris and ignominy, he's betrayed his loved ones, and he's also probably feeling pretty terrible right now.
The human thing to also do is not pushing AI everywhere for the benefit of themselves and their stakeholders, to the detriment of literally the rest of humanity
Have you never been in a situation where you made mistakes, felt guilty, and appreciated the empathy and sympathy from fellow humans in light of all the shame and vitriol you received counter-wise?
> It remains possible to feel sympathy for people who have done wrong.
It does remain possible; he's a parasite and someone who's just had an affair. He wouldn't value the sympathy given, Neither himself or Nvidia would return the gesture.
They give null shit about you.
> He's one of the richest men on the planet, he's acted with hubris and ignominy, he's betrayed his loved ones, and he's also probably feeling pretty terrible right now.
He chose to have the affair and as having my father do the same to my mother; you get no sympathy for cheating. Let them feel pretty terrible, maybe they will find what it's like to be human for a change.
Nothing more than a parasite in the corporate playground. His actions caught up with him; woe is me. What will I ever do with so much money.
> I think the biggest issue is to not have empathy for sinners and you think you are a saint…
At least that's only hypocrisy (assuming you are not, in fact, actually a saint--you might have developed habits and values that mean you are not likely to sin in that way.) At some level it's not even a problem: you want to aspire to be a better person than you are right now, which means you will hold values that you do not currently measure up to.
But thinking you are a saint because you have empathy is perniciously self-righteous. You can see something similar to this in the progressive movement right now, for instance.
Genghis Khan probably had bunions and I could have some empathy for the pain endured, but I don't because spending a second feeling anything for him is a second I'm not invested in empathizing with, and better yet, helping people that actually need it.
DO you feel for how depressed that WW2 dictator was before he took his own life? How sad and lonely the big "H" was? That stirs empathy in you? Not me. I make choices about who I spend my mental and emotional efforts on.
I think a lot of people might also disagree with the consequences. Something along the lines of - if it’s all consensual then why does it matter. Disclosing trade secrets (wittingly or otherwise) or skirting export ban is a separate matter that does have real legal consequences if proven true.
This is his identity. Sure, he’s made some poor choices. Imagine Jobs resigning at the height of iPhone phenomenon or Gates at the very peak of Windows. Not sure if Jensen can bounce back from this psychologically. He’ll be broken for awhile.
"with a spy" where is the proof that she is a spy? It seems to be perfectly ok for CEOs to profess blind allegiance to a terrorist state, like Larry Ellison does, seems like a double standard.
Me too. If he needs somebody to take his place he can reach me at my HN profile page. I'll take the bullet and try to struggle through with just billions of dollars.
This is why socialism/communism won the Cold War. They got rid of entrepreneurship, yet new and innovative companies just spontaneously self-assembled for the greater good!
Success in some areas of your life does not insulate you from tragedy. The guy still puts his jeans on one leg at a time. Probably very expensive jeans he throws away after one use...but still. The human condition cannot be escaped.
This includes his family and the family of those involved in the affair. Many lives were turned upside down.
The guy has enough money to buy an island in French Polynesia and never leave it for the rest of his life. You are correct he is still human, but he can do pretty well at making a new life for himself where he doesnt have to ever think the word Nvidia again.
In 10 years he will have a new family and new friends and this will be a distant memory for him.
It isn't the tragic human condition to have affairs. It's a choice he made with his free will. There is no need for apologia; he could simply have not done it.
Not my clearest comment. What I mean to say is: "it's the human condition" is being used as a defense/absolution of his affairs, as though it's somehow a matter of course that he's going to commit infidelity. It isn't inevitable, because he could have simply chosen to do otherwise. It may be the human condition to experience temptation, but in the end it's irrelevant. He made a choice. That's what matters.
China hawks in the admin. Trump was on board with loosening the export controls so that Nvidia could stay in the game, which ironically would've prevented China's domestic chips getting off the ground. The Stephen Miller types (and whoever connected to ant/openai) didn't want to concede anything. This is beyond personal vendetta stuff.
More likely the hardliners/security establishment. Rubio reportedly let Trump know of the affair/spy suspicion earlier this year (April? I don't recall), and he clearly ignored it because he likes Jensen and/or he wanted to get in on the action as Nvidia was making bank selling GPUs to China.
This breaking just before a meeting with Trump/Xi and just after the midterms show a changing wind in Washington is a hell of a coincidence—or not.
Securities lawyers, among others. All this scandal is going to lead to shareholder suits, which puts a LOT of pressure on the board to act. They have fiduciary duties!
The smuggling and romance details that have been exposed so far are either well known or immaterial to the business. So why the crazy urgency now?
Perhaps some influential folks want to support Anthropic's IPO by showing that the open source models will soon be blunted/outlawed, but IPO-ing into a crash seems like a high price for that moat.
Or do similarly influential folks want to tank AI as a whole but couldn't politically afford a crash before mid-terms?
How illegal is it for a CEO to sell goods (potentially a core component used in military weapons) to a foreign government after your government said not to?
Don't think people realize that whichever politician executes a tech CEO will likely become President for life. The public absolutely hate these people and blood is in the water. Democratic politicians know this, republican politicians know this.
- we can't allow China access to buy or lease any GPUs
and
- turns out China is half the customer base, so cutting them off will crash the market, and the Chinese will just build their own anyways
Considering Trump & Jensen traveled to China just to sell more GPUs and despite that the CCP banned Chinese companies from importing Western Hardware in favor of domestic alternatives, I have my doubts this story makes sense
Interesting! If they have this, why are the Chinese labs still so compute-limited (hence relying on distillation instead of training from scratch), and why do they seem to want Nvidia chips so badly?
Everyone, including the Chinese labs, seem to understand that Huawei's chips are not as capable as their press releases make them out to be.
Also, for what it's worth, tech-insider.org is an embarrassingly lazy AI-generated content farm: https://tech-insider.org/about/
I would hazard a guess that Huawei is paying to get positive stories about their chips on the English-language internet, because they certainly aren't getting any organically!
They are not as capable certainly but considering they didn't have anything like 3-4 years ago, I'd say the potential to catch up is there.
Also like OpenAI's Jalapeno, with LLMs it might be feasible to deploy relatively simpler silicon that's hard to program for, and farm out implementation to AI so the CUDA moat might be shallower than before.
>I would hazard a guess that Huawei is paying to get positive stories about their chips on the English-language internet, because they certainly aren't getting any organically
Jensen has said that 7nm Huawei chips are comparable to A100-level chips, and even fairly recent models as of 1>year ago were trained on those and process improvements are not what they used to be
He didn't resign because of two affairs. He resigned because there were a LOT more than two affairs. I'm sure they wouldn't stop coming after enemies and the press smelled blood in the water.
Eh, I think they wouldn't care except that both affairs are potential conflict of interest issues. If it were like a random person with no connection to the business that he had an affair with it'd be treated as less of an issue I think.
..and because American culture is really prudish about that.
The French and Italians wouldn't blink an eye. Us Brits, we'd talk about it, he's get a slap on the wrist but wouldn't be sacked.
It seems to be a uniquely American thing that the CEO can basically do anything (lie, cheat, fraud etc) just as long as he doesn't get caught with his pants down.
Prudish about affairs with spies? Or about affairs with people who, if they break off the relationship could lose their jobs (or if they continue it they could get promoted)?
These aren't just affairs.
Also, fraud remains to be seen, and shopping chips to China sure seems like questionable judgement.
When you engage in an affair with a superior you have more leverage than you think. Yes you could lose your job, but if you lose your job you have nothing left to lose and can fuck up their life if you have the right evidence.
Have you seen how women are treated when they are part of an affair? The mocking, excoriating, debilitating media coverage? Heck, in this forum of probably more decent than average people you have posters describing the women involved as "holes" and "sides".
Do you remember how Monica Lewinsky was treated? Decades of jokes at her expense, mockery of her and her features, jokes about dresses and semen and blowjobs. Can you imagine how hard it still must be to deal with all that shit day to day?
Bill Clinton still has enormous power. He's had to face nowhere near the burden she has, and yet he's the one who cheated and he's the one who did so with a report.
If you lose your job you lose your source of income. Your way of paying for your children, your house, food. You're left broke financially and mentally while the other party remains at the top with all the power to control the story and to further threaten you.
I don't think that the US *care* about spies? Look who has been put in charge of the NSA, FBI. There's even someone who is strongly suspected to be a Russian spy working in the Pentagon.
These shipments to China - I remember there being a deal made with the President which allowed these sales to happen contingent on some kind of "risk fee" being paid.. to the President.
Americans are prudish, but not such that he would lose his job over an affair. A few Americans would boycott his company - but not enough to matter. There will be general disapproval, but that is as far as it will go.
However he will lose is job over an affair with someone that he has any form of business relationship with. He can have an affair with a nurse in the local hospital of the waitress of a local cafe and we will ignore it. However the girls he had an affair with are off-limits, and should be for any culture for reasons that we think should be obvious.
Isn't there a thing that when it's consensual, tell HR and done? Or you have to be on the level at the org? It is not a law, but in my previous not big, but ~ 1K international org, many marriages and many babies.
Did he do anything besides infidelity, as it seems that the "board" knew about that anyway.
In any case, he fell on his sword, and I wish him well in the afterlife, nothing is black and white.
Not tell HR and done. Tell HR so they can ensure you are never in a place where you can influence her business success. It happens all the time and the rules about what companies do are very complex. As CEO I doubt he can every avoid the conflict of interests that HR is concerned about in these cases and in turn he can't be both CEO and have these affairs. (but the nurse or waitress down the street would be okay, even the CEO down the street so long as they are not competitors and careful to avoid any interaction with each others as customer/supplier - this is often possible since the CEO doesn't decide which widget to buy)
Hi. I was musing, not pro / con. I mentioned the power imbalance, and I am shrugging at his "wisdom" given his status, but hear me out, it's that everyone seems to have know and kept the fact as an ace in their sleeves. I am sure he didn't fly himself and his mistresses commercially, there is a crew, and gossip spreads. The truth is elsewhere, regardless of each's view on infidelity. I give you Gates, Bezos. Cheers.
He wasn't getting sacked yesterday. It only changed when the second affair leaked.
Narrow-minded? I don't know, given the levels of insanity and in-your-face corruption we've seen pretty much every day coming from the US and particularly from the entire tech ecosystem it's really hard to understand the "norms".
I've read about how the US President raped a young girl (13) and multiple other victim accounts. I've watched how we've shown consequences to Prince Andrew, Mandelson and many others. I also see on Twitter the owners of this very site standing behind the disgusting people on the US.
I can't square that with the Jensen situation.
I should add that I'm personally in the camp of leaders who cheat on their wives or who make or accept bribes should be removed from their position. I don't agree with the British (or French/Italian) takes at all.
Just because tabloid news are full of usgov garbage doesn't mean every single human in the world accepted such behavior as new norm. There are still decent folks out there, dare I say a majority.
But yeah how can US folks stomach child rapists at the top of their power is beyond me, I've met plenty of folks with flexible spines while working in banking but this is on completely another level and that level is whole nation.
I agree - and I still believe that the vast majority are decent people. The issue is being ill informed.
The problem is that a whole layer of society have been completely and utterly corrupted to an extent which makes say a country like India seem to be a paradise.
Probably because of the power dynamic makes it really hard to see how free that "choice" really is.
And also puts doubt on any decisions by the boss that affect the employee - companies don't want people "sleeping their way to the top" as that's not putting the business' needs first.
This is a very successful woman, career wise. She’s clearly not incapable of navigating high stakes power dynamics and you shouldn’t just absolve her of responsibility in this.
We don't really have the ability to judge the power dynamic without intimate knowledge of the people and their personal lives, we don't even know when things started and what place their lives were in then.
It's why we generally frown upon relationships if there's any direct business link.
Because a boss has the power to reward the otherwise lesser competent women he is sleeping with over someone else who is otherwise better at the job but not sleeping with the job. If I'm a shareholder of the company I care about that, and the person wronged also cares.
As an aside, the above applies to any one of any gender sleeping with their boss (again of any gender)
Because it’s actually misogynistic to cast women as passive and subservient victims of power abusing men, when for millennia women have been doing all they can to get as close as they can to men with the most power, money and status. This is the most recent example.
Obviously over your head. Please don’t flame and cast peoples takes as “culture war garbage”. I was responding to the OP’s framing as the women as passive participants in this saga. Hard to believe that’s the case.
You think the women that have caused Jensen to come undone this week are passive and powerless victims of him abusing his power? Except for his wife, it seems like it’s the opposite.
I am not talking about the spy, but the women who reported to him. Being powerless or weak is irrelevant. He had power over her and that was what "me too" was calling out.
If she didn't sleep with him would she have had the same position, received the same bonuses, etc? We don't know. Even if he wouldn't have gone after her if she refused she may have thought it could have happened.
The French would not blink with an eye about a spy spying on the top tech company of the country? The French intelligence would probably got her killed.
The second one was a direct report to him, and I wouldnt be surprised if he granted her favors in exchange for the sex (whether it was "promised" or not) typically no executive 'survives' having an affair with a direct report and stays in the company.
Who you have an affair with matters more, in this case a Chinese spy wasn't enough, which almost makes you think, he was not the only one at Nvidia who knew.
The "nVidia are selling chips to China" thing wasn't exactly a secret though. It was all over Twitter and the tech/investment communities I was in. And in the gamer communities (as we're pissed at how nVidia and the rest of tech have screwed us).
What you know and what you can prove are not the same.
What we can prove in the near future likely changed a bit when Congress went to the Dems a few days ago. Republicans weren't gonna make a scene about their $25M donation to the ballroom project.
I need to find the links but the reporting in Europe was that this was part of a deal where Trump got given a 20% fee for it (I believe those were his own words!).
It was reported together with the victim statements of the children Trump allegedly raped. I understand that the US media aren't allowed to publish any of these stories though so I can understand why few people would know about them.
It's not just that they were selling through China, but that they bribed their way through the Trump admin's efforts to investigate it. But even that was partly known, it's just everything is now coming up all at once, making it so obvious he had to take a fall.
I didn't care who he's tupping, yes he's a piece of shit and his wife should take him to the cleaners. What we should all be looking at is how far the company was prepared to go in pursuit of greater profits and start evaluating the circular financing of the AI industry with that in mind.
Bummer. He stood in the way of regulatory capture and AI monopolists had him removed. I foresee the open model / open weights ecosystem eventually getting locked down, especially the most competitive Chinese models.
It's not about the weights, it's about inference. Banning American inference providers from serving "non-vetted" models would surely bring a lot of customers back to OpenAI and Anthropic. Just when they go public.
Nvidia is not the proximate provider of open weight inference. That’s Nvidia’s customers, cloud compute services like AWS. If there was a move to ban open weights models, I am pretty sure these companies would howl much louder to the government than Nvidia, and they’re arguably more influential as a group.
And specialised providers like Baseten, Fireworks, Together…
If regulation for the sake of safety was to pass, they wouldn’t be able to serve GLM, Kimi, or Deepseek anymore
I wouldn’t underestimate Anthropic’s and OpenAI’s power of nuisance on that regard.
That's not by design though, it's pure happenstance and a lack of competent competitors. Handicapping the entire industry to favor the the manufacturers who chose the wrong R&D path is interfering for no business reason. The only valid reasons are political pressure.
Right. It wasn’t that Jensen had an affair with a foreign spy and that the Nvidia board found damning evidence despite them being very incentivized not to. This is actually the doing of the secret cabal of AI monopolists (all three?). And now because we didn’t look the other way while a CEO was double-timing (talking of course about selling to China while saying he was being faithful to the US) we’re turning the car around and there will be no more open weights for anyone.
He didn't build it from scratch un-nurtured. He built it with help from people smarter than him, and with external capital that has severely diluted his stake in the org.
He's a <3.5% shareholder.
He then carried out actions which put the jobs of people smarter than him at risk, and also put the capital that gave him a platform at risk.
Frankly, you're being naive. When it comes to a massive $4 trillion market-cap US corporation and one of the most important companies on planet Earth, money is everything.
If the company struggles without him and it's obvious they need his leadership, he'll be back. Morals be damned.
> Now, back to the main point: your egregious comparison of a potential Huang-return to Jobs-return unfortunately still remains just as terrible.
Here is some reading material to clear up your ignorance:
When Chrisann Brennan became pregnant with their daughter, Lisa, in 1977, Jobs was a young man in his early twenties just as Apple was beginning to take off.
According to Brennan, Jobs reacted with dismay and anger to the news, and they never married. Furthermore, for several years, Jobs denied that he was the father, even going as far as claiming in court documents that he was sterile.
A court-ordered DNA paternity test eventually proved conclusively that he was Lisa's father, after which he was required to provide financial support.
One thing which isn't adding up to me. Everyone is breathlessly reporting that in the past three years (or whatever) megaspeed obtained $7.5B in nvidia chips. Nvidia's revenue is about $6B per week. If the fear is that China's AI research is catching up due to those chips, which seems like a percent of nvidia's production, does that mean China's researchers are so efficient they only need that 1%, or does it mean they are getting a lot more AI compute through other channels?
From all the readings so far, it does not look like he knew he was under the spell of a honeypot, nor nvidia knowingly sold the chips in question, directly to china. The truth will come out one day, and it is might be an uphill battle to prove a criminal intent from Jensen.
On a more mundane level, since he can neither go to office, nor to the house, any guesses what his routine will be over next couple weeks? Not a perfect example, but for some reason, this reminds me of the last scene in Fargo where WH Macy gets holed up in a motel buying time.
Cheaters are the worst, lying and betraying a woman who trusts you. Western people should treat cheating more seriously and not turn a bling eye to it. I wish they found a way to take back some of his pay too.
Huang is the classic example of an entrepreneur who grew up and came of age at the end of the Cold War, at the height of globalization and the Pax Americana: focused mainly on business, with no obligation to take sides for any national interest. Unfortunately, those days are over, and, reluctant to fully adapt, he has paid the price.
This is going to be very unpopular here, but this domino triggered by the China hawks in the current admin (and the handful of dem lobbyists in the pocket of openai/ant) is going to go down in history as a massive geopolitical and technological blunder.
Huawei just announced a fully domestic computer, Deepseek is rumored to be training v5 right now on entirely domestic Ascend chips.
I know eventually there will come out all the justifications for how this was to protect AGI, etc. But this move has also now tipped the scale beyond just the hardware bifurcation, but also the open vs. closed and commons vs. sovereign models. This isn't just chopping off your nose, this is America purposely gouging out it's eyes and removing it's ability to see down the road. Jensen Huang was the world's best shot and trying to keep a global AI world together, but one side has made their voice on that extremely loud and clear.
I wish there was more commentary on your point of view. HN has really disappointed me today. I come here for the deeper insight and instead I got Reddit lite. I read the NVIDIA way when it came out and was gobsmacked that all these years the company was operating the way that it did. It really made me admire the perseverance the employees went through and made me realize Jensen was a hidden gem. Seeing China announce their own GPUs made me think NVIDIA was in for some sweat but now? Its as if they are torpedoing NVIDIA for a short term gain only to not realize they have just tossed the long term win to China. The conspiracy theorist in me think they are hoping to pin the blame on the left or they think they can remain in the shadows and break companies that dont play ball no matter how important they are and walk away unscathed. This is a serious fundamental problem in modern American governance that might scare talented people away from the country.
Unfortunately a side effect of many HN readers having outsized influence on the AI and tech industry. Influence campaigns are much more valuable when run here.
Astroturfed talking points is prevalent since like maybe 10 years I believe. There was this huge shift when 'influencers' became a thing and people realized there was power in that for real.
It’s more disappointing that some HN users have zero awareness that sexual impropriety in the workplace is actually a really bad thing, and that being a great business leader does not excuse you from the consequences of being a bad person.
I feel this could be a chess move by OAI/Anthropic/AWS etc to get Chinese companies stop open source models and get hands on all Nvidia Chips. This real estate race is getting dirty.
Jensen's the most pro-open weight guy and calmest on China public figure at that level.
Musk has done, and continues to do, the most horrific stuff, including things far more questionable from a US security perspective. Altman's reputation is not one of honesty and fair dealing. We've had very clear evidence of Microsoft's leadership being caught in honey-traps by foreign governments. No heads rolled.
> Tin foil hat take: I think Jensen's been sniped.
I think this statement has a real risk of turning into a motte and bailey argument.
If you are only alleging that people are gunning for him, that’s true for every CEO and powerful person on the planet. People have things to gain from exploiting their positions.
1. China, to take down one of the keys to Nvidia's success and potentially sabotage US dominance in AI and hardware, right as they've started their own.
2. The US gov, who may have been worried about Jensen's "loyalty".
3. The US gov, who were previously skimming money off of illegal sales but now need to do performative justice to prevent themselves from being held accountable after the change in governance last week.
4. A coordination between the US gov and AI firms, who may not have appreciated Jensen's open-ness toward open models and likely refusal to install firmware-level blocks for "unapproved" models.
The term "performative justice" seems to be a theme, and reminds me of "Hegseth awards medal to soldier who reprimanded him and aides at Arlington Cemetery."
Big CEO has affair, even with the intelligence angle, is pretty routine kompromat fodder.
The normal pathway would be that this would be disclosed to said horny capitalist via state security, with the understanding that they'll behave in certain circumstances and that it will be ensured that things go no further. This is a win for Uncle Sam.
That this didn't happen is telling. Obviously, cui bono gives quite a long list, but the state would have needed to be on side.
The others do not have a board capable of outing them. It has, in fact, been tried and discussed at length.
It's not a conspiracy, this is what happens when you don't give one person total control through manipulating the board and stock. You fuck up and get the axe.
Yeup. Didn't want to go into all of it, but that's basically what I was referring to.
This is, in theory, feature not a bug territory. Your CEO did something they shouldn't of (allegedly). The board now fires them rather than having the stock and the company ride or die based on it.
Will the short term stock suffer, sure. Will the company do better for it, maybe/maybe not? I don't totally agree with one great man but I get the idea and once you start working at a certain level you do see products often as a reflection of the values of the top of the chain.
Either way, there's no doubt this is a complicated and "unique" circumstance given the behavior of the US government, and I wouldn't be totally shocked if he DID knowingly break the law and did so with the help of the POTUS, and that's an entire quagmire.
The board/company distancing itself from that makes sense, and bluntly, it's not like jensen staying on was going to save the stock or AI. This is a symptom of what's going on not the cause, and him somehow not being voted out likely changes nothing, even for the board or NVIDIA who are all going to have uncomfortable questions about behavior and decisions even with Jensen out the door. Hell it might be the best place for him.
That's why they should all stay. And ideally export the corruption and stupid business culture to China so they get hit too. I want a world that's not dominated by one or two powerful countries.
Yep. More accurately, Amodei’s wife wanted to be connected to Epstein (after he had pled guilty) - but he turned her down!
> An earlier venture, adult-film company Eddice, drew Clark into contact with Jeffrey Epstein. In 2011, she emailed Epstein a film script seeking investment, according to documents released by the Department of Justice in 2026. "We thought you and the ladies might enjoy," she wrote. Epstein did not invest.
Hmmm I don't know like limiting Starlink on Urkainian drones? Like repeatedly meeting with Putin and failing to disclose it? Failure to report foreign contracts? The fact that he was denied Special Access Program clearance (we don't know why)? The fact that he has over $1B in loans from state controlled Chinese banks? Campaigning on behalf of the far right AFD party in Germany?
The drone thing is uninteresting. But the others I haven't heard about. Do you have reliable sources for these? The problem with anti-Musk stuff is that 99% of the time it is overblown sniping from media hungry blowhards or oil industry lobbyists, and has been since 2012 when he launched the Model S at Tesla. But, I'm open to considering real problems. His time at DOGE was definitely dodgy (but the falling out between Trump and Musk was epic cinema.)
The difference between Musk and Huang is that Musk has engineered such control of his companies through dual class listings that there really is no one who can fire him. Having said that, people are very openly talking about the fact that Musk is going to spend the next couple of years spending quality time with the US congress explaining in minute detail why he's not a traitor.
The other big difference between the two is that after the last election, Musk (with Trumps help) essentially put himself in a position where he basically controlled the federal government for 6 months and did whatever he wanted with no consequences. It's a lot easier to commit crimes when you fire all the people who are trying to stop you..
This smells like a hit job on Jensen Huang. Years from now, it'll probably come out that Alice Huang wasn't a spy for China and the whole Kimberly affair was a setup. Of course, by then, no one will care about the truth.
On Nov 8th, the board stated that "no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised".
OK, looks like this spy story was not power enough (as we do not have evidence), let's use another one: an internal affair. Maybe two lies will do the job.
I'm probably failing to see enough nuance here, but isn't Nvidia taking a hit a good thing when they are basically a monopoly? It seems to me like unintentional self-inflicted anti-trust regulation. Nvidia's failure is another chip maker's opportunity. And it's not like Nvidia is going to instantly implode and take the stock market down with it. It would take the form of slowly losing market share as their products become less appealing for whatever reason, assuming the decline would happen under new leadership at all. Then we get real competition in the GPU market.
I only wish he got ousted for being a liar about where the money was coming from during the crypto boom, or the super anti consumer policies like prohibiting OEMs from having a top of the line series with anything other than nvidia, refusing for years to support standard vrr and pushing for g-sync, artificially nerfing silicon capabilities in consumer grade dies and helping this bubble get bigger and bigger with bad accounting practices.
The dude is out at the absolute top of the company because he fucked too many women he shouldn't have and in a year people will be missing him when the AI reckoning for hardware manufacturers comes.
Edit: and hairworks! That fucking shit that tanked performance but was "a game changer" due to PR. Just like the fake frames and slop filter they're pushing now.
This could turn out to be the best thing for AI. I hope Jensen starts a new startup and challenges NVDIA. This will enable more options of GPU for end users and break NVIDIA monopoly.
He will never do this. His family is so embedded in Nvidia that he may as well be handing over a kingdom at this point. He might go on to do other kinds of related things, or maybe he will buy an island and vanish, who knows. But, he will never compete with Nvidia.
Exactly. People are acting like this is some conspiracy or a woke move or something. When it seems pretty likely he just broke the law while acting as CEO and they're trying to get ahead of it.
The big question for NVIDIA investors is how much of their sales came from skirting export sanctions because you can bet there is an investigation coming.
You're getting mixed signals because it's both a yes and a no. Very likely not a "spy" per se - she's a proper business woman with a long career. Very likely in touch with China's information services - because she's a business woman with a long career.
But yeah, the "model" memes are completely offtopic. She's nearly 50.
There is a lot of discussions on Export Ban. Does selling to a Singapore Company with Chinese Stakeholders considered illegal under those ban? Does Nvidia have to track every single GPU sold or even resold?
I was under the impression he sold it to a Singapore company, or even any other companies. What those companies do with those GPU is not his fault.
'Singaporean' company whose former managing director (Chinese national Alice Huang / Huang Le) and owner (through a self-titled company) is the same person he's had an extramarital affair with.
The same company they've audited the datacentres of, and saw dummy non-running servers within which had been stripped of their GPUs, and were 'fooled' that they were simply yet to be commissioned.
The point is that there is clearly knowledge of the company having heavy ties to China - his affair partner owned it. Therefore, heavy caution should be taken with regard to export controls. Instead it acted like a gold stamp.
Yes US hyperscalers have plenty of hardware but are running out of 'warm shells' to put them into. It's not much of a problem in Southeast Asia.
Any guesses if that correlates with earnings? Are they bad, so they can they, look we already have new CEO, now everything is going to be better. Or are they that good, that they can say, look we will manage without Jensen.
I feel this is a hasty and suicidal move for the company, and for the American AI chip industry as a whole, esp. when they haven't figured out a transition plan.
If he had affairs with normal staffers and NOT involved with a chinese spy, he'd probably would have survived. The fact that he's out means he definitely supplied the chinese with chips.
I don’t approve of his actions, but the man was in charge of the whole AI revolution… like Wall Street hotshots a small scandal is navigable but this? THIS? They had no choice.
To my knowledge, Sergey Brin remained on as president (although he was not CEO) after admitting to an affair with a Google employee, and every other publicly-confirmed affair with a subordinate led to the CEO stepping down. Boards HAVE been known to put in a lot of effort to keep affairs from being publicly confirmed, though.
eh, there is a rumour that it was one of those 'open' marriages, given that his daughter was seen with him and Alice Huang in a video, implying they were ok with it. (dunno about the second one though, but given the first, the second seems excused as well)
Nah, this is about the indirect Chinese access to chips, and this whole cheating thing is a cover. He's confessing to a 'lesser' crime to save himself for the real threat of jail.
None of them are able to put two and two together that this was a deliberate coup
And it seems like nobody is paying attention to what Jensen Huang was fighting for. He was against regulation of open source local models. He was against regulation shifting liability of local model developers as well as frontier models.
All in all without Jensen, it isn't just about NVIDIA, there's no one to champion for open source models and running them locally is going to get a lot harder and expensive. It's actually going to accelerate the monopolization of closed models and they will have to pass on the costs to consumers.
It's an L across the board and I'm noting the degraded quality of discourse on HN and that nobody is seeing through the veil here.
Jensen Huang was against regulation of open models because he was *for* selling GPUs. He was so for it, he might have helped an Alibaba corporate cutout launder a bunch of them against US trade regulations.
You may think that's a ridiculous bigger picture, but that's the bigger picture I'm looking at. I think your bigger picture of, "this is an inside-the-industry coup to remove the one champion of open weights models," is even more ridiculous.
Both of these notwithstanding, what makes you believe nvidia's new permanent CEO won't also be a champion for open weights? An open weights ecosystem is better for their business long term.
Or they’re simply clear eyed enough to not reach for conspiracy theories as an answer when one man’s ego and inability to keep it in his pants is the obvious explanation
The board is considering both internal and external candidates. Who has experience in hardware, has led a trillion-dollar company, has deep connections in Asia, and might be available?
It's possible Tim Cook's phone is ringing right now.
It would be interesting if the story unfolded with Jensen going to TSMC [1] and Tim Cook taking over NVIDIA.
It's hard for me to imagine Cook taking over Nvidia unless it was strictly temporary. I get the impression Cook retired because he wanted to relax and enjoy his golden years. But I agree he'd be a good choice to manage the chaos at Nvidia.
I don’t think Tim Cook would even give the time of the day to the Nvidia board or recruiters. He can bear and hold a grudge for a long time, similar to Steve Jobs. His firing of Scott Forstall and Apple’s dissociation with Nvidia after its GPUs failed in Macs are just two examples.
There’s a rumor that Apple’s Johny Srouji may be tapped to be Nvidia’s CEO. But I’m guessing Apple will do whatever it takes to retain him.
The problem i see is that I dont see anyone who is suitable to be a ceo of Nvidia. It’s a special blend of hardware and software chops that no other CEO has imo.
Very very few HW CEOs have even the slightest ability to appreciate the key strength of Nvidia which is ability to build hardware and then drive it with outstanding software.
Look at AMD. Great hardware but hamstrung by their software for 20 years.
Funny how that perspective completely changed because CUDA ended up being a better idea than initially anticipated, while the need for well-designed and -maintained linux graphics drivers.. somehow subsided? (my nvidia drivers still deadlock way too often)
“Hey Lisa! How’s it going? So ya we just fired your cousin who created our company. We were wondering if we could get on a call with you about replacing him and leaving your rival company? If you could call us back on 1-800-NVDA that would be great.”
If corporations just had feudal succession laws we could just have AMD and Nvidia form a dynastic union, no need for someone to leave one company to head another.
Despite his personal affairs, he brought significant growth and stability to NVIDIA thanks to which we all have access to excellent products so his dismissal does not seem like a wise decision. I wonder if his successor will be able to measure up to him. And what would be the cost for nvidia?
It all seems political and every politician has an affair to hide...
I don't care who he's tupping, yes he's a piece of shit and his wife should take him to the cleaners. What we should all be looking at is how far the company was prepared to go in pursuit of greater profits and start evaluating the circular financing of the AI industry with that in mind.
This might be due to violations or breach of his duties as the CEO, especially given the nature of who the other party has loyalties too, but nonetheless, its a lesson for us all. Because even if he didn't directly provide any IP, would that party have reasonable access to any IP during the events. Guess only time will tell
From Game of Thrones:
- Men without cocks. You wouldn't find me fighting in an army if I had no cock. What's left to fight for?
- Gold?
- I spent my life around soldiers. What do you think they spend that gold on?
- Family.
- Not without a cock, you don't.
- Maybe it really is all cocks in the end.
The specific truths about anything hardly matter when a story becomes this big. The hubbub is too much of a distraction and Jensen was going to get hauled in front of Congress by reps trying to score points with anti-AI constituents.
For intents and purposes, consider NVIDIA compromised for some foreseeable future. For operations and future purchases/CAPEX, more than a passing due dilligence is warranted if considering NVIDIA.
Huang has shown catastrophically bad judgement and lied publicly [0]. Many commenters here harbor lots of sympathy for him, I assume out of respect for the technology and company he's built, but that doesn't exonerate him.
He was sleeping with one of his customers—a huge conflict of interest. That alone is good grounds to get a CEO fired, but it only gets worse! Alice Huang, a Chinese national, was previously working for a CCP propaganda channel network with an impeccable acronym: CCTV. Her company was accused publicly and investigated by the government for suspected smuggling of sanctioned NVIDIA hardware into China. Now we learned he also had an affair with one of his direct reports — another diabolical conflict of interest, which alone could be good reason to oust the CEO and possibly the VP as well.
It's yet to be determined whether he disclosed secrets to the Chinese spy, or whether he at least privately admitted to the second affair (if not, that's even worse!)
It's not a single, horrendous mistake anymore but a pattern of disastrously poor judgement. Building an extraordinary company and technology shouldn't mean lack of accountability, and thankfully we found out today that even at the highest level it doesn't.
I've seen some people speculate whether or not he'll be a prosecuted/arrested. It's difficult to believe, but surely would be the biggest imprisonment that I can remember from recent memory.
This is insane. This is the best case scenario for China, much better than just getting the chips. They just crippled their biggest competitor. The stock might not crater immediately because of ongoing AI demand, but it will at some point.
He's the hero we needed but didn't deserve. If this thing didn't happen my guess is open models wouldn't exist and we would be deeper and darker into the whole AI boom
- Relationships with subordinates is a violation of policy, demonstrating a lack of judgement and a willingness to break the rules
- Relationships with subordinates create legal liability for the company by enabling claims of sexual harassment, hostile workplace, coercion/abuse of authority
If people want a system where individuals are not going to break the rules it should ensure:
- every trivial action, or lack of it, is not garanteed to break some of the mountains of existing including set of rules one is supposed to obey when it's physically impossible to even assimilate them all
- people that do respect the rules can have decent level of certitude they will have a fine life without major troubles that could be avoided by breaking some rules
- the culture promote to respect rules as a viable flexible path, as opposed to actively promote one that states "it's easier to get pardon than to be granted authorization".
Everyone is welcome to assess their own society from what they experienced in life.
Sure, the comment here was more general than specific to the topic, however once you favor some behavior in society, one should not be surprised to which extend it will flourish.
Your comment focuses solely on company profits. I don’t care about company profits. I do care about HR or company policy policing things they should not be allowed to police.
I would agree for a "regular" employee - as the CEO you are literally the face of the company, so you are held to a higher standard. When you look bad publicly, the company looks bad - that's the job you agree to when you become CEO.
It's not about sex, it's about integrity and decision making, which directly impacts NVIDIA and through them, US national security. His board asked him questions and he lied to them, and they found out in the press.
A bunch of you on here think this is about sex, it's not, it's about signals that point to extremely poor leadership decisions and threats to the US economy and national security.
But hey even if you're an ubermensch who depends on absolutely nobody to make a living, can you agree it is unfair to those who do if they have to compete based on sexual favors?
A corporate conflict of interest occurs when an individual's or entity's personal, financial, or outside relationships interfere or appear to interfere with their ability to act in the best interests of the company or its stakeholders
It's not a personal romantic relationship if the other side is either a direct subordinate or the head of a chip smuggling operation in violation of federal export control laws
Regardless of the implications, even just as a change for NVIDIA this will be one of the moments we look back on. Keep hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times!
He resigns so he would forfeit much of contractual severance in most cases. A negotiated settlement is likely as part of the resignation and if he’s rehired elsewhere (eg at terafab or tsmc) it will generally terminate ongoing payments, healthcare, access to private aircraft and security.
Now I'm in danger of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, but I think there are several layers to this current drama. Most of the reporting is very "surface level". I also don't pretend to have the full picture myself, but there are many players and many agendas at play, and those agendas can change over time.
[edited for typo]
Huh, between the Anthropic IPO, the big shift in political environment, and the change in outlook for tech stocks, this comes at a pretty pivotal moment to see if AI train keeps accelerating at the same pace or if we start to see the end of the bubble.
I don't want to sound like a Jensen apologist, obviously huge missteps on his part, but he was quite a figure in shaping the last few years broad economic narrative. Good or bad, he was a force in shaping one of the largest investments ever. Does that shift without him? Does it shift really quick?
I would have preferred a slow fade into the sunset as a opposed to a dramatic exit. Yes, there would have always been a correction, but the bubble bursting explosively vs a more measured, slower correction will have different broader impacts and I just hope this doesn't push more towards the outcome that hurts a lot more.
The board, made of 10 members, only has 3.94% of Nvidia share in total, out of which 3.58% is owned by Huang.
Meaning that the 9 people pushing him out add up to own 0.36% of Nvidia share, only 0.36%
This is betray of shareholder interest. The board doesn't own Nvidia, this is not their business, yet only they can vote. they just want to finish as soon as possible, and you get a mad result.
I can think of one company that rose from $347 billion to $4.6 trillion market cap after their finance person successfully filled the shoes of an innovator
And now nothing is stopping him from defecting over to China and Deepseek. Lost his family, lost his job, and China has plenty of money mountains and a very dedicated workforce. The idea must have crossed his mind.
My conspiracy theory is that its American spies who let this go public to pressure him out because Jensen was fighting their agenda of stopping China getting advanced chips. The flow will probably slow for a while, domestic Chinese companies will be forced to adapt, and as a bonus the USA wont even be competitive because they took their best horse out behind the woodshed and shot it to stop someone else from getting a ride. 12 months from now Jensen is gonna be VP of AI hardware at Huaweii or similar, calling it now. Another A+ geopolitical move from an administration that has been in a class of its own right from the beginning. Im a nobody who knows nothing but if I had to bet it would be on this.
I cant help but see a difference in the moral standard to which Jensen is being held compared to the moral standard that someone like Elon is being held. Why can one get away with shocking moral behaviour, but the other has to step down for a mild affair. If Jensen didnt have the affair, or it never came to light, would all of this still have taken place?
When Cambridge Analytica happened, no one kicked Mark out of Facebook/Meta.
Not making excuses for Jensen, at his status and power level, this stuff goes with the territory. But I cant help but see a double standard here.
The lesson is that if you allow yourself to be held accountable by other for poor decision making then they might do that. Huang created a corporate structure that could hold him accountable for bad behavior and it did just that when he behaved badly. He did the "right" thing in setting up his company and it acted as designed.
This isn’t a case of being punished for doing the right thing. The right thing is retaining control of your own company and doing so is not “authoritarian”.
The idea of a board of directors is one that actually has to be defended on first principles.
What is the actual value add of a “board of directors” except to basically be weak willed PMC/non founder-type people with a lot to lose reputationally and financially who can be cowed and/or blackmailed very easily.
The typical person on the board of a public company would fold to pressure as soon as they saw a NY Times reporter called their phone.
I'm not sure if you're being facetious. The board of directors role is to look after the shareholders' interests. A good board is exactly that - the representatives of the shareholders.
And in this case they fired a CEO who created more shareholder value than almost any person in human history and they didn’t fire him for declining performance.
Sorry but IMO this sort of company structure should not be allowed. Private companies should not be able to issue stocks the way Zuck & Elon have. Pull Meta’s charter and redistribute their assets. Let that serve as a notice to Elon that he’s next.
The argument is that the shareholders who own the majority of a company's stock (by value, not voting rights) should be able to control the company, not a minority owner. It is the corporate structure that allows guaranteed minority control (e.g. Zuckerberg owns something like 13% of Meta, but controls 60% of the voting power). In a free market, why should publicly traded companies be allowed to sell "shares" that are not ownership in the traditional sense?
In an actual free market the distinction between “public” and “private” company would be really just some transparency/accounting standard or set of standards set by the particular exchange(s) that the shares were traded on.
And just to be clear in practice, stocks are not priced based on their voting rights but rather expectations of their future cash flows (dividends) or simply how much the stock is expected to go up or down by. A lot of modern financial activity is nonsense.
If you really want to actually understand what a company is you should go look up when corporations became a thing and why. It had to do with various legal protections to stimulate economic activity and tax revenues.
All of these modern notions and principles that you’re invoking or basing your arguments on about ownership are most likely just contrived nonsense. These aren’t necessarily eternal principles of anything.
Ask almost anyone here and they'll tell you that the C-suite are mostly a bunch of morons who don't know anything about technology, and now you want to ensure that businesses can only ever be run by such technologically illiterate morons, not founders? Insanity!
It's entirely fair to think that, given what I said, that I would mean to do this without some form of legal basis. Not so!
Is it my view that Meta has engaged in a sustained course of unlawful conduct that persists despite the judgements the law has already applied, and will persist into the future. As a corporation who is consistently in court, and based in Delaware, it surely seems to me the bar has been passed -- the AG of the state would be well within their rights to revoke their charter. Meta's entire basis of being at this point is to control public discourse. That's direct harm to the state and the public at large.
What happens to their assets afterwards is a job for the courts. Applying existing law is "retroactive authoritarian". Pfft, please. Ignorance of the law is not a defense against it.
Having a libido is fairly normal for most non-castrated men, at least historically speaking. In modern times, men are in seemingly depressed and in general need of various pills to help with erectile dysfunction, which perhaps in part explains the low birth rates.
What did he do that was “playing with fire” specifically? Having long term sexual relationships with women?
The thing he did that was actually wrong was that the NVIDIA executive he was in a sexual relationship with was herself married. That is actually wrong, that’s not “playing with fire”, that’s simply wrong.
To be honest, I don't know how to succinctly tell you that this is a bad take. For starters, that company has hoovered enough tax money that we should all be on the board. Secondly, encouraging family feudalism is crazy if you even claim to be a supporter of capitalism and the free market. Thirdly, you're not a tech baron and never will be, especially if you can't trust that your investments are concerned with your interests and goals due to CEO exceptionalism. Just saying. If he was a judge, he would be disbarred. This company wants to be a stupid percentage of our GDP, so they're gonna have to suck it up and hold themselves to the standards of a public office.
I think you’re confused on the essence of what he was trying to say.
The comparison was drawn because when you are such a position of power, your actions have such a monumental sway. Thousands, millions of people’s of lives are impacted, for better or for worse. In Jensen’s case, that’s up to the court of public opinion.
However the thinking is that when you are in that position, a just and fair society would probably want to keep just and fair and morally tact people in those positions.
IMHO I don’t care what way you want to spin it, when you have that level of influence over one of the major drivers of the AI boom, you have INCREDIBLE power compared to what most people think of when you say “private citizen”.
Agreed. The fact that he gets this perception while Musk has repeatedly betrayed the US's best interests shows that things like rationality and merit have gone out the window. However, don't mistake this for me excusing either of their behavior. Neither are not suited for that level of responsibility.
I don’t entirely follow this comparison. Maybe we spend time in different circles, but Musk in the current day is nearly universally s*t on by everybody I know. Even the people I know that still praise his work remain with a bad taste in their mouth.
My buddies and I were just talking about how Jensen is probably one of the MOST liked amongst all the leading big tech CEO/Owners. I feel like the amount of grace this thread is giving him is proof of that.
I don’t understand how that’s comparable to the perception of Musk.
> The lesson is that if you do the right, non-authoritarian thing, you get punished
Cheating on your wife and betraying your country is the right, non authoritarian thing? We arent having this discussion for any other reason than those two events happening. Its an insane lens of entitlement to view the situation as if he should indefinitely retain ownership due to ... what? Existing? But never have any of his actions have consequences. That's the promise you make by positioning the board shares in that manner: you promise to have accountability. Finding it a weakness to answer to others for your actions is definitely a popular style of thinking amongst the current group of wanna-be authoritarians in the presidential cabinet, "strange" how your first two examples of CEOs unwaveringly align with that political faction huh?
In neoliberalism, there is no such thing as society (Thatcher). When there is no society, you can't be held accountable for previously non-acceptable moral transgressions.
If you are competing in a neoliberal environment where other companies play by these rules, you are at a disadvantage if you are following some superset of them.
I am not saying that he has done 100% right things, I am just saying that if he set himself up in the same way as his competitors, he would have been fine. Maybe he would have to pay some fine/bribe, similar to what the prior 2 have done for their infractions against the people.
History has actually tested this question quite extensively, and the overwhelming result is that, on aggregate, an entity where power is distributed is more successful than an entity where power is concentrated. Setting up Nvidia like Meta or Tesla might have been the best thing for Jensen, but clearly wouldn’t have been the best thing for Nvidia. And, quite frankly, over the past few years those other two are pretty good examples of why.
You're missing the point of the commenter which is that neoliberal social order confounds the empirical evidence. The framing of "x approach is better for a company's success" is a non-question, it is beside the point. Distribution of power "under neoliberalism" is a self contradictory model.
You don't have to agree with leftists but ignoring the premise just lets you talk past the point.
> if he set himself up in the same way as his competitors, he would have been fine.
Jensen chose to set up his company in such a way that he had to follow a superset of the rules that his competitors did. My point is that was a competitive advantage; even though it unmade him, that superset was a necessary tradeoff to be the head of a $4T company. We can see this because those other companies have started to be held financially accountable; the same lack of accountability that lets those leaders get away with affairs also lets them “get away with” withholding evidence (and the resulting $243M punitive damages). Unaccountable power (which is what parent is arguing for) is brittle and fragile.
Jensen isn't stepping down for the affair. He's stepping down because the affair was with a Chinese spy, and his words and actions appear to have facilitated circumvention of exports bans to China, and he concealed it.
Shareholders don't care that he's having sex outside his marriage.
First, I think it’s important we all remember that NVIDIA issued this resignation. NVIDIA’s board != Meta’s or any other company’s board. So there is no double standard because it’s not the same people.
Second, there is no proof that any moral standard is being applied at all. This could (and in my opinion likely) have nothing to do with a moral standard and more to do with extenuating information uncovered in the investigation or a strategic shift to protect against the current admin. There is likely so much happening behind the scenes and so many people have so much money to lose, I think it’s prudent for us to first exhaust all non-moral possibilities (unfortunately).
I do think a lot of people are projecting their societal and marriage expectations onto Jensen. They're expecting that he should follow the same set of standards they follow with their partner. Yes, monogamy is the societal norm - but it is not a requirement of a relationship. And, it is certainly not a requirement of a relationship that you're not a participant in.
In my eyes, this all comes down to the perception that someone is able to be compromised by non-monogamy. Jensen came out, apologized to his wife, and (at least publicly) communicated that he broke the expectations and boundaries of their relationship. This clearly communicated that a secret relationship compromises his position. And, should there be more secret relationships they'd continue to be used as leverage.
Musk isn't subject to this leverage because it's pretty clear that his relationships are not built on traditional definitions. Non-monogamy is either a clearly defined boundary in his relationship or simply not something that concerns him as leverage.
No one really cares, in the grand scheme, that he had affairs. He's being ousted because he potentially compromised national objectives. The NVDA board knows that senate hearings are coming, and want to make sure they have distanced the company from him before that happens (and all the text messages, emails, and details come to light).
The biggest questions are:
1. Did Jensen knowingly compromise national security (criminal implications)
2. What is the fallout / impact in the AI arms race
> the moral standard that someone like Elon is being held
Elon’s comparable fuck-up was betraying Ukraine with his Starlink intervention. It’s a huge deal. Unlike Nvidia, he has no Board to hold him accountable, it will have to be done by the Congress and states. (Europe will be useless as usual.)
As a result, that hammer will fall much more directly on his companies. It will just take more time to do so.
Zuckerberg, to my knowledge, hasn’t compromised American security in a comparable way to these two.
> if they do see it they don't care. This bubble is convinced they are untouchable
If this were just the elites being out of touch, that would be one thing. It's more. There are rafts of folks–you can see them on here–who are convinced the only reason Jensen could be facing any wrath right now is because of a hare-brained conspiracy. This is honestly-felt fandom bordering on zeal.
> You don't think impregnating an employee is an issue?
Never said anything close to that.
I think it's horrible. And it's an issue that's gotten multiple Fortune 100 CEOs fired [1]. It's categorically distinct from corruption and compromise of national-security laws.
> Musk gave Ukraine Starlink with the condition it not be used for warfare
You're saying Musk didn't know Ukraine was using these terminals for war, including air defenses, for the last few years? Despite constantly tweeting about it? And doesn't know that's what they're being used for now? What?
The best evidence for this being more ketamine nonsense is that Musk initially lied about the cut-off having been Trump's decision. Unfortunately, this time his actions may have crossed into treason–when he did this, he gave aid and comfort to an ally of a country America was at war with (Iran).
I don't. Musk himself conceded and gave the B.S. about ToS violations.
In any case, sure, he can say it actually wasn't him under oath. Burn that pardon.
> considering Trump is aiding Putin who aids Iran
Trump is the President. Musk is a private citizen.
> don’t think Elon will face any consequences regardless of the truth
I had this exact conversation with a Silicon Valley executive about Jensen Huang on Monday. There is a blind spot in Silicon Valley about the fury aimed at tech executives from across the political spectrum.
The fact that a bunch of people are publicly tweeting that this was a mistake shows just how clueless our cadre of SV elites are.
I guess you’re unfamiliar then with the ways in which Facebook failed to prevent (and therefore enabled) Russian interference in US elections over the past decade?
Certainly feels to me like compromising American security
Let's put aside that American "free market" scam for now.
Actually, problems where the ownership structure causes CEOs to be removed have been happening over the past 10 years or so.
For example: OpenAI's Altman, Musk, and so on.
Therefore, the ownership structure of Musk's new company SpaceX, which allows him to keep the company firmly under his control, is a very smart approach.
I think a large portion of new companies in the future will become like this.
I think the main issue is Jensen crossed the bright red line of national security. Whatever Zuck or Elon did they were nowhere near as political damaging.
Why do you think Elon has involved himself so directly and closely in politics? He spent almost half a billion to ingratiate himself with Trump and co.
Having an affair with a Chinese Spy and potentially skirting an export ban to sell chips to China AND having an affair with your direct report are not remotely morally or legally comparable to anything Elon or Mark have done. Shocking you would even consider that.
this isn't about a moral standard; no one cares about the affairs
the board must know that the risk of Jensen staying on (likely due to whatever hasn't yet been brought to light) is greater than the risk of instability by firing him; whatever is unknown to us must be pretty serious (again, not in terms of more affairs, but other stuff, like selling chips to China or whatever)
Meta's board probably would have fired Zuck over the CA scandal but they were unable to because of the company structure
That's not certain. I tend to agree with you, but it is possible that the concern is for the effect on the employees. Especially the 2nd known affair is a violation of HR rules that are supposed to apply to everyone, and it's hard to argue that when you don't apply them to your CEO. By itself, I'm highly doubtful it would be enough (you can slap him on the wrist or something), but the effect on morale and company culture is a much larger concern. If people lose confidence in the company, they're more likely to jump ship, so you pay them more. And if investors lose confidence over any of this, then that's a much bigger and more expensive problem. There's a moral standard behind these types of things, even if it doesn't directly matter.
What we don't know and what really happened at the emergency board meeting are probably the key here. I'm sure there's plenty more going on that we can't see. More affairs are obviously possible, which is kind of meh until you find out who they were with and what deals they were part of.
It's even possible that Huang made the call -- it's not like he's going to escape public shaming at this point, and depending on his calculations of the repercussions, he could easily have tens of billions of dollars riding on this. He is clearly good at taking actions that maximize the market value of his company -- might this be another such action? Our armchairs aren't the best perspective from which to evaluate that.
Elon Musk has no accountability. He has effective control over the boards of his companies. Shareholders know that the value of their shares is predicated largely on this one man, so removing him would destroy their value.
Government could hold him accountable, and some of those gears have been turning over the last decade. In response he has spent a lot of money trying to steer elections and gain the influence of the ones in power to try to avoid accountability from that direction as well.
The double standard is that if you play capitalism well enough you are shielded from the consequences that others would face.
Elon made Tesla using Chinese automation, and China was its second biggest market (and largest for some models). Even though there are the same export controls for Chinese EVs, Elon managed to get around it politically. And lastly, Detroit isn't as shameless and ruthless as Ant/OpenAI are.
This is wrong and made up. Tesla was made in America, if anything they acquired a german automation company. No export controls existed to be subverted.
What kind of a shill are you exactly? U post a lot about China
I mean the guy tried to break a national security law.
Yes Elon and Zuck are abhorrent, but when they have tried to break the law, they have been held accountable in some sense. Not to the extent that they deserve it, but still.
If they become as big a libility to their businesses, even their controling shares won't save them
Musk and Zuckerberg are simply more politically shrewd.
There’s no actual evidence that Huang broke a national security law. Even if there is, we need the federal prosecutors to say so rather than random commentators on the internet. Even when prosecutors say so in this country we presume people to be innocent until proven by court to be guilty. I have personally looked into the rumors and I don’t believe Huang broke any law.
It speaks to Huang's actual work performance. His seemingly sole value proposition was talking; his customers originally identified a gpu's utility in AI.
yeah, I think he is way more than that, CUDA exista because he refused to concede to shareholders pressure, the whole GPU release cadence compressed to 6 months with Jepsen and the whole stack of datacenter technology to connect those GPUs didn't happen by mistake either
Jepsen survived in an industry of failures, he is an incredibly talented CEO
What I think is hard to argue: Jensen did a remarkable job leading his company, especially during the development of CUDA, which required an enormous investment in the 2000s but eventually created an ecosystem that outside developers and companies now help sustain and expand. CUDA is a major reason Nvidia has such a dominant market position and should continue to achieve far into the future, regardless of who is CEO. Nvidia's massive risk and its extraordinary payoff will likely be studied for a long time.
AI pushed Jensen into the spotlight very quickly and he didn't respond well, but he should go down in history as an extraordinary leader.
I would honestly love to hear why you think there is anybody at all working for or invested in Anthropic who is capable of orchestrating a coup against one of the most well capitalized companies on the planet AND a supplier partner that poses an existential risk to Anthropic itself (per their S-1) in the way of spending commitments and ability to procure compute capacity.
I don't need to hear why you think they did it. I'm already familiar with the "why" behind this crazy theory. I would like to know how you think it's possible they did this.
"Some officials at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, including those close to director Jay Clayton, have framed the characterization of Alice Huang as a Chinese spy as not entirely accurate and over-torqued, sources said. And officials at the CIA also are not yet convinced that the intelligence collection on Huang to date, including intercepted communications, proves she was knowingly funneling information back to Beijing, a source told CNN.
Still, some Trump officials told CNN that it strains credulity to believe that she was not acting as an agent of the Chinese government — simply by virtue of the fact that she is a successful Chinese businesswoman working with one of America’s most powerful companies."
Personally I am not a fan of companies being moral arbiters, or company's reputation and such be the organizing axis around which we decide whether a person has the right to a livelihood, companies after all are not people. Though Jensen is insulated from economic security concerns, for any other "normal" person, the coercive power of a corporate with it's army of lawyers can effectively ruin a person's life.
Whether one deserves such ruination is a moral matter, and everyone is entitled to their own judgement, but it seems wrong to concentrate such power in a private for-profit entity. The entire basis of anti-fascist doctrine is infringement of individual liberties and modern societies, while mostly conditioned to be against government coercion are remarkably comfortable with corporate coercion, dressed up in the pretty language of compliance and organizational reputation. A company is an economic entity, not a moral entity. It is fine with being a moral entity when it comes to matters of its own reputation and operations, but conveniently becomes an economic entity when it is time for layoffs. Ultimately, it comes down to who has a bigger stick
The thing is an organization is not just a place where you work; it is a provider of economic security, livelihood, and dignity. This concentrates extraordinary power in your place of employment; you are to clock in 5 days a week for at least 8 hours a week; and then work in a highly locked down corporate machine, which you are not allowed to customize even though this is where you will spend the majority of your week in, and one has to ask the question to what extent a company owns your life.
I think that we must also identify the cultural contradiction here; where Hollywood and the like in a sense glorify promiscuity and depict wealth as flaunted with assets and women, as a cultural ideal, and then turn around and hound creatures who are products of such a culture.
Of course, in this case it is far more likely that Jensen was involved with some national security incident.
Jensen, even after decades, remained deeply involved in many operational decisions with 40+ direct reports. He had a long-term mindset, investing heavily in Tegra and CUDA in 2009-2010, even as he was plagued by write-offs from faulty chips.
This is a terrible decision for NVIDIA and the broader economy.
Someone with an actual long term mindset wouldn't have slept with a suspected PRC spy, while simultaneously flouting the intent of export control laws, and setting his company up for federal smuggling probes, and congressional investigations.
Someone with an actual long term mindset and who had the interests of the company would have groomed one or more successors, and, if, for some reason, they felt they were indispensable, would have probably avoided jeopardizing the company by allegedly having an affair with a subordinate.
There are plenty of people in the world to sleep with besides subordinates and spies. Failing the most basic of marshmallow tests is not a indication of a consistent long-term mindset.
Jensen is a colorful, important figure in the history of technology. He did make many solid long term bets. But if the company falls apart because of his reckless actions, that that's on him too.
And if it doesn't fall apart, then the credit goes to him for resigning.
Where do you think that someone who is surrounded by bodyguards, always traveling, and working 7 days a week is going to meet someone normal?
I’m not even a billionaire, but the only people I interact with are people who I work with or who insert themselves into my life because they want something.
To go full devils avocado: Surely a CEO selling more chips isn't a bad thing for his company?
All I've seen is his personal relationships drama and advocating for softening of useless export laws that didn't stop a single CPU or GPU get into China in the first place, selling to Megaspeed is hardly anything unlike what AMD or other suppliers does right now.
It's a hitjob and he probably could have fought it but chose not to.
Much like the broken unenforced rules that lets OpenAI/ycombinator sell trillions upon trillions of tokens into China each week despite all the export restriction laws against them doing it.
You really think the Chinese can't pay and access ChatGPT/Anthropic/Google premium models today?
does that imply OP is right that Huang is the best person to lead the company and efforts to pressure him to step down are just people trying to cancel him over his sexual escapades? Otherwise what is "spoken like a true shareholder" supposed to mean?
So, I understand this is getting priced in to some degree, but I just don't see how any of this will change the fundamental core business value of NVIDIA.
Even if they have to pay a fine or increased regulatory scrutiny. At this point NVIDIA is more like SHELL(10 years ago maybe/during oil spill scandal) than a tech company. Its going to keep printing money with its chips.
So, I guess I'll timestamp my prediction that now is a good time to buy NVIDIA stock.
He had two back to back scandals that would normally oust any other CEO. Don't fall for the story this is some targeted thing, he screwed up at least twice publicly and they came out very close together ensuring his ouster but both of these individually are likely tenure enders.
is today the best day in over a year to buy NVDA? From a long-term perspective, how much was he the one driving innovation, and can they be something like an Apple who overcame founder's reliance?
I mean practically speaking if he gets hauled in front of congress we don’t know that money would keep flowing. Investor lawsuits, etc, like - it could have become financially unteneble as well.
Am I the only one who feels this is a smear piece to oust Jenson to retain optics?
Outside of the continued selling to China/skirting the export ban I’m of the belief that he was offered a better deal in China, took it, then signaled he was departing, the timing on this seems…suspect.
Recalling the May POTUS and CEO field trip to china, the lot returned together with Jenson extending his stay nearly two weeks afterwards.
IMO this ongoing theatre provides cover to oust Jenson and vilify him before he appears somewhere in China —- imagine how the share price would fair if it came to light that he was leaving as CEO to take a position in Huawei…
The “foreign asset” got him is what I want to say. It’s tough letting this slide from the American technostate. One of our biggest gaps between competitors was architectural.
Extramarital affairs are pretty common in our ruling class, so unless the media is conveniently withholding information, think he got in bed with the wrong folks.
I am in shock, Jensen is one of the pioneers in our industry and we will always remember his accomplishments. But I do fear Nvidia will now only make safe bets and not be able to innovate in an ongoing industrial revolution because they lack their biggest, boldest visionary to set the direction. This man has created an insane wealth for over 50% of his employees. An extraordinary leader, engineer, salesman and team builder. I still believe in the excellent talent at Nvidia, but I do not believe in a board that fires their best person and we have seen several examples of a board/leadership ruining a company because they lack the founders vision, fighting spirit and ownership. Jensen deserved another punishment, not getting fired.
> Jensen deserved another punishment, not getting fired.
If he knowingly sent GPUs to Megaspeed knowing they would get in Chinese hands, he is guilty of Conspiracy, Espionage, SEC violations, and Export Control violations.
Just the Espionage charge alone is 20yr to life, with the possibility of execution/death penalty.
"We had a situation where somebody was reported to us to be doing something bad with AI. We called them very strongly and said get ready to go to jail."
Wish the interviewer would have let him talk more instead of changing the subject.
The irony isn't lost on me that Jensen Huang suffered consequences for his involvement with mature, consenting adults and a whole bunch of other tech billionaires didn't for their island antics.
I think the affair with the subordinate was the big problem. That opens up NVidia to a lot of legal exposure.
The Chinese spy is bizarre because these guys have corporate security and cooperation of the US government. How was this allowed to happen?
Skirting export bans is an unknown. I honestly don't believe this administration would let anything bad happen there. Jensen Huang is simply too rich and NVidia too big.
> The Chinese spy is bizarre because these guys have corporate security and cooperation of the US government. How was this allowed to happen?
Yeah, this is the most interesting part to me.
It points to the US government knowing about this, and holding onto it as compromat until the time was right to kick him out. But I don't even have a guess as to why this was viewed as the right time...
Meh, not really. NVidia stock is presumably rebounding as we speak -- unless they pick someone political or unhinged to take over, this will just be a blip.
And I doubt it'll cost him much. What could you pay the founder of the second most valuable company on the planet who already holds $150B in equity? It'd be as absurd as paying Donald Trump.
> NVidia stock is presumably rebounding as we speak
Not in premarket so far, 12% down sing yesterday.
Also why would it do better? Overall Huang seems to be a highly competent CEO. Replacing him with someone seems risky (especially if the board is influenced by Trump & co.). Especially given that Nvidia never had any other CEO.
So, I understand this is getting priced in to some degree, but I just don't see how any of this will change the fundamental core business value of NVIDIA.
Even if they have to pay a fine or increased regulatory scrutiny. At this point NVIDIA is more like SHELL(10 years ago maybe/during oil spill scandal) than a tech company. Its going to keep printing money with its chips.
So, I guess I'll timestamp my prediction that now is a good time to buy NVIDIA stock.
“some fines” could be a very big deal. Sanctions laws have teeth.
How much of Nvidia’s revenue came from infringing sales to china? If so, that revenue is probably going to disappear as now they will have to really be serious about export controls or face much greater pain. Some estimates I’ve seen is 30% of their revenue perhaps disappearing overnight!
Sure, but then that would mean they can now take those chips and sell them to Musk, Zuck, or Dario at inflated prices instead.
And I'm pretty sure any CEO with at least a bachelors degree knows about the De beers diamonds story, so, I really find it hard to believe they will struggle with the concept of maintaining their artifical scarcity/demand.
If 30% of their chips were going to China and now they have to stop that, it means they will have an excess supply of chips and the prices would go down instead of up.
I think the biggest problem is the way Huang was creating demand by orchestrating the financing of the entire tech industry. The CFO in charge can handle the contract details, but do they have the strategic chops and relationships to keep doing that?
And it was all high risk. It may be only a once in a generation founder who wants to orchestrate that risk.
And again, no one was expecting NVIDIA to stay flat, massive growth was priced in.
Massive growth is no longer priced in. The P/E is 20, despite anticipation that this quarter’s results are 100% year over year.
I would say it’s under-priced, but I get really nervous when my thinking diverges this strongly from the market. Previous confidence in my thinking has not gone well.
>, but I just don't see how any of this will change the fundamental core business value of NVIDIA. [...] Its going to keep printing money with its chips.
The key is that NVIDIA is in a fast-changing technology sector and that means the core business requires NVIDIA to keep innovating new and better products that beat the competition. Having a company continuously adapt and iterate future products requires a visionary leader that pushes the company to stay on the cutting edge. Competitors and alternative products like Google TPU, Amazon Trainium, AMD, Cerebrus, etc are not standing still; they're innovating too.
Many shareholders (including employees with RSU stock) are worried that NVIDIA without Jensen puts them in a weaker position for the future unless they can find someone with equivalent influence and vision.
Intel was once on top of the world with CEO Andy Grove running things. But then the followup CEOs didn't keep Intel at the cutting edge and they lost market leadership to TSMC, AMD, and Apple Silicon in various areas. The world kept changing and Intel didn't adapt fast enough.
So IMO, it really doesn't seem to be that much of a fast changing sector. Moores law is long dead, my 6 year old 3080 laptop gpu is still damn powerful, rather we are seeing power efficiency/optimization now between GPU generations.
Its more of a 'race to the bottom' for price efficiency/hardware deg efficiency against price of electricity and price of the chips over lifetime, than it is a fast changing tech sector where breakthroughs are being made everyday that change the entire game like say with OpenAI and Anthropic.
It very much clashes with the idea held by some that CEOs are fungible and that the value is all created by ICs. But yes, semiconductors are at the forefront of human technology and you need the whole company (including c suite) firing on all cylinders.
A variant of that idea is the push Jensen could have he's already done by now. The company is basically set and it will continue to do it's thing into the future. Apple as corollary example. He just can't as one person have been in day to day of everything that made Nvidia tick.
Everyone is somewhat replaceable but the work they historically have done might have been critical to reach current stage. And Nvidia may miss on what he could have done but it will take a while for the downturn to happen and others are just as capable. They may find another internal or external candidate that may be able to push further. Market will price the uncertainty until then.
Sort of agree but he did go around and spoke how export controls to China have no effect, and then he's in bed with a foreign asset, so lots of geopolitical stuff in there.
Plus whole lot of people waiting for that signal that the "AI bubble " is about to burst. No bubble will be bursting as a cause of this.
Well, AI bubble is not going to burst, probably ever.
We have a new equivalent to something like Web 2.0 boom, Its not like the dot com bubble, because its not actually made up of a lot of empty unimplemented websites with too few users.
Rather its already able and in my opinion has met Dario's claim about 'replacing all developer jobs' if a bit later than he claimed, alongside every other single job, nearly bar none, able to be replaced if it can be done via a computer.
For example, Fable 5.2. I wish it was cheaper. It's able to perform a build out of and then run an entire complex software stack, including dependencies/servers for internal opensource git servers with ci/cd and the full git and jira featureset combined, with spin up/server management across every major cloud provider and then use said stack to run a swarm as a collaborating dev team from every major llm provider.
I know that because I've done most of it (or rather Fable has). I started this project 24 hours ago. I now have:
Complete containerized customized claude code + codex deployment package with tacked on feature set 'plugin' mostly for claude + a custom-agent mcp that drives mostly codex for now, allowing claude to call codex subagents (so I can farm that subscription too), that allows multi level sub-orchs which make sub agents via said mcp with future work items being bringing in a modified hermes or pi harness to use across the board (Claude code stays until I can afford 20k usd monthly api usage).
This also includes a custom ci/cd deployment set of pipelines/management to aws servers easily integrated with necessary accounts, which was done adhoc as a replacement for gh actions, because of course I've used all 18 usd of my free usage on my private account, and then all 18 usd of my free usage on the git enterprise trial about 14 hours ago.
This is alongside getting ready to finally ship to prod several high complexity SaaS including international supplier integration, and a 'contact suppliers' module/role for high tier llm models only and an entire suite of CAD design and 3d model design with an array of custom tools for both.... which is now good enough that its actually production ready for my niche market. And I'm not even bullshitting. Its a good thing somebody on my team speaks mandarin and it isn't me. So far its been fine surprisingly.
Anyways apologies for the ramble, I need some sleep.
Its just so bewildering to me though. All that gobbledygook I just typed out is actually true, and I've tested the hell out of it, myself, I've had my wife test it, etc. It actually works. I can't think of anything I would need a technical employee even for now at this point. Because every bug I find I tell a fable session to make a git issue for and fix and then it does that and the bug is actually gone...
Now its more just the gatekeeping/relationship building hand shaking part that seems to need people still. I was thinking about a marketing lead but then I dipped Fables toes into that too...
I guess the AI vibe code everything bros that were infuriating 12 months ago, had the right mentality.
They'll be fine for a few years with a talking donkey running the place because they have a roadmap. And then when the situation on the ground has changed and the future is ambiguous, they will nosedive like SGI did. My money is on Huawei now. Way to go America! You've actually outdumbed the CEO's poor choices of mistresses.
How though? Is there any legal cases where this has been sucessfully done before? And even they couldn't NVIDIA drag their feet on it for years in court?
Personally I think a bigger risk than that is AI models getting good enough to legitimately just reverse engineer and open source CUDA directly.
>Huang, Nvidia's fourth-largest shareholder with a stake of about 3.61%
This was the founder? Damn!
I get that hardware requires much more capital and investment than a pure software company, but he had crossed the board-being-able-to-fire-you rubicon looong ago
There's huge risk in firing a very successful CEO without anyone ready to replace him.
No one really cares about the affairs, so I think the only thing that could push the board do this would be the threat of more damaging stuff coming out, like nVidia skirting the China ban, or a legal threat to Jensen that envelops the company. Or back-channel pressure from the US Gov.
This seems like a wild over reaction to the stock. Does anyone actually think Jensen being CEO of Nvidia is with $1 trillion in market cap?! The reason Nvidia is dominant is because of their ecosystem and them having the best chips, not because of some guy that leads the company.
I actually think this may be worse for the gaming industry, which more lay people will care about. Jensen was a gamer and clearly excited about pushing innovation there.
I hear they're (temporarily) replacing him with a non-engineer finance suit.
It would be shocking, but with gaming making up just 1/20 of their revenue, maybe someone who doesn't actually care just says "we're pulling back from the consumer market to focus on our real business."
There are lots of reasons to do this. Many of the work in the favor of the the person ratting. There are strong whistleblower protections for some of the reasons that work against that person.
Jack Clark Co-founder and head of policy at Anthropic / head of the Anthropic Institute is the nyt and @AnaSwanson "source" he is the one coordinating a coup against Jensen.
But they are going to be hit by this as well - this is a strike against the whole AI ecosystem and honestly, the US economy as a whole considering how propped up it is by the hype.
interesting. the timing would favor their IPO in terms of flexing their ability to move policy through extra-judicial means. but it would also benefit them to coattail the narrative even if they weren't players so I wouldn't assume it without evidence.
It just sucks because Jensen was basically the last big tech CEO that seemed like a human being, and knew what the hell he was talking about. I guess a little too human in the end. But this has pretty much destroyed my last bit of faith in any of them.
Both of these scandals individually are usually pretty rough to weather, together they were essentially guaranteed to have him forced out by the board. He's choosing to resign the same way a cop under investigation resigns to avoid more public consequences and to hope to sneak away to a new job.
He is at retirement age and a zillionaire. So he is going to start cashing as he is no longer required to report the sale of the stock. He is going to liquidate.
Gates did it too and they still think he is a guru which he never was by the way; all of them are into this stuff when the hit their 50s feeling left out of the game while accumulating zillions.
> NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) Board of Directors announced today that Jensen Huang has resigned as President, Chief Executive Officer, and a member of the Board, effective immediately.
Jensen Huang gone as President, CEO, and a member of the Board of Nvidia, effective immediately.
The Nvidia coup operation has been completed. It is over.
It's kinda crazy to me to point at open weights here when we got proof of foreign interference of this kind. The case for considering China a fair or respectable actor in this regard is now absolutely dynamited.
This proves that not selling to China was a good idea, and throws into question every narrative pointing otherwise. It also should make it evident that yes, China is most certainly spreading propaganda regarding these points, there's just no way it's not happening.
i hate this moral outrage. what's wrong if he was sleeping around? let him just print gpu. his ability to print gpus has nothing to do what he does in his bedroom. i can sympathaize with the wife and infidelity is a sin. but he was supplying everybody with gpu. so that makes him a great guy too.
Because there is potentially more to the story that would impact the actual business than just affairs. The board is to protect the business and if they make a move like this, they do so in the best interest of shareholders. We will see if anything comes out but I suspect it’s not just sleeping around.
There is also fears of a federal investigation and the ability to scapegoat Jensen may be the best move, business wise
I was hoping we wouldn't return to woke witch hunts
If this was about national security or evading the law, it would have happened when it was discovered.
The board didn't have the determination either to fire him or to protect him, and he realized they wouldn't be able to make a decision, so he did it for them.
Now we'll see yet another jewel taken over by bean counters because the board was so dependent.
Let's hope other founders have boards who can actially handle their responsibilities.
The spy affair was probably going to sink him eventually because she was also tied to a company that was redirecting chips to China where NVidia is banned from selling chips above a certain capability. Another affair came out this time with a subordinate inside the company which is also something that CEOs normally don't survive, the combo of them helped hammer in the nearly inevitable conclusion of each of them.
I have seen several references to Huang's stance on Open Models, and there is apparently nothing below board with exports. Is there a chance (within reason, I don't mean conspiracy theory) his ouster was orchestrated? Let's call the affair a "convenient excuse" because from what I've seen in my time on earth, a CEO's private indiscretions aren't always enough to result in a termination.
tl;dr - how much of this might be motivated about internal politics and board views vs. CEO views ?
Apple and Nvidia could hardly be more different here. Apple is a consumer brand, with basically zero presence in data centers. Nvidia is the opposite. They do make GPUs for "consumers" but it's for a small niche of hardcore gamers and basically irrelevant compared to what they make for data centers. An "app store" model would never work there.
Lots of HNers chiming in that consent is all that matters, so the affair with a subordinate is totally fine.
Perhaps this may help explain why it's unethical to date a direct report to those HNers:
- It's unfair to the coworkers of the subordinate, because the affair can give the impression of influencing promotion, personnel and monetary decisions you make in favour of the subordinate.
- It places your direct report in a compromising position. Such a relationship is potentially coercive, because the direct report may fear reprisal, rendering any consent invalid. Many have commented that imputing coercion to any power imbalance leads to the absurd conclusion a rich person shouldn't date at all - however, this use of "slippery slope" doesn't offset your ethical duty as a leader. As the boss, you have to protect your employees, and placing them in this situation in the first place violates that commitment.
tl;dr you violate your duty of care, plain and simple, to everyone underneath you by doing this.
A pragmatic, ethical workplace policy is to instead date people not in your reporting chain. If that means you shouldn't date your employees as CEO, then that's responsible behaviour, not a chafing limitation.
---
Others have commented that Jensen's affair is plausibly fine because "we don't know his private affairs". Jensen has made an unambiguous statement about hurting his wife and family - if they were non-monogamous, Jensen has had the opportunity to disclose it. Absent that, you have to assume this was an illicit affair. Moreover, none of this changes the fact that having an affair with a direct report was entirely unethical.
Still others have attempted a whataboutism by asking why "other CEOs" haven't had this level of blowback for having an affair with a subordinate. Unfortunately, not every tragedy gets the same level of public reaction, for no other reason than timing, luck, or lack if engagement. We should be equally upset about all the other cases as a general rule, rather than relying on normalized apathy to lull us into complacence.
wow! things moved fast. It was only yesterday we were debating what could/should happen.
If he did what he did as an employee, he would be fired too. As a CEO it was much worse.
Also, this did not happen in a day, it was cooking for some time and the mid-term shift of power may have something to do with it as well.
All the folks arguing "oh China does not need the chips, this ban is bad". That is a separate issue. Fact is there is a ban and this reeks of at least turning a blind eye in pursuit of profit, if not downright complicity. Second major character flaw for a leader after he demonstrated tendency to cheat.
A CEO is the public face of the company. If he was in China, he would already be in a remote prison for "re-education".
Folks may have their own opinion, but I do think China desperately wants access to the latest nVidia chips. Their own efforts are lagging behind (maybe at 80% and the last 20% is the hardest). So in the meantime, they don't want their software part to fall behind. So they need the latest/greatest for their AI models.
Eventually they may get to hardware parity and likely even get ahead (they have enough smart people and consistent leadership focus). But not today.
For them this was a win-win. If it worked, they would have the chips they need and if it blew up, they would have slowed down the leading US company (and it will affect nVidia).
Mr. Huang who already was quite successful eventually could not manage the stratospheric growth that he lucked into on the back of AI. Maybe on a product level he did, but on a policy level, he seems to have come up short.
Now that leaves another big hardware company, also helmed by a Taiwanese - I hope they can keep their heads (women are generally better at that since they only have to manage one head).
I remember Jensen saying he doesn’t have a contract with TSMC. The whole supply is based on a trusted relationship and handshake deals between the two CEOs. I wonder if that relationship is transferable to his successor.
And is it going to get cheaper to build data centers?
Nvidia was/is such a fundamental cog in the american ai economy/ machine, what spies, what cheating are people obsessed about? Nvidia created the capital for its own success; read about it, think about it, be against it, be for it. The capital did not exist, they created it by neoclouds buying hardware which they wouldnt need for two years ahead by lender and vendor-backed financing; hardware, which would be replaced in another 2-4 years.
Will nVidia continue to provide the same backing to neo-clouds? Without nVidia backing are lenders willing to give more or less?
Forget about chinese openweight models, antropic or oai, I see this development as a huge spanner in the us ai economy, maybe the biggest blunder of the year, the biggest own goal if it came from within the us administration under or without guidance.
And finally: Jensen selling to the chinese iron. Okay, was he the only one, god amongst mortals, in the fricking room. Who the heck comes up with these shallow plots...
> Jensen Huang was fighting hard to hang onto his role with the company he founded, according to several people briefed on the discussions. But an interim plan for the chief financial officer, Colette Kress, to take over Nvidia was well underway yesterday.
From the NYT live updates.
Ah well, I'm somewhat seeing parallels to the 2023 OpenAI drama, not sure if this is gonna be how things end quite yet.
Would anyone bat an eye for “one admitted affair”? It is the “spy, Chinese, export ban, a blonde” caught on. No evidence whatsoever on these. It is the imagination of if you have “two ANT in the kitchen…”
The affairs are horrible behavior. Going around export restrictions.
But talk about ruining a legacy before it really took off. I don't really have sympathy. But this guy should have carried around a piece of paper with some short aphorisms to look at everyday to anchor him back to reality.
I was telling yall I knew something was off with nvidia when they had those remote controlled “lets pretend they are ai” Disney robots on stage - I was like that’s not cricket.
This is the reason no other ceo projects an image of being good guy. One affair and everything you build just collapses. And on the other side rich people can be doing anything and nothing moves markets for their deeds lol
"The state of the world economy and the future of open models would be in turmoil due to the affairs of a person who's not even a politician" was not on my 2026 bingo card.
Could this be it? Are these fuckers worried about their incentives being misaligned where Anthropic would love to stop open weight models in the US and NVIDIA has incentives to beat Apple at the local AI game.
Financially, this is probably the best thing that could’ve happened to him…even with the almost assured impending divorce. Wonder if he’s gonna start a new chip company.
I guess everyone looks at infidelity and goes oh the horror. Thing is these are puritanical views and has no bearing on the companys wider performance. Not to mention the fact we dont really know what was going on with these people's personal lives. Now going around sanctions otoh is a whole different problem. Although tbf, given the clown that is the US president right now, I am not sure the US has the moral high ground to suggest selling to China is a problem or anything. I dont see the point of these sanctions, so I understand if Nvidia found a way of going around the sanctioned pathways.
Firing one the world's smartest men that built one of the most valuable companies just because he had consensual sex with a woman he wasn't married with.
It's amazing to see the people cheering on Jensen's resignation as if it's not the death knell for open models..especially on a forum that prides itself on open source, what a slap in the face and a compromise of the forums values.
we'll see whether it was about the affairs if Nvidia keeps promoting open weight models or just becomes a supplier for openai and anthropic's closed ecosystems for 'national security' reasons.
Would make 0 sense for several reasons. Very gullible thing to take anything seriously Musk spouts out. So strange that there is basically a fantasy world out there for Musk fanboys.
Law and adultery are so obviously irrelevant here, besides being used as kompromat. That's a pretty transparent and well timed punishment for disloyalty and a corporate+state coup of one group against another, there's zero doubt about that. I wonder if anyone who commented "oh it's just China doing Chinese things" on Jack Ma back in the day will ever notice (ironic) parallels with Huang. Detestable.
Banging Chinese Spies presents a conflict of interest the Board cannot overlook.
Banging 1000 women while married is Chinese "Boss" behavior.
The cause and effect is that any and all future CEOs caught in a honeypot will be easier to compromise. Xi loves the news. Nerds with one billion dollars hoping to attain unlimited groupies will need proper Hollywood Handlers. HR for whore intake if you will. Until the sex robots arrive.
Since this company has abandoned gamers for AI. Plus allegedly giving away a few million plus chips (gamers get fucked) to China. I am fully on his wife's side. She was there at the beginning.
Luckily we know that American courts are one sided. Making the upcoming divorce more costly then the Bill Gate's Foundation implosion. What's the over/under divorce cost trending on Polymarket right now? Seems undervalued.
Jensen Huang getting caught with his pants down was not on my bingo card for how AI ponzi schemes will crash. This is the same guy and the same board that has been loaning peter to rent compute from paul who buys from them. ie circular financing juicing forward revenue.
Eh, i think he's acting as a heatshield for Nvidia, his affairs are irrelevant, but the Chinese sales could put both Nvidia as a company and him as CEO in jail... this allows them both to pretends it's a 'personal issue' and get away with it.
That bit with Dwarkesh was very prophetic in hindsight.
Huang/Nvidia = House Atreides
Lisa Su/AMD = House Harkonnen
GPUs = Sandworms
US Govt = The Emperor/House Corrino
Smugging GPUs to China = Smuggling Sandworms off planet to try and break the spice monopoly
This event = some stuff that happens in book 2/ movie part 3
Stuff
Let this be a learning experience for everyone here: if you ever get the CEO if a US tech giant, then never f** a Chinese spy! (and never circumvent export bans while you are at it)
Someone of incredible wealth and influence suffering negative outcomes for something wrong that they did?
I'm not familiar with the thing I'm seeing.
Might call my financial advisor and ask him to buy some shares. They'll be lower, and the board has shown it can actually protect the interests of shareholders.
The real question we must ask is if a current $30k consumer GPU that initially sold for $2.7k is just as inflated as the 'AI' holdings revenue predictions.
The smart money will wait till the legal mess starts, as the dead cat bounce in the panic sell off is probable as people try to buy the dip. ymmv =3
He was at the top of the world just last week and now his career is over.
Slept with a direct subordinate - who btw rose quickly through the ranks - also slept with a Chinese spy and allegedly sold one of the most precious commodities in modern times illegally to an economic adversary. Hit job or not, he really fucked up.
Elon(and others) got it right by making perfidity a feature of there character right up front by bieng VERY public about whatever they get up to.
Jensen just so happens to be a convienient scapegoat to buy a news cycle away from the very difficult political and economic situation that would otherwise be the lead story, and I bet that having him fold his hand quite so easily is actualy not what they were hoping for, and good on him for doing it.
Jensen is basically Nvidia, he has ruled it for over 30 years single handedly, he took the risks and had the vision to take it to where it is today under his leadership. Without him, they are just some chip company, and will be revalued as such. The innovation will stop.
How many of his dozens of direct reports will leave the company as his successor, guided by some management consultancy, convert the company to a more normal hierarchy?
I have to say, this seems like a ridiculous over-reaction on the part of the board.
I think if you could know the truth, 75% of CEOs in the US probably cheat on their wives. They are not hired to be faithful to their wives, they are hired to increase the stock prices of their companies.
Like sure, if you're a good Christian, it's not good behavior, but ultimately, it's just having sex with someone. I want the guy to make me money and build a great company, I don't care who he has sex with.
It's not about the sex. It's about the judgement shown in cheating with a Chinese spy and a direct report, specifically. It's the lack of trustworthiness shown by someone who is willing to cheat in their marriage (presumably they are then fine lying to their company). And finally it's about exporting gpus to China illegally.
Not sure about the people thinking he didn't do much wrong.
The point is that as CEO of a company you have a fiduciary duty to have the best interest of a company in your actions and behavior.
Having sex with your workers and chinese spies is obviously not the kind of behavior that reflects that.
And if companies did not fire their CEOs over such blatant missteps the wrong message would be sent to the whole corporate America.
It sucks because obviously Nvidia would be nowhere without Jensen, and it's not like he killed someone or committed fraud, but the mistakes have been huge none the less.
And don't forget that those are the two cases we know about, but when you see 2 ants in your kitchen there's always more.
And the internal investigation of Nvidia quickly assessed that the issue was bigger and Jensen was more of a liability than an asset.
I think he clearly did something wrong. It just doesn't seem that bad in comparison to the current shit our leaders do weekly. We're in an age of morally corrupt leadership across the board in the United States.
And the way to fix that is to start holding leaders accountable. So the insistence that it's wrong to somehow hold Jensen accountable here is a pretty absurd angle for the exact "But but but we don't hold leaders accountable here" people to take.
You want leaders to be held accountable? Look, a leader who clearly made bad and dumb and wrong choices, and a simple opportunity to celebrate them facing accountability. Can you support that?
I never mentioned cheating? Not sure why are you bringing it up.
I said that the missteps was having sex with subordinates and chinese spies.
Now start connecting the dots with Nvidia being one of the major advocates for relaxing exports to China and selling billions of GPUs to shady Singaporean companies that the chinese spy represented and you understand why the board finds him a liability.
Even the "chinese spies" is just unsubstantiated 'she's chinese so she should be a spy". She's not even chinese iirc, isn't she singaporean? so it's like suspect by ethnicity.
Suspect by payment from ... TenCent? AFAIK. Her company got money from Tencent and after every longer meeting with Jensen, someone from Tencent flew in and had a meeting with her. At least that is what I remember hearing.
In Wikipedia no mention of TenCent at all. In another writeup it's mentioned, but nothing clear.
Was Alice's company supposed to be the only company getting Nvidia chips (which they deny doing anyway). Or one of many and Chinese companies did it with many different others?
If many, why is her relationship specifically important or special from that aspect?
Again, I can understand snooping for confidential early information from him. But "she got with him so that this single company gets chips"?
But yes, the fact that Nvidia advocated for relaxing exports to China and that he sold billions of GPUs to shady Singaporean companies is now obviously under major scrutiny.
If it was some middle manager who got fired for screwing a subordinate you'd see the typical "don't shit where you eat" comments.
My guess is people are upset because their stock is down 20% over the last month because of this drama.
I think both nvidia AND jensen will be doing quite fine 5 years from now.
I agree. And to the conspiracy theorists: what is more likely? That an impossibly rich guy who thinks he is the center of the universe does something as entitled as this? Or that there is some shadowy coup going on that just checkmated him? Human nature doesn’t need that much encouragement.
I really hope the NVIDIA GeForce Now service sticks around and doesn't get enshittified.
It's actually an excellent high quality service and with all the shortages should hopefully continue to get more and more successful. Cloud gaming will continue to become a more important part of gaming.
Now that Microsoft recently enshittified Xbox Cloud Gaming, we have a situation where GeForce Now is pretty much the only good option left.
It seems whenever something like this happens to high profile, or deep pockets theres a bunch of additional folks who appear, some (maybe all) whom are just opportunists.
People also just tell more open to talking once the news is public.
When you are the first person to call the ceo a sexual opportunist, you take all the risks. When you’re second third, it’s easier, you’re just one more person.
One Blue Tsunami, and now all the oligarchs are suddenly turning progressive and transitioning! Trump was right all along. This is exactly what he was trying to warn us about.
Think of all the mistresses who will now have to accept and adapt to their oligarch lover's new gender -- Jensen has at least two that we know of, but when you see two ants in the kitchen, you know there are a lot more. I can't wait to see the wig Bezos picks out.
What is, however had, more interesting is that many of
his statements did not age well. Now, mind you - I still
think it is his private life at the end of the day; one
can reason about foreign spies, but then the same question
can be asked about Trump and his strange addiction to
Putin. As well as how Jen-Hsun was so obedient to a
mainland-China female, when the other Taiwanese are
scared of being possibly invaded and subsequently killed
by dictator Xi, just as dictator Putin commits to his
own personal genocide against Ukrainians right now.
But, with regards to statements, I distinctly remember
Jen-Hsun berating the british as incompetent economists.
I watched that on a shorts on youtube; can not find it
right now (google search AND youtube search sucks to
no ends now). Well - he may be right that the UK suffers
huge economic problems, but boy, this has not aged well.
People will poke fun at his love of women potentially
being spies while berating the british as being too
incompetent in economics. Perhaps he was too incompetent
in his own love life?
The reason this is all going so quickly now is because they realised how deep the shit is Jensen put the company in.
There will be an endless walk of shame for Jensen that would constantly drag the price of the company down, because this is the perfect opportunity for the Democrats to fly out of the gate in January and put the fear of god into the other billionaire oligarchs again. Punish one with extreme measures the others will fall in line, because at the end of the day they are all pussys.
Remember Elon wanted to do cagefighting with Zuckerberg. Those two losers had every excuse ready not to fight in the end. They didn’t even touch gloves for a single sparring. Manly men. All they can do is tough talk.
Plus the voters will see at least one party is doing something against blatant billionaire corruption, with corruption being the third most important topic in the elections.
There needs to be made an example of what happens to you if you start selling weapons-grade technology to the enemies of the United States for personal profit, and then think you are above the law.
This is not over for Jensen. And also not over for Nvidia, so the only sane thing to do is get as much distance between the "rogue" CEO and the company. Same for the White House, let’s see how often we see Jensen and Trump still together.
They are going to throw him under the bus and say he had the opportunity and the access and the power to do this without anyone else noticing, especially as he was sexually manipulating managers that directly report to him on important corporate issues.
They will make it look as though it’s all Jensen’s fault because otherwise they stop being a trillion-dollar company.
It’s a fitting end for Jensen Huang.
He gets taken down by the holy trifecta of power, money and politics he valued above his own marriage or what this whole mess would do to his kids.
He even lied in his public apology because he still was confident the other affair with his married manager would never surface because he truly believes he is smarter than anyone else.
What a loser. 140B deep pockets and still a loser.
Money is only paper. All that counts is family.
Threw away his life’s work, his marriage and every last drop of respect for him as a man, father and husband his kids could ever have for pocket change and some ass.
I still got no idea why an affair is such a big deal, why everybody immediately assumed his wife was not ok with it, or why this had any effect on his ability to continue running a business he's been very successful at running for three decades.
The amount of crass intrusion in someone's irrelevant private life is amazing, especially when it mostly comes from a country with some of the highest infidelity rates. Most of the people eager to insult him and make assumptions about his wife's feelings probably are cheaters.
There was absolutely no reason for him to resign or even publicly apologize until the pending investigation about his girlfriend being a spy or not completed.
Stuff like this is why AI automation is going to come faster than people think.
Invariably it will be recognized that the weakest link in any part of any organizations are the humans. Humans once had a monopoly on long-term strategic thinking so capital had to confer them authority and compensation, but once AI supersedes humans in these respects, then the human element will be aggressively excised from any company where human flaws put the strength and compettive advantage of that company at risk.
A robot employee never has affairs, never sleeps, never needs worker's compensation for injury, never sues the company. When trillions of dollars are on the line, eliminating risks like this is a trivial decision.
If you're controlled by your greed, yes. But human beings are relational. Half the reason I go to work is to talk and relate to my coworkers.
I know some people have AI girlfriends, but most people are not willing to (nor do I think they should) make that jump to trying to relate to their robot coworker.
I hope it's the same for people making a company. If not, we are heading towards a very lonely world.
You're assuming that the economy isn't driven by profit.
Of course there will be the minority of artisanal companies that accept the lovable flaws of fellow humans, but they will not be profitable, will not drive growth, and will not inherit the capital future. A market economy will sell to the highest bidder, and the buyer which has more money because it aggressively pursued the most efficient option at every opportunity will invariably be the highest bidder.
This is insane. Firing someone for their personal life choices instead of their professional life choices is absurd. The reporter that went after the second affair story was a proper misandrist too (as per reels) who had a history misandry in the past.
a CEO doesn't have to be a friend of the consumer- it's not their job. What Jensen made of NVIDIA, now a market leader not just in its original gaming segment, but in compute in general, deserves recognition.
Again, the decision to oust him was correct, but finding someone with a comparable long-term vision and skill is going to be nigh impossible for the company. And sure, bring even more downvotes for that
I don't really care about that. I don't use NVIDIA, I don't own any stock, and there will be other GPU stacks for AI. It's tech industry drama and is kinda trashy and compelling in that respect, but NVIDIA did a lot of nasty things for consumers like me and I have to look elsewhere for the performance I want. The current iteration of NVIDIA being led well is not something I care that much about. If they change their stripes, maybe I'll care more someday.
What are the implications if up to 15% of revenue was "fake"? The investors have been pricing Nvidia based on demand and revenue from (most places except for China). Since it turns out that it was actually (most places including China), doesn't that imply the market is actually smaller than they thought? Can buyers sue because they paid increased prices for their products due to sanction breaking by Nvidia?
> the second affair alone would fell most CEOs because it was with an employee
I mean realistically, no it would not. They do not resign for that in general. It is tall order for them to resign or leave when there is credible or proven accusation of actual abuse or harassment, there is not even that in play.
> At CNN, Mr Zucker faced criticism from those who believed the network gave too much coverage to the former president, especially during the Republican presidential primary. Mr Trump has also criticised what he saw as unfair coverage.
I will happily argue that affair was just an excuse for other reasons. His coverage was not pro-Trump enough.
> I will happily argue that affair was just an excuse for other reasons. His coverage was not pro-Trump enough.
Well you could, but considering:
1) Zucker's "too much coverage" that was internally complained about was him trying to be pro-Trump, not anti- (regardless of what the then-still-disgraced former President whined about)
2) his resignation came in 2022 while CNN was still largely free of the right-wing pressure campaign it has been under in the last 18 months pre-merger
3) … in the middle of an internal sex scandal investigation involving someone else, in the #MeToo era, when the company was trying to make it very clear that it would not tolerate such things
I think it would be quite a stretch to make your case.
Jeff Zucker was not even fired for the relationship, but for failing to tell the board about it as company rules said he must.
Again: top CEOs do indeed resign over this stuff. Because it is serious: it opens them up to blackmail and opens the company up to lawsuits.
I said "not pro-Trump enough". I did not said "anti Trump". Yes, it is long standing conservative tradition to call yourself victim when having pro-you bias.
2.) It was not free of that pressure, it was just not that super high yet.
My case is that sex alone wont make it. It is easy to make my case, you are kind making it for me by adding more reasons why it was not just afair on itself.
I'm supporting your argument by offering a straightforward, easily proved counter-argument to it? You're wrong, it's that easy.
> I said "not pro-Trump enough". I did not said "anti Trump".
He was not ousted from CNN for not being pro-Trump enough. If anyone at CNN ousted him for politics-related reasons, it would have been because he was too pro-Trump. Because he was, for example, helping Trump before the election debates, offering to have a weekly show with him etc. This pissed off a lot of his colleagues.
None of that is why he was fired (not least because it would have happened a lot sooner than 2022).
He was fired because he broke corporate rules in a way that embarrassed them when they were trying to boot out Chris Cuomo for being a genuine abusive boss.
I'm quite interested to know what you mean here, between the lines. OK, he was running a multi-trillion dollar company, are you saying currently it's a over-reaction because of that, and the reaction would have been justified if it was smaller/bigger company? I'm really not sure what the underlying point you're trying to make here.
The guy changed the world, heaven forbid he sleeps with a few extra women. They were age appropriate for him. The guy's getting more punishment than the Epstein class did.
It is not about the sex! It is about the corruption/lying to the board/misuse of company resources/risk of abuse of power/impact on other people's career progression.
The sky is the limit. The problem with high-level CEOs having affairs with subordinates is that they create extra scope for insider trading, for blackmail (and thus for espionage, corporate and otherwise), as well as the ordinary stuff like people defrauding the company in various ways, staff being compelled to keep the secret, staff finding that their own promotion is impossible because the person boffing the boss gets their job, the subordinate themselves effectively finding they can't break off the relationship, all sorts of stuff. Lawsuits all over the place and usually some other secrets come out.
Whether or not you're arguing that Nvidia should just say, well, the worst his shagging around is going to cost us is X billion, price it in and let it slide, as so many seem to be, I can't give you a number.
He's facing one of the largest divorces in history, you don't think that would be a little distracting?
And if you don't know why leaders can't have relationships with their employees, that ignorance is on you. You're trying to insult other people but it just makes you look bad.
Can't legally, or are you just talking about social pressure/policing? Because everyone involved are adults, and knew what they were doing.
Besides that, it comes down to how well he's able to separate personal life and work, and whether he continues to add value for shareholders (which Nvidia has clearly been an absolute outlier at doing, during his tenure).
But it looks like they won't give him a chance anyway.
A lot of marriages survive even after stuff like this. Especially in Asian cultures. The fact that his wife is White is the only thing that hurts him on his chances here.
Or she'd be more than adequately rich, worth around $75bn, able to do whatever the hell she wants with the rest of her life, able to have impacts independent of him, and free of a sleazy worm who humiliatingly cheated on her twice.
My understanding is that he has been very hands on, but it's also not that unusual for people who have built successful businesses to "check out" once the role chances from building an early-stage company to growing a large one. Whether or not that works obviously greatly depend on whether the people around them can take up the slack.
Resignation means that he can start liquidating his shares without input from shareholders or directors.. Divorce will also be likely. Affairs with the staff would matter if he had promoted people; who knows what else is in that stack. He had planted his own kids with no experience in tech as executives there too . He is a zillionaire though and he has enough cash for many generations.
I guess even if Jensen Huang leaves scorched earth, he will have sufficient money for the rest of his life. On the other hand, any other person who invested into Nvidia stocks will have a much more serious problem. :-)
So, it would not be a dumb idea for Jensen Huang to leave scorched earth and "let the world burn" (and in particular cause utter panic in the AI sector). :-)
The only reason Jensen is out is because he doesn't pretend AI is an existential threat like Anthropic and OpenAI do to boost their own valuation/moats and to boost the anti-China sentiment for the administration.
Because he cheated on his wife?? Or what am I missing? If that's the official reason, I don't buy it. I don't think those who can influence this decision give two shits about this type of morality. It's silly on its face. Obviously it's cover for some other agenda. I'm just surprised people buy this silly excuse instead of getting to the bottom of what is really happening.
That he conspired to smuggle NVIDIA GPUs into China to bypass a US embargo working with the Chinese government via a spy (either willingly or via blackmail). Impropriety adds insult to injury - the board have rightly seen that the market will view it more negatively if he stays than if he leaves.
It's only been like a year since the last CEO resigned for viral infidelity.
And that was only with a subordinate, not a subordinate AND with a foreign spy (alleged). Reports say China got billions in chips imported thanks to this operation.
Politicians also drop like flies. The only person impervious to consequences has been Trump. None of his supporters care that he's the devil.
No, it's because he repeatedly lied. 20% of the company's profits were/are coming from selling sanctioned chips to China and he said 0% 0% 0% (in official filings)
The news made it sound like she was a sophisticated person using him as a simpleton, but if anything he was using her to move his products against sanctions.
If shareholders want to save the company fu-g board of directors should be replaced completely and Jensen back.
Colette Kress has brain of Marisa Mayer who destroyed Yahoo. A woke clown to lead technology company? No vision, no skills, no understanding of technology.
Apologies, but I don't really get why these issues are being exposed all over so awfully about the person life of the poor person who is getting ashamed, reputation getting damaged, and what's more important, his wonderful personal, private life is getting exposed and preserved in the history...
These lovely cases must still be approached with pure respect for private life of everyone, and understanding, because we all are human who have feelings, and this is absolutely normal to make mistakes in love sometimes trying...
Relationships, affairs, love... this is personal and must be respected. These are some of the most complex subjects, if not the most... and infinitely magnificent feelings... where sometimes the heart and hope wins over rational actions...
Yet, this is true for every single human, isn't it? This is true about me, I believe, too. This is true about people I know in overly serious and responsible positions at critical decisions for business and lives of other people... and they know that, and stay careful.
And these cases, vulnerabilities, or operational risks... are also covered on military classes, as leadership and security awareness courses, to stay responsible for actions and consider the future - to remind that you must always evaluate the long term consequences, to the point to decide quickly in full action.
This is matter of the heart... human emotions... infinitely powerful aspects of human nature... the dear love...
There's nothing to be ashamed of.
Yes, you must stay truthful to your half... the ring bound promise, which is a miracle if from love...
But it is fundamentally... absolutely normal, awesome to try searching for your soulmate if you don't have peace at heart, making mistakes, trying hard...
// ---
Such public cases are either designed for public (e.g., to derail attention from something more important), or those that get out of control, which is relatively rare, I believe.
It is rare to get exposed on public since these relationships are known to limited number of people, aren't they? So samizdat is rarely responsible for it, and mass publishers are normally supervised by governments, which is expected for them to stay responsible for control of events.
Even if circumstances and consequences may be monumentally tragic or overly serious, this is love which is no less serious, and miraculously lovely awesome...
// ---
> I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry...
>
> To my wife and family: I love you. I know an apology cannot undo what I have done. I hope our family will heal and that, over time, I can earn back your trust...
>
> My family bears no responsibility for my choices. I do. Please give them privacy.
>
> ~ Jensen
>
> Source: https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/a-message-to-our-company
// ---
And I just heartfelt sorry for the person to receive so much shame, hatred, mockering, hostility, ridiculing from public... for just his attempts to find love, his peace at heart...
There is no shame in that, I believe, absolutely. This is his business to be not exposed so disgracefully on public.
This is a miracle to proud of, to understand, and respect always.
Sincere heartwarming hug, dear Jensen... I am... sorry... for the people to ridicule on it you nor anyone deserves...
How do you know he did it "for love and peace at heart?"
People coming at this are coming from the opposite assumption: that he's a billionaire and uses that power to fuel an appetite for lust.
I mean, if you look at the evidence, that's what the narrative supports. Both those affairs - one with Alice and one with Kimberley - overlapped in time. It's not that he fell head over heels for someone and pined for them - it's that he didn't resist the temptation to prioritize getting laid over getting love.
Further, matters of the heart are less important than doing the right thing. You don't date a direct report, period. It's unethical for everyone involved, and affects everyone of that woman's coworkers.
I am not saying there's no complexities in matters of the heart. I'm just saying this case is simple, and black and white, and not an excuse for us to turn off our eyes and ears.
Everyone wants to think they’re morally superior, that they wouldn’t do the same. Newsflash people, having sexual desires is a very natural human thing, it’s wired into us all. You don’t know what his marriage was like. Could’ve been the most draining thing imaginable but maybe he wanted to keep it together for his kids.
He made a very human mistake and now his personal life is on display for the world to read about. I feel sorry for him.
Jensen Huang called Israel a "second home" while it was committing genocide against Palestinians. This is just a continuation of a pattern of corruption. I think he resented his own success because these are not honest mistakes. Jensen Huang is the AI Great Gatsby.
fwiw, this was seen at the time as a gesture to the large number of NVIDIA (Mellanox) employees in Israel. Both due to it being a major center for the company and because he had personally been spending a lot of time there meeting with the networking org.
I think a lot of people here seem to underestimate how much of a CEO's job is perception.
"Oh who cares who he slept with, he's been great for Nvidia. Nothing has been proven."
He's one of the most visible CEO's in the most visible industry in the world, and the entire AI economy is dependent upon them. The perception of him as stable is incredibly important.
Merely the suggestion that he is having affairs with people with close ties to China's government, given export controls, is a huge PR problem. Adding in an additional affair with someone under him. And the likelihood that there may be even more out there.
I doubt the Board wants to get rid of Jensen Huang. He's done incredibly well for them. But right now, there's a huge PR shitstorm swirling around the company.
Maybe in six months it all dies down and he comes back, who knows. But right now, you really can't just ignore the problem and hope the media doesn't care about the whole "well she was only sort of a spy" situation.
I was watching Jensen's interview by Emily Chang a few hours ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW5s9Md4U2U
There's an increasing agreement about how big of a deal AI is, that if misused it has potential to be more dangerous than nuclear weapons. This calls for careful and measured advancement... it also calls for some level of coordination with big players, including China.
Jensen echoes similar sentiments in Emily Chang's interview.
I rue that nuanced opinions are going to brushed aside amidst the nationalist fervor in current ongoing media cycle.
Was.
Many leaders and engineers at Nvida are multi-millionaires many times over, they don't need to be there, they love the culture, vision and leadership. With Jensen gone, that could all change. I'm sure many employees are looking at the exit now.
China won big with this one.
Not if there is much more scrutiny on American GPU exports going forward. I remain very surprised Nvidia has enough of an advantage that primary nation states cannot replicate it.
Wosrst case scenario in my opinion is that this leads to serious financial troubles for Nvidia to the point that the US tries to take it over.
Both parties have toyed with a sovereign wealth fund and government takeover of the means of production. Doing so in an industry considered a national security concern wouldn't be the out of the question, but it would be a very, very bad turn of events.
Indeed. Imagine managing to plant a single rumour, and then watch your opponent stab themselves in the heart in response.
Right, it's alleged spy. We don't even know if she's actually a spy yet, but people are already talking about it like it's a definite thing. What happened to innocent until proven guilty? Places like reddit are notorious for putting heads on a spike on just allegations (eg. Depp v. Heard)
Not sure Reddit or HN is putting his head on a spike.
He admitted the affair and now it turns out he's had affairs with two subordinates. If Nvidia had not told him to resign, it would have no viable way of enforcing its own regulations about sleeping with reports.
Her being or not being a spy isn't the issue. He was at the wheel and admits to infidelity. Now everyone has to second guess his statements retroactively.
Price of leadership.
What are you talking about? Dude built one of most expensive companies in the world, that enabled huge advancements in AI. If anything he proved that he can do things and his judgements in this area were right.
If you’re a puritan, sure.
Not hardly. Look if you entertain the position of leadership remember that you are a collective representation of your entity. Jensen was exposed as saying:
Any hole for attention.
Cheating on your wife shows deep dishonesty.
Oh come on. Everyone knows these tech CEOs are distasteful humans, people just buy from them because they have little competition (from fellow evil tech CEOs).
The CEO's personality is irrelevant if they're selling something that's in high enough demand. Money matters more than anything.
This particular scandal is an issue for Nvidia because:
1. Actual espionage, national security, etc. is potentially in play - criminal charges cost money.
2. Liability from potential lawsuits around in-office affairs - civil suits cost money.
Interpersonal relationships at companies are quite common, at all levels up to the C-suite. It depends on company policy whether it's permitted or not and Nvidia had no policy barring it. It becomes a legal problem in the event of coercion or favoritism, but otherwise, it happens.
See page 7 of https://images.nvidia.com/aem-dam/en-zz/Solutions/about-us/N....
> We avoid situations where our actions might create a conflict—actual or potential—between our personal gain and our obligations to NVIDIA. If such conflicts arise, we immediately remove ourselves from any decision-making role in the matter
"Personal gain" here is usually interpreted in a financial sense.
That's the question, isn't it. It's easy enough to armchair quarterback and say that, as a man, I'm not that distasteful, and that I wouldn't do that, but I haven't been put in that position before. I can pretend to be the most pious, on the other side of my keyboard over the Internet, but, honestly, I haven't actually been sitting in that (bed)room as a billionaire against a woman who's motivated to get me to do her bidding. I can say all I want about what I would do, but that's all just hot air.
As a person with some social skills and what I'd like to consider ethics, I have gotten clear indication from beautiful women that they want to sleep with me. But if you're already at the point where you're in the bedroom with them and you find them attractive and know theyre willing, you're already losing. You're better off not getting to that point at all and cutting it off waay earlier.
One woman, sure. Two?
> I think a lot of people here seem to underestimate how much of a CEO's job is perception.
What a load of crap. Elon Musk is deranged and nobody bats an eye. Zuck is proven to steal and sell data illegally for political gains in authoritative countries with Cambridge analytica and nobody cares. This guy has 2 affairs and is out.
Nobody bats an eye? There is an enormous amount of Elon hate, probably more so than any other tech leader I have seen and I don't even live in the US.
Musk also has significant voting rights as opposed to Huang. Musk is also part of a company that does weird, wacky and wild things, Huang isn't.
Nvidia is seen as a massively stable company with a respected CEO. That's what has been eroded.
Obviously in context GP means nobody in a position to make Elon's behavior negatively impact his companies has done so to any meaningful degree. Customers, partners, and advertisers have not really fled from Tesla, Starlink, SpaceX, Cursor, etc.; Most kinds of antisocial behaviors can be overlooked so long as there's money to be made.
>Researchers estimate that Tesla lost between 1 million and 1.26 million U.S. vehicle sales through early 2025 due to this backlash—meaning sales would have been 67% to 83% higher without the negative perception effect.
It's not that it is overlooked. It certainly have some effect. But he is so rich that he doesn't really care. When Tesla was something new, when it was product for "better people" image was everything. Now it is not that important because it's a everyday ordinary car.
I think Musk controls enough of his companies' voting stock that random people's feelings about him aren't as impactful.
I say this with complete neutrality on whether Huang got a raw deal or is not... actually tbh I feel like he's been a massive jackass, brought this all on himself and has only himself to blame, how could you be so reckless, etc... AND also he is getting a raw deal and an undeserved lynch mob. If that makes sense.
I can see the point. It's not really about ethics as such, but, it is bad publicity.
In trillion-dollar companies any bad publicity can have huge financial percussions for its investors. HUang himself must understand that, and he is a major investor in NVIDIA. He probably saves a lot of money by resigning.
[delayed]
I am sure lots can be said on this topic (what the hell was Jensen doing!); others will say it, but I want to add that expectation management and posturing is very important in this age.
You mean the age where Donald Trump, a known liar and felon, was re-elected, on the promise of lower prices and no more wars, then proceeded to do implement the opposite of those promises?
You and I both know that they have very different groups of people they are supposed to please, and the moral expectations exerted on the two are far from the same.
You are basically saying it's ok with Trump base, because Trump is acting according to their expectations. If Trump shot someone on 5th avenue I think it would be truly bad, but not so in the eyes of Trump supporters. At least that's what Trump himself thinks, and has said.
And that's bad right? So we shouldn't just decide it's okay everywhere, right?
Not sure why you're being downvoted. This shit is so commonplace and well-known regarding the elites and CEO's. It should've been priced in anyways.
My theory is the rest of the oligarchy was getting scared of NVIDIA's stranglehold on AI development and the broader economy and felt they needed to knock Huang and the company down a peg or two. Maybe install a bit of a crony CEO (a la Tim Apple).
Not sure was he forced to resign, or whether he just thought doing so would keep the stock-price from falling, and thus save Huang himself a ton of money.
And Elon sleeps with every woman possible going so far as building a Texas compound for these women and children. If Musk were to sleep with a Chinese spy his excuse would simply be she was ovulating at the time.
This comment is excellent, and I'm not even an Elon hater at all.
Nobody bats an eye at Elon?
and with a normal board, those 2 guys would likely be out, but they have far more control over their own companies
Musk and Zuck both have far more voting power in their companies than Jensen Huang does in Nvidia. Zuck specifically has effectively unilateral control.
All of those issues with musk etc… are all “priced in”
Jensen was the sober boring AI leader everyone could count on
When perception of that changes then “the market” will re price
Well you'd imagine after what the current US president has done, it seems like the standards for this to matter would have been fairly low.
When the share price is at max max any slight crosswind is going to knock it hard too. And this is a big one because a trifecta of scandal, the spy thing and him being ousted and so that brain and leadership and image being lost. Wouldn't be so bad on a value share probably (I invest in another scandal ridden CEO stock so I know the drill!)
With the recent midterm / AI crash, I'll leave this stock well alone. Might buy at sub 100 if panic sets in.
Possibly having your companies nationalized or seized through such severe bypassing of US law.
You spoke too soon about more affairs hah
If it were a female CEO being ostracized for having an affair she would clamor that "men do it all the time" and how sexist "society" is obsessed with controlling women's bodies.
Oh come on. Tell that to Sam Altman's sister. This was a hit job.
I hope people understand that the affairs are not the reason he is being fired - NVIDIA has supposedly been skirting the export ban put in place by the previous administration. This was put in place for national security reasons. Whether you agree or disagree with the ban, it exists and Jensen&NVIDIA are in a world of trouble if this comes to light.
From all the reporting I've read, it is hard for me to avoid the conclusion that NVIDIA sold to China despite the export ban. I'd love to be wrong
>I hope people understand that the affairs are not the reason he is being fired - NVIDIA has supposedly been skirting the export ban
If you dissect the timeline of the events and various statements, I think the 2nd affair with a subordinate employee K Powell was the reason to fire Jensen Huang -- more so than the allegations of secretly selling to China.
This is the timeline:
Before Nov 11, it looked like NVIDIA might try to ride out the storm and keep Jensen at the helm especially if they saw that the China accusations and evidence wasn't strong enough to be a problem. Again, it was totally unnecessary for the board to publicly back him up if they had plans to get rid of him because of China allegations. However, the Board of Directors emergency Nov 11 meeting is inconsistent with the Nov 8 statement affirming Jensen's leadership.Nov 8 was coordinated with carefully crafted communications showing that Jensen and BOD were aligned. Contrast with Nov 11 being chaos and an emergency meeting convened.
Reading between the lines, what probably happened is that Jensen didn't come totally clean with the board on Nov 8 and tell them about the 2nd K Powell affair. Instead, the board got totally blindsided and lost trust in him. (Is there another 3rd secret affair he's hiding from us?!?) It was impossible to keep Jensen under those circumstances.
> Reading between the lines, what probably happened is that Jensen didn't come totally clean with the board on Nov 8 and tell them about the 2nd K Powell affair. Instead, the board got totally blindsided and lost trust in him. (Is there another 3rd secret affair he's hiding from us?!?) It was impossible to keep Jensen under those circumstances.
Exactly my read as well. "If you find two ants in your kitchen, the best estimate of the total number of ants in your kitchen is not two."
Lawyer here - I actually would bet this is not the case. Whether he came clean or not, the 2nd affair with a subordinate is basically always a firing offense under the sexual harassment and/or code of conduct policy, whether you are a CEO or not.
The lies may be part of it, but if you didn't fire them for the COC/SH violation, you would be in for near infinite liability because it ends up as evidence that the culture from the top was tolerant of violations, etc. THis is not conjecture, it's what has basically always happened in the legal realm when companies try to work around it.
> the 2nd affair with a subordinate is basically always a firing offense under the sexual harassment and/or code of conduct policy, whether you are a CEO or not.
In my company, it's explicitly not forbidden, but the relationship has to be disclosed to HR early on (source: yearly training). That being said, I'm not sure what HR is going to do with the information.
HR will use the information to ensure the two are not subordinate to one another. Example: A is dating B at the same company. HR will make sure that A is not subordinate to B and vice versa. This will reduce conflict of interest.
You have a high opinion of HR. Often one or both are dumped for violating employment agreements.. making HR and the company's life easier with the least effort.
Fire you, probably.
Not fire you. It gives them the ability to fire the others who aren’t forthcoming.
I suppose this way they can warn you to date people who are not direct reports… which hopefully you are not doing. Or offer you options (being transferred).
What’s the practical definition of “near infinite”? $1B, $100B, personal liability for board members, criminal liability?
Knowingly allowing ongoing misconduct or consciously ignoring resulting harm is considered bad faith
Protecting the CEO for the directors’ own interest is considered a loyalty problem.
Both of these things would make them personally liable in a shareholder derivative lawsuit.
California permits personal liability for directors perpetrating harassment and prohibits aiding or abetting prohibited conduct.
That's the directors.
Company wise - actions by the CEO are generally imputable directly to the company. This leads to potential hostile-environment claims even by employees who never had a relationship with the CEO, and those claims have been particularly cognizable in California.
Non-termination is also likely to lead to punitive damages, because it will be seen as "malice" or "reckless indifference".
Value wise - sexual harassment verdicts - depends who sued, but probably <150 million to start, long term cost maybe a billion very worst case.
Shareholder derivative lawsuits (where directors are personally liable if they end up with a finding of bad faith) - insanely more - hundreds of millions to billions.
The max value available for the company to pay out.
Isn’t musk a clear counterexample here? He has had numerous liaisons with subordinates. Yet I haven’t seen either SpaceX or Tesla (who actually could) move to fire him. Or is he the exception?
Musk has most of the voting power in his own companies, so he has loads more of freedom because he answers to himself.
That was not the argument the OP made though. Clearly not "unlimited" liability.
We are up to 3 now [1]. This is turning into a Bangarang.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/former-nvidia-ceo-huang-h...
Laughed out loud! Thanks for this new terminology.
So there is a third ant.
https://archive.is/nXQE3
Except at peer tech companies like, say, Google.
Some people get to have affairs with subordinates, others don't. It's a question of if they have the support of the people pulling the levers or not as to whether it's considered acceptable. Universal rules are for little people, once beyond a certain position they are merely tools for selectively shutting out opposition.
+1. I'm sure Danny is well aware of what happened/s at Google.
Wait until you hear where Bill Gates met his (former) wife.
The first woman he had an affair with was not just a spy, but also a customer. Isn't an affair with a customer also a fireable offense?
Generally I don't most handbooks have affair with a customer as being an offense. Arguably, that is just good business. On the other hand, having an affair with a vendor would be a problem.
My understanding is that the legal protections for the board of directors can quickly evaporate if they know about such lies and do not take actions. This is a major point of contention in the Oxford LLC bankruptcy proceedings per my understanding after the founder was found to have been persuing several kinds of fraud.
After they caught him in a lie, they may not have been able to not fire him.
I wonder if it's an elaborate dance.
They can't legally not fire him. But they can legally re-hire him after firing him. So ironically the ONLY way he can continue at nVidia is by being fired - we just have to wait a few days and there will be an Altman-like resurrection.
Where did the "ants" saying come from? i've kept seeing it here and there after the hacks to Hugging Face and others.
It's likely a variation on the saying that, if you see two cockroaches, there are more. Here's a page with that saying from 2013: https://www.weekand.com/home-garden/article/see-two-cockroac...
https://x.com/_NathanCalvin/status/2084856543561093535
This is a paraphrase of the less technical-sounding: "if you find two ants in the kitchen, you don't have a two-ant problem" which I definitely heard my mom say in the 90s (about actual ants, not metaphorically).
I just did a quick search and concluded the same. I wonder if he got it from somewhere before. If you have Twitter account please ask him!
A fortune cookie I suspect.
More seriously, I was also curious. A quick search seems to say the earliest recent source is https://x.com/_NathanCalvin/status/2084856543561093535
Nonsense, this is just folk wisdom. Ask your parents.
I have a feeling this one falls in the same category as "sweet summer child", which, while technically as old as the hills, only hit critical mass after game of thrones popularised it
People say it in real life about things that are often present in groups and are hard to spot. I most associate it with cockroaches and bedbugs.
Isn't it a common saying for all pests? I've heard it for ants, mice, and roaches
And CEOs, politicians, etc.
If I found two CEOs in my kitchen, I probably wouldn't be suspicious that there was a third hiding somewhere.
Don't live in Silicon Valley though.
Can't confirm; replaced all my CEOs with AI
Lucky you. Probably better overall.
The Powell affair has been well known for years inside the company.
> and lost trust in him.
I don't think this has anything to do with trust. It's absurd not to trust Huang as the best possible CEO for the company that he brought from zero to 5 trillion dollars in value. It's about being afraid of public opinion, and especially fear of being blamed for not taking the expected decision.
He's clearly not the best CEO for the company if his leadership has opened them up to a tonne of liability. The thing with Powell is problematic enough on its own, and yet it looks like a misdemeanor compared to the fact that he was sleeping with a Chinese spy and potentially knowingly sold chips to China in the face of a US-government-imposed ban. I just don't see why this is so hard. The best guy for the job is the one who doesn't risk the company and investor's money by overstepping into the geopolitical arena because he wants to poke some strange.
Probably still the best fit even if it costs the company billions.
Given that a third woman (another coworker) has just been alleged, I'd say that Jensen was the best fit in a few other ways too. I'd be furious if I were an investor.
Yeah, I'm wondering this too. Jensen's damn good at his job, love him or hate him. I genuinely am struggling to understand why they'd remove him unless there's more they know that we don't.
> there's more they know that we don't
They know that media and politicians were asking for his head, and that it was riskier for their own asses to resist than to concede. It's that simple.
> riskier for their own asses to resist than to concede.
I dunno, I bet the stocks would recover from the affair in less than a month. That they will recover from losing Huang as the CEO is less certain.
Exactly my thoughts. You put a typical corporate type ahead of NVIDIA and we'd manage to see AMD get ahead of them in datacenters.
I don't think there is anything more to it than self preservation. All humans and I'd say living beings are good at it.
This is why martyrs are so praised. You have to overcome this instinct of self preservation to give up your life. I suspect most people can't do it in the heat of the moment.
Basically what others have said, it doesn't matter if Jensen is good at his job or even if nVidia prospers under Jensen. I don't think the board members care one lick about that. What matters to them is their own self interest and it takes a lot of experience to realize that executive leadership and even the board does not instinctively value the goals of the organization above their own self interest. I submit this is true because of the massive amount of bribing err I mean incentive alignment that the organization gives in terms of like stock options or bonuses for meeting certain targets.
>Jensen's damn good at his job, love him or hate him.
He can barely stay coherent to reality during interviews and on stage. Especially when the AI generated slides don't make sense.
To be fair, he evidently pulls a lot of late nights putting his body on the line for the company. It's exhausting, back-breaking work.
That's bad leadership.
He got honeypotted by a rival superpower and appears to have actively helped to circumvent national security concerns and export controls to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.
My god, how much more spectacular could his mistakes be? Does he have to eat a baby live on TikTok while proclaiming "transistors are dead, we're going back to vacuum tubes" or something?
There are very few human beings in history who could have taken nVidia from zero to megatrillions like he did, but the idea of him continuing to run the company after this is absolute absurdity.
if you think getting powned by chinese intelligence is 'stupid mistakes' you are extremely missinformed about the lengths they will go through and the resources they will deploy.
look at you over here all WOOO CHINA NATIONSTATE SUPERPOWERS WOOO RESOURCES WOO
it took a vagina. it literally just took a vagina.
you really dont understand or know how such a placement works. They can very easily do it to you regardless of how paranoid you are.
everyone can be fished.
the simple fact China had to deploy an operative to get yo him means he and Nvidia are well secured. its an expensive and risky option, not the first by far and intelligence agency would take to get to someone.
go shout in all caps in call of duty -_-
I wouldn't give people like that any ideas
He produced a one-in-a-zillion success, and he certainly did it the hard way -- he was apparently unusually hands on. The word "genius" gets thrown around a lot, but I think it's apt.
But.
He put together a string of frankly insane mistakes that are now endangering that 5 trillion dollar company from both the inside and outside. There's no chance in hell that they're going to go from $5T back to 0, but you are not understanding the trouble they're in.
Internally, boinking your direct reports (who also happened to have a string of recent promotions) is incredibly ruinous to a company's internal culture, destroying notions of internal meritocracy. How would you feel if all your hard work was apparently not as important as putting out for the CEO? Do you think that would make you eager to do your best work for that CEO? And that's even before thinking about the insane legal liability.
Externally, he got honeypotted by a foreign government and managed to simultaneously mess with national security and, it seems, circumvent export controls to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. nVidia is in some extremely serious shit, and will have the government breathing down their necks between now and the end of time.
I think his unfair, and much of it not true.
Jensen is actually extremely well respected by his staff and has the highest staff approvals in almost all of tech.
I'm certain that his personal foibles won't engender him any love, but it's not unheard of.
Elon Musk has had sexual relations with at least 4 staffers, children with one - while he was having children with his wife.
Where's the scandal?
"he got honeypotted by a foreign government and managed "
Where is the evidence of this? Give me one specific allegation?
His mistress was passing information to the government, ok, as will many nationals that have met with him, and as US nationals often do as well.
Elon is in direct contact with Putin several times a year since 2022 - and there's no good reason for that.
Consider putting all of that in context vis-a-vis much of the rest of corporate America and consider the rest of his contributions.
Obviously it's fair to bring all of this up, but it's intensely hypocritical for the most part.
I'm puzzled that so many Huang defenders point at Musk.
The bar shouldn't be Musk!!
Give me one specific allegation
https://archive.ph/c4kmF
---
Next to the Nvidia chief was a woman named Huang Le, or Alice Huang, an executive of a Singapore-based data center company called Megaspeed, which was poised to buy $2 billion of Nvidia A.I. technology over the next year. Though Ms. Huang and Megaspeed are little-known players in the A.I. industry, their association with Nvidia and its chief executive has recently become a preoccupation in Washington.
Commerce Department officials have been investigating whether Megaspeed, which has close ties to Chinese tech firms, is helping companies in China sidestep American export restrictions, according to more than a half dozen current and former officials and other people familiar with the companies, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an examination that is not public.
The inquiry, which is active, calls into question how closely Nvidia is tracking where its A.I. chips end up and highlights the possibility of American export laws easily being sidestepped. Megaspeed is also facing scrutiny from Singaporean police, who told The New York Times in a statement that they are investigating the company for breaching local laws, without elaborating further.
There are no allegations against Nvidia there.
It's absurd to suggest that Nvidia would need to secretly ship a handful of chips to some sketchy actor when Nvidia chips have a a mile a line long for sales.
Jensen can sell his inventory 10x over. You have to have buying power just to get a hold of them.
Anything is possible but it would be extra stupid for one of the smartest people in the world to risk everything for literally no reason at all.
I think you missed the point. An average person may hold their alcohol and operate, but we don't approve cops being drunk on the job.
Huang betrayed 38 years of trust his wife put into him and recently betrayed the Board by lying to them. That's already admitted, no ifs or buts. He clearly had reasons, as he is a sane person. His reasons were romantic engagement with (alleged) spy. Since he is a sane person, he must have weighed pros and cons and still engage in an affair, even though it jeopardized his marriage and his job. The Board needs to do bunch of "what ifs" in such situation, including paranoid ones, such as "what if this woman had such access to NVIDIA tech stack that each cheap is infused with some form of Chinese virus". We simply don't know how far this goes, but this firing certainly shows much further than just a consequence of a romantic fling.
> Since he is a sane person, he must have weighed pros and cons and still engage in an affair, even though it jeopardized his marriage and his job.
Sane people still make irrational decisions.
It's one of the weird dichotomies of our species.
Or well thought out ones, that everyone views as irrational. Who can tell .. can't expect a cheater to be honest
Also worth noting that in the event his wife doesn't stand by him, this immediately becomes the second largest divorce settlement in history (behind only Bill and Melinda Gates). That's not the kind of headlines the PR department is love with either.
That would be the best estimate, if the choice was 2 or another specific number.
Turns out there were at least three ants.
https://nypost.com/2026/11/12/business/ousted-nvidia-ceo-jen...
Or, in this case, aunties.
The leather jackets were the red flag everyone missed. He needed to be validated as a sexy man.
Man’s been stockpiling affairs like his customers stockpile GPUs.
end of thread
Has he been bankrolling them like he's been bankrolling his customers?
https://glonce.com/nvidia-bankrolls-its-own-customers-the-ec...
We were getting ready to draw straws on who should join the anthill for some GPUs. Now we gotta find someone else to seduce.
> Is there another 3rd secret affair
Perfect timing: https://www.reuters.com/technology/former-nvidia-ceo-huang-h...
One ant could just be an antomaly however
Ironic, because in all likelihood, the Ants had a hand in his takedown.
> Instead, the board got totally blindsided and lost trust in him. (Is there another 3rd secret affair he's hiding from us?!?)
That seems to be the most natural guess based on public information, but it's equally plausible that the board knows more than the public already, whether because they drove investigations, received disclosures from Huang, or received insider tips once the heat started rising. Trust aside, they may already might know worse and more materially or legally impactful things.
That's the kind of thing that a healthy class of professional journalists can help uncover and trace in a way that our post-journalism world is losing the opportunity to do. Even still, I wouldn't be surprised if further scandals for Huang or Nvidia started being reported in coming days and weeks. You might be right that it was just too many sex scandals and general loss of trust, but we just can't expect to know yet.
We need to be careful not to equate the two affairs as being countable apples-to-apples. An affair with a customer executive that generates several billions dollars of revenue has a much different risk/reward profile for the board than an affair with a direct report employee within the company. The former also has much lower legal risk: bribery laws aren’t properly calibrated for this circumstance and sexual harassment laws are less applicable. As far as the board is concerned, I imagine they’re fine with him having an affair for every single $5B+ signature as long as he’s delivering the goods and doing so without getting caught so overtly that sales are impacted — thus the vote of confidence! — but that internal affair suggests bad judgment rather than greed-driven judgment, and exposes Nvidia to harassment discovery claims and/or exposes that he lied to the board about not having internal affairs, so he’s out.
When the affair with the customer executive involves deals that directly violate federal law? Don’t bet on it.
Assuming that federal law is enforced neutrally and uniformly, your point is completely correct.
That assumption has not held to date in this presidential cycle, and Jensen Huang has openly had the backing of that president. From a financial perspective, that would considerably lower their financial risk estimate of either having to pay a fine and/or hand over one or two C-level executives for some rich person prison-vacation time. I would assume the board is competent and has verbally, off the record, discussed how many billions of dollars they expect to be fined in the worst case and accepted that as the cost of doing (corrupt) business, but we could get lucky and find they did so with a paper trail that’ll come out in court someday :D
As long as the president has power….. current election makes him look like a lame duck.
Coincidence?
No, I’m assuming it’s not an applicable coincidence here in this specific instance, since the Board wouldn’t have made a statement of faith on November 8th if it was; they are likely an amoral entity but definitely neither an irrational nor oblivious one, and the elections outcomes were well understood by then.
Uh huh.
You are, of course, welcome to present a counter-argument.
Why, when you ignore it?
It’s like talking to the void.
Yes: https://techcrunch.com/2026/11/12/jensen-huang-was-having-a-...
> Is there another 3rd secret affair he's hiding from us?!?
Reports are just breaking that this is indeed the case.
The source for this appears to be Reuters[1]:
> Jensen Huang had an intimate relationship with a second employee, according to two people familiar with the matter, Reuters has learned... Reuters is not naming the employee.
They love all hands meetings at NVIDIA
"That's the kind of thing that a healthy class of professional journalists can help uncover and trace"
don't has to be a journalist, it could be a spy too... :-)
So to preface, I do not condone adultery / office affairs, etc.
But in the big picture, isn't it crazy that a relationship between two consenting adults is a bigger deal, and of larger impact to the economy, than an action that is supposedly unlawful and threatened national security?
It's against pretty much every company policy to have a relationship with someone who reports to you.
All 42,000 employees should be held to the same standard, otherwise you will end up with all kinds of problems within the company.
Company leadership should lead by example as well.
Right, and to make it explicit for some people following along who are wondering why companies have that policy... It's to prevent predatory and abuses of power. There's a power imbalance that can easily lead to exploitation.
Adding on to that clarification: The leverage the boss has over the employee creates a rational pressure for the employee to ignore any boundary they might have otherwise had in order to avoid any chance of the boss using that leverage against them.
The reason companies care about this so much is more practical than moral. Bosses having sexual/romantic relationships with employees leads to irrational decisions that are bad for the business.
Because it's likely sexual harassment. In two ways:
1 - did she feel pressured to have a relationship with him? It's hard to have genuinely free consent when he can make or break her career; and
2 - sexual discrimination towards every other employee. Did she get benefits from the relationship? It's more than fair for the rest of the employees to wonder if they'd also been eg sucking his dick if they would have gotten better raises, faster promotions, etc.
In the current state of consent, a subordinate cannot give free consent.
All of them are big deals, but being deceived by a spy isn't the same as choosing to break an important rule.
We established 28 years ago that it's not considered a big deal. The real story is somewhere else.
First, his actions were alleged to have impact on national security, but that is not for sure. It is for sure that he was acting inappropriately as a boss, though. Second, I suspect that it is both events which led to his firing. If the affair with the subordinate had come out first, and then the affair with the alleged spy, I suspect he still would've been given grace for the first but not the second event.
> Second, I suspect that it is both events which led to his firing.
Plus possible other events known to the board but not us. We’ll know eventually.
Not necessarily.
Once I worked at a company where the sales VP got caught embezzling by setting up (large amounts of) fake affiliates.
It boosted the overall revenue numbers, and I think they were impressed at how long he had gotten away with it, so they let him be ‘stolen’ by a competitor (who didn’t know the circumstances) while they swept it under the rug.
Easy 8 figures of revenue impact per year.
Pretty ingeniously evil, IMO.
Nobody cares about the sex, it's about the abuse of power.
It's about lying. The proper procedure is to disclose consenting relationships with a subordinate so that HR and the board is aware of conflicts of interest
If an exec is lying about this, what else might they be lying about? Embezzlement? Corruption?
You’re right, because failing to disclose who you’re fucking is definitely at the same intellectual and moral level as embezzlement and corruption.
This batshit insane decision by the board is a timely reminder that prudes inexplicably truly do continue to thrive among us.
Nobody on the planet is better off with this guy resigning.
It’s a kind of corruption; specifically that the senior may have coerced the junior. And once it’s done, the junior can blackmail the senior. Since you can’t reliably determine that it was all mutually agreeable, you have to rule it out by policy. Same as emoluments.
you make it sound like hes the only person working at nvidia. he did good things but the company will continue to do good things as countless talented individuals make up the company.
It's not the affair, exactly. It's that he violated HR policy (which incidentally was by way of having that affair).
Indeed. The world operates on trust. Once trust breaks down, there's no choice but to deal with it directly if you want to remain effective. Unfortunately for Jensen Huang, that meant NVIDIA choosing to not have a leader they can no longer trust.
I've not fired very many people before, but deception removes any ambiguity as to whether or not someone should be fired.
I’d love if that were true. But actually what the world operates on in selfish money grabbing.
Nobody trusted Trump yet he had the loyalty of all the tech giants because they needed him to make money.
And likewise, AI, and thus the global economy, are dependent on Nvidia. So there was no financial incentive for him to leave if it were just a matter of trust over his inability to keep his penis in his pants.
And let’s remember, this isn’t new news. Nvidia have been aware of this for a year already and it wasn’t a problem until recently.
So what’s changed? The obvious big thing is American government. The Democrats have made it very clear that they’re not going to tolerate any more shenanigans. So removing Haung is a great way to reduce the risk of any financial penalties for Nvidia’s deals with China et al.
> what probably happened is that Jensen didn't come totally clean with the board on Nov 8 and tell them about the 2nd K Powell affair
This is the right line of thinking, but I don't think a second affair is enough. To me, it says there is more we don't know. Possibly a lot more, and a lot worse than a second affair. Apart from anything else, that is the only reason to act this fast. You don't fire a CEO like Jensen in 24 hours over an HR indiscretion.
So I think both you and the parent are correct, but its a combo: he didn't come fully clean, but there is a non-public part that probably looks a lot more like treason that the board knows and we don't.
come on man people have multiple through out the lifetime lol
Well, turns out there really might be a 3rd affair based on how the internet is buzzing. Seems to have been found out a bit after the resignation: https://www.reuters.com/technology/former-nvidia-ceo-huang-h...
> I think the 2nd affair with a subordinate employee K Powell was the reason to fire Jensen Huang
Hasn't Musk done this multiple times (including having children with subordinates)? He's still the CEO of a few companies. Bill Gates married one!
Boards don't care about this kind of thing unless they are already looking to get rid of someone. Worst case they pay the person off, and the cost will probably be less than a principal engineer earns in a year.
This doesn't pass the smell test. My guess is damning evidence was discovered which incriminates several high-level individuals at Nvidia with willfully bypassing the export ban. The second affair was leaked as a cover for why they were letting him go.
I'm sure it will all come out after a bit.
It also gives them an affair not connected to export issues to hang it on.
It may be that, but I feel it's more about managing public perception. Potentially leaking secrets to a literal (stated) enemy of state feels much more catastrophic than infidelity (obviously his wife may not feel that way).
If someone has been: 1. Managing the company well 2. Attracting and retaining good talent 3. Making money for shareholders 4. Building strong company fundamentals
Then forcing a resignation over this seems... odd. I was under the impression that barring this infidelity, Huang was one of the more sane tech CEOs. I feel like I could to literally any other CEO (Zuckerburg, Bezos, Musk, Ellison, Gates, Jobs) that have done something equally bad or worse, and haven't had to resign.
> Reading between the lines, what probably happened is that Jensen didn't come totally clean with the board on Nov 8 and tell them about the 2nd K Powell affair. Instead, the board got totally blindsided and lost trust in him. (Is there another 3rd secret affair he's hiding from us?!?) It was impossible to keep Jensen under those circumstances.
Yeah, this seems likely. It's also quite possible that he not only "didn't come totally clean" but outright lied to the board i.e. "this was a one-time thing"
Reuters is now reporting a 3rd affair...
Just saw an "Exclusive" announcement that there is indeed a reported additional relationship with (as of now unnamed) female Nvidia employee.
I really feel sorry for his family.
Many times, a board will maintain that they have full confidence in a CEO right up until they actually fire him. Their non-binding vote of confidence means nothing. Just as one example:
- July 25: Amid the Deepwater Horizon disaster, BP publicly stated that Hayward had the board's full support.
- July 27: BP formally announced that Hayward would step down as CEO, with Robert Dudley replacing him.
Similar situations with Bob Chapek, Travis Kalanick, the Boeing CEO in 2019 when all those crashes were happening, Carol Bartz, Bob Diamond...
No board is going to say “we think the CEO is a bit crap, but we’re going to stick with them for now and see how it goes.”
There are ways to say this without saying it
But are there reasons for them to say it? They don't say it because there's no benefit to the company by saying it, either outright or implicit.
“His moral failings are secondary to their commercial successes and clear delivery of shareholder value”
Did you expect anything else in a country that choose trump as their president?
[delayed]
Oh, c’mon. I’m not condoning anything that’s happening here, but CEOs having affairs is hardly unique to the US or a US government or trump.
What about a board that says: "We think the CEO is a bit crap, but due to how the business is structured we have no actual power over him"? cough meta.
As folks have said in other contexts recently - if you see two ants in your kitchen, the total number of ants in your kitchen is probably not 2.
Jensen's PR strategy with his open letter was to draw attention TO his affairs. It's a "limited hangout" strategy.
If we're just going to be purely speculative anyway, it could be the case Jensen is the one who himself leaked the 2nd affair, in order to continue this distraction strategy.
I wouldn't be surprised if 100% of the info we have on this is Jensen's PR. 1) Anonymous "leak" tweets are all PR agency slop -- real jouranalist scoopers would take credit to draw attention to themselves. 2) Any Federal investigators aren't going to say 1 word to the public. Ergo, it was always Jensen trying to keep the narrative on his affairs.
And if you want to be TRULY conspiratorial about it, perhaps one or both of the affairs never existed, only the smuggling.
I have seen a weird number of posts/responses trying to say "this isn't because he had an affair" and like, I guess it's not, it's that he had multiple affairs that have confounding effects on the business (with subordinates, with people who got chips to China).
So no, it's not literally about his sex life, but pretending like that doesn't factor into the whole things seems like a very strange point for people to keep making. It may not be that 90% of the cause is "he had sex out of his marriage" but it's also not 0% (it surely doesn't make him a "good leader(tm)" if he's having sex with subordinates)
Another weird thing, and a TIL - people love the line about two ants.
people?
entities posting comments at Hacker News
I don't know if you intended that to be funny, but I had a chuckle. I am an entity that pets my dog.
Also, implies anyone not posting on HN forfeits personhood by default
I took it as “here there be bots/non-people”.
If you see two comments about ants in the comments section, the total number of comments about ants in your comments section is probably not 2.
Two ants are better than one. Unless they’re in my kitchen.
I’m starting to think a lot of people around here aren’t entomologists.
Sex with spy of country actively tariffed and greatest active threat to US. Billions in tariff bypass. That puts you in jail for decades territory. People magazine cares about who he is banging. Legal and possible company nationalization care about bypassing tariffs.
Sex with a spy isn’t relevant any more than it was to Congress because you can’t prove it was knowingly.
Selling chips to China is pretty easily provable. Who cares what pussy he is diddling, it matters that such a large company might have their assets seized due to such blatant shenanigans.
Did you mean rationalization?
No. If Nvidia's leadership is incapable of abiding by US law they could have their company and assets seized.
National defense makes this a much bigger deal than people seem to understand.
All of this is based on leaks, mainly from the US government. So the November 8 board decision might've been the cause for the November 11 leak, because the original leak failed to achieve the goal of removing Huang. Remember we're talking about stuff that's over a year old. None of this is an evolving situation.
This was my original read of the whole thing. The timing on this, happening immediately after the Republicans lose big-time? This all seems so incredibly convenient and weird. I sincerely believe this is retaliation for something that he did or didn’t do.
The Dem plan for AI was to work with Anthropic and lock down GPUs to prevent running open / unapproved models. Basically limit AI development and inference to a handful of regulated companies.
Jensen Huang wasn't on board with that so now he's gone.
Getting downvoted, but if it's not a deliberate outcome it's certain an interesting and relevant one.
Huang was famously loyal to the gaming GPU markets, and there's been a subindustry of people running open inference on high-end consumer GPUs.
If NVIDIA kills those product ranges that subindustry will die, AI hardware will be limited to corporates and the small number of individuals who can drop five figures on an AI rig, and open models will become less valuable/dangerous.
Meanwhile I find it hard to believe the board had no idea what was happening and they're suddenly shocked - shocked! - to discover that Huang was plugging his CPU into the corporate motherboard.
What could he have done to swing the election in their favor? I think it’s more likely that with Democrats in power, NVIDIA can no longer count on the Trump administration’s corruption to prevent investigations. There may be a lot more left to uncover, and they now have a convenient fall-guy to pin everything on.
Classic: It's not the crime. It's the cover-up.
even MULTIPLE affairs ?
Or the board realized these things are going to keep coming.
Powerful interests want Nvidia to change directions and my guess is that they didn’t think that would happen under Jensen.
> Powerful interests
Nvidia’s Board is not a list of power players. They were, until now, largely pliant to Jensen. They flipped because they saw what everyone outside Silicon Valley did—that they personally, and Nvidia broadly, would pay the price for Jensen’s failures and potential crimes if his brand wasn’t severed from Nvidia’s.
This is the same sort of timeline argument Noam Chomsky gave me regarding why he thinks that Zelensky stopped negotiating with Russia after Boris Johnson’s visit. After the firefights in Bucha he was still saying they’ll have to make a deal, then Johnson arrived and said Putin is not a man to make deals with. And then Zelensky stopped saying it. I asked Chomsky about this explicitly (whether the discovery of bodies shot point blank in the aftermath of the Russian withdrawal from Bucha was the decisive factor) and he pointed to the timeline. I don’t know if I fully buy that argument:
https://youtu.be/_BypvatagNQ?si=1CDGUZKSd6r3jz_n
Would love to hear more about this - is there a timestamp within the video where the relevant discussion is? Other sources? Ukraine shifted pretty dramatically to offensive operations within Russia in late-2025/early-2026 and I'm curious why.
It starts about 1:25:00 in, I confront chomsky for the receipts
Chomsky has pretty terrible track record on ascribing motivations in the conflict, going back to Khmer Rouge. Should have really stuck to formal languages.
It's absurd that they're going to drop a guy that build the most profitable company in the world over 35 years of working every day, and is basically beloved by his own staff and the industry.
Something stinks to high heaven here.
Elon Musk has multiple allegations of sexual assault against him - he's had sexual relations with at least 4 of his staff including children with one of them while he had children with another women.
Elon solicits young women over social media to have children with (which is also soliciting sex).
He attacked his own regulators during DOGE, has direct meetings with Putin several times since 2022 (still ongoing), he's taken $100's of Millions in investment from Chinese state banks, special deals re: factories and data capture and sharing rights.
And more.
The difference is that Elon has 1) and iron grip over the board and 2) is an aggressive, spiteful person who will attack anyone and everyone - and everyone lives in fear about saying anything negative about Elon.
Jensen is paying the price for being a nice guy.
Apparently he should have been dragging the board over the coals, and threatening the press and industry to keep quiet, to quash the stories, to kiss up to Trump and make sure there's nothing but love from the government etc. etc..
" It was impossible to keep Jensen under those circumstances"
I'm sorry but this is very not true and ... I don't want to be mean but it's effectively naive.
Elon tells his board whatever he wants to tell them including ridiculous fabrications about products, roadmaps, and handles them with total contempt.
This is game of power, not trust.
The fact that someone's sex life would factor into the decision at all is so backwards.
First, polyamory has been gaining popularity. But a lot of poly people I've met keep that strictly secret, because their friends and family wouldn't understand and would judge them harshly.
Second, the problem isn't that he slept with someone other than his wife (we don't know what kind of agreements they have in place, and ENM is a thing in 2026). It's that he slept with a subordinate. And that's a real problem due to the power differential that exists between him and his employees.
So it's not the second affair per se, but bad judgement. Dating at companies should only happen parallel in the hierarchy, not up or down.
What I'm pushing back on is the notion that someone should be judged simply for fucking someone who isn't his wife. There's a reason people keep ENM agreements a secret, due to the judgmental attitude from the public at large.
Hopefully alternative lifestyles will become normalized to the point where our descendants in 30 years will look back on us with the same disappointment that we look back in 1996 gay marriage laws.
ENM among older couples is particularly common. But sure, it's always possible that Jensen was just cheating on his wife without consent. The thing to watch for is whether his wife has expressed unhappiness publicly about the situation. Notice that in articles like https://archive.is/Ubg4k they'll do everything but ask her how she feels. Or if they have, it's possible she's refused to say anything on the topic. That silence means something, and we don't know what. So hold off on the judgments until we have confirmation that she's actually unhappy with it.
The issue is not his personal life -- the issue is that he has brought a spy into a position to compromise the company.
And you know you haven’t had sex with a spy because?
Do you think you might have?
I mean, I think most people know they haven't had an extramarital affair with a spy for one very obvious reason!
So I guess a marital affair with a spy is okay?
Sex or not “catastrophically bad judgement” and “CEO” are fundamentally incompatible.
Than every CEO would need to be replaced.
Sounds like a solid plan to me. I'll get the woodchipper.
Do you think Bill and Melinda Gates should never of happened?
1. He had sex with a spy 2. He had sex with a direct report.
This isn't a story about the sex
The spy was also a customer. This is two pretty broad violations of your usual HR policies at minimum even if you remove “spy” from the equation and ignore all the sales to sketchy parties.
The spy being a customer is not an excuse -- it raises more questions as to how they passed KYC and compliance requirements to be a customer.
It's normal for B2B companies screen for this before you even get a demo.
Who's to say "know your customer" isn't to be taken in the biblical sense?
From the article's first paragraph: "Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang resigned Thursday, capping a spectacular downfall for a poster boy of the artificial intelligence boom whose exit following reports of extramarital affairs now thrusts the chipmaker into an uncertain future."
For a lot of people, it's about the sex. In fact if you only read the first paragraph, you'd come away thinking it was solely about the sex.
At least on HN the sentiment is more nuanced though, which is good.
The sex is quite the nuisance. Maybe in the future we'll have AI CEOs that don't have these nuisanced lifestyles.
There was a comment yesterday that suggested this was either a Chinese intelligence to destroy NVidia, or CIA operation to get Nvidia under control of a friendly puppet. [1]
My money is on the CCP, simply because they have more of a motive for it. From all appearances, NVidia was playing ball with the Trump administration. He was a frequent ally of President Trump, Trump supposedly knew about this information for the last year and sat on it, and even the CIA leaks that started it stressed how much Huang had praised the Trump administration. Reportedly they had already voluntarily stopped exports to MegaSpeed [2] as of June 2025. China, however, has a lot more to gain from his departure. It's going to harm NVidia very severely: reportedly he's very hands-on, "the conductor that makes a very complex operation work", and as a founder the whole knowledge pyramid that the company is based upon rests with him. If they want their domestic hardware industry to surpass NVidia, the easiest way to do that is to take out NVidia leadership.
I suspect that he was compromised by both the CIA and CCP, and with tensions rising between them, eventually found a situation where they each wanted him to do different things, and he couldn't satisfy both. Likely the CIA got wind that the CCP was going to move with their leverage, and published to stave that off. This also has the nice side benefit for U.S. power of letting the other side know the extent to which the CIA knows what you're doing, and showing that even the CEO of the richest company on earth is not immune to U.S laws. But it's still a net negative to U.S. power to have Huang out as CEO of NVidia, simply because it's such a net negative to NVidia. This is only a desirable outcome if he's going to be ousted anyway, or if he is otherwise compromised to become a Chinese puppet.
I suspect the role of the second affair was to show the board just how deep the kompromat goes. First affair, okay, it could be an indiscretion that happened in the past, cut ties and do damage control. But if there's a second (and third and fourth and many others?) affair and everybody knows about it, it becomes impossible for Huang to lead the company because everybody has so much leverage on him.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50462327
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50464121
> My money is on the CCP, simply because they have more of a motive for it.
No they don't. They just lost access to Nvidia chips that they still rely on (even if not said out in the open). Alibaba's stock tanked on the news for example.
> I suspect the role of the second affair was to show the board just how deep the kompromat goes.
The role was to get the agenda off spying and export (the things you'd go to jail for)
Yes, they do.
They would prefer their companies buy local, as it will advance their local semiconductor infrastructure.
However, these companies would prefer Nvidia if they are allowed. All the advances in the past few years are due to advanced chips being restricted, so they had to step up.
It's interesting, the second comment I linked to was about the divide between Model Hawks vs. Hardware Hawks within the state department, and this comment thread is a great example of that.
Some people believe that the key moat for AI is the model, and under this model (hah) torpedoing NVidia would be bad for China and good for the U.S. because they won't have access to cutting-edge NVidia hardware for model-training. Other people believe the key moat for AI is the hardware, and under this model torpedoing NVidia would be good for China because it'd allow Chinese hardware makers to catch up and bad for the U.S. because it destroys our key competitive advantage.
Interesting that a policy decision depends so heavily on a question of fact, but that isn't unique to this issue. (I suspect that left and right would agree on abortion if they could agree on whether personhood begins at conception or birth, but they don't, so). There's also an element of time preferences here too: it's likely that model training is dominant now, but hardware will be dominant when you project out a few years, and so both factions could be right but on different timescales.
> They would prefer their companies buy local
They already do. Local produces maybe >5% of the volume needed. It's NOT prefer or not. It just doesn't exist.
This is the right read.
There are certain lines CEOs of this level absolutely cannot cross, and a relationship with a subordinate is one of them. Hiding it, putting the entire company at risk for it, a board can’t trust a ceo that puts their extramarital dalliances ahead of the company’s interest.
Chips to China, on the other hand, is in the company’s interest. That’s what lawyers and lobbyists are for, and when they behave enough, that’s also what “rockstar” CEOs are for.
Jensen got too big for his leather jacket. Simple as.
Exactly how was the entire company put at risk?
Optics and lack of trust seem to have done plenty in the markets, no?
The image of Nvidia advocating for exports of GPUs to china while compromised by an allegedly Chinese agent is the real issue here. Endless congressional hearings on that topic starting in Jan. The Nvidia corp still has to answer for that even when Jensen is out.
+1. Jensen getting really heated when pressed by Dwarkesh over China during his interview can be seen in new light now.
Yeah but Dwarkesh is completely wrong and the fact he couldn't see this made me think differently about him.
Money is like oxygen. If you deny oxygen/money to the Chinese chip market, they can't grow as fast. By supplying China with chips, all the money will go back to the US and not enough money will go to Chinese chip manufacturers to help them advance the way Nvidia can.
This is what Jensen was saying and he is 100% correct here. The chip ban to China will really help them catch up because the money will recirculate since they have no choice but to buy Chinese chips, and in the end it will make them much stronger.
I'm doubtful of this hypothesis. Maybe for a few years, sure. But China has proven time and again that they do not need foreign supply constraints to incentivize the growth of their own competing domestic industry.
The fundamental contradiction of the AI maximalists like Huang is claiming that AI does not need regulated while simultaneously supporting chip exports to China. The supporting claim for the former is that we need to compete on AI with China and move as fast as possible and every day matters, while the latter implies that slowing down their compute is inconsequential.
If this was the case, the Chinese government would have placed import restrictions on US chip manufacturers. Currently Chinese AI companies are constrained on compute. This is why they go to such great lengths to use Singaporean straw purchasers of NVIDIA cards. Merely having strong market incentives to succeed is not enough. Sustained, time-consuming R&D and technology sharing is necessary to catch up to competitors.
If this principle were true, then autarchies like North Korea would be the most advantaged since they never have to worry about international competition in their domestic market.
Your confidence is not backed by any data or observation, it's just an unfounded inference.
> the Chinese government would have placed import restrictions on US chip manufacturers.
OT but one thing I didn't realize until reading this comment:
Those used CMP 170HX 8GB were advertised in front of crypto server rigs. Those were probably spread across South Asian scam malls(shopping mall buildings built in literal sovereignty contested areas of non-China/Japan/Korea/Russia non-India non-African non-Muslim Asia, under guises of Chinese tourist destinations, that are literally rented out to local Chinese-speaking gangs engaging in all sorts of gang crimes from tech support scams to human and organ trafficking, straight out of the fictitious Chiba in Neuromancer), and they would happily sell or rent compute to Chinese AI firms if only those were more valuable than 8GB VRAM they have, which they all had all along.
GPU export to China must have become significantly less meaningful since the 170HX unlock became a thing. That alone must have provided petaflops of unsanctioned untraced junks for parts priced compute to Chinese AI startups.
> If this was the case, the Chinese government would have placed import restrictions on US chip manufacturers.
There are. A lot of Nvidia chips are still stuck in Hong Kong.
What the government does is not always what corporations follow.
You mean the exact thing China has been doing?
https://nationaltechnology.co.uk/Nvidia_GPUs_Sitting_Unused_...
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/u-s-commerce-secr...
> If this was the case, the Chinese government would have placed import restrictions
"About 600,000 of Nvidia's advanced artificial intelligence chips are stored in Hong Kong awaiting shipment to mainland China, two people familiar with the matter said, as Beijing withholds approval for large-scale imports despite demand from tech firms" [1].
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/nvidia-chips-pile-up-hon...
> "If this was the case, the Chinese government would have placed import restrictions on US chip manufacturers."
I do not know full details, but China did exactly that. There were articles about limiting Nvidia chip imports more than a year ago. It really highlighted the absurdity of the export ban.
To my non-expert knowledge, the reasoning behind the export ban has never been explained beyond a vague assertion that China would do some sort of evil with AI if they have bigger GPUs than some arbitrary number of transistors, and also some silliness where paying a 15% tax made some of the GPUs safe to export. It has been pretty great for Huawei.
IMO that ignores the decades of investment the Chinese government has made in its semiconductor industry. It’s literally been written into their five year plans at the highest level with tons of government pressure to buy domestic when possible across industries. With the biggest captive consumer market on the planet, there is no universe in which China doesn’t get its own cutting edge chip industry. They have been determined to do it since at least the 90s and have invested hundreds of billions in a concerted effort to pull it off.
This might make sense in a pure free market. But as a state planned economy, regardless of export bans, China is going to continue to heavily invest in cloning EUV.
Both China’s geopolitical situation and technological history point towards them cutting any reliance on a foreign tech stack as soon as they can.
As I see it, giving them chips just means they have less of a gap to close when their own EUV fabs come online, it can’t have any delaying effect on their plans.
One can have good argumenta against a specific law (personally I am very much pro free trade), but as long as the law exist, breaking it comes with consequences.
You say this, but there is already massive scarcity in the domestic market for any 16GB+ GPU. We can't get enough and it's bottle-necking scale out. Even if Nvidia diverted their entire supply to China there would still be a global shortage and an economic case for Chinese companies to build chips.
The Chinese chip market is exactly like any other market in any other country, except it's run by the largest and arguably most successful autocratic organization in the world, one which views reducing reliance on external suppliers who can turn the taps on and off at will/whim, to be of existential importance. I mean, aside from them being autocratic despots and control freaks, I can't even blame them. Your main adversary's president (and we all know how high-quality they always are) can wake up any day and decide you don't get to buy a critical part of the AI tech stack, good luck with all your future endeavours!
Yeah, no. No one in Beijing will let Nvidia or the White House have that kind of power in the long run because the free market knows best and golly gee where will we get the money and whatnot. They will buy whatever they can to bridge the gap to a time when they own their own tap.
It's not a completely dissimilar argument to selling them the nukes or F-35s because "it will deny oxygen/money to the Chinese nukes and fighter jets market".
I'm not sure if this is true or false, but as an observation: this is the exact opposite reasoning people use to criticize isolationism and market protection.
You are essentially arguing that CEOs can violate US laws if it makes them personally richer. That is litterally the crime.
Your argument is that it's actually good to break the law?
Some people argue that it is indeed a moral responsibility to break an unjust law.
Bingo! This guy gets it.
The best way of hampering China technologically has always been about keeping them completely dependent on foreign chip supply chain, e.g. ASML, TSMC, NVDA, ARM, AVGO, INTC, etc.
If you simply ban them from getting any western chips or chip tech you simply light a viciously hot fire underneath them to develop their own TSMC equivalent and their own chip designers, and we are now seeing them catching up rapidly. In fact, they are pretty close to catching up now, basically within one or two years...
Supposedly, one of those half-billion-dollar ASML EUV machines has found its way to China somehow.
The best reason to NOT ban exports is that it really doesn't work against a peer state, and China is close enough now to count. Given the significant economic trouble in the PRC (youth unemployment, unwinding the property bubble, overproduction of EVs) the US could definitely have played this better instead of creating a vibrant full-stack domestic AI sector in China.
How would they obtain one? These kinds of industrial machines come in pieces and need to be assembled, commissioned and maintained by OEM personnel. The only thing I can think of is ASML sold a machine to a compromised company who secretly shipped it to China without ASML knowing.
He is probably referring to this : https://www.reuters.com/world/china/how-china-built-its-manh...
They hired old asml employees.
Still, it’s not like an off the shelf product with an 2 pager quick installation and first steps manual. Training, and maintenance, and repairs, and configuration,… I doubt you can simply ask your friendly neighbourhood LLM
> vibrant full-stack domestic AI sector in China
This has crashed, check the markets.
This would work in a fully capitalist economy where supplying them with chips would remove funding/investment from the local alternatives. This is not China. China has been and will continue to pour billions upon billions of dollars into their native industry because they too believe that having their own chips is important, so they will take all the cutting edge chips they can get and they will continue to develop their own at the exact same rate.
They do not need a ban to light a fire under them. The fire is already lit and burning and nothing the west can do will even slightly dampen it.
You yourself claim they are within a couple of years. If that's the case you think they will stop developing if we sell them chips? That's laughable.
Yeah, Jensen sees the whole hw/sw ecosystem as a package. It isn't just chip n+1 on process n-1.
Keeping adversaries X-behind discourages adversaries from developing a new ecosystem since X-behind is better than building new. If an adversary with tremendous resources must recreate the ecosystem, it will be adopted by US+global companies since it will be lower margin.
Link to the interview https://youtu.be/Hrbq66XqtCo?t=3457
Thanks for the link.
Watched the interview and as far as I see he was getting 'heated' because he was speaking the obvious truth and being frustrated by poorly informed questions.
This is entirely expected from somebody like him who has a long history of being on the right side of technical argument.
He is a huge loss to Nvidia and the US - replaced by a ex-CFO.
The US had put an export ban, and he clearly skirted it while at the same time banging a suspected Chinese spy. The company he ran like a fiefdom broke the rules set in place by the same country for which he's supposedly a loss.
I don't see it. Nvidia has a lot to answer for, and the fact that Jensen was very successful as a CEO does not shy away from the cracks in the structure.
Are we saying he was skirting the ban because he was having an affair with a Chinese spy? That seems like a stretch. Jensen was ideologically opposed to a ban, he didn't need any coaxing in that regard.
It was illegal, and I'm sure if this comes to light there will be (major) repercussions, but I don't see it as an immoral move.
Cheating on your wife of 40 years OTOH...
He was playing both sides and got caught. Nothing more.
"It's not immoral to violate trade sanctions if you don't think they should exist".
Sure, why not? Morality and law are not always aligned. I'm not sure I would go so far to consider these sorts of trade sanctions "immoral", but I wouldn't fault someone for believing so.
In this case, though, I think Huang just believed these sanctions were the wrong move, and would end up long-term helping China and hurting the US. Which is fair to believe, but believing a law is counterproductive doesn't give you immunity if you break it.
> Morality and law are not always aligned
This is a significant philosophical point.
https://www.econtalk.org/public-choice-and-politics-without-....Is it immoral for Jensen to cheat on his wife?
What if he "believed fidelity was the wrong move" and that he'd end up divorced eventually anyways?
When is disloyalty and dishonesty immoral?
It’s something you are not equipped to judge. You don’t know much about his private life and the private life of the people around him. Having sex in itself is not the problem, and so far what was demonstrated was that he had sex, at least one with an alleged spy evading trade sanctions, and once with a subordinate. Either are improper and ground for firing; both together are untenable (plus the possibility that there are other skeletons; we don’t know for now).
The relationship with his wife is neither here nor there, unless she wants to make it public. If she feels betrayed, wants a quick buck, or otherwise wants to for any reason, she will sue for divorce and, considering the publicity of the cases, she should get a favourable judgement.
It’s easy to impose our morals on others. But more than half of republicans believe that gay sex is immoral just as strongly as you believe that adultery is.
Sure, I don't disagree.
I'm trying to point out the inconsistecy with the OP who implied sanctions evasion is not implicitly immoral but that "cheating" is.
Huang may have had an agreement with his wife that this was fine.
But he did not have an agreement with the justice department to flaunt the law and funnel GPUs to China.
>>But he did not have an agreement with the justice department
Neither did conscientious objectors? I don't think you mean to claim that the justice department is the final word on morality? Just that on this topic, you agree with the justice department (which is fine), but they will do things that you disagree with. They are no final arbiter and have helped enforce plenty of immoral laws in the past.
There is even a case to be made that flooding the Chinese market with advanced GPU's will hamstring China's ability to build their own, just like they have done to our ability to manufacture. In fact that is exactly the case Jensen has made plenty of times. By holding back exports you are actually creating the market conditions in China for building advanced GPU's indigenously, CCP doesn't even have to do much, the market is responding. Who's immoral and unpatriotic then?
Can you make the case for trade sanctions being a moral issue?
Isn't the specific trade law being broken related to arms control and dual-use technology?
IMO it's not a terribly strong case to make while Boeing sells whole jetliners to China, but the law was put in place for both moral and practical reasons.
It would depend on the reason for the sanctions...
If the sanctions are to prevent buying the products of slavery, that's a moral issue, and violating the sactions is also a moral issue.
Same deal if the sanctions are to prevent selling things that will be used to carry out genocide/etc. That's a moral issue, so violating the sanctions is a moral issue.
I don't think there's an alegation that the GPUs will be used for immoral purposes, just that the US government has national security concerns. Those concerns may or may not be valid, and may or may not be served by having trade sanctions applied effectively, but I don't think that's a question of morality.
It's not de facto immoral to violate the law. It could be immoral to violate the law and conceal it.
> It would depend on the reason for the sanctions...
But then it would be the thing that is sanctioned that is the immoral activity, not the breaking of a sanction, right?
It's like you said, unlawful != immoral.
I think you can make a case that breaking a rule intended to prevent immoral activity is in and of itself immoral, even if breaking the rule didn't result in the immoral activity.
It's arguable either way, morality isn't a formal logic. There's no right answer, and it's mostly judged by popular consensus... If there is a final authority, they don't publish their notes. :p
It would be immoral to sell weapons to your nation's enemies but not to your allies.
Unless you're saying that disloyalty and betrayal are not issues of morality.
It's very interesting to read here that Jensen is immoral for betraying his wife but not for betraying his country.
Absolutely. Immoral and illegal/unlawful are separate things alogether.
However the fact he was having an affair muddies the waters on the two. At best, the optics look bad to someone outside. Yes, he could have been opposed for money reasons, and that’s a position that needs no more explanation.
But how do we know he wasn’t being whispered to by the smoking baddie he was trying to impress? Maybe he’d not have taken the risk were he not having this affair but we know what men do when their ego is on the line. Case in point: Musk paying people to play PoE for him and losing his shit when he was caught.
Do I think money is a good enough explanation? Yes. Could I believe that what’s in his pants also played a part? Also yes.
People at this level get intoxicated with their power. They think they are invincible and can do whatever they want. Often they can. Sometimes it all comes crashing down, here for example, or the case of Eric Swalwell. But they never think it will happen to them.
No, he probably wasn't doing it because of the Chinese spy. But when you are sleeping with a Chinese spy people are going to have questions.
Sure but that's not the point here: he was getting frustrated in the interview because he was getting second guessed by someone who doesn't have as much insight has he does. Dude is the founder of Nvidia by the way.
The board should be fired next for allowing a CEO to have 60 direct reports and no succession plan.
You're getting downvoted for this, but it has some merit. It could be argued that NVDA's flat structure is what led to the company's success - Jensen himself greenlit the development of CUDA from the anecdotes I've heard. However, in the last 2 or 3 years the board should have pushed for more redundancy and a succession plan.
Since NVDA had such a flat corporate structure with Huang having ~60 direct reports, I expect that the company will be lost for a period of time as they try to get their bearings. This is an opportunity for AMD, INTC and others.
At the very least a succession plan. Just insane that there wasn't someone ready for this in case he keeled over one day (for some definition of keeled).
This is a $5T (well, I guess $4T now) company we are talking about. What is the board being paid for?
It turned them into one of the most valuable companies in history. The board can figure out succession now.
Both of these things can be true. He can be the best founder in the world that we want to be there forever AND we need to have someone just in case that is 100% up to speed.
This is a $4T company for Pete's sake!
Is that the reason? Or is it that they happened to make a product that became very in demand?
You say that as if a lottery assigns companies what product they shall make. Or that they found their product designs in a kinder egg.
They had an idea which they thought will be valuable. And they worked bery hard on making that idea a reality.
People complain that companies don’t have leadership with long term vision. The leadership of NVIDIA heard the idea of GGPU computation and put the resources behind the idea to make it a practical reality. Here the gap between “nerdy idea” to “product sells like hot-cakes”, is measured in decades. That is not just luck.
Finding yourself making matrix multiplication machines for computer graphics, then suddenly an unrelated technological revolution requires that exact hardware?
They absolutely got incredibly lucky.
This take is crazy; NVIDIA not only built the GPU, *they created the demand.* For a very long time there was nothing like CUDA. They're working on an open-source self-driving car. Back when they were a gaming company, they sponsored the gaming ecosystem.
Jensen Huang cheated on his wife AND conspired to evade arms control regulations, but he's still a genius.
"happened"?
Ok, but the goalposts are shifting. This started as "look how flustered he got when asked about China. That means he did it".
Um it's absolutely possible to break the rules set in place by a country and help it in doing so. No clue whether that's the case here
I am curious which questions you found poorly informed? Jensen Huang started with "China could have trained a Mythos level model" because the resources needed for that were "mundane". Maybe you believe him on that or you know that to be true but maybe mundane is not the right word. Also the rest of his answer did not age well. I think Dwarkesh genuinely wanted to have a deep conversation and not to be a troll.
The uninformed part was a rather dismissive attitude to Chinese capabilities and the assumption that access to NVidia chips was the only important success factor.
Jensen has two core points:
- stopping selling NVidia chips to China isn't going to stop China developing AI
- stopping NVidia selling to China will ultimately ceed US leadership in chips as Nvidia's commercial edge is as much about the dominant developer ecosystem as it is the chips per se.
ie the real risk is the default world tech stack shifts to open models on Chinese chips. End result Chinese lead in both.
He has spent his entire career competing and winning and he is being told he has to stop competing in order to achieve a goal that he knows won't actually be achieved by sacrificing NVidia.
In that scenario, where somebody is suggesting you throw away your life's work for nothing - I think anybody would be animated.
>the real risk is the default world tech stack shifts to open models on Chinese chips.
As someone who isn't based in the US/EU and whose job is to deploy LLMs on premises, I can't wait for the moment when China starts selling its GPUs globally en masse with a proper CUDA equivalent. It's going to be cheaper in the long term and without all the export control drama.
It's refreshing to see a podcaster push their guest to defend their positions, after having had the displeasure of listening to clips of Lex Fridman just accepting even obvious bullshit from his guests without any follow up. It sounds like Dwarkesh did the same with Dario, who argued the other side.
The questions weren't poorly informed just because you agree with what Jensen was saying. He seems pretty obviously to have made drastically poor judgement decisions that potentially affect national security of the US. I don't know if I would consider that to be a huge loss to the US.
The poorly informed part is the assumption that if Nvidia doesn't sell chips China AI dev will stop.
It clearly didn't - don't you remember the Deepseek launch where it came as a rude shock that the much vaunted concept of a compute capacity moat was blown away?
He kept repeating that while he made the best chips, computer science was more important.
Replaced by a CFO… this is what they always do. And that sign the slow death of the any company.
A CFO as interim CEO is fine. Their job is to keep the house in order and Wall Street at bay while the search for a new CEO is underway.
Yeah, this is the standard/textbook move. Keep things moving forward and the financials in order during the search.
Interim. They just need someone to crisis manage. I’m sure they have veteran capable executives other than Jensen. Maybe the AI focus wasn’t all Jensens idea even
All of the sudden people care about keeping Nvidia around? Theyve been jerking people around for decades, screwing customers, shitty drivers, exploding power connectors, anti competitive practices for miles.
those are mere gamer issues. perhaps more relevant ten year ago, but these days, the only question is the rack-scale products (and in that market, Nvidia's driver game has been pretty OK, though unfortunately closed-source).
We used their GPUs at scale before there was AI, and nvidia has always been a hostile vendor to deal with. I'm so ecstatic that at least huangs reputation is now in the trash, and I hope nvidia suffers severe consequences for all the decades of crap they've put us through
"let's ignore how shitty the consumer facing company has been for thirty years, they're too big to fail."
Ma Bell without the anti-trust (yet!).
Opinions on Nvidia depend heavily on one's shares:gpus ratio.
Yeah, its just their karma finally paying dividends.
And yet their products are superior to the competition. Yes, it's a sad day.
Sad? How? Self dealing CEO who cheats on his family after decades of being a shit to their customers as well, seems... deserved
Quite surprised they did not replace him with AI CEO-Class Agent. This would be sweet irony...
He clearly made some very bad decisions or we wouldn't be having this discussion
Replaced for like 10 minutes until the new CEO comes in. This isn't the time to announce the permanent next-20-years CEO.
Yeah, you always want someone sacrificial to be the immediate next person in the hot seat. Too much emotional expectations will be attached to whoever is next. Let the next person take all of the crap long enough so that the person you actually want has a clear path. You see this in sports franchises as well.
> replaced by a ex-CFO.
Let's be clear, she is just the interim CEO (primarily because Huang neglected to ever even start a transition plan) while NVidia searches for a permanent CEO. The names I've seen floated are Rene Haas, CEO of ARM, and Ian Buck, the creator of CUDA.
I'm not sure what to make of the idol worshipping going on here. He was an average CEO and the train will continue right along. NVIDIA doesn't exist because of some inherent greatness of a single person.
He saw the promise in GPGPU 10 years ahead of time and kept funding it out of a stubborness despite a lack of returns until it 1000xd the business.
You can say it was luck but it was definitely not "average".
He also fostered shifting the product line to enterprise- dominant and therefore fostered the acceleration of decline of personal computing. There’s no nuance that I can see reflected in his actions; big money AI spenders come, he jumps in feet first. If “democratization of AI” is even a concept, it’s pretty insulting that the personal consumer is cut out (but let’s make sure China is still getting hardware)
He has poor judgement but I’ve yet to see any of the major consumer hardware companies that understand both hardware and software in the way he did. Or really the value of a fully vertically integrated stack.
Nvidia thrived because it paired great hardware with great software.
AMD and Intel think hardware is enough; it’s not. There’s a reason neither has ever been able to compete with Nvidia.
They have a giant ego, but I’d argue it’s probably well deserved.
Apple is/was similar. They also see that hardware without great software is useless. Spend as much; if not more on software to make your hardware shine.
Intel has some good compilers that take advantage of their hardware don't they? I think AMD now understands the software side of things, and is trying to fix it. Wonder how long it will take for them to get close to Nvidia's software side?
Apple's software quality has jumped off a cliff in the last few years, unfortunately.
According to you, in comparison to the current competition, hardly Microsoft Google, Amazon, Nvidia, AMD, the Koreans, the Chinese, the Linux world, they don’t add up not when it comes to hardware and software and the ability to create an ecosystem, you’re actually dead wrong.
Another thing is wrong was thinking that Apple should run in and build some type of AI model that’s proving to be well wrong the only thing in Apple’s way right now is memory. certainly isn’t money, and they certainly have the talent and house to fix the memory problem. The question is whether or not they have the will to do so.
No one equals Apple at this point in time when it comes to seamlessly integrating multiple devices in a useful way. Be it a desktop computer, laptop a smartphone, tablet, smartwatch, Apple Vision, AirPods with each iteration, once again in comparison to their competition, they seem to have the best hand at this time.
Memory cost is the biggest problem Apple has right now and it’s not like they don’t lack the money and with the Apple Silicon design group they certainly have the capability to fix it, or I should say design around it.
Yes, it might take 2 to 5 years to do it, but it’s not impossible, the main question is, do they have the will? And they’ve certainly shown it when it comes to processors, GPUs, modems, and other support chips that they can execute over time.
They may not execute on what you want or what I want, but in comparison to their competition, who is out there right now that can combine both the software and the hardware at a high level across the board?
> Apple's software quality has jumped off a cliff in the last few years
So did they round something you wanted to see square, or vice versa?
Yes, we’re gonna find out how important he was. If he is on the level as some of the other great CEOs Nvidia gonna have trouble, this little flare could be the beginning of the AI bubble bursting. Because I don’t see Intel or AMD rising to the same level as Nvidia. Microsoft seems to be having bad luck with their team-ups.
I can't say it was solely his choice but Nvidia continually made fantastic market moves. CUDA, then their positioning to ride the crypto boom, and then the AI boom. all of that required deliberate planning with a strong long term vision.
Not true. The decisions always come out of the person at the top. See what happened to Intel recently when they had a succession of MBA bad CEOs…
Nvidia is a highly technical company we’re gonna find out how important Jensen really was to that company tech wise?
And if you look closely at their company, what have they really innovated on over the last five or six years? from a distance, like Intel, it seems like they just turn up the juice/Wattage in short, they are just cruising along.
Self founds one of the most valuable companies of all time - average CEO, sure
You can criticize his recent question actions all you want, but you can’t believe he is “average”.
Definitely not average, but Nvidia is the definition of one trick, and that one trick long-term will be their downfall, Intel is in the same position and so is AMD and Microsoft.
Due to sanctions there’s one Chinese company that seems to have become a multi-dimensional company we won’t know for sure for another two years.
Being a vertical computer company appears to be coming back in style bring on the 1980s. early 1990s.
NVIDIA doesn't exist because of some inherent greatness of a single person.
Yeah, it pretty much does. CUDA is why they are positioned where they are. Other players like AMD and Intel could have done that, but they didn't, and if they had, they wouldn't have persevered for 10+ years with essentially nothing to show for it.
Whether CUDA will continue to maintain dominance is less clear. It may become a literal victim of its own success, as CUDA-based models gain the ability to migrate themselves to new platforms.
It is because of his vision. And with him gone, we shall find out about Nvidia, when Apple computer went through a succession of mediocre CEOs, they were on the ropes if it wasn’t for the founder CEO coming back, Apple would’ve been history like Sun, SGI, Acorn, Commodore, Digital and a host of other computer companies from the 1980s and mid-1990s.
Western companies have had that problem. when the visionary CEO bites the dust. I think the Eastern companies are even more susceptible.
Note: Nvidia is the very definition of a one trick company I think they were in trouble long-term no operating system, Microsoft is in trouble in the other direction. No real in-house hardware ability. Long-term you have to have the ability of both in-house to adjust and iterate over the long haul with the changing conditions in tech.
Exactly.
He may not have 'invented' CUDA but he saw the potential and gave it resources to be created and continually developed.
How many "CUDA-like" ideas have be squashed at other companies by leaders that don't see the potential or are willing to take a multi-year loss?
IMO, it's like SpaceX vs other rocket companies - especially Blue Origin.
Bezos, at least at first, had just as much money if not more than Musk. So why did SpaceX do so much better than them and every other rocket company. I despise Musk personally, and he's generally not as smart as he makes himself out to be - but there is something there he does differently than others in his position, some with similar resources as he does as well.
Bezos is a genius and an another direction? a direction that is 180° different than Elon? and neither one probably will ever do well on the other person’s home field.
The temporarily embarrassed billionaires have swarmed your comment to remind you that success is based on a single person, which is why they should get to do whatever they want when they're running their own Nvidia-sized corp one day.
There are so many people who could fill his position. Not such a big loss
Tell me you know nothing about nVidia without saying it.
Let's see if nVidia goes under now that he quit. I bet it won't and doesn't matters. You probably thought Apple couldn't go on without Jobs.
> He is a huge loss to Nvidia and the US
Let's expect better of leadership than to be criminal.
I'm not sure how long I should've kept watching but so far that looks like very good and knowledgeable answers, exactly what I'd expect from a competent tech CEO.
Unless it's like super far in, if this counts as heated then I just don't know what you expect.
Also got a similar vibe from him during Ezra Klein interview but Ezra was better at keeping it on rails.
https://youtu.be/HjurAWAr_nY
https://youtu.be/JW5s9Md4U2U?t=1058
Wrong interview
Its about his push for China. No intention of posting the other interview.
Why are you posting random unrelated things? The comment you were responding to: "Jensen getting really heated when pressed by Dwarkesh over China during his interview". Jensen's push for China in some other interview where he didn't lose his composure is unrelated.
Is related to the subject of him being a chill for China. Anybody would guess the context, people dont need somebody to find the link to an interview being mentioned. But they will be interested in another similar one, and I posted it at the exact relevant second.
Now that I explained it in detail for you, shall we move on to addition and subtraction? Or do you need a short pause because your head is hurting you?
Please stop posting misinfo. One very specific interview was referenced and you deceptively posted a youtube link to a different interview. Stop.
but how do you explain China refusing to buy nvidia chips ???
I remember listening to that and thinking, this sounds like a guy who is primarily focused on selling chips and is brushing away legitimate concerns in a way that, I just did not find very compelling. A little bit too much protest you might say. Not to say there isn't or wasn't validity to his arguments, but in light of the current circumstances it seems to me that those arguments are quite a bit less valid than they were, and I've certainly swung my personal opinion from being on the fence to a hard no to selling these chips to Chinese buyers.
If the Chinese Communist Party are going through such great lengths to obtain these advanced Nvidia chips, it further invalidates a lot of what I've been reading here and elsewhere about China "catching up" or that being the leading models isn't what matters (commoditization). You don't do stuff like this unless you really need something.
Talking to friends who worked in diplomacy - honey traps are extremely common and often tried quite routinely. It makes sense if you think about it. The failure rate on these is going to be fairly high and even if it’s a small success (ie a one night stand sort of thing) you can get a little compromat. The cost is probably fairly negligible, a lot of this will be fairly low risk as far as spying goes.
My favourite honey trap story comes from the cold war. A Russian diplomat in Denmark was the target of Danish intelligence. They tried to honey trap him at a party, but he didn't respond to their agent's advances. So, the Danes supposed that he might be gay, and sent a male honey trap to the next party, but again got no response from the Russian. They shrugged their shoulders and gave it up.
Unbeknownst to them, the Russian was actually at that time trying to make contact with western intelligence, as he was keen to defect! He was just a bit too awkward to respond to flirting.
He did eventually manage to defect to Britain, and died in 2025. His name was Oleg Gordievsky.
> honey traps are extremely common and often tried quite routinely.
WSJ reports that U.S. intelligence says Chinese intelligence approached Alice to become an asset after she met Jensen in March 2024. So, she was an opportunistic info source, not targeted in advance.
also, men are redickulous. And they can go in any number of beneficial direction from turning informant, selling GPUs to the chinese, or just a pee tape, etc. Just like a lottery of fun ways to screw with an adversary.
Jensen was a tech geek? who had a midlife crisis…
I think it's worth remembering that China isn't a monolithic bloc, and CCP doesn't drive everything, that there are tons of private enterprises there that would benefit, even if the Chinese government strategically would prefer to push Huawei to grow the domestic capability. There being a ton of private demand internal to China doesn't invalidate Jensen's view that it's a strategic blunder to let Huawei get a foothold in the market. Within the CCP, there's also a lot of inter-regional competition to show growth in their own regions, because that's the primary qualification for advancement within the party.
That said, I don't have any special insight into the specifics of who was driving the demand backing Megaspeed.
there's a good analysis that says Alice was a fixer and/or white-glove. those are common-in-China roles that have to do with obfuscating big financial operations, not necessarily with any political (CCP) involvement. obviously, CCP approves, if tacitly, everything that happens in China.
I find this hard to believe. Covid made it clear the CCP is very much in charge and in control.
Which part? You find it hard to believe that there are private enterprises there that don't always do exactly what CCP wants? Or that there're conflicting incentives inside the CCP, so that "what CCP wants" isn't simple?
Political officers are assigned to most Chinese tech companies.
You can't just take away someone's boogeyman like that.
> invalidates . . . . China "catching up"
China catching up does not mean they are not still behind.
Also, China is a big country with many companies. While some may be trying to catch up via local development, others may still prefer getting western hardware right now e.g. in order to get a competitive advantage over those catching up.
Over the last 40-50 years they haven’t had the try that hard to get that technology, the overwhelming majority was served up on a plate.
I'm a bit out of the loop, what part of what he said is wrong? He said they have more power and the more capability to produce chips, so they can essentially just brute force things vs the US if they wanted to: is that not the case?
If they don't need NVIDIA then why are they attempting so hard to bypass export controls.
If they don't need NVIDIA then why is the now former CEO of NVIDIA trying so hard to allow exprt controls to be relaxed.
And it's because brute forcing only allows you to not fall behind, but you can't catch up to frontier models or surpass.
That's like asking why China is building nuclear and coal power plants when solar is so much cheaper. They are doing all of the above.
Let's assume for a second that the compromat story on Huang is true, how much would that have cost? It could be everywhere from 10k to 10m $, depending on how difficult it was to get access, but it would still be a rounding error for AI invest.
Chips aren't what maketh SI anyway. The US is ahead because of a trifecta of having the best (most) hardware, best data, and best talent. You might also throw in business culture. But the same way Google is leading from behind in the US AI eco system, China is behind the frontier on LLMs, but laying foundational work in robotics, multi-modal models and integrated factories that might prove a big advantage down the line.
Best talent, doubtful keep holding that belief. Right up until 2050…
Could it not be true that they could brute force it if need be, but it would be much easier to use the better chips if they can get them?
No it's not the case because if they could do it they would already have done it. Selling them Nvidia chips doesn't change that.
But here's a link to the podcast episode if you want to give it a listen. It will inform a lot to the discussion taking place here and help you understand a few of the things he said that are probably now wrong: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/jensen-huang
I am trying to separate the current situation from his comments. Perhaps that is a mistake. He's trying to sell chips but that doesn't make him wrong.
They are catching up. Don’t delude yourself. This minor innocent little faux pas is the start of the AI bubble, it is in some ways poetic…
One other little crack in the dike. Was Sam Altman saying regular computer users shouldn’t have memory all memory should be allocated to data centers.
What will be the third crack in the dike?
But what’s the point ultimately? Delaying their progress by a couple years?
Not selling them chips virtually guarantees that they will learn how to make their own, very quickly. The end result of that is much, much worse for the USA.
(and could leave Taiwan in a much weaker position in the near future)
People are bending over backwards to come to try to find some deep reason, but I think the reason is simple - the people in charge are not particularly farsighted nor insightful. It's simply short-term thinking without consideration of long-term consequences - it's not limited to just businesses.
For another example, the reason Chinese are not allowed on the 'international' ISS is because of the Wolf Amendment. [1] The idea was that if we just allowed them onto the ISS they'd steal all of our elite tech or something. Within a decade they had launched their own space station and carried out various revolutionary space activities.
And of course all of that happened while the ISS itself continues to deteriorate with no replacement in sight. And when China did an unprecedented sample return mission from the far side of the Moon and offered the whole world access to samples, US researchers had to jump through a bunch of hoops to receive them, again thanks to the same law.
It's just myopia.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Amendment
> Not selling them chips virtually guarantees that they will learn how to make their own, very quickly. The end result of that is much, much worse for the USA.
Are you proposing we guarantee access to avoid potential access?
Friends close and enemies closer.
An economy kept dependent on American tech is unlikely to drop bombs on America and vice versa. Co dependency prevents war.
This isn’t what China does though, the moment new tech crosses the border they reverse engineer and start producing it locally. IP protections are meaningless there. How many times does this have to happen to sink in?
What needs to happen is that the people who are getting wealthy from the offshoring of manufacturing and labor to China need to stop getting wealthy. Until then any and all excuses to pretend that China will operate in good faith will be levied to try and make people seem like it's in their best interest to hollow out the USA to hand over to China.
The problem is, the man in the mirror and it ain’t just the Chinese that have taken advantage, the Japanese and the Koreans are pretty good too, and so are the Taiwanese and it’s only a matter of time for one or two countries in Southeast Asia to rise up too, and if it wasn’t for Russia’s stupidity, both Russia and the Ukraine would have certainly produced what three or four very, very good AI models to the mix…
Soon, China, if they aren’t already, will be the premier developer of Thorium reactors courtesy of Oak Ridge, Tennessee and they also are now number one or at the least 1A when it comes to high-speed rail, and if the Russians and the Ukrainians weren’t fighting each other, that high-speed rail probably would be already built out all the way to eastern Europe.
Keeping them dependent upon you guarantees that they never surpass you and that you can milk the relationship for all its worth economically and geopolitically. When they have their own fabs spun up it's possible that you are the one eventually stuck with inferior tech, and you lose all sort of revenue + leverage you'd otherwise have from the relationship.
Except it's not a guarantee. They can still surpass you. It might be a little harder, a little less likely - but it's still completely possible.
Huawei has become a super company basically because of all the sanctions, Wxmt will become the dominant memory maker worldwide in the next five years due to shortsighted thinking in the West.
It make sense. China had X amount of demand. If the demand is met they are satisfied, if the demand remains unmet they seek alternatives. That seeking of alternatives primarily means huge amounts of money, that would go to Nvidia, going to direct competitors of Nvidia to "chip" away at their competitive advantage.
The long term result is the same regardless of who makes the chips but the real strategy is delaying China's ability to surpass the US. It takes a lot of time and money to essentially copy the entire infrastructure required to build an Nvidia GPU. Nvidia has enough demand as is.
China is a trading partner but there is still a serious catalyst for war in the form of the South China Sea. If we went to war with China in 5 years time, why would we sell them the tech they need to match our ability now? Let them figure it out on their own.
If the US wanted to delay "China's ability," wouldn't the strategy be to give them just enough GPUs to keep them reliant on Nvidia (and make developing alternative tech locally seem less critical), but not enough to develop superior models?
It feels like Space Race thinking, honestly. If the US delays China and ends up with an AGI god a few years in advance, that can still be a significant advantage even if China can catch up. This especially would hold true if a theoretical AGI could maximally leverage RSI so the improvement curve becomes exponential.
It's much closer to nuclear arms-race thinking.
If the US or China developes an AGI that can leverage RSI, the game is over. It is over in the same way that WW3 is over as soon as the missiles are in the air: it doesn't matter who has the fastest or highest yield missiles, because there is a finite amount of time before there is nobody left to care about the advantages of one side. Except at least WW3 is over in about an hour, whereas an AGI could take years or decades to complete whatever thing it has been misaligned to desire.
AI alignment research is still in its alchemy era, and global cyber security is underfunded and bad. As a species, we simply do not have the tools to deal with AGI that can self-improve.
What stops another power from developing its own AGI a year or two later? Or from catching up once there are two competing RSI AGIs? The Soviets were a few years behind on getting nukes but they still got them.
The first AGI protecting its turf and sabotaging or corrupting the second AI to be its agent.
I think the verdict is still out on whether having an AGI God fly out of your butt would serve as a strategic advantage in the great power struggle.
Davidson Window...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davidson_window
This. And this happened before, see the China Sovjet split
AI has been identified as strategic national priority for both the Chinese and United States.
NVIDIA’s commercial interest is pretty clear… it’s beneficial to them. to sell everyone to maintain the dominance of CUDA. That is not necessarily the national interest. And remember that espionage and infiltration is not a one-sided affair, the US may well have the ability to sabotage Chinese development efforts. You just don’t know.
End of the day, corporate CEOs are very powerful, but they’re not as powerful as the government. My guess is that Jenson truly didn’t think that this individual was a spy, and figured that the questionable legality of chip exports to Chinese proxies could be addressed by ingratiating the administration.
Why wouldn’t they have done that by now then? Where is their ASML or TSMC? They’ve had decades to catch up already.
> They’ve had decades to catch up already
No, they haven't. They spent the first decade after WW2 repairing the damage left behind by the Japanese and their Civil War. Subsequently they managed to starve tens of millions afterwards in several missteps, and then righted themselves.
They then spent three to four decades lifting about thrice the US population out of extreme abject poverty, and then in the last 20 years catching up. And catch up they have; they are already the leaders in green technology and EVs, already manufacture some of their own chips, already have indigenous military aerospace capability, which they are now expanding to civilian use. They make almost everything in the average household.
Their ASML and TSMC are...ASML and TSMC.
Who says we won't just progress as well and they stay behind a couple of years?
Where is the evidence that China is catching up considered a fiat d accompli?
Do you presume that China is destined to always at least catch up in every sector or field ever? That stinks of Chinese Exceptionalism to me.
If they could just "catch up" they would, and whether we sell them chips wouldn't matter because they would want to create their own Nvidia and export chips and make money too.
> Do you presume that China is destined to always at least catch > up in every sector or field ever? That stinks of Chinese > Exceptionalism to me.
Suppose you want to build something that requires technical knowledge (a GPU, a fighter jet, ...). You have engineers, but they don't yet know how to build it.
If no one on earth has ever built this thing, you need to consider the possibility that it can't be done at a cost you can pay. Perhaps it violates some law of physics, or it can't be manufactured without knowing some chemistry/physics that we are 100+ years from discovering.
If a company in some other country is already building this thing, you can be sure it is possible to build it. That is a critical piece of information! It means you don't need to discover (much) new physics. It means you can buy/steal a working copy and look at it to learn about it. It means there are engineers you can hire/spy on to understand their design process. It means you can more easily convince a bank/government to fund development, as they have proof your goals are achievable.
Inventing a thing is much harder than inventing a clone of a thing. The idea that China doesn't have the people and organization to copy things other countries make is the opposite of Chinese Exceptionalism. It is the belief that the Chinese are uniquely incapable of engineering work. This is obviously not true.
> The idea that China doesn't have the people and organization to copy things other countries make is the opposite of Chinese Exceptionalism. It is the belief that the Chinese are uniquely incapable of engineering work. This is obviously not true.
Which broadly leads to two conclusions:
They can't do it. If they could they would. If you could invest and create your own Nvidia, ASML, TSMC, &c. you would do that especially if you are China due to its stated goals and actions it takes that we can all see toward those goals.
They can do it and so selling them the chips doesn't matter other than helping to speed up their ability to do it, so we don't want to sell them the chips and thus speed up their capabilities.
But your viewpoint also holds true for the United States and Europe. Anything China can do we can also do, otherwise you're just supposing Chinese Exceptionalism.
> fiat d accompli
The phrase is “fait accompli”, without a D, and is French for “accomplished feat”.
> Where is the evidence that China is catching up considered a fiat d accompli?
The ever closing gap between the capabilities of frontier models vs chinese open weight models.
Models aren’t everything. You need physical infrastructure at scale for inference, which is where the economic power comes from. Chinese hardware makes double the heat and needs at least double the energy input.
And 3 years ago they were producing no heat and required no energy because they did not exist. Clearly they are catching up
even if true, luckily for them, double the heat and double the energy input aren't an issue, and they have more physical infrastructure at scale too
It's like the ever closing gap between the smartest kid in class and the kid who sits behind him copying his work.
That's not a strategy that leads to actually being the best.
Exactly. And we better keep it this way. The fact that we can block them from copying us today means that they will try that much harder to come up with their own answers. Remember, they are miles ahead in manufacturing hardware and the software is not a problem anymore. Whatever moat cuda represented is gone now.
This is good evidence sanctions don't really work. Critical sectors will find ways around them and it only punishes the rank and file working class. If China or any sanctioned nation wanted those nvidia chips, it has ways to get them. So the military and intelligence get them, but the people don't. Same with sanctions on Russia now, which has not significantly slowed its military machine, but in fact its military machine is coming out with constant innovations (new Gerans, better EW, more spy sats, etc). I remember seeing a post mortem of some Russian drone. It had a Jetson chipset Russia was not supposed to be able to get. I imagine the smuggling market is far bigger than we might think and sanctions far less effective than we think.
Same when you sanction food imports. The elites who make decisions will always be fed. Sanctions are almost always an attack on the working class who do not make the high-level political decisions the sanctions are trying to address. Not to mention the idea of "making life hard on them so they revolt" almost never works.
Sanctions should be a bigger conversation. They are almost never needed and especially trade tariffs and such are always used for the most corrupt cronyism.
> Same when you sanction food imports. The elites who make decisions will always be fed. Sanctions are almost always an attack on the working class who do not make the high-level political decisions the sanctions are trying to address. Not to mention the idea of "making life hard on them so they revolt" almost never works.
There’s also the minor quibble that restricting food exports to starve another country are illegal under international law.
Nobody is starving in Russia (at least unavoidably).
That sanctions only harm the civilian economy is not an argument against them. Kinetic sanctions agains oil refining are also primarily impacting the general population and the military have enough oil. But they still impact the ability of the Russians to fund the war. Civilian infrastructure and economic assets are used by militaries too.
I watched the interview. I think the arguments made sense. People get heated talking about the colour of an object they can both see. I wouldn't want to project reasons for heated behaviour.
For the record I think that less than half of the people who thought the dress was black and gold were being influenced by the Chinese government to take that position.
He doesn’t seem too heated to me. Maybe it was just the way this awful interviewer took 3 minutes to finish asking the question.
Yeah call me crazy but I don't see the need to sell the cutting edge chips to China if you're already a trillion dollar company. Sure more money is nice, but not living under the thumb of a global dictatorship is nice too.
If the sale is not about money or share price then maybe it's ideological.
20% more revenue is a lot of money and makes Huang wealthier since he owns a large piece of the company.
He was so unhinged and angry. Ppl just ignored it at the leather jacket glazing time s
LMAO Dwarkesh is stupid ass
> The image of Nvidia advocating for exports of GPUs to china
As a business, why shouldn't they advocate for export to a relatively huge market? It is an expansion for them and from a business perspective completely expected.
The advocacy is not the problem. The problem is that, once the ban was in place, they skirted the ban.
Didn't everyone already know that China was buying Nvidia GPUs?
Is the problem that Nvidia was not making it as hard as it should have?
Realistically, how much does that even matter?
Because the government, empowered by the people, have decided it matters, as a matter of national security.
There's is no argument to be had about this specifically. You can argue whether this is true or not, but that's not relevant to this subject. If Nvidia still decides to ignore the government, it'd be not only completely, absolutely fair, to nationalize the corporation, but the country itself has a duty to its citizens to do such thing.
Now legislators demonstrated how much that matters. I don't have the knowledge to evaluate the national security concerns. But from the outcome, it's a matter they'll firmly push as a long term strategy, even at the cost of one of the world's most visionary CEOs.
They and their shareholders are about to find out how much it matters.
Which is not what the comment being replied to said at all.
Well its suspicious. If they were onoy advocating then thats free speech, but if they also skirted the ban, then its then kinda admitting to it
They should and there’s nothing wrong with only advocating. The problem is that it wasn’t just advocating but (possibly) knowingly subverting the export controls
You intentionally cut off the why here.
Let's export rockets, F-35s, Typhoons, Rafales', Gripens, jet turbines.
China should have infiltrated ASML, not much they can do without them until they get the blueprints. Unlikely they aren't doing it already.
> rockets, F-35s, Typhoons, Rafales', Gripens, jet turbines
these are actual weapons, does anyone use GPUs to kill humans?
Yep.[0]
US congresspersons and international media outlets condemned the use of AI warfare against Iran, including the Department of Defense's (DoD) Project Maven—a target tagging system integrating elements of Palantir's Maven Smart System and Anthropic's Claude large language model.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Minab_school_attack
They can be part of the "kill chain", yes.
There was the kerfuffle with Dario Amodei and Pete Hegseth, who declared Anthropic a supply chain risk to the US. IMO, yes. Killer robots don't run on one 5090 :)
There is more spelunking to that situation, but that's a different thread.
Turns out there are laws and regulations that restrict one’s ability to lobby for foreign interests as both a public and private individual. Read about NJ Senator Bob Menendez which is a particularly egregious example.
That feels like it should be unconstitutional.
> The image of Nvidia advocating for exports of GPUs to china while compromised by an allegedly Chinese agent is the real issue here.
OK sure .. obviously sleeping with Chinese agent is a security issue .. very bad .. but Nvidia's position on the export ban was sound. The export ban does not make sense. In fact, it is counterproductive because it closes a huge market to Nvidia and makes China less reliant on US Tech - forcing them to accelerate development of homegrown GPU business.
> Nvidia's position on the export ban was sound. The export ban does not make sense
Jensen had the ear of the President. He could have lobbied this properly.
Doing so by obscuring Nvidia’s Singapore business, failing to apply for an export license to Megaspeed, corruptly quashing a Commerce investigation into Megaspeed, all while sleeping with its leader who turned out to be a Chinese spy, and then only coming clean when the Congress flipped…I don’t know how he could have flipped the bird stronger at the American people.
> corruptly quashing a Commerce investigation into Megaspeed
I'm squarely blaming the federal admin for this. Lutnick and Rubio both knew about this way ahead of time, and their negligence is what ended up screwing the American people over. Removing Jensen doesn't prevent this corruption, it just shuffles the blame around. Huang became the fall guy for corruption at a ludicrous scale, while Donald Trump ponders installing Tim Cook (?) as his replacement.
The whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. This is the Kardashian-ization of the American tech industry.
> I'm squarely blaming the federal admin for this
Everyone is. It's increasingly clear the administration helped Nvidia break the law [1].
But this is how corruption works. The mobster pays the mayor to let him break the law. That doesn't mean they aren't both breaking the law.
> t just shuffles the blame around. Huang became the fall guy for corruption at a ludicrous scale
Fall guy implies innocence and the end of the line for blame. Neither looks likely with this case. Jensen wasn't innocent. And there is is bipartisan fury starting with Lutnick.
> while Donald Trump ponders installing Tim Cook (?)
I think he got this idea from a joke Kara Swisher made. In the end, Trump would love nothing more than for a media circus around Jensen's succession to distract from the above.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/12/business/nvidia-megaspeed...
there are many sound positions that are illegal, so it's kind of irrelevant
Hold on here ..
If Nvidia was skirting the law, then they should held accountable for that.
If Nvidia merely held a position that the particular law is, say, counter-productive and lobbied against it (but followed it) - what's illegal about that?
Has anybody argued against your second point? Feels like a straw man.
> If Nvidia was skirting the law, then they should held accountable for that.
in corporate america haha
But had he paid his Trump tax? Perhaps he’s not one of the elect!
Are we calling her a "Chinese agent" because her business smuggled chips into China or because anyone believes she was a trained intelligence operative? Does being monetarily incentivized to do business with China make her an agent?
Reported claims from officials is that she was working as an asset for China’s Ministry of State Security and providing them information... not simply doing business for her own company.
There is a lot of different ways that one can be an "asset" it could be as simple as giving information about who in east Asia is buying their legitimately purchased chips so that Chinese firms can try to buy or rent them. That would be very different from if as some have suggested she is a handler for Jensen.
>The export ban does not make sense. In fact, it is counterproductive because it closes a huge market to Nvidia and makes China less reliant on US Tech - forcing them to accelerate development of homegrown GPU business.
Could you tell China this? Because they seem to not agree at all, given what we are seeing
> The image of Nvidia advocating for exports of GPUs to china while compromised by an allegedly Chinese agent
I don't really buy that. China was already like Nvidia's #2 or #3 market. It didn't take a Chinese agent to convince him that he wanted to sell to China.
To me, the first "girlfriend" looks more like a chinese handler. Jensen used his control of nvidia to forced nvidia customers to buy more hardware today that they did not need or they would be cut off from future orders. That is how Jensen was able to increase nvidia production so he could increase the number of cards he could smuggle to china. I don't understand how jense is not in custody yet. He is a massive flight risk. The only winners were jensen's bank account and chinese businesses that wanted nvidia gpus. US businesses and consumers paid billions more for hardware because of Jensen's crimes. We also need to investigate every CEO that partipated, because they likely are criminally culpable for their participation.
Also that its intertwined with asking the corrupt administration to relax export regulations
There's speculation that Trump knew about the Chinese spy and Nvidia donated $25M to the White House Ballroom in October 2025.
Even if this is just a coincidence, Jensen himself came out and said he donated to the ballroom, but kept the amount hidden. In internal documents, Jensen and Nvidia said to keep the amount hidden and it only came out due to disclosure documents from the government.
Trump went on 60 Minutes and said as much
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I think that the risk is not nearly as real as it-- as they talk. And I think the risk can be managed. And it's managed, you know who? By who? The DOJ. We had a situation where somebody was reported to us to be doing something bad with AI. We called them very strongly and said, "Get ready to go to jail. Please give your wife a kiss good night."
ROSS DOUTHAT: Who was this person?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I can't tell you--
ROSS DOUTHAT: Or this company?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I can't tell you. But we said-- "Do you like the color orange because get rid --" said, "Go home right now. See your wife and children. Give 'em a kiss good night, and--"
ROSS DOUTHAT: If--
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --"that's the story because--"
ROSS DOUTHAT: If the Democrats--
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --"because tomorrow morning--"
ROSS DOUTHAT: --wanted--
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --"you're goin' to jail."
ROSS DOUTHAT: If the-- if they--
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Let me tell you--
ROSS DOUTHAT: --wanted to make a deal--
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --this person--
ROSS DOUTHAT: --to put that (UNINTEL)--
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --this person totally changed everything. Totally. "Yes, sir. Yes, sir--"
ROSS DOUTHAT: "Yes, sir"?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Okay--
ROSS DOUTHAT: Was it a leader of a major AI company?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: One of the big ones. Yeah.
ROSS DOUTHAT: Okay.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: One of the big ones. And--
ROSS DOUTHAT: If the Democrats--
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --and-- and I don't think--
ROSS DOUTHAT: --said, "We wanna put th-- we wanna--"
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --I don't--
ROSS DOUTHAT: --"codify this into law--"
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --I don't think it was--
ROSS DOUTHAT: --would you work with them--
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --done maliciously. But it coulda been malicious, but--
---
This is what losing the Rule of Law looks like by the way. The sitting president is on TV saying that he found out someone rich and powerful is suspected of wrong doing serious enough to get a call from the president threatening him with prison, but that that's the punishment. Once that rich and powerful person bent the knee, said "Yes sir" with the right tone of voice, all was forgiven.
Equal Justice under Law means that we shouldn't punish people we don't like with harsher sentences it also means that wealth and power shouldn't be sufficient to skirt the law.
We often speak of a two-tiered justice system, but I've never seen the president go on TV and tell America in no uncertain terms, it exists, I'm a part of it, and it went very well, he said "Yes sir" just the right way and so you don't need to worry about it.
https://youtu.be/m2aC8lAOQbg?t=1444 starts at 24 mins in
This conversation is completely unhinged and unintelligible.
Thank you for the transcript, I can hear it in my head with all the inflections and combativeness. Douthat reads as "Doubt That" to me, chef's kiss to whomever is writing the script for this simulation, haha.
You're just NOW noticing that we have lost the rule of law?? The constitution has been continuously violated for over 100 years, we are clearly a post-constitutional republic? I guess? I think we entered full clown world in the 2000's where the currency, government and war systems started glitching out.
What I am noticing is that the high trust society we inherited has finally eroded to the point that we no longer tell ourselves that we have rules and laws that are equally (or sanely) applied.
Which is a good, scales dropping from eyes, innocence ending sort of thing. Makes me hopeful for change, in a way.
$25M to sell billions of GPUs to China
cost of doing business. kiss the ring, get the blessing, make fat stacks -- illegally.
These "donations" are just par for the course (to use an expression from the current president's favorite sport)...
I’m aware, Apple and other companies donated too. What I found odd was the lengths Jensen and Nvidia went to hide the amount. Other companies came out and said how much they donated.
Ok Mr. Both Sides, show me the donations to Biden's gilded ballroom.
I should have made it clearer that I was only both-sidesing it when it comes to the donors, not to the recipient...
Oh! That explains why Trump was so sympathetic to Jensen : "He is suffering. Poor man. He is such a nice guy. And his family… but he is suffering greatly."
Corrupt from top to bottom.
he's also probably empathetic towards men who have publicly been caught cheating on their wives, for obvious reasons
birds of a feather, and all that
So directly colluding with Russia hasn't taken Trump down, but maybe allowing prohibited exports to China in exchange for money will?
The audit on the main contractor for that "ballroom" must be wild. I guess that auditor is going to make a pretty penny.
As far as I know there is just no evidence of direct Trump collusion with Russia that would be strong enough to get Trump in any legal trouble.
Trump has several protections- #1 is that as chief executive he gets to decide who our friends and enemies are to begin with…
No, he doesn't. Congress has abdicated this power up to now during Trump 2 because the GOP are total lickspittle sycophants. The Democrats will be spineless cowards -- at least the older generation -- but they won't be total pushovers on this front.
Where did I say this will bring Trump down? Maybe Trump gave the go ahead as long as he gets his cut?
You didn't say that, I was speculating in response to your comment.
The image is not a problem. That image has existed for months already. The problem is that Huang lost the tenuous protection that Trump and Lutnick agreed to give him so he could avoid jail. On that basis, investors are now scared the company might suddenly be under investigation for export violations.
https://www.axios.com/2026/11/11/trump-lutnick-nvidia-china-...
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-administration-jail-le...
> Nvidia advocating for exports of GPUs to china while compromised
As a public company its job is to sell as much stuff as possible to as many people as possible, they had every incentive, arguably a duty to advocate for exports to China. The incentive is there regardless of outside meddling.
Skirting the sanctions intentionally would be bad.
The Chinese government working hard to ban NVIDIA GPUs from the country [1][2][3].
How does it make sense that Jensen is compromised while advocating for exporting GPUs to China, which is something that primarily benefits NVIDIA (and arguably the US) while being against the Chinese interests? If he were compromised he would be like "well actually maybe I shouldn't export chips to China after all and give their domestic semiconductor industry a chance".
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/nvidia-chips-pile-up-hon...
[2] https://ng.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/nvidia-ai-ch...
[3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-17/china-age...
They obviously need/needed as much NVIDIA as possible short term, and locally produced superior alternative ASAP long term. So one hand rushes to secure all stocks of NVIDIA prosumer and enterprise cards, while another rushes to ban it.
Long-term plans vs. short-term plans?
China doesn’t want regular businesses to have them illegally.
That’s not the same as China not wanting them legitimately.
Guessing Trump was talking about Jensen on 60 minutes this weekend when he said th DOJ called someone leading a major AI company and said "get ready to go to jail" 24:18 mark
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2aC8lAOQbg&t=1458s
And not that Nvidia is absolved of responsibility but it does make it a little easier if it's the new leadership in the hot seat for those things being like "yeah we did some naughty stuff but it was the last guy and we're working on hard on getting it all cleaned up."
This is dwarfed in scope of the compromise of NVIDIA by its shareholders, a shadowy group who some analysis believe have an interest in the sale of GPUs anywhere, a set of locations that is thought to include China.
> Nvidia advocating for exports of GPUs to china while compromised
I doubt it has anything to do with it really. China is a huge market and by not exporting to China they were missing out on tens to hundreds of billions in revenue. Any CEO would have advocated the same.
Considering the incredibly high demand for GPUs, they would have sold them regardless. All those sales do is increase demand and push prices up.
Particularly in the current political moment, saying essentially "we were using high demand in a market we can't legally sell in to increase prices for American customers" is not a good look.
(Yes,obviously, not all of this is Nvidia's doing, and demand at this volume through smuggling/front companies would still affect the legitimate market. But being an active participant in it is not a good look.)
> The image of Nvidia advocating for exports of GPUs to china while compromised by an allegedly Chinese agent
but china refused to buy nvidia chips
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-12/china-urg...
Especially on the Trump admin having knowledge for an entire year, and not acting on that information in any significant way.
It's not just NVIDIA that's extremely weak on China, the entire Executive branch is both weak and incompetent on what they claim is a chief concern, and Congress has been completely absent on the oversight role that it should be performing according to the US Constitution.
The incompetence and/or corruption is inexcusable. Teapot Dumb Scandal.
The thing is China itself has no incentive to have their companies skirt the export ban. The whole saga is just completely ironic and incredibly unorganic. The alleged "spy" and her firm Megaspeed was doing export circumventing mechanisms to China not because the CCP was allegedly pushing her to do so, in fact it was a counter-reaction to how restrictive the Chinese customs became to importing Nvidia while the corresponding customers are hungry for that compute that is piling up in the ports. China is doing a zero-sum policy where every American chip that gets passed to their tech companies is one less domestic/chinese, which equates less money for R&D and catch up. So something very strange going on here, along with the timing, in time where Anthropic is preparing for an IPO and briefly after the midterms where the median voter rejected AI wholesale. I suspect this might have been a long game to turn the man down that is standing for open-source and the freedom to build AI. Heck epstein was having a ring of elites diddling minors and nothing scandalous came out of it.
All the regulators that kickstarted this dumb export controls in 2022, which in-turn made the american AI-stack weaker vs China, while also using doomer-fud about safety must feel glorious right now.
Sad day for developers.
as always, any slither of facts skewing from the narrative gets downvotes before a single comment pointing out where it's wrong never change hn
I'm just exhausted, and I mean exhausted as in, I do not have it in me anymore, to presume interpretations like these are made in good faith, since for months we have been dealing with a barrage of comments that somehow always seem to justify, and often even praise, whatever, and I mean absolutely everything that China does.
This combines with the fact that it requires actual effort not to think China spreads propaganda regarding AI at this point, I'd rather err on the safe side.
You are writing this with the assumption that I'm chalking up alleged China actions or that I'm being their shill. I don't, in fact it's the severity of this adverserial competition and why I want the liberal world to win this race that has got me peeling back the layers with nuance. China is a legit adversary, with top electrical and software engineers. The chip layer in the AI industry is a constant and America is ahead in it, so it is in the best interest of all the global tech community and especially America to have its winners in it like Nvidia be ubiquitous and abundant. Unlike software, which is dynamic and has potential to do harm, that what should be regulated.
Maybe GPU's will get cheaper then, that would be nice.
Honestly I doubt Huang seriously believed he could ride this out. He didn’t only jeopardise his own marriage, he jeopardised his company’s core IP, national security and possibly the entire global economy. That’s a tricky mistake to forgive.
> The image of Nvidia advocating for exports of GPUs to china while compromised by an allegedly Chinese agent is the real issue here.
I said the same thing a few days ago and got heavily downvoted. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50417959
> Endless congressional hearings on that topic starting in Jan. Ha! Who's going to wait until Jan? There's already a congressional hearing on Nov/18 https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/news/press-releases/chairme...
I may sound arrogant, but I am not. Many people are a bit slow to catch on to these incidents or can't see beyond one layer, like this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50418215
The cult of the Genius Tech CEO is strong on HN.
they think ceos are one many armies and no one else at these companies has talent or does work. its incredibly stupid and franky disrespectful to all the other hard working employees there who make shit happen every day
Agreed. "Huang was right to advocate for them, China has no incentive to skirt the import ban, sad day for developers," are not takes I thought I would read today.
Bots are cheap and easy to spin up. Looking forward to a real government that doesn’t just lick billionaire taint.
I can think of several more urgent topics for congressional hearings than that honestly...
> the affairs are not the reason he is being fired
The second one -- affair with a direct report -- is what he is being fired for. This one is hard for the board to ignore as it directly violates HR rules.
As for the ban for national security reasons, the ban is not super useful because it only prevents hardware from being physically imported into China. If the hardware is physically located in Singapore and Chinese researchers use those machines remotely, the US does not ban that it. If so how meaningful is the ban?
> directly violates HR rules
> ban for national security reasons
These don't sound like they are on the same order of magnitude in terms of severity?
The first can be objectively and quickly ruled as violating company policy. The second has to go through a process -- did Jensen knowingly violate national security policy, and if so how significant was it?
Externally no, but internally to the company they probably can be.
I think, among other things, Nvidia’s board didn’t want to find out if a Congressional committee agreed about that.
Mr. Huang, you’ve admitted that you violated Nvidia’s policy on relations with subordinates. Why should we believe you were faithful to Nvidia’s policy of compliance with national security export controls?
Did the investigation complete that quickly? I don't think he was fired a few days after an investigation was announced. He resigned in disgrace under pressure due to all of his choices combined.
I hope nobody in the presidential administration needs to resign because of their role in the largest scandal in US history but if so, that is what is best for the country.
> This one is hard for the board to ignore as it directly violates HR rules.
I don't think that is the least bit difficult for a board to ignore.
oh come on, do people genuinely believe HR rules plays as a role here when it's regarding CEO, especially someone at the helm at the one of the most valued company?
Time and time we saw executives having affairs and dodging consequences. Elon Mask, Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos. All faced much less severe consequences. Definitely not something blow over like this just after a few days it's being reported.
This is a coordinated attack on Jensen and it was very successful.
> do people genuinely believe HR rules plays as a role here when it's regarding CEO
At most companies it does. HP. Intel. McDonald’s.
The only consistent exception is Musk.
That said, I disagree this is why Jensen was fired. The national-security cover-up is a far bigger deal.
Those are just your average CEOs. Jensen is the founder and CEO of NVDA for 30 years and has been seen as one of the backbone of this AI era. No one at this level ever faced this level of scrutiny and consequence.
Even Bill Clinton faced relatively minor consequences, considering presidents should be held to a higher moral standard
The Board had a choice. Ask him to resign now. Or wait for the Congress and potentially White House to turn the screws on Nvidia.
> considering presidents should be held to a higher moral standard
They’re not. They haven’t been since John Adams.
> The national-security cover-up is a far bigger deal.
Could be, but that requires time to investigate. Banging employee is different because the board would just have to ask Jensen if the reports are true.
> that requires time to investigate. Banging employee is different
True. The combination probably did him in. But I don't think he'd have been fired if he only slept with an employee. Or had a couple affairs. That's just speculation, though.
Not the _only_ reason, sure. However, it's quite common when executives have an affair they will get fired. I think that's just the reality. If you publicly humiliate your family and the business, you're out...
I was on the leadership team of a startup that is now public, during that build something like that happened (almost exactly the same as this NVIDIA situation sans the spy stuff), there were effectively 5 of us involved in what the outcome should be and it basically came down to: me and another guy didn't want to sit on a leadership team with someone who exercised judgement that way, to the point that it was me and the other guy or affair person, so affair person was out, even tho it was very painful for the business. Also, I don't think what I just described is particularly uncommon.
I have worked at a larger company where the CEO did something similar and across the company all anyone could ask was "why would you do something that dumb", which is not a great way for people to feel about the person supposedly leading the company.
Well, I'm not pro-affair, but I've seen lots of people say "why would you do something that dumb" about lots of executives, doing regular things like changing marketing plans, changing the color of the logo, choosing clearly inferior technology because of the caste of the chief architect, etc.
Dumb is apparently totally normal at that level.
Starting a c-level polycule to derisk the s1
Yeah it's insane how many people are like "bro affairs are totally normal!" (they're not) or "affairs have nothing to do with the business!" (of course they do)
Look at the NVDA stock chart. There you go! That's why affairs are relevant to business! Business is always about trust, and someone who isn't deserving of their own spouse's trust certainly isn't deserving of anyone else's.
(Agreeing, with an asterisk.)
Markets care about predictability.
To that end, it's the secret and the reveal of that secret that's the issue for a leader. If a CEO is open about his socially-unacceptable behavior from the beginning, there's no shock to absorb.
Yep that's an even better point. Though I would say there's a distinction between socially-unacceptable and untrustworthy. Being forthcoming both limits surprise (per your point) and mitigates the trust component of deviance.
> Yeah it's insane how many people are like "bro affairs are totally normal!" (they're not) or "affairs have nothing to do with the business!" (of course they do)
Why? I'm playing a bit devil's advocate here, but why? Because society think it's bad and a leader should be associated with positive views? Because if they got caught they are not smart enough to be the leader?
Why just this specific thing is to be considered? Why, for example, all the Musk's "extravagances" are not ground for a CEO termination? I'm pretty sure many other CEOs have many of those "extravagances" and manage to keep their position but yet, if you have an affair, you're 100% toasted.
Maybe I don't understand enough the US culture.
> Why, for example, all the Musk's "extravagances" are not ground for a CEO termination?
This has less to do with the relative social morality of his behavior, and rather that he has more control over the boards of his companies, and his personality represents a larger percentage of the perceived values of his companies.
Meaning that the desire and leverage for shareholders or the board to actually punish him is significantly less. Shareholders would potentially be evaporating trillions in speculative market value that is not backed up by Tesla or SpaceX's actual business fundamentals.
And any shareholders who disagree with his behavior have had plenty of time to leave and take their earnings by now, which means that the remaining shareholders are a self-selecting set who is okay with his behavior as long as it keeps making them money.
Going through dating, marriage, having children, growing a family, co-parenting children is a massive time and emotional investment (for most people who take it seriously). A large part of, at least Western, society is built on this concept of spousal trust. It's part of the tax code, its part of the legal code (spousal privilege), it's part of our moral fabric, it's a cornerstone of many religions. Breaking that is a huge betrayal of our collective societal moral understanding.
Right, and because he was willing to break a commitment that serious it de-values other commitments he's made, including those more directly relevant to the business.
gosh we need another 68
What does that mean?
1968
All this coming from a country that elected twice as President a guy that married three times, led a very sexually promiscuous life, including the notorious boasting, and was accused of sexual misbehaviours by almost 30 women. Hilarious.
The US system gives voters two options for president. Those options are chosen by parties, and parties make terrible choices.
In 2016, the choice was between Trump and Clinton. Clinton famously excused her husband's infidelity by calling the long list of women who claimed they were assaulted as "a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty".
In 2024, the choice was between Trump and Harris. Harris got into politics by being the mistress of a CA governor.
It would be interesting to see what would happen if the US presidential election offered a choice between someone who was moral and someone who was as immoral as our existing political class. But that has not happened in my lifetime, and I don't expect that to change.
Willie Brown and Jerry Brown are not the same person
Trump's key innovation was shamelessness. It's good that Jensen feels shame here.
One part trustworthiness, one part likeability, one part risk aversion. Some companies have very unlikable CEOs but they are otherwise effective enough to get by.
In this case, Huang hit all three. Changing CEOs is also a good way to get the media coverage over faster, or at least change the narrative in the pubic (and investors) minds.
If it were just an affair, I doubt he would have lost his job. It wasn't, though, and the other circumstances- potentially dodging export controls and abusing a role of power over a subordinate- came with far too much heat, so to speak.
Also, affairs make for much more entertaining gossip than the other items, so it's probably natural that that aspect gets talked about more.
It's not true that if you have an affair you're 100% toasted. And CEOs do get ousted for non-affair-like drama all the time.
But anyway a person's character is not cleanly separable between personal and professional life, so yeah affairs add (many) points to the "not to be trusted" column.
> Business is always about trust, and someone who isn't deserving of their own spouse's trust certainly isn't deserving of anyone else's.
> Why?
It is a conflict of interest same as any other. If there is no conflict of interest then the company won't care. As the CEO of the company every other employee works for him and in turn he has power over them.
Society will not like you (in the US), but nothing more will happen.
Musk controls his companies stock and can't be fired. If that wasn't the case I think his situation would be very different - he's an outlier in most ways. But there's no board to enforce anything on him.
I think it often comes down to: do your actions match your words? In the instance above, when said exec joined our leadership team, they were well aware of the standard of conduct we expected, they agreed to them with their words, in fact. With us it was very simple, provided you're not a bigot, what you do on your own time is not our concern. However, what you do within our business is our concern. If you have intimate relations with anyone inside our company, even if consensual, you're no longer on our leadership team. Then, their actions did not match those words, when that is true, trust is gone. In society more generally I think this is true, there are people who we strongly expect their actions and words to match, and there are people who we know that isn't the case, and on some siding scale, we accept it (I didn't say acceptable). For example Fox News or CNN, marketing people, and to some degree apparently Elon Musk (in that people who matter to his success appear to believe they know where they stand with him). Groups typically have criteria/standards, if they change that, it may change the group to varying degrees, and that may be ok or not ok, depending on the group. I don't think this is an American thing or a European thing or anything like that, my understanding is this is a pretty human thing generally?
*Everything on a spectrum.
You cannot tell from the NVDA stock crash if it's because the CEO had an affair, or because NVIDIA illegally sold GPUs to China and is in huge trouble.
Or because the current stock value is highly inflated and the bubble is starting to pop.
I can't see how the stock is highly inflated with a P/E of 20 and expected +100% year over year quarterly results expected in a few days. Normally companies doubling their revenue or profit (not sure which is what the expectation is here) are priced rather higher. A P/E of 20 is what I would expect for Coca-Cola, since it is going to grow at about population rate, since about everyone who wants to drink a Coca-Cola product is already doing so. (KO is currently 28, which I think is high, probably from people rotating out of tech)
Feels like the pop would start with companies like OpenAI and Anthropic.
...Or if it's because Chinese intelligence has stolen confidential information from Nvidia.
Somehow, that wasn't an issue for Eric Schmidt, who was shagging some publicist while he was Google's CEO (and while happily married). Wonder why.
Was she working at Google at that time and reporting directly to Eric Schmidt?
That’s how it was for Sergei brin.
And Andy Rubin. At least he got fired though.
For one, Schmidt left Google in 2011. Cultural acceptance of fucking subordinates has changed a lot since then.
Considering that extramarital escapades didn't prevent the current US president from being elected twice - and quite recently at that - I'm pretty sure this has nothing to do with cultural acceptance.
You're "pretty sure" that you can isolate causality in multicausal and overdetermined systems by pointing to a few extreme examples?
I'm jealous!
I can dumb it down even further for you.
Yes, please do!
Seems like a real analytical breakthrough that I'd legitimately love to learn more about.
this is something i am probably too european to understand...
At the end of the day, it's also just too simplistic.
Humans don't have some kind of overall "morality" or "judgment" setting that applies equally to all areas of life, where a failing in one area translates to failings in other areas.
You can be an amazing CEO and a terrible father. You can have the best judgment in the world around mothering, and abysmal judgment in business. Most importantly, you can be totally trustworthy in the realm of business, yet not in romance.
The idea that there is this binary switch, where someone is either perfectly trustworthy in all contexts, or else you can no longer trust them in any context, is just not an accurate understanding of how real human beings work. It's not supported by modern psychology.
The affair isn't the issue, or at least not the only issue, it's who he had the affair with.
At the end of the day Jensen chose to have an affair with a senior officer of a company strongly suspected of bypassing trade restrictions and should have known that it would be a terrible look for Nvidia and himself. Even if he didn't suspect her of being an agent of China, even if he didn't believe the allegations against Mega speed, even if he had no intentions of passing confidential information or aiding in bypassing trade restrictions. He knew it would carry the appearance of all those things.
That is the unforgivable lapse in judgement.
"you can be totally trustworthy in the realm of business, yet not in romance."
If you can't adhere to the terms of a voluntarily-entered personal contract with a person to whom you've promised utter faithfulness, why should I believe you'll be trustworthy with regard to some boring, impersonal business contracts?
It's perfectly possible to be trustworthy in one thing and not the other. If you can't trust a lion with your flock of sheep doesn't mean you can't trust it with a bunch of bananas.
yes, that exactly the point. i want my colleagues to behave correctly on the job - i don't care if they have 3 boyfriends or cheat on their partner. it's not the point. it can be fun to gossip around the coffee machine, but that's about it. nobody should be fired for having an affair.
This is more than an affair though. This is an affair with someone he has a business relationship with and thus it becomes the interest to the business. There are many many cases where someone give business favors to the person they are having an affair with.
My company is willing to hire my wife, but she wouldn't be allowed to work for me, nor I her.
If he’d had an affair with his physical therapist absolutely no one would care and he wouldn’t be out- it’s the totality of his actions and his extreme lack of judgement at issue.
You should be fired if you're having an affair with a spy, or with someone who reports to you.
How do you know you aren’t?
By not having an affair with anyone?
You're too European to understand infidelity? Must be French!
- Signed, another European
i understand infidelity, i don't understand who would care on the job. also, not french :)
All (or nearly all) fortune 500 company has a rule against sleeping with a subordinate, and it is one of the most common reasons for a CEO to be fired. If all we learned about was the second affair, I still expect he would have been fired. So every single successful actor has arrived at the same conclusion, but you don’t understand why. This is a great opportunity to learn something new.
You don't understand who on the job would care when it's with a job coworker or job client?
Really?
If he was French, this would be “oui, et?”
...must be those long vacations
One of the reasons this behavior is problematic in general is the potential for blackmail. It's not even really a statement about morality, just an acknowledgement that somebody who wants to keep things hidden is going to be beholden to the people who know the secrets.
"It's not the crime, it's the coverup."
Jensen went to many high profile parties with this woman. I don't see where he's trying to even hide it. Even the kiss was made out in public, not like a hotel room.
Also, an affair is only blackmail material in a society of prudes. I recall the story about a president who was confronted with condemning photos of his activities by CIA agents, and he pretty much encouraged the agents to publish the photos.
> Also, an affair is only blackmail material in a society of prudes
No? All it requires is for Jensen to want to remain with his wife and for his wife to be willing to divorce him if she finds out he has an affair.
Or, even if we suppose he doesn’t care about his wife’s feelings at all, he might be very incentivised by losing half of his assets in a divorce. It’s worth many, many millions to him.
Very little involvement from society in that one.
186 thousand million.
> Also, an affair is only blackmail material in a society of prudes.
You don’t have to be a prude to think cheating on a spouse is condemnable.
In general, it also doesn’t really matter what society thinks. You can just threaten to reveal the affair to the spouse. And even in the case the spouse doesn’t really care it’s fodder they can potentially use in a divorce to get a better deal.
One thing worth pointing out is that in this case in addition to the affair with the Chinese spy he was allegedly having an affair with a subordinate, which is always problematic.
> affair is only blackmail material in a society of prudes
For better or worse, this is the world we live in.
For worse.
That's pretty wild. A society that doesn't value faithfulness to a spouse or looks the other way at sleeping with a subordinate is pretty sick imo.
> I recall the story about a president who was confronted with condemning photos of his activities by CIA agents
Sukarno. "Project Happy Days", lol.
He (Sukarno) thought it was hilarious and sent copies to his friends.
CIA was pissed w/ him because he killed a lot of Communists but then started leaning to China and beefing with Malaysia, which irritated the British
Apparently the KGB tried to honeypot him - and they were flabbergasted when he asked for copies of the photos. Apparently photos of him with multiple Russian women would bolster his machismo image back home?
Although if you read his Wikipedia page, he had many, many wives, some concurrently, and the youngest was 19...so it's probably true, lol.
Then you read about a certain EV company CEO and his escapades and repopulating the planet, and you don't know what to think.
Or Charlie Sheen...
I guess politicians, celebrities and CEOs are another world from us mere mortals.....
It seems more common they get fired for either "with a subordinate" or "a relationship with a conflict of interest for the company".
There are many examples where the outed affair resulted in nothing material when neither of the above was true.
This case, seems to touch both.
Reminds me of the Coldplay concert couple, which happened to be a CEO and head of HR. Head of HR! And what's more interesting is that they only got removed when the affair became public. At the same time the company was small potatoes so presumably less interesting to state actors.
It’s not just about humiliation. If your boss is sleeping with your coworker or someone on your team, how can you trust their decisions are grounded in fairness and logic. Sure, the world doesn’t work this way, and ceos are at a different realm than a mid level manager, but this is usually how HR defines things.
Yeah there’s a reason it’s strictly against companies policies and it’s not a moral reason.
You don't have any say in that anyway. People hire and promote their spouses, relatives and friends all the time.
That is assuming there is a layer above the executive, which is not necessarily the case.
It is true for anything with a board, of course. But there is no rule mandating boards.
Pretty sure all publicly traded companies in the US are required to have a board
Several publicly traded companies have (or had) majority-owner CEOs, which makes it more than a little awkward for the board to fire them. I can't really see the board outing Zuckerberg under similar circumstances
Zuckerberg protected himself from this scenario by starting off with an Asian wife.
Most certainly, but the statement was
> If you publicly humiliate your family and the business, you're out
There is no "* only applies to publicly traded companies". Hence, it is incorrect.
The bigger point I am trying to make here being that not everything is investor-driven. People can run businesses without that. It annoys me greatly that HN regularly forgets that.
In publicly-traded companies, the board is not the ultimate boss, though. That would be the shareholders. And, at Meta and many companies copying Meta's playbook who have IPO'd since (notably including Anthropic, though notably not including Nvidia), founder shares have so much voting power that the founders are effectively in complete control.
In theory, Nvidia shareholders, if dissatisfied with today's decision, could vote to oust the current board and replace it with people more sympathetic to Huang, who would, as their first decision, re-hire him as CEO, as would be their prerogative. This is... unlikely to happen.
None of the above is investment advice.
It worked for Sam.
Public companies in the US are required to have a board of directors. If they’re not a “controlled company” - i.e. no single person controls more than 50% - then a majority of the board are required to be independent, i.e. not employees, executives, or consultants to the company.
If you publicly humiliate your family and the business, you're out...
It's not entirely about humiliation.
Having an affair (or multiple, in this case) demonstrates poor decision making. You don't want someone who can't make wise choices running your company.
> If you publicly humiliate your family and the business
I can hardly imagine anything more stupid than judging the aptitude of the CEO of a 5T$ business based on his private love life.
I suspect so many of us see examples of corporate crime or even of corporate greed (legally) causing an incredible amount of damage that an affair feels trivial in comparison. That is especially true when the private family life of a CEO is private. The damage of the affair could be anything from devastating to the family to they were all but legally separated.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
You should be concerned about corporate crime.
That doesn't change that there is a conflict of interest here and any company should fire someone who has a conflict of interest that they are not carefully managing to ensure they don't become real.
This is not about his private love life. This is about a conflict of interest that happens to also involve his private love life.
Which is as it should be. First of all, marriage is a covenant. If someone cannot be trusted to keep his word on that, it's tough to trust him with power over thousands of employees and trillions of dollars. Second, I'm guessing the board asked Huang after the first affair's revelation whether there were more skeletons in his closet, and he said no. Lying to one's board is more than enough reason to be ousted.
> marriage is a covenant
That's a very narrow view that's a function of one's religion, culture, and values.
When I was in school, (US) my very Catholic French teacher explained that his uncle, in France, had a mistress. His uncle's wife knew and was okay with it. What my teacher was explaining is that the culture around marriage varies considerably through the world, and you can't take for granted that what we were taught (monogamy) is the standard that others live to, or even expect from you.
Yes, I can. The normalcy of a thing doesn't make it right. But this isn't really about whether absolute cultural relativism is appropriate or not. It's about a man who broke his word. Huang wed an American woman in America, not a French woman in France. Nothing about this situation indicates Huang's wife was remotely aware of nor alright with his philandery.
After looking up Huang:
He is an immigrant, he holds dual citizenship in Taiwan, and regularly travels there.
I didn't go so far as to find out if he married in the US or elsewhere, or if his wedding was Christian.
What I do now is that in some cultures in that part of the world, it is acceptable for a man to visit a prostitute during a business trip. It's not something I condone.
I should also point out that in the US, there's no standard wedding vows! I don't think you know what vows Huang made with his wife; nor do I think you know what their expectations were in their relationship.
> Huang wed an American woman in America
Please don't make the mistake of assuming that American culture is homogeneous: It's not.
There's no major American subculture in which stepping out on your wife is "a good thing" or even "an okay thing". A vast majority of Americans poll consistently against adultery and it's often the most universally condemned action in surveys. Here's one example: https://news.gallup.com/poll/692801/adultery-cloning-seen-im...
> There's no major American subculture in which stepping out on your wife is "a good thing" or even "an okay thing".
No, there isn't.
There is a significant part of American culture that separates personal life from professional life. IE, an affair is treated as a private matter to be handled by the married (or committed) couple. (IE, this is why many people in this thread focus on Huang's job performance over the affair.)
And I agree with the latter: The affair is a matter between Huang and his wife; it's a signal of his trustworthiness and honesty, and raises concerns about national security. But beyond that, it's not my place, or your place, to judge.
Wait till you hear about what wives get up to at “board game night” in San Jose.
My mother had gotten "two wrongs don't make a right" through my head by about age four. It's still true. I don't know nor care what they're doing in San Jose.
Seems like what they’re doing in North America kind of undercuts your assumptions.
Perhaps it’s you that is out of touch?
Both partners in this case know and/or participate, you don’t want drama at your games night after all. There is no wrong here, it turns out that many partners like seeing their partner have a great time.
From a religious perspective, sure. From an earthly perspective, you don't know what the other side was doing. Have you ever been married to a menopausal or a post menopausal woman? A marriage in which there is a permanent refusal to have sex can be annulled.
> A marriage in which there is a permanent refusal to have sex can be annulled.
That’s not quite true. A more accurate statement would be: A marriage may be annulled in some U.S. states if one spouse entered the marriage with a concealed, permanent intention not to consummate it, and that intention constitutes fraud going to the essence of the marriage.
If the couple was having sex after marriage, and then one partner decided to cease having it some time later, that is generally not grounds for annulment.
If it were permitted, this would make many, if not most, late-stage marriages subject to annulment. People get sick and injured or just incapable in old age.
Seems like some weird fundamentalist take. On its own it's purely a private matter between him and his wife (obviously the GPU smuggling stuff is a separate thing). Given that the affair has been semi public for years it's hard to imagine his wife didn't know about it anyway.
If it's fundamentalist to hold a man to his word, then I suppose you can count me a fundamentalist. If he'll shatter trust with the person he purportedly loves most in the world, just what might he do to you, the customer or shareholder?
> shatter trust with the person he purportedly loves most in the world
Well we don't know that, you are not legally required to love someone you are married to and I have no clue what their relationship is like or whether they have any sort of "arrangements". I could hardly care less really since its their private matter.
> just what might he do to you, the customer or shareholder?
I don't really see a correlation between those things. All sorts of immoral degenerates (e.g. Musk, (potentially) Gates and I assume plenty of other lesser known CEOs) have generated massive amounts of value for their shareholders.
It may even be the case that immoral degenerates are the MOST suitable people to invest your money with.
no one cares who you put your dick into if the returns are good and there are no threats to the business. but he only fucked threats to the business.
he was fucking a spy
he was fucking one of his direct reports
what are two things you shouldn't ever do as a CEO of the biggest company in the world?
this wasn't Cindy the random waitress from the Palo Alto Ruth Chris', these were literally two people he should never be fucking
he put the company at risk of national security issues and HR lawsuits for what is otherwise painfully mid-tier pussy. he's gotta go.
> for what is otherwise painfully mid-tier pussy.
This is an extremely unnecessary misogynistic comment.
commenting on someones looks is does not confer hatred of women. it is fine to have opinions about how someone looks. i thought it was funny.
was it confirmed she was a spy? or is that just twitter rumors?
It is the official allegation of the United States and other major governments. So that doesn't guarantee it but it is more than a rumor.
Can you link me to the press release or anything where this is said? I want to share it with my friends!
https://www.banking.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/20261111_warren...
https://abcnews.com/Technology/wireStory/china-dismisses-spy...
appreciate it!
This is the kind of story that makes me think most critical leadership should be held by women. Grossly generalizing here, but I think women are inherently less corruptible than men in this manner, especially older women.
It’s unambiguously a good thing that the next NVIDIA CEO (even if just an interim CEO) is a woman, and that the AMD CEO is a woman.
Exactly. Jensen could have had ten high-priced escorts attending to him at home at every hour and there would be no issue.
I dunno that executive looks rather top tier to me. Maybe you have different standards for late-40s extremely accomplished women.
Famously, Mark Hurd made dubious expenses that were perceived negatively by the public (there were sexual harassment allegations) and was ousted as CEO from HP. Then Larry Ellison mocked HP and hired Mark as Oracle's President. So, some companies are worried about that, others aren't
It's entirely possible that the board just wasn't that warm on Jensen in the first place. Not cold, not looking to be the tall poppy that gets cut down... but at least willing to give Jensen the boot if given the right push.
This is how things change. Slowly and then all at once. If the board were more in love with him, they'd probably have been willing to turn a blind eye for just a little while longer. No such luck for Jensen, but we make our own luck in these things.
Not looking warm on a guy that synthesized five trillion dollars from nothing in the 90s is some high standards.
Not sure how personal affairs humiliate your business
They do when they're with a subordinate or a vendor, both of which he did. Add on "foreign agent" and you're done.
They can when they reveal poor decision making. If this guy is so stupid that he's willing to stick his dick in anyone, including a Chinese spy, what does that say about his ability to make rational decisions elsewhere in his life? He's clearly not making decisions that benefit him personally in the long term so can he even make good long term decisions at his job?
There's a reason why government background checks looks at financial records. Someone that has trouble paying their bills due to a gambling habit might be easy to turn by the enemy with some cash. Or someone that regularly cheats on their wife might be willing to do some favors for a pretty girl if she lets him sleep with her.
They do in our puritanical culture.
In a Goffman Front Stage/Back Stage sense, you are supposed to keep the front stage presentation on the level of a pious monk or nun.
The irony to me is this just another asymmetrical advantage for Chinese culture.
Trump was elected twice. I think there are other factors here.
Maybe people are tired of that bullshit. The most powerful guy in business clearly felt empowered to let that facade go. I guess he just got a check for his experiment.
Getting obviously played so hard that it makes you, your wife, your children, your company and your entire country look like idiots surely should humiliate your business no?
"Oh hey, I'm going to be buying 1,000,0000,000 widgets from that widget maker Nvidia"
"Haha you mean the Chinese spy guy? Hey ask if you can get a discount if your secretary sleeps with their CEO haha"
Good executives go to Epstein island and do not get fired.
I wonder where they are going now.
We know nothing about Jensen's private life or if he humiliated his family here.
Marriages of 41+ years can get into any kind of dynamic.
100%. While I do not condone his actions, publicly we do not know anything about his private life and the dynamics. Until there's a statement from his family, for all we know they may have been separated.
It's clearly the CN link and/or the cosying up with a customer that is the problem; the board would not care about his private life (and neither should the public, tbh).
And the open letter sounds more like it was written the way the public would expect a CEO to write.
If he was in an open relationship or had a girlfriend while separated from his wife, that's not really something to be embarrassed about. His letter talks is him apologizing to his family and asking for forgiveness. He got caught in a Chinese intelligence honeypot and knows he fucked up.
Then obviously his letter could've said as much. It didn't, ergo an interpretation of available evidence clearly indicates you are wrong.
> or if he humiliated his family here.
His open letter about his infidelity seems to imply he has embarrassed his wife and family, have you read it?
> His open letter about his infidelity seems to imply he has embarrassed his wife and family, have you read it?
He has also said so very many times in so very many ways that Nvidia was absolutely not involved in violation of export control laws regarding the export of its products to China. That -in fact- there was absolutely no smuggling going on and claims to the contrary were utterly baseless and without merit.
I agree with ohnnyApplePRNG's assertion that we know literally nothing about the private life and situation of Mr. Huang and his family.
So because he lied when he denied certain allegations, you don't believe his admissions of guilt? That seems like an odd logical jump.
> we know literally nothing
He "literally" wrote about how his actions hurt his family, I'm not sure why there's a second account parroting the exact same phrase.
> So because he lied when he denied certain allegations, you don't believe his admissions of guilt?
He repeatedly and aggressively lied about violating export restrictions. "Our chips aren't potato chips. These GPUs weigh two tons. [So, how would you smuggle those? It'd be impossible!]" is an especially memorable deflection of his. He's obviously very willing to lie about very serious things when doing so is beneficial.
> He "literally" wrote about how his actions hurt his family...
He also spoke and wrote about how it was impossible to smuggle Nvidia hardware into China, and that everyone who was claiming that smuggling was going on were liars. CEOs will often lie when issuing Obligatory Standard Statements, whether they be brusque dismissals of accusations of the company's wrongdoing, or assertions of how shameful they consider their behavior that lead them to do whatever it was that they've been caught doing. CEOs make the expected public statement and get on with their lives.
Plus, given how most folks are -at best- confused by and -at worst- enraged by things like polyamory, why on earth would he publicly reveal it if his family was actually totally okay with regular extramarital sex and romance?
No, situations like this get the Standard Admission of Deep Shame and Regret For All The Harm Caused, regardless of whether or not what's said has any resemblance to what the family feels about the situation. The only folks who know how the members of the family feel about this are folks who actually know the family.
This is incorrect. Even if they had a totally open relationship, it being public news across the world can be humiliating.
We do actually know enough to know that the edge cases do not sufficiently apply here to arrive at the conclusion you're implying.
> We know literally nothing about Jensen's private life or if he humiliated his family here.
Uh... but we do!
---
I owe my family and all of you an apology.
I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry.
Throughout my life, my family has given me love and support. They deserve my honesty and loyalty. Instead, I let them down and damaged the life we built together. I take full responsibility for what I did and the hurt I caused, and I accept the criticism that comes with it.
To my wife and family: I love you. I know an apology cannot undo what I have done. I hope our family will heal and that, over time, I can earn back your trust.
To my colleagues at NVIDIA, including those I have worked alongside for decades, and to our board, partners, and shareholders around the world: you deserve better from me. Leading NVIDIA is the privilege of my life. My responsibility is to serve you and be worthy of your trust. I have fallen short of that responsibility. I am fully committed to NVIDIA and will work to earn back your confidence.
Regarding the national security concerns raised in news reports, NVIDIA’s Board of Directors has initiated an independent investigation. I support the investigation and will cooperate fully. I love our country and our company. I am committed to protecting NVIDIA and supporting America’s national security. I am proud and grateful to be an American.
My family bears no responsibility for my choices. I do. Please give them privacy.
Jensen
---
Source: https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/a-message-to-our-company
If he is actually a bi-furry with an understanding with his wife on 'affairs', do you think he'd say that? Or would he maintain the straight, family-friendly, investor-friendly front expected of him [by some people] in his position?
Don't get me wrong, I'm very much a promoter of monogamy.
I think it is naive to assume that such public statements are the whole truth of a matter.
People who fuck up a company (or have an affair, or get caught snorting drugs off a sex-worker) aren't really 'stepping back to spend more time with their families'. Historically the classic example of executive public statements.
> If he is actually a bi-furry with an understanding with his wife on 'affairs', do you think he'd say that?
Yes, and it would have helped. CEOs have "exciting" relationships all the time, and folks seem entirely willing to accept this.
These are entirely different stories:
"My wife and I have a non-traditional relationship and would prefer to keep the specifics private, but no harm was caused by my actions."
"I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry."
I think the thriving bi-furry community on HN might have a word or two to say about that
People don’t realise that execs don’t actually write these messages usually.
Perhaps, but it's also more common than not for affairs to hurt families, and the statement confirms that applied here.
If you have stronger evidence that the statement was untruthful when it said he hurt his family, you may present it.
Until such time, the statement strengthens the bayesian prior, which is that his affairs hurt his family, and thus that is what we can conclude. We need not be 100% confident to conclude this absent further evidence. >50% confidence suffices.
We don't know, but it is overwhelmingly likely that he and his wife do not have an open marriage. Most people do not.
Tell me you have no clue how corporations are run without telling me. Furthermore Jensen wasn't some random executive otherwise this wouldn't be now top news all over the world.
Let’s be real here. Everyone making money out of NVIDIA was more than happy enough to go around the restrictions and see the prices go up due to Chinese demand.
Having these people saying otherwise is pure hypocrisy.
Unless you are a competitor.
Or Anthropic
It's a good thing Congress doesn't just care about their opinions then.
In what world is the modern US Congress a good regulator of these kinds of things? Half the people in the Capitol have a literal vested interest in the very companies they claim to be trying to keep on a leash (and I recognize that some of these are inverse instruments, my point still stands).
what's the alternative?
no regulation?
regulation without representation?
Public service, especially at the highest levels, is both a realization of civic responsibility, as well as an immense material privilege.
If you've had a career in congress, parliament, whatever, you can live comfortably off of the various media appearances you're likely to have for much of the rest of your life.
Representatives in government should be able to keep it in their pants when it comes to investments at least while they're in government, and have a thick, thick wall between their jobs running a country (or state, or whatever) and the management of their investments. Blind trusts should be the bare minimum.
What I'd prefer to see is that while actively sitting in government, representatives must keep their savings invested in funds so diversified into low-risk instruments that almost no regulation can benefit them significantly more than it would an average passive investor.
My money is on the congress members - including the greatest stock trader of all times, Nancy Pelosi - having just sold their NVIDIA shares right before the spying was uncovered.
Let's see if this is true... Nope. [0]
However it is looking like his fellow philanderer donald knew and kept it under wraps for personal gain.
0 – https://www.quiverquant.com/congresstrading/politician/Nancy...
They're both terrible
This link you posted, doesn’t work like you think it does - well, except on the part where she is shown to be beating the market by double digits every single year for the past decades.
She is up 934% since 2014. This congresswoman is the greatest financial genius in the all history of mankind. She was beating S&P steadily, every year and since 2014 she is up more than 600% compared to the S&P.
For context, the probable next best investor - after all these great financial minds in congress - is Warren Buffet, and he is actually down 34.8% compared to the S&P since 2014.
You will only know that Nancy Pelosi was up to since the beginning of October next January. Congress members only have to submit their trades (their SEC fillings) every 3 months. [1]
[1] https://www.online-tech-tips.com/track-congressional-stock-t...
This link I posted, doesn’t work like you think it does. It shows trades which happened. It shows trades as recently as November 6th, which is after the end of the prior quarter.
It doesn't, however, show sales of nvidia stock prior to this release. Thus no such sales happened, unless you have any further evidence.
It is, however, looking like JH's fellow philanderer donald knew, and kept it under wraps for personal gain. Probably insider trading. I mean, just look at how much donald and his family's wealth has increased compared to the S&P500, or Warren Buffett.
No, it doesn't. You are either being purposefully obtuse in the argument, or now trying to go after the tail of it.
Congress members are not mandated to fill a trade as it happens. If Nancy Pelosi latest filling day was Nov 6 (as you are pointing out), it means that she is only forced to show trades up to 30 days before (and that is mostly what she does as her median filling delay is of 24 days).
Also, as you are so keen to bring Trump into the discussion for some reason. I must sadly tell you that the chap is only 4.4% up compared to S&P during all his history as a member of the government/representative. The guy is not nearly the same financial genius as Nacy Pelosy.
The thing you're missing is, the evidence doesn't have to meet your standards. It just has to be better than the nothing which you've put forward in the opposite. And it is! Pretty much anything beats nothing.
So now, the onus is on you to convincingly back up the allegations you're making regarding sales of nvidia stock, and you haven't. If you have some sort of evidence that Nancy made the trade alleged, and is delaying reporting, whether allowed or not, please share it.
The evidence is, however, looking like JH's fellow philanderer donald knew, and kept it under wraps, probably insider trading for personal gain.
I already proved that by pointing you to the numbers in your own link, that show that Nacy Pelosi is up 934% in her stock market trades since 2014, beating the S&P 500 by more than 600% in the same period.
The allegation isn't that she made money. After all, donald has made billions on the presidency in just a couple years, nearly doubling his wealth.
The allegation is that she sold nvidia stock right before this happened. Is there any evidence for this?
The first affair was possibly survivable, although the cost of survival would be high for all involved.
The second affair was fatal to Jensen Haung. An affair with a direct report is generally a no-no in modern business and would have opened Nvidia up for all kinds of liability issues if they knew in any capacity. If he stayed it would have made a mockery of their code of conduct rules and opened Nvidia up to further legal issues.
It's also possible that after the first affair news broke, the board asked him questions and he didn't disclose that there's a second affair too (and maybe more??). The board only realized that he'd not been truthful/fully forthcoming when the second affair news broke yesterday. That's when they decided to boot him. Because if there's more and more affairs going to keep breaking, that would be a complete media spectacle distracting from the company.
Musk has survived and brushed off much worse.
And Jensen isn't just any CEO, he is the founder and has run the company for thirty years.
He would have survived the affairs if it wasn't for the export control violation aspects.
Musk controls 19.9% of voting power at Tesla, and more than 80% at SpaceX. Huang has about a 3.5% ownership stake in of Nvidia and that’s jointly controlled with his wife.
But there is a great belief that Huang is the reason for nVidia’s success and like Steve Jobs take 2, removing him will imperil the company’s future.
Musk's companies have low quality boards, which is by design to make it almost impossible to fire him and the legacy of that should serve as a cautionary tale
Cautionary tale for who?
I agree that this is a more likely explanation, given the AI arms race between the US and China.
I think NVIDIA lose more things by firing Jensen.
Screw him.
He put US national security at risk just because between his wife and his other mistress, he couldn't keep it in his pants.
There are some things more important than stock valuation.
Possibly, I am a bit tired of the national security argument with hand waving vagueness. It’s generally unfalsifiable because details would be a national security risk. Meanwhile we have seen National Security concerns that were pure lies once we get sufficiently far past it.
Or, he was right by advocating for letting China buy Nvidia chips to keep China dependent on US.
> He put US national security at risk
My god, the god complex
You actually fell for the propaganda?
How exactly does selling a few billion dollars of GPUs to China threaten "US national security"?
Yes you see there are various types of national security. For example, there is the national security when a country that touted capitalism and free trade for years suddenly finds itself beat at capitalism by someone else, that's a big national security issue. Then suddenly free trade is evil and a danger and a national security issue.
This is the funniest thing to see it happen so blatantly. “National security”, what a joke.
> There are some things more important than stock valuation.
Given that the economic growth of the USA during the last few years was entirely due to this man and his technologies, I'm going to say nah.
China having access to GPUs is not a national security threat. It's an economic threat. Not sure why people treat China as some enemy nation. It's just a competitor.
Frontier AI may help China in a military conquest of Taiwan: their stated ambition.
If the Taiwanese are happy to sell chips to China, why do we care.
> He put US national security at risk
It is far far worse than that - he lied to shareholders.
> he couldn't keep it in his pants.
Or maybe he just simply wanted to make more money by increasing demand for Nvidia's GPUs by tacitly allowing for them to be exported to China though Singapore.
>NVIDIA has supposedly been skirting the export ban put in place by the previous administration.
That's not the reason either.
They never did it in a way that was technically legal iirc. And the new administration allowed the exports later anyway and lifted the AI ban on July 2025.
Even she was a spy, the idea is that what? I can understand her snooping for fresh confidential info, in that, case, but what would her role be the sanctions? That just because he got her as gf, he made nvidia evade exports as a favor?
As if it was his personal bypass and not what the nvidia board wanted for the $$$?
They're likely worried about the optics of it, and what a Democrat administration, or increased power, would do to Nvidia stocks with such scandal as leverage.
> They never did it in a way that was technically legal iirc.
If Jensen knew that Megaspeed was a Chinese front, then he willfully engaged in a criminal conspiracy to circumvent US export controls. That is very serious felony.
I know it's just speculation, but the fact that Nvidia hasn't tried to scapegoat some random compliance officer strongly suggests to me that Jensen did know, and that the board has seen the paper trail that proves it.
I’d also note that being complicit and not entirely aware of sanctions evasion -but being in a qualified position that should have been able to discern it- is sufficient for criminal charges and conspiracy. I spent a long time in trading and money movement, and this was the scared straight things our former federal prosecutor internal counsel would lecture us on. The bar for prosecutors in national security, sanctions, conspiracy, etc are very very low and this sort of relationship is a perfect foil. It exposes Nvidia to extreme risk, and Jenson even more so. And being cutoff from Nvidia now makes him prey without the support a major employer and driver of the economy could provide him.
I hope people understand that the china export is not the reason he is being fired.
He controlled the trade and price for a global asset more valuable than gold as a single person. Some people didn't want that, it's that simple.
"There’s an old Chinese idiom: "Possessing jade is a crime" (怀璧其罪). When you hold the most valuable asset on earth, everyone wants a piece of it."
I said this on the thread this morning/yesterday. It is impossible for JH to speak about China with any credibility going forward. That alone made it impossible for him to remain CEO. Add to that, everything he's said about China in the past will now be scrutinized and questioned if he was influenced in some way.
If it was just affairs, he could likely have survived this.
Only by the shallow thinking - there can be more than one reason to espouse a position and they can all be valid.
> there can be more than one reason to espouse a position and they can all be valid
Of course, but perception matters.
Why can't it be all of the above? I'm disturbed by the number of posts I'm seeing around social media downplaying the affairs as if this is normal behavior that should be encouraged or allowed. He slept with someone who worked directly under him, under what universe would he be allowed to stay at Nvidia? That's absurd.
Cheating on your wife may be despicable behavior, but it doesn’t warrant firing the founding CEO of one of the most important companies on earth, especially considering how much is at stake economically, including how reliant the U.S. economy has been on AI build out spending. On the other hand, cheating on your wife and endangering national security at the same time is a different story.
It does actually. Consequences are consequences. not firing him just for the 2nd would have made a mockery of their policies.
> He slept with someone who worked directly under him
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
They were allowed to sell to china, just not their top models. It was widely known that china acquired those indirectly.
What changed is the publicity about the affair. So this is about the affair.
Or the publicity about the affair put a brighter light on the thing that was already "widely known" and increased the need for a response.
It's widely known that luxury cars stolen in the west end up shipped to the UAE, where they're resold, frequently to Russian customers.
So for example, a stolen Porsche could end up being driven by a Russian oligarch.
Porsche is not on the hook for this. The car was stolen by a third party.
If a Porsche exec instead had sex with the thief and tossed them the keys to a brand new 911, then they might be on the hook for violating sanctions.
Exactly. Remember the Supermicro scandal? NVIDIA has been bypassing the ban at massive scale. Everybody knew.
It'll be a relative slap on the wrist. The US is not going to destroy one of the companies keeping it competitive on the AI landscape right now. Worst case, it is a heavy slap and some individuals go to jail, but the company will be fine.
But yeah, the affairs are probably just a last straw.
I hope you understand the affair with the spy does not strictly matter, but he is in fact being fired because of the affair with a subordinate.
Like everyone, they have a COC/sexual harassment policy, and that is basically always a firing offense in practice. They cannot place him above it, or else they would be in for infinite liability.
This is why literally nothing mentioned firing until that was discovered, and then it instantly became about firing him.
To me the fact that it was known for a year that the affair was happening, and nothing changed implies that this is more a publicity move rather than anything else. They had to make a change, improve their brand image. Probably nothing will change in how they sell their product, the rules they skirt.
Links to the reporting?
“Sold to China” can mean a lot of things including legitimate entities in Malaysia/Singapore selling cloud computing to companies in those countries that then resell compute to entities in China. Export bans on gpus are inherently impossible to make work unless you police the eventual destination of every byte exiting a datacenter.
Why? Because the government want to maintain the American advantage in GPU chips and AI? This move tips the scales in favour of China. Right now there is tens of billions of dollars of Nvidia GPUs sitting on the dock in Hong Kong because China government blocked them. They think it's more important to support their new domestic GPU industry than to have the best models today trained on nvida.
or....they figured out that the chips were ...um... untrustworthy
There does seem to be a sway in the reporting towards his relationship with an employee and not the whole trade ban and spy stuff. I'm not sure why that is
Probably A/B testing. People click the salacious stuff, so that's what gets emphasized.
Think of this current fracas like this: Americans have a strange penchant to define themselves by sexuality. So, they are easily distracted into a trance by their hormonal and prurient interests for extended periods.
A famous guy had an island and it was extrajudicially a place where alot of powerful people internationally could come to his island and interchange info and ideas and make deals and things could occur and he collected up all that kind of stuff, including arms deals and the sex stuff.
But Americans are only right now aware of the sex stuff in what he collected up.
The sex stuff is essentially a distraction, the oily film on the deeper ocean of truth.
The green username is always very telling
I don't know what that means EDIT: Oh, ok. I am a newby. I guess I deserve to learn the punishments
it means you are a new user account
thx :-)
There's every reason to believe this is not true.
You could be right, but you're putting way , way too much faith in the board etc.
These people can be clowns. Don't over estimate how ridiculous, petty, thin skinned and arbitrary boards can be.
The fact that Nvidia was skirting the export ban was an open secret. So many outlets like NYT itself, Reuters, WSJ, etc have published reports about it starting over a year ago.
He was also favoring local open weight models in a world where frontier AI companies are lobbying the government for control. Could be one of the reasons why he was ousted.
Yeah if he had a random affair with a waitress or something, it'd be a bit scandalous, but not firing-worthy.
Sleeping with a Chinese spy or subordinate turns a personal problem into a workplace problem.
I'll plug our Pretrained episode from Monday here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N97DW8gfCnI - this chip export goes back years, through shell companies that are very easily traceable to Alibaba.
What happens if all the money in the system circulating through AI companies turns out to be ill-gotten gains?
just another day in paradise [sips daiquiri]
The affair with a subordinate is totally a firable offense. It's what Brian Krzanich of Intel was fired for, after all.
I think it was obvious that the chips were making their way into China.
The problem is that Jensen destroyed Nvidia's plausible deniability.
> I hope people understand that the affairs are not the reason he is being fired
People refuse to understand it. Every single thread is full of the same comments. People are obsessed with culture wars.
If it were just about the export ban, then why leak the affairs? US intelligence (which serves US corporate power only) has decided to put this guy out to pasture by any means necessary. That's the reason for this faux moral outrage. They want to make sure there's no chance he makes it out the other side.
Presumably his replacement will be subservient "enough".
>then why leak the affairs
Allows the influence of selection of next CEO that is more aligned with long term Chinese goals. Or punishment for not going along with the plan.
Im not much for conspiracy theories, but if you think about it, in the state that US is in, there is absolutely zero chance US will do anything retaliatory to China if they do spy shit on US soil. China is basically free to play spy games. My guess is that they have their fingers in Anthropic, Amazon, OpenAI, SpaceX, and AMD, and probably other agents within NVIDIA in high places.
Their game is basically rearrange the pieces so eventually China becomes the world number one superpower, while keeping the status quo as much as possible
US intelligence agencies are actually working for the Chinese government, and releasing leaks to NY Times as part of this effort? Implausible.
He committed what looks like some light treason. The fact that he had an affair with a Chinese intelligence asset who helped the CCP bypass import restrictions is why he had to go.
It is currently not possible to commit treason because the United States is not at war.
Yes we are. He just needs to lay off the super hot Iranian spies. Which, good luck.
This comment yesterday [1] indicated that Megaspeed was not on the blocked entity list, but that NVidia voluntarily hasn't sold to them since June 2025.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50464121
We've had insatiable demand for Nvidia excluding China, I doubt they would have run that kind of legal risk.
there are many reasons for that kind of risk to have been taken. many reasons for a patriot to have been compelled or coerced to take it
One of the affairs could have been a means to get GPUs to China despite the ban. So they are at least intertwined.
They did not even need to sell them physically to China. Many of them ended up in Malaysian datacenters that rented them to China.
Gamer Nexus looked at it like a year ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H3xQaf7BFI
History will look back at this and see Jensen was right to do this.
Underestimating China under this export ban is a huge historical blunder of epic proportions. China will develop all their own chips and put everyone out business eventually.
(1) actively assisting/violating the export ban. There is no evidence, nor any ongoing gov't investigation regarding this accusation.
(2) buyers redirecting legitimate, legal purchases to mainland Chinese companies. There is evidence and multiple ongoing gov't investigations by (a) Department of Justice, (b) Federal Bureau of Investigation, and (c) Department of Commerce.
I cannot find any senior Nvidia executives that have been charged with crimes for directly assisting/violating the export ban. That said, there may be ongoing gov't investigations, but I could not find any public press about them.
I think thats correct, I was at GTC in berlin a couple of weeks ago, a number of Chinese firms that are on the export control list were present and had booths… so perhaps this was all rather blatant.
Nvidia has always sold to China through the back door, that ain’t gonna change even with a new CEO…
well...and I am not generally a theorist but
dark ops [well, maybe these are really very bright out in the open ops...!!!] may have taken an opportunity and now the operation is at its close, the data is reduced, and the devices utilized are being obsoleted, and operatives burned
we US citizens should not let naivete overrule the gravity of this technology race, on the order of the nuclear arms race
It will be interesting to see if there are criminal proceedings. If you or I violated ITAR or CMMC/NIST 800 there would be.
The affair is what led to this, demonstrating why it actually should matter if your CEO is having one. Ethics and trust should matter.
Daniel Dumbrill on youtube[1] does a good job decomposing this.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC3Kh40dEQY
Do we know yet what the potential consequences may be? Legally or from a market/business standpoint?
They didn’t sold the chips directly to China, they sold them to Megaspeed and they sold the compute to China.
It looks like there's quite a bit of them that made their way directly to China, and that they knew that was where they would eventually end up.
I've heard rumours that 20-40% of Nvidia's revenue was coming from sanctioned chips that make their way into Chinese data centres. If true, it's not small potatoes.
Wilful blindness is not a valid defense
The thing is China itself has no incentive to have their companies skirt the export ban. The whole saga is just completely ironic and incredibly unorganic. The alleged "spy" and her firm Megaspeed was doing export circumventing mechanisms to China not because the CCP was allegedly pushing her to do so, in fact it was a counter-reaction to how restrictive the Chinese customs became to importing Nvidia while the corresponding customers are hungry for that compute that is piling up in the ports. China is doing a zero-sum policy where every American chip that gets passed to their tech companies is one less domestic/chinese, which equates less money for R&D and catch up.
So something very strange going on here, along with the timing, in time where Anthropic is preparing for an IPO and briefly after the midterms where the median voter rejected AI wholesale. I suspect this might have been a long game to turn the man down that is standing for open-source and the freedom to build AI. Heck epstein was having a ring of elites diddling minors and nothing scandalous came out of it.
All the regulators that kickstarted this dumb export controls in 2022, which in-turn made the american AI-stack weaker vs China, while also using doomer-fud about safety must feel glorious right now.
Sad day for developers.
What is inorganic? China banning GPUs ≠ China not wanting the GPUs. It is not unreasonable to imagine China not wanting to shake the sanctions boat, so offloading the crime into another country allows them to still have their cake and eat it too. They get to develop technology locally, they have undeniable regulations on the books that make them compliant within the expected framework of US-China trade, and then still get to have their MVPs rent restricted hardware from gray market dealers in Malaysia. 20% of NVIDIA's FY26 was channeled through this framework. The point of the system is what it does.
The previous and current administration.
This is obviously something that has been postponed for after the midterms.
> Whether you agree or disagree with the ban, it exists and Jensen&NVIDIA are in a world of trouble if this comes to light.
Law has to be enforced by human beings to be meaningful. Donald Trump, who is the one who put the export control in place and has the power to make any legal trouble vanish, has very loudly signaled that he does not care and Jensen/Nvidia will not be in any hot water.
China doesn't even want Nvidia chips. They're holding up hundreds of thousands of smuggled cards at Hong Kong customs. Many Chinese companies want to take the easy shortcut of using Nvidia, but the Chinese govt wants Chinese companies to go through the pain of helping the domestic chip industry develop.
Plus the fact that there's absolutely no evidence that the lady is a spy. All media report anonymous sources but treat the allegations as fact. Singapore said their investigation of the lady is not due to spying, but no western media picked up that story. The lady traveled to Taiwan with her Hong Kong passport, and the Taiwanese govt also said they have no evidence she's a spy. The Chinese spy agency just started investigating her due to all the commotion (likely for smuggling chips, which China also doesn't want, see above), and also has no idea who she is. Despite all this, the public still treats the spy allegations as a fact.
Jenssen Huang is a victim. Those who wanted to get rid of him and set this up, have succeeded. But everyone is under the mistaken belief that this hurts China somehow. China doesn't give a damn. In the mean time, all Chinese Americans lose. Jenssen is not the first such victim, and won't be the last.
I think they were selling to Malaysian shell companies to China.
Where the hell is your source for this?
I think the affair with the Chinese CEO is a considerable factor. Jensen cannot possibly maintain any plausible deniability over Megaspeed's alleged diversion of chips to China and his role therein.
The second affair with an employee likely just dealt a death blow (if it hadn't already been dealt) to Jensen in terms of his ability to ride the crisis out.
Being compromised kinda does seem like a reason to be fired. It seemed well known he was doing it since there are plenty of photos over a few years? So it’s more she was a honeypot.
If they really did, I hope they at least go to prison for a while. I say at least because they actually should be court martiall-ed and spend their next 30 years in a military cell.
It is legal for Chinese companies to buy US neocloud time. These toothless restrictions were poorly constructed and unenforceable law. The extent to which nvda was supposed to self police is unclear. I find it hard to believe any binding evidence of direct sales will be found.
Does it mean we will have mass produced cheaper graphics cards? Akin to flagship killer mobile phones and other hardware? Sounds good.
> NVIDIA has supposedly been skirting the export ban put in place by the previous administration.
Is rumor and conjecture enough?
I mean having an affair with someone who works below in the company hierachy, is also a huge problem (if the thing about second affair is correct)
Eric Swalwell was not punished and committed something worse than Jensen Huang, because he was a government official. He even ran for Governor and the only reason he as forced to resign was because of a different sexual abuse case.
If our own government officials can't face justice, why should the CEO of a company?
You are exactly right, and it’s depressing how dumb most people are for not understanding this.
I thought the export ban was lifted by this Administration. Trump publicly announced it months ago.
Export ban is the wrong call
How do you know?
Trump is on record saying Jensen should not be fired.
That suggests no treason.
> Jensen&NVIDIA are in a world of trouble if this comes to light
Are they though? As long as they're in the good graces of Trump, is the Justice Department going to do anything about it?
Are they still in Trump's good graces? Sure, they gave him money before. But can they promise him more money again? He's pretty quick to dispose of people when they're inconvenient too.
Um hard negative to what you are saying. It is absolutely fundamental to the issue -- its compounds the issues around assessing Jensen's judgement.
This story has more to it that will come to light .. I'm sure of it.
The affairs are absolutely part of it, they show a dishonest pattern of behavior.
I am not sure I can agree. Perhaps this was the underlying reason. Perhaps others wanted to frame him and launched a media campaign. But from what I can see, at the least on the surface, to me it looks as if he was fired for liking too many women at the same time, at the least one of which might be a possible spy. This may all be fake-reasons on top to cover underlying real causes, but to me right now it looks as if the girls cost him the job here.
Jensen is Taiwanese. Nvidia's chips are made in Taiwan, as are all the most advanced chips in the world -- including the chips in Apple and AMD products -- by TSMC. China wants to re-absorb Taiwan into itself, partially because they cannot match TSMC's geometries and they desperately need those geometries.
Speculation here, but it's conceivable that China gave Jensen an ultimatum: Give us your chips and we'll delay invading your homeland for a little while longer. Of course this would have been implied since China never says anything so direct.
Highly unlikely that China would direct a military threat at a tech CEO.
The more sane explanation is that Jensen Huang just wanted to capture more revenue.
Unlikely, but not implausible, and should have been reported directly to the FBI / CIA if that was ever implied. But, the whole affair business means he probably wouldn't have handled hearing something like that responsibly either, which is part of the problem.
Abuse of power in the case of the second affair to the extent it could've easily turned into a rape scandal and is a big reason why it is a big HR no-no, and in the first case, the affair not being public is exactly the kind of thing a honeypot wants in order to keep you quiet about the kinds of threats that may end up implied.
Either way, the dude is going to be getting investigated and will not be able to effectively lead NVIDIA in the course of what's coming.
Alternate perspective:
bipartisan bill[1] needed to decapitate[2] opposition[3] to expanded controls/moratoria and install “neutral” caretakers[4] until passage
[1] https://www.semafor.com/article/09/10/2026/bipartisan-ai-saf...
[2] https://x.com/brianchau57/status/2120745928722087948
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49035303
[4] current CFO Kress or former Apple CEO Tim Cook (suggested by president in social media post)
Yep, this is exactly what is going on here. TLDR: Anthropic lobbying funded this coup because Jensen was pro-open weight models.
How does Anthropic lobbying make this happen? Not trying to be snarky - but literally, what did they do.
As though the Board had no idea of this, and are suddenly acting oh gosh this is the first we've heard of the phantom SG revenue! Time for Jensen to go. Nah, not buying it. Many of the board have been w JH since the early 1990s. This is because his reckless disregard for the company and his years-long relationship with a Chinese spy.
China is a gigantic market. A company that profit hungry will find it supremely difficult to resist doing business with China. It is almost guaranteed, that they did in some indirect ways sell to China. It's also not like people like Jensen care one bit about the USA. What they care about is pure profit of their own kingdom. Uhm, I mean company, of course.
With a strict ban of chips to China, Chinese companies will not have enough compute. Without enough compute, they are not going to be able to release new open weight models.
That means American companies will have to rely on Anthropic. And interestingly, Anthropic loves to tell users what they can or can not do, such as "The training of Fable 5.2 and Mythos 5.2 included measures to limit advances in a narrow set of capabilities that could most directly accelerate AI development, like accelerator kernel optimization".
Interesting times
> ”it is hard for me to avoid the conclusion that NVIDIA sold to China despite the export ban.”
Nvidia sold to companies in Singapore, and then “somehow” the chips got redirected or forwarded on to China.
It’s been known/suspected for years that this was happening, but this Chinese spy scandal does suggest that execs at Nvidia might have known more about what has been going on than they’ve previously admitted.
Him taking the stance of "we should be allowed to sell all the GPUs to China" was bad enough in itself.
Now that the possibility of him being compromised by an actual Chinese spy AND the possibility of Nvidia actually sanction-busting to ship to China regardless are on the table? Both at the same time, no less?
Yeah, that kind of liability is bonkers. Jensen might be too vital to load him into a cannon and fire him into the sun, but I'm not at all surprised that Nvidia wants him gone from the big post.
Why was it bad?
His argument was “we must not make it more convenient to develop a fully domestic stack”
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer is a fairly reasonable adage
China was already "developing a fully domestic stack" either way.
So the only thing selling to them accomplishes is give Nvidia more margins. At the cost of boosting the Chinese AI sector - possibly to the point of parity.
China at the moment has the capability to do infrastructural rollouts far faster than US or Europe, but doesn't have the chips to stuff new datacenters with. So it's easy to see why China would want the chips. But it's not like Nvidia is having trouble selling their AI accelerators outside China - and they can't ramp up accelerator production on demand. More demand for accelerators would push the prices even higher, and that would reflect in the margins, but the benefits for Nvidia weren't even that large.
So it was a questionable push all around - even before the spy scandal.
Nationalism is a mental disease.
Tell that to Ukraine.
> From all the reporting I've read, it is hard for me to avoid the conclusion that NVIDIA sold to China despite the export ban.
I thought this was like, basically an open secret? Like... I'm sure they stayed within the technical letter of the law? Except if any of the laws required them to not be grossly negligent and not be cartoonishly naive. So that they can later argue that they couldn't possibly have known that chips going to South East Asia were being resold to China?
They were literally allowed to sell chips to the US branch of sanctioned Chinese companies. Same pattern as the tariff nonsense, not really opposed to any products or companies, just wants to bring all the production to the US instead. Plain protectionism, like the same car made in Germany is badly unfair, made in China is a national security risk, but once it's made in the US it's perfectly fine.
I dont think its more soo about the ban as China itself has 'officially' blocked the chips that were being licensed as exportable. I think its more of the asks that were being made by the NATSec and Amodie aligned actors (see the pod he had with Dwarkesh ), to ho tighter and more aggressive. Basically Jensen was sort of the brake on the impulsive ideas getting thrown around on how to 'win' AI and create a moat against all latecomers.
In any case pushing him out allows a freer hand for their shenanigans , so well know shortly what the asks were that he pushed back on (kill switches in chips?) if they get announced.
Also his role will be difficult to fill , seeing as hes had biz/gov relations going back decades with all relevant players in the semi industry from design ,litho,fabs to packaging etc.
I think this episode proves one thing:
It would have been simpler and more profitable to sell China the GPUs.
One woman from the CCP just burned a couple of trillion out of your 401Ks. Have you said thank you even once? Are you sick of winning yet?
I would be so, so surprised if the US government / CIA / etc wouldn't know at all that NVDA was selling to China and skirting the export ban in a meaningful way.
In 50 years from now, some declassified documents will maybe shed light on this specific incident.
I would imagine it being a form of "So, China, we'll let our Jensen guy sell you X in chips, and in return, you do Y in relation to Russia, and Z in relation to Taiwan. Oh, and we need to use one of your spies, in case someone f*cks up".
Well the only thing super weird is the timeline - USA bans exports, China (very soon after) bans IMPORTS! And then there's a company which keeps doing trade under the nose of the potentially two most powerful nation-states and their secret service sources. This is super fishy, really I don't buy nobody knew nothing, only for a "lucky" journalist to figure out the whole thing...
Is this remotely believable, that one CEO can surreptitiously work around both the government and his own company to sell restricted goods at volume? If this were real you'd have to lobotomize the entire management structure, because there are a lot of people that would know and know better and that they'd face jail time. And maybe merge it with some other company quickly so it doesn't completely collapse because of the immediate mass firings to try and sway prosecutions toward individuals and not the destroy the entire entity.
I'd be more inclined to believe the spy thriller narrative if he sent the RTL of their top designs to China. Selling goods is not a one chief op.
Well...we dont know half the story yet, one and two and three... "Jensen Huang had ‘intimate relationship’ with second employee" - https://www.cnbc.com/2026/11/12/nvidia-jensen-huang-ceo-live...
Very much agreed, the second this became clear his position was untenable. He will surely have launched his unicorn by the end of December regardless, I’d be surprised if this had any tangible repercussions outside the divorce court.
Very much dislike that this in large part is overshadowed by his adultery, which should be considered separate and treated totally private, at least for the sake of his family.
Sold to china and gave trump, whitcoff and kushner I think, 15% of sales. Almost like a bribe.
Lots of this has been known since may, and it sounds like the president was informed she was a spy a year ago.
One wonders if this happened now since the Dems took control of the investigation bodies.
If they had not, would they have kept right on as is?
Biggest valuation ever will turn into biggest investor lawsuit ever. The music on the AI circular deals is about to be broken by a feminine spell. This has Lord of the Rings all over it...
NVDA at $151 right now...I never expected to see the day...
Yeah, this has to be related to the export ban. It's too much of a coincidence that the woman happens to run a shell company that funnels NVIDIA chips to China.
It's just unlikely that an affair would nuke his CEO's position.
That’s the excuse, it isn’t the reason.
The reality is a lot of people want to ensure only approved “safe and aligned” models are trained and executed, and nvidia were, by far, the biggest promoter of the idea of freedom. This will be done by forcing you to rent capacity from approved providers that monitor and watermark everything.
Huggingface are almost certainly next in line for a push to lock down. For child safety, obviously.
The strange situation, however, is that the current administration, specifically Trump, loves Jensen for he thinks that they're kindred spirits: both incredibly successful businessmen at the top of the world and at the top of their game (this is from Trump's perspective).
It's an odd situation where, yes, they're breaching national security mandates, but they're also being protected by the man at the top of the organization that makes those national security mandates.
We're living in a comedy film, where the outcome of said comedy film has an effect on the world economy, so we're actually living in a tragedy film.
That's how corruption skews the reality that the powerless are forced to live within.
Oh, it's not the repeated violations of sexual conduct with an employee, and a spy, and likely more? A CEO who is that dumb to risk his and the company trust isn't worth it. Look, a trillion already wiped out. When employees say "how dumb could he be", you know the board and major investors are saying that too.
I just find it weird that trump loses the midterms and suddenly this happens. Might be a coincident but feels very sus.
Did your TV tell you that? I hope you realize that there is absolutely no proof of the import ban having been skirted. The FBI has been investigating Alice Huang and Megaspeed since 2024 and all they have is a few GPUs still being unboxed at their Malaysian data center.
Like the film ‘War Dogs’ but with GPUs and affairs instead of weapons and drugs. :D
I think it's all the leather jacket.
If an executive suddenly starts wearing a leather jacket, watch out!
It’s not the side chicks, it’s the side chips.
As if rules have been enforced since 2025 right?
them skirting the ban is the worst kept secret in the world... was it even a secret?
NVIDIA's latest chips were also on an export ban for several Middle Eastern countries ("security" theater). That's about the time the UAE's sovereign fund invested a large sum in Cerebras. They were still able to get the chips by way of Kuwait, which is a friendly Middle Eastern state.
Of course, not a year went by before the UAE and Saudi invested heavily in the Trump crypto fund and, very coincidentally, the ban was lifted.
Fear not, Cerebras managed to get another investment from OpenAI!
So it was just a coincidence that the affairs came out at the same time?
The timing is politically important though; shifts headlines from
"Trump/GOP lost their ass in midterms!" and "Dems intend to investigate GOP/Trump!"
Also provides news channel attacks on Dems; Congress should be looking into national security issues over here in CEO land! Not dividing Congress with partisan hackery!
Important to call out the social engineering going on among all the tribal groups.
Well, you say that, but the perception is he hasn't got sacked for circular financing, nor for the providing of sanctioned components (supposedly they went to third countries, not China, so legal). But he got sacked for two affairs.
This seems very silly.
In all likelihood he got sacked for all those things, the affairs just were a convenient excuse.
What board would admit two thirds of their revenue is imaginary money. It's much better to sack a CEO for being "unfaithful to his wife".
> national security reasons
We've really run this term into the ground, haven't we? They don't even bother to try to convince us that China wants to hurt us anymore before making our lives shitty for it.
Yeah Jensen Huang is secretly Chinese.
Pretty sure he was fucking a Chinese spy though... so...
>I'd love to be wrong
wong?
I mean, an undisclosed affair with the CEO of a large customer is also a pretty big conflict of interest, regardless of natsec concerns…
They could not have done any of the export ban skirting without the complicity or outright cooperation of the administration.
Remind me: when did Huang direct NVDA funds to the Trump ballroom fund?
Trump greenlit H200s for China just this year.
> supposedly
According to who?
There is a wealth of reporting out there, it is harder to ignore this story than to read about it. My statement was couched and is clearly just my opinion, I'll leave the reading to you and let you form your own conclusions
national security hoaxes. When was the last time China attacked the USA? compared to say our best ally and friend Israel that sunk the USS Liberty.
Do you think he might get the death sentence for treason?
He ALSO slept with a direct report, which would get most of us fired too.
Allegedly. There were no proofs of that, not confessions.
And there is a second employee report now...
A lot of people in this industry have gotten it into their heads over the last 25 years that if you create enough value, you get to ignore things like "rules", "laws" and "common sense".
Part of me is hopeful after this. Huang did something that was, at the very least, profoundly stupid, and just short of treason at worst. However, I'm also filled with dread, because I know that this means that there will be even more of an effort by founders to make sure they're immune from consequences from boards if they go public. You already see this at Meta and with Zuckerberg.
We need real reforms on corporate governance that make this sort of situation - a board able to control the C-suite - the norm, not the exception.
TBH, I find the manner in which this was done to be pretty distasteful.
The US government initiating action against Nvidia for breaking the law, causing the affair to come to light? Yeah, that'd be fine by me. Somebody inside that government tattling tales to the NY Times, possibly with tacit consent of their superiors? That I have concerns with.
I've seen a theory floated online that somebody inside the government, who was part of the faction advocating for stricter sanctions on China, leaked this in a way to cause maximum damage to the anti-restrictions faction. Whether Huang (female Huang) was actually a Chinese spy in the first place is also up in the air, keep in mind that while the affair has almost certainly occurred, given that Huang (male) has admitted to it himself, the Chinese spy allegations are still unverified. It could possibly have been a "grain of truth in a sea of lies" play.
> The US government initiating action against Nvidia for breaking the law, causing the affair to come to light? Yeah, that'd be fine by me. Somebody inside that government tattling tales to the NY Times, possibly with tacit consent of their superiors? That I have concerns with.
Everything only comes to light with the New York Times reporting on it. It would be fine if the government did it, but... they didn't.
If nothing else, this indicated to the board that JH is capable of thinking with his dick and that can be a problem for business.
Its a threat to their own companies and whatever amount of democracy is there. Maybe ego is like some cancer that kills/self-ded structs its host/person if it gets big enough. Which is good. A persons etreme wealth gets them political power and also advantages before the law. We've seen this with big corporations.
> A lot of people in this industry have gotten it into their heads over the last 25 years that if you create enough value, you get to ignore things like "rules", "laws" and "common sense".
That's literally how the world works? And has worked for many centuries or longer. By "value" you mean wealth, and wealthy people can get away with murder. They buy and write the law and have the best lawyers in the world.
We won't have billionaires/trillionaires/kings AND rule of law for /everyone/ equally - the world doesn't work that way.
It could in principle though, and things certainly have not been improving in those respects. I'm not going to straight up say they are for sure getting worse either though. I mean, worse compared to when?
That being said, I think resigning yourself to this sort of behavior because "muh power and world works this way" is just kind of stupid. It is not in your best interests, as a regular person much like the vast majority of HN posters (besides the AI shill bots), to just be content with that state of affairs, if there are little things that are relatively effective at reducing those kinds of corruptions of social systems.
One of those things happens to be general distaste of an authentically Christian society against hedonistic behavior, but that has been on a noted downtrend lately, and I don't think that's been a very good thing. Similarly, I think Protestantism is to blame for a lot of nutty justification for the rich and powerful getting away with stuff like this, but I'm going to be vague about what I mean by that because it would be an essay length post.
Our President literally diddled kids on a Carribbean island, cheated on his wives several times, and is probably a closeted homosexual, but richest man on earth having an affair is where we draw the line.
Affairs are wrong, but they are not illegal.
> if you create enough value, you get to ignore things like "rules", "laws" and "common sense".
Hmm... I wonder why that is. Could it be because a bunch of CEOs, prominent politicians, and business people were found to have taken multiple trips to an island where the had sex with children and nothing happened to them? No, it couldn't possibly be that. I'm sick of the pearl clutching against a man who had consensual relationships with adult women his own age, while we excuse pedophilia.
> I'm sick of the pearl clutching against a man who had consensual relationships with adult women his own age,
Do we have evidence that his legally-recognized other half consented to these relationships? If so, fine. That still doesn't remove the problems with those relationships, like the possibility of Alice Huang being a PRC intelligence asset, or the fact that one of the affairs was with a company employee, which can, in a roundabout way, place potential penalties on her career if she doesn't consent.
>while we excuse pedophilia.
Excuse me, where the f*ck did I excuse pedophilia???
You don't have to censor 'fuck.' Anyways, we excused it by not rising up. There was the token online outrage and then the story blew over. Unfortunately the individual is part of the group, so we're all guilty by association.
Speak for yourself, people are still working to get more information out and more prosecutions lined up.
https://khanna.house.gov/media/press-releases/khanna-massie-...
> That still doesn't remove the problems with those relationships
In this day and age of no-fault divorce, co-parenting, etc, where is this moral outrage coming from for a man cheating on his wife / girlfriend? I'm just so confused TBH. 'Legally-recognized other half'.... in no jurisdiction is it illegal to cheat on your wife.
> like the possibility of Alice Huang being a PRC intelligence asset,
The sole evidence that she is a Chinese intelligence asset is that she is Chinese.
> he fact that one of the affairs was with a company employee, which can, in a roundabout way, place potential penalties on her career if she doesn't consent.
Forgive me for not feeling sorry for a likely deca, probably centi, millionaire. This is not some secretary intern.
> Excuse me, where the f*ck did I excuse pedophilia???
Because, if we're going to be witchhunting CEOs for their personal lives, there are a helluva lot worse people than Huang that need to go.
> In this day and age of no-fault divorce, co-parenting, etc, where is this moral outrage coming from for a man cheating on his wife / girlfriend? I'm just so confused TBH. 'Legally-recognized other half'.... in no jurisdiction is it illegal to cheat on your wife.
If Huang had just slept with someone other than his wife, it wouldn't be a story. The outrage here isn't from the fire-and-brimstone perspective. I'm a single guy in my mid-30s; even here in Middle America there are plenty of people who practice ENM, no-fault divorce, and coparenting. It's now widely recognized that people aren't necessarily monogamous as soon as they get married.
At the same time, it's still an expectation that one should not do that sort of activity behind a spouse's back. It could result in other issues that could cause them issues, like STIs, or planning life around a child they didn't expect, or estate planning complications. Being open with your partner in life about the feelings you have on the matter is important, and puts the "ethical" in "ethical non-monogamy".
We don't know what the Huangs' arrangement was. I hope it was understood between them, and that all of that was sorted. If not, well, Jensen's going to get to deal with the fallout with that. Which brings us to the problems with the relationships themselves.
> The sole evidence that she is a Chinese intelligence asset is that she is Chinese.
Let's be honest here: that's not enough to get a story going in 2026. There's the fact that she set up a company in Singapore that had revenue figures that far outpaced what's expected for a company of its age, and the fact that they may have helped Chinese interests dodge US export restrictions on Nvidia's products. This was important enough that it was known to Nvidia corporate and the US government. You don't get attention like that just by dating someone from China.
> Forgive me for not feeling sorry for a likely deca, probably centi, millionaire. This is not some secretary intern.
Cultures like this impact everyone. Do we know if the executive was promoted or otherwise benefitted because of her relationship with Jensen? No, but it immediately opens up a conflict of interest for any request she has of the c-suite.
At worst, Huang was operating a Weinstein-like casting couch for roles within the company. If you can make an executive have to perform those sorts of actions in order to advance in her career, what does the secretary intern have to put up with?
> Because, if we're going to be witchhunting CEOs for their personal lives,
This isn't a witchhunt for the reasons stated above. It's SV, bud. People do all sorts of non-traditional relationship arrangements. Hell, even the Alice Huang affair was probably passable once the next news cycle hit. When he's sleeping with people who report to him, it's a problem on its face. It's unprofessional and it makes everyone at the company wonder just what they'll have to do to get ahead.
> there are a helluva lot worse people than Huang that need to go.
We can actually take care of both groups of people. That is actually possible, believe it or not.
I'm sorry this is insane. Why is it moral to divorce your partner unilaterally (which by necessity is behind your partners back) while cheating is somehow worse. This is retarded pearly clutching to think one is good and the other wrong. Bunch of hypocrits, the lot of you.
Fuck no. Jensen did no such thing. He actually hasn’t been charged with a single crime. You’re outright hallucinating here.
The board is voting him out because they can AT any TIME.
If the board liked him, they would wait for the charges to go through. But they don’t like him. Tons of people cheat on their wives and husbands and I’m sure even the fucking board has people that have.
The board doesn’t like him and has been waiting for a way to oust him while not looking incompetent. Why they don’t like him I don’t actually know.
Maybe because he’s Asian? Maybe this is an internal op by the US government to get someone else up there? I don’t know. But I can guarantee that everything your reading is a cover story. There are underlying forces and motivations here at work that we are not able to know.
yup, my NVDA puts are printing hard rn.
>NVIDIA has supposedly been skirting the export ban put in place by the previous administration.
Of course they are why wouldnt they.
>NATIONAL SECURITY REASONS
Clipper Chip Mark 5 nonsense.
Can you imagine if it were a female CEO fired for the same thing? Oh how the accusations of sexism and double standards and how she doesn't have to report to the board what she does with her body. The argument writes itself.
How naive do you have to be to believe that Congress actually cares about that? They don’t care and happily watch their shares rise in price.
If the second affair didn’t come out, this wouldn’t be a discussion.
The rumor is
Trump knew about this in late 2025 and decided not to act.
The reasoning is believed to be because of the idea that if China didn't get Nvidia chips, it would just develop it's own chips faster. So holding the belief that China would end up in the same spot no matter what, it would be preferable to get them to pay Nvidia along the way.
Delving a bit deeper into conspiracy
It's also possible that Trump saw it as a silent favor to Jinping, who took the opportunity to return the favor months later by cutting Chinese oil purchases. One hand washes the other and all that.
I don't think so.
I think it was the affair with the direct report that did him in.
That's a bigger no-no than selling to spies, especially when the administration knew about it and did nothing.
And yet from the reporting Trump okayed the sale so Nvidia argues they had a license to export from the President. Lutnick was okay with it too apparently and State didn't get a vote. If the reporting is accurate, then I think Nvidia gets zero blowback from the sale.
>From all the reporting I've read, it is hard for me to avoid the conclusion that NVIDIA sold to China despite the export ban. I'd love to be wrong
This was blatantly obvious. Do we really think Malaysia was using Billions in GPUs on some secret AI project?
Elon Musk has an AI bot generating explicit images without consent, regardless of age, yet nobody's firing him.
While Jensen seems like an egomaniac who deserves what happened to him, there's a part of me that feels some China hawks had fingers in his firing, it must not sit well with them than America's most valuable company is not in the hands of the old guard.
Musk has 82% of the voting shares of SpaceX, which owns Twitter. He can't be fired, no matter how much he might deserve it.
That is simply not true, Grok refuses to make explicit images, and with uploaded media it refuses to do even mildly enticing ones. *
* — We did a test of it after similar claim a few weeks ago, and what pushed us to do a research is because my friend who works in a hotel industry was getting moderation blocks on Grok left and right — they now use only AI images to not bother with copyright trolls ever again who threaten lawsuits for things like improperly credited bought stock photo — and in their case moderation was a serious hindrance for creating images.
So all of [1] is made up?
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok_sexual_deepfake_scandal
I don't know what was in back 2025. We tested it late October, 2026. Couldn't generate anything explicit at all.
There was no action taken against him when it was most definitely happening was the point, which stands.
Instead of blahblahblahing endlessly you could just go render an explicit photo on Grok and post it here to prove your point.
I'm rather confident that you would not be able to do that.
However, I'm also confident that instead of doing that you'll continue spreading information that is now obsolete and incorrect: in your original post you said that Musk has a bot, but when confronted with the current state of affairs continue to cite Wikipedia about what Musk had a year ago.
There is zero possibility than Jensen Huang faces any serious consequences for this. NVidia is too big and Huang is too wealthy. This administration in particular would never prosecute that. And, even if they did, a pardon is only $1-3 million anyway.
I believe it was the affair with the married subordinate that was the real problem. There's a huge amount of legal exposure for NVidia with that. With the Chinese spy he can portray himself as the victim. As I've said elsewhere, with billionaire corporate security and the support of the US government, It's astounding to me that this happened at all.
Also I'm 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
[1]: https://x.com/_NathanCalvin/status/2084856543561093535
> I believe it was the affair with the married subordinate that was the real problem. There's a huge amount of legal exposure for NVidia with that
For someone not familiar with American law: How the fuck is that a bigger problem than the Chinese spy ?
Is there any explicit rules at NVidia forbidding that in a code of conduct somewhere ?
It's not. That's a strange statement to make, particularly the emphasis on "married". It seems that person is implying that if a married woman participated in the affair, it was due to coercion. A sexual harassment lawsuit would mainly be a liability in the court of public opinion.
Being fired seems like a serious consequence.
> I believe it was the affair with the married subordinate that was the real problem
You really think Nvidia would let Huang go (without a replacement matching his skills, experience and knowledge in the field) because he cheated with an employee? It is the spy affair while Huang promoted an open export policy.
Plus thanks to Huang, Nvidia is now under investigation by federal agencies.
None of them care about a CEO cheating.
Also, being fired from the company you founded is a serious consequence.
"There is zero possibility than Jensen Huang faces any serious consequences for this."
Hah. He doesn't have a prenup. That's going to lead to serious enough consequences for him in divorce court.
Let's cut the crap, it's a coup because he is in favor of the open-weight ecosystem and doesn't want to restrict models at the firmware level. Anthropic is in large part behind this.
The ban was lifted and fees were applied so there were plenty of legitimate ways to sell. I hate how inaccurate hn has become.
Except the administration has known about them skirting it since day 1.
So it’s no longer about national security. What changed now compared to 2 years ago to make Trump care? Did Jenson reduce SpaceX’s allocation?
The midterms seem like the most obvious timing. Trump has a little less power and everyone is starting to plan for what happens after him - jockeying for being able to say they didn't support this and that. If it was only being ignored because Mr Huang could donate a lot of money to Trump's ballroom that deal probably isn't as important now.
> What changed now compared to 2 years ago to make Trump care?
We all now know that Trump knew about it, that's what has changed. It was fine when this was private, but now his administration is starting to get questions around why his Commerce department punted the initial investigation to DOJ where it ultimately died as the opposition party is about to retake Congress with investigations top of mind.
You have put your finger on it.
Likely there was at least a feeling of mutual understanding between Jensen and key people in the administration. Now the wind has turned in a big way and none of that is on paper. And in fact what is on paper points in the wrong direction.
Probably the only thing protecting NVDA from prosecution right now is that nobody in the White House wants to pop the AI bubble. That might protect Jensen too because he would entangle the company. There will be an interesting tension with congressional oversight. Buy popcorn and NVDA vol.
Yeah, over a year ago the likes of Gamers Nexus was able to follow the clues to figure out how Nvidia was skirting the export ban.
It's hard to believe the US government was so incompetent that they didn't do the investigation a YouTuber did (But not impossible).
The export ban was always BS. Unless you are going to do a total ban and all parts are manufactured in the US, then it is just 1 additional hop to get stuff into China.
> Whether you agree or disagree with the ban, it exists and Jensen&NVIDIA are in a world of trouble if this comes to light.
...maybe. Or maybe not. Consistency in application of the law is not exactly at an all-time high right now.
Oh please, nothing at all will happen to them ...
NVIDIA is important and Jensen's a billionaire ... we're talking a little bit of media scrutiny for a few weeks, a little embarrassment for Jensen, some heartache for his family, and that's it. This will then be consigned to the footnotes of history.
His PR company right now are just saying, say nothing, lay low, we'll handle it.
I still think it would have been far easier for Jensen if he'd given the lady a horse. I understand that's the going rate in the US right now.
It may well be that it's his private life and it doesn't have much to do with things, but it is a contributing factor. The skirting of export bans was the reagent, but the infidelity is the catalyst that is making it much bigger.
CEO is supposed to be a high integrity position despite most tech CEOs trying to pretend that is not the case. If this person cannot be loyal to those closest to him, how can he be loyal to the company or shareholders?
And, there is no spy business. They just want a more compliant CEO. What a *hit show.
So many HN folks defending Huang's actions as "just an affair" - what an epic reading comprehension fail. Yes there is an affair, and that's what grabbed the initial headlines. But just read a paragraph or two and you'll find the espionage story.
For reference, the US has sentenced violators of export laws to decades of prison or even execution in extreme cases (when the Rosenburgs leaked nuclear secrets in 1953, they were sentenced to death). It's just shy of treason, legally. This is maybe one of the largest and most consequential intelligence breaches in history. Anyone who thinks this about an extramarital affair really isn't paying attention. Buckle up, its gonna get bumpy.
Mostly the apologism is for the affair part, not the espionage part. So it kind of lines up with your points about what the important issue is.
What else did the US do in 1953 since you are so keen on it? Can think of a few things.
Everybody should be against the export ban. It's laughable to claim that it is for "national security", it's blatant protectionism to cover US AI companies for the fact that they operate at monumental losses. Any country in the world should be allowed to buy the hardware they need to run AI, if they need it, and if the roles were reversed the US should also be allowed to buy tech from other countries. Graphic cards aren't nuclear bombs, and AI is a multi-use core technology every nation on earth should have access to. So far, China has made a far better impression in that respect than the US. At least they have published open weight models.
The future will be commoditized local AI anyway, so it doesn't matter in the long run. I just needed to rant a bit about the US hypocrisy in that matter.
If the roles were reversed you’d see American battleships off the country’s Ports
Basically every technology is dual use, but still I basically agree, there is an incredible level of anti-China rhetoric in the US right now, not just on the right. The Chip export ban is incredibly tricky reason the outcomes of. For one thing, doesn’t it change the China Taiwan relationship?
[flagged]
We've banned this account.
I hope this won't change NVIDIA's refusal to block inference for unsigned and registered open-models in the firmware of modern GPUs. Anthropic and others are pushing hard on this. First the hardware export ban, eventually the software one via hardware-enforced execution controls like IETF hinted at
> block inference for unsigned and registered open-models in the firmware of modern GPUs. Anthropic and others are pushing hard on this
For real? Anthropic sounds more evil that my wildest imagination. If true, I hope this kind of evil company gets destroyed sooner than later.
There are two (very disjoint) opinions that both land in the same place (banning/restricting open-weight models).
1. "We want to own it and be the only megacorp that exists in the future", and
2. "Proliferation of open-weight models is like giving everyone a nuclear reactor in their home: it is extremely dangerous to the world"
Anthropic has previously stated (or, at best, implied) that they believe/have-reason-to-believe the second.
Some other organizations, well the public has every reason to believe they believe the first.
The end result of "hardware shouldn't be capable of running non-validated models" is the same between the two.
I can't comment on which of the two Anthropic is (because I have literally never in my life talked to anyone in an influential leadership position there). Just keep in mind that even people who are diametrically opposed can have matching recommendations (again, for polar opposite reasons).
It's obviously the biggest concern.
Either through technical means, or simpler: by law for American providers. It's hard to believe the administration was not aware of Jensen's affiliations all this time. And time is pressing for Anthropic and OpenAI.
Only conjectures for now, time will tell
Is there a source for this? I googled it and this was claimed to be satire
Not really tbf, it's an extrapolation. As far as I am concerned, there is growing concern, with Anthropic coordinated lobbying against open weights. The point I am making is we need strong Hardware actors consistently standing for hardware neutrality and integrity. Historically, NVIDIA has been very pro open weights. But at the same time, in-silicon guardrails seem to become the new thing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49879883
Makes you wonder what would happen if the US ever wanted to enforce "certified US AI" on its chips
The entire article that thread references never mentions any hardware, at all, only their software platform. The "Watchdog" referred to in the (editorialized?) title is literally never mentioned, and it is not really a piece of "hardware", it is a piece of _software_ called "Sentry" that (clarified in the Nvidia blog) they run on Bluefield-4 hardware (the "chip") which is their network card. It only exists in $10mil+ clusters. Just an awful and misleading article and headline, and an awful thread filled with people who know nothing about how hardware works arguing over nothing.
Most of the hardware functionality from a GPU that models need is generic and used every time you use a GPU for any compute. You can implement language models in a GLSL shader; modern GPUs have been programmable for 20 years, that's the point of their existence. The best thing they could do is just literally nerf the consumer hardware substantially to make tokens unusable or stop selling consumer hardware. They don't need spyware to do that. It would also make their products dogshit.
More broadly, "Compute" is basically a resource that our economy relies on to a large degree, it has been that way for decades. And it turns out it's very bad when you just destroy the thing your economy relies on. And doing so doesn't solve problems like "Current computers exist today" or "Other people make computers". So who gives a shit about Jensen? Comments here talking about "taking him out"? What's actually more likely is just that really powerful people today are often corrupt and also really fucking stupid. He played a stupid game and lost.
None of this stuff is putting the current open weights genie back in the bottle IMO. Amodei using RoboStormtrooperGruppen9000 bots and going door to door to take peoples GPUs at gunpoint is a more plausible method of doing so.
Yeah, even setting aside the impact and implication on the AI-tech-driven stock market of such a mandate, I don't think it's technically doable to implement either. What if you modified/wrote your own inference engine which uses a somehow slightly modified version of model weights, how would you want to detect (at a firmware level) that compute to be an "unsigned" model over, I don't know, a video game?
Open-weight models, at an absolute minimum the ones that already exist, are here to stay, and will continue ([0]) to get drastically cheaper to run.
[0] I shall continue to reference one my favorite articles in recent months: https://jyn.dev/tokens-too-cheap-to-meter/
I'm curious how effective something like that would really be.
Nvidia can certainly put up some guardrails that will sound impressive to the dinosaurs in Congress, but can it really stop China from using those GPUs anyway?
This is a simplification, but is this not in some way similar to how the Switch 1 has hacked due to a design flaw on Nvidia's Tegra chip?
In the same way, even if their GPUs get this protection, wouldn't a state actor figure out how to get around it?
Yeah, this is the biggest concern that I have regarding this whole story.
> I hope this won't change NVIDIA's refusal to block inference..
lol had to read this several times due to all the negatives
finally got it - "I hope NVIDIA continue to allow inference..."
Wow. Finally found a human in the comments
Refusal to block implies a bit more: some entity is requesting that they block
Of course it's about building an oligopoly of frontier companies controlled by the deep state.
It's sad that people talk here about some personal affairs when it's clearly about governmental control, but it's not the first time a scandal is used as a weapon.
Definitely, expect future GPUs to run only signed LLM models with mandatory online attestation and reporting.
Of course it will. That's the entire point of this. It has nothing to do with an affair.
Jensen has created more shareholder value than nearly any human on earth. Significantly more than Elon, with the key distinction that Jensen has distributed much more of that shareholder value than Elon has through stock options to employees and appreciation of public stock (it’s one of the reasons he’s worth 150Bn vs 1Tn).
I think the real risk for the economy, the AI industry, and the US is that Nvidia becomes JUST another company. Nvidia losing 50% of its value from its peak means it’s still a $3 trillion company. What if it loses 90%? Then it’s the size of Intel which we generally agree is an important part of the industry.
Nvidia can afford to invest in companies because the stock is so high and capital is incredibly abundant. Those companies buy Nvidia products at the 50% NET margins. Nvidia gets a ton of cash. Earnings are crazy. But if this cycle stops and efficiency wins in the market (lower margins, more competitors, more options), then Nvidia goes back to where they were which was a Tier-1/2 supplier battling for margin and market share. That is not a $6T company.
It would be a great thing for the economy. So many sectors are underinvested right now because capital has been stowed away into these companies valuations. Imagine 6T dumped in any other industry and it would be a generational step change event. For reference that's ballpark like 3x the valuation of the entire American biotechnology industry, all in one company. Talk about opportunity cost.
Investment isn't the issue it's talent.
Jensen provided a platform and roadmap to help advance AI. His selflessness and leadership attracts talent.
Money might help pull talent away but it's silly to think money taken away from Nvidia will suddenly be reinvested into other pursuits.
If you don't think talent is an issue, why hasn't anyone begun seriously competing with SpaceX, TSMC, ASML?
Suppose NVIDIA ceased to exist today. What would happen? AMD would step in. Huawei would step in. Maybe even Intel eventually. More fab capacity would go to these companies accelerators.
At worse, progress stalls for a year or two.
NVIDIA was at the lead and took most of the revenue and valuation because of it. But the same process would have happened with or without NVIDIA.
Now go back five years and substitute an NVIDIA collapse. Do you think that we'd be in a very different position for AI? I don't think it would be far off at all.
There were many game accelerator companies when NVIDIA started, they were just slightly better than the others, and the efficiency gains of consolidation resulted in those other companies being sold off.
ASML is definitely a one off though. And perhaps TSMC is a unique one off, but they got there by taking the most customers. If it wasn't them, then somebody else would have done it.
The key selection function was "this is the best option at the time" and if the best option hasn't existed, somebody else would have been chosen path that time, giving that other company the capital to build somethjng.
We don't need to do all this hypothetical thinking. Jensen's vision for his company is what positioned his company to gain from AI.
Say whatever you want about those other companies: they exist right now and there is nothing stopping them from competing.
Who has the GPUs everyone wants today, and why do you think that is? Why do you need to bring in all the hypothetical thoughts?
ASML and TSMC are not one offs. When the investment cost to compete becomes so great: talent must centralize to push the frontier.
You could build exact mirror images of the factories and you will struggle to find the talent to run the factory.
> Suppose NVIDIA ceased to exist today.
(Notably, it kind of already has done so -- just in China rather than the US.)
In addition to all that, other investments would be made in other sectors. I'm sure a huge bulk of investment into NVDA in particular is strictly because of the five figure percentage growth it has enjoyed over the last 6 years after all, with the whole chip argument being the fig leaf over the rampant greedy pumping. It has exploded like some lucky shitcoin and that's enough to drive investor action on massive scale after all. We are in the world where shitcoins are listed along with the blue chip tickers on bloomberg news. Everyone is greedy right now. Gambling on every scale from every direction. Most corrupt president in history to boot openly insider trading; water is full of chum and blood right now.
More people, more awareness about how money works, and more dependence on global investors.
Everyone invests so they can have more in the future, so yes, it's not crazy to imagine people will invest in a company that's growing without knowing any other details.
Why did it grow so large is the question. Why do some of these companies attract all the talent and grow so large and dominate the future is the question.
It's because we're all limited on time and greedy.
In part, because money is going to these other ventures instead. Where would money go if there weren't an NVDA is the 6T question. What would this world look like with more balanced investment across the SP500 sectors instead of money dumped into this one industry in particular? I don't think it would be more chip companies on a 1:1 basis of NVDA investment. The fact that it is going to a single ticker in this case makes it more likely to suck the other options out of existence. If it were say 100 chip companies, more likely on an individual level than an investor might instead say, maybe this time I would invest in some other industry. Mutual funds that investors buy into to hedge into many sectors are also heavier than ever in tech companies like NVDA sort of perverting the whole concept of these funds in the first place. Sort of unprecedented times between how overlevereged things are, and the constant uninformed pumping of air into these stocks thanks to these packages such as these mutual funds that people automatically contribute their paycheck into, again believing they are probably getting much more broad exposure vs how leveraged these packages are currently.
> selflessness
He's an incredibly accomplished entrepreneur and leader, but I'm not sure what he's done to qualify as selfless.
He gave his employees some of the wealth. And his employees seem to like him, or at least they did a few days ago. Maybe he's not selfless but he certainly wasn't completely selfish.
There must be something redeemable about him that makes people want to work for him. That's all I meant by selfless.
Cheating on your wife is certainly selfish.
> If you don't think talent is an issue, why hasn't anyone begun seriously competing with SpaceX, TSMC, ASML?
To quote the late, great philosopher and renowned businessman Eugene Krabs:
"Money."
Time is money, and talent takes time.
Company valuations aren't a sum of the cash flows invested into a company or the available cash flows out of liquidating it either. These aren't uncorrelated numbers but you can technically get a six trillion dollar "valuation" from one person paying $1 for a sixth of a trillionth of a company.
No they aren't, but it is an example of relative scale of investment. Especially when much of that market cap growth has come just within the last 5-6 years or so. Money could have flowed to other ponds collecting off the river of investor cash flow instead of this one massive lake. This might have lead to a different growth trajectory in our economy and technological development than one so focused on the ROI of chip production in particular, to the exclusion of much else. The fact that much of that demand is brought up by circular investment is another aspect. Two lakes backfeeding into eachother eating more and more of the flow off cash flow river, drying up other ponds along the way. Much is lost with such unitary focus of investment.
I would go a little bit further and just say that American workers haven’t been the main beneficiaries of investment for at least a decade now. It “used to be” (some rose tinted glasses but still big kernel of truth) that if a company was making a lot of money or sitting on a big cash war chest, eventually it would make its way back to the employees for expansion, R&D, etc. It would be used for something! But ever since companies started to divert those flows to stock buybacks (and now, the equivalent which seems to be mutual stock purchases) less and less of those profits have been functionally reinvested - the reinvestment mostly happens on paper, and the already-wealthy owners of the stocks get wealthier without expanding the stockholder base as much.
When was this time when corporations paid out more in compensation to workers than they absolutely had to?
Maybe for a short window between the establishment of strong labor unions and Reagan era deregulation.
It would be really interesting to get a snapshot of the actual dollars spent on ownership at any one point in time. Stock market volume can be a lot of froth and slosh of a small-ish subset of all shares.
Does it work like that though? I agree that AI may be crowding out other industries, but I'm not sure you can just take apart a company and redistribute that money elsewhere.
No, it isn't measuring the velocity of incoming investment. But it goes to show just how outstandingly large the pile of money on one ticker in particular is, relative to other high tech industries that are even favored by investors for their 10x potential (maybe moreso historically than today albeit).
There's not really $6T stowed away in one company. That's not how market caps work
What's the downside of that for the economy? It seems like it would be the market becoming more efficient, cutting down on margins and so on. Bringing Nvidia back to earth might open up cheaper hardware for other companies to work with and accelerate AI anyway.
Efficiency is a great thing and long term what’s needed so we can buy laptops again at a reasonable price. There will be a pretty large blast radius across ANT/OAI/ORCL/SPCX/TSMC/neoclouds. Prob 15T of market value at risk and the flywheel of investment which is conditioned on investors and the economy believing they have durable appreciation locked up in AI stocks (“if my basket of investments is safe, I’m willing to invest my next dollar in more of it” vs “the sky is falling and I need to tighten the belt / pull money out”). I’m trying not to be a doomer here as I think it’s somewhere in the middle it’s just very frothy and the upside scenarios generally envisioned NVDA to be stable
I will be honest, my personal opinion is keep the blood flowing until RAM prices return to Sept 2025 levels.
This whole saga has been a ridiculous waste of everybody's time and energy. There's no compelling argument that points to these new innovations not otherwise happening if RAM prices weren't artificially inflated by the fever dream of private equity.
How is nvidia crashing out going to reduce RAM prices?
The demand for high-ram consumption applications is higher than ever and rising. That demand is not created by nvidia, but nvidia's customers. nvidia's customers are buying nvidia parts built with other's ram because they have customers renting the compute.
Whoever nvidia is buying ram from will simply sell to the next highest bidder, and the ram will still be sold out through the coming years.
Because Nvidia is personally investing in a huge amount of those customers, enabling the hyperscaling. If half of the circle breaks, the other half does too.
And those customers still have the demand to keep wanting more.
Contrary to the AI-bubble-doomsayers - most hyperscalers and neoclouds seem to be at capacity for current demand and even have already booked future demand.
> If half of the circle breaks, the other half does too.
If the good Lord's willing and the creek don't rise.
RAM prices are not artificially inflated. Everyone wants to run models that require 1TiB of RAM locally. AI agents utilize RAM on every computer more than ever before. The fever dream is imagining these prices are ever coming back down without serious fab investment.
There is blatant and open collusion between everyone that can invest in fabs in order to "slow down" the investment and the supply in order to maintain the prices as high as possible, as long as possible.
https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/articles/ram-crisis-one...
"The lawsuit also points towards similar collusion between the companies in the past. In 2005, SK Hynix and Samsung were fined $180 million and $300 million respectively after pleading guilty to price-fixing DRAM pricing. It is suggested that the same occurred between 2016 and 2018 when prices spiked again, ..."
Agreed. We all want a soft landing.
> if RAM prices weren't artificially inflated by the fever dream of private equity.
RAM prices are a result of skyrocketing demand. That's hardly a fever dream.
You can hardly blame RAM suppliers for taking the money of people who are coming to them begging to pay more than the person before them in line. It's not like they are squeezing the market in some cartel price-fixing racket.It's the customers who are willing trying to pay more for better access. The innovations and the price of RAM are so non-sequitur at this point; I can't understand what point you're making. Sure, if RAM were as easy to get as the circuit boards they're being put on, innovation would be the same (or accelerated!) but that doesn't have anything to do with the fact that RAM is incredibly supply constrained and ramping production to meet the demand of a seemingly insatiable market takes a long time for a product this complicated and specialized.
If any of the manufacturing companies could have seen this coming, they'd have started ramping production to insane levels 5 years ago, and they'd be taking in just as much money as Nvidia is.
> It's not like they are squeezing the market in some cartel price-fixing racket
You don’t know this with certainty, do you?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_industry_price_fixing
This time is purely supply and demand.
Companies (CRWV, etc) are borrowing at 10%+ interest rates to buy NVidia GPUs that NVidia makes 75% gross margin on. I repeat, companies are selling junk bonds to buy GPUs at a 300% markup. Cocaine dealers probably don’t even make 75% gross margins.
Other companies (OpenAI, etc) are also borrowing at 10%+ interest to rent the GPUs to train LLMs.
All of these GPUs need a ton of RAM. There is a fixed supply of RAM. There is insane demand for RAM.
What in the world does a 20-year-old scheme and prosecution have to do with it?
Besides, when demand outstrips supply you don't have to fix prices. Why would you? They cannot deliver all of the RAM people want. Think about it for a minute: how would price fixing even work?
(and don't get me started on the ridiculous "they're switching from DDR3 to HBM" part of that wikipedia article...)
It’s not a given that markets are able to navigate the risk between massive capital investment and unknown future revenues. Everyone is trying to figure out the long term value from AI. For a made up numbers example the path might require $1T investment to unlock $10T revenue in 10 years from now. But if no one can put up the $1T it stalls and doesn’t happen next decade
Spot on
It’s the wrong way by having a neutered market leader instead of strengthened competitors.
Guys going to start his own company. Surely?
He may not feel like putting out the effort. Hired by AMD could be interesting.
The hardware is expensive because it's supply constrained. Demand far exceeds supply.
Harming Nvidia would only make us more compute constrained, and raise prices further.
It seems it's impossible to get a certain type of person to understand this regardless of whether it's housing, education or chips.
Harming the producers of [thing] or disincentivizing profits will not make [thing] cheaper if demand remains the same (or if it is growing, like in all of the areas I mentioned).
> It seems it's impossible to get a certain type of person to understand this regardless of whether it's housing, education or chips.
What type of person are you referring to?
Have you ever considered that an efficient economy is you paying everything you have for food and living in absolute poverty
That doesn’t seem to fit any definition of efficient I can think of.
That’s why you aren’t an oligarch. You think efficient equals fair.
Doesn't this situation demonstrate how bonkers it is to pin the fortunes of the stock market and potentially the entire economy on the behavior of one person?
> pin the fortunes of the stock market and potentially the entire economy on the behavior of one person?
"We" don't. Media narratives over-focus on individuals and personalities because that's what humans focus on.
Markets can overreact emotionally on daily headlines and weekly narratives but tend to correct quarter to quarter. There's lots of data and examples: Apple after Jobs, Microsoft after Gates, etc. Even after losing iconic, long-time leaders, most industry-leading companies continue to make even more money, more profitably than ever over the following decade.
> "We" don't.
> That's what humans focus on.
I struggle to understand what narrative you're correcting here. "We" in this context seems to collectively mean "humanity". Markets, media narratives, etc. are all run by humans. That's "us", whether or not you personally want any of the blame/credit.
I was disputing that financial markets "pin the fortunes of the stock market and potentially the entire economy on the behavior of one person" at least beyond emotional reactions to daily headlines by retail investors.
I agree that markets shouldn't do that, and further, I believe they don't do that in any meaningful way. NVidia's price drop of ~20% is short-term volatility. Tracked against the NASDAQ, NVidia will likely post new all-time highs within the next 100 days.
It was already on a downward trend from all time highs before any of this happened.
The company should have plans in place for what to do when something happens to the CEO. Situations like this, death, or just deciding to leave. I've read reports that Nvidia didn't have this, which would be irresponsible if true, but it's not the norm. The founder leaving is likely a bit different than some other CEO coming in later, but any good CEO should be thinking about what happens to the company when they're gone so people know the company is still in good hands.
But by not having one, the CEO has a lot more leverage over the company.
good leaver vs bad
They have an LLM trained on all his speaking and writing ready to take over.
Can you produce me a list of people who will be better for the job than him? You are asking the wrong questions.
This doesn't seem like the right question either. Can you provide a list of unique qualifications that make Jensen irreplicable?
He started the biggest GPU company and ran it successfully for three decades?
Right, but then he resigned. So the question on all our minds is if NVIDIA should be entirely written off since losing Jensen's irreplicable talent, or if some of those skills are transferable.
Since he apparently also arranged the company so it revolved around him and no one else was in a central position to know cross silo information, how would those skills transfer?
As a shareholder I want a leader who knows how to let other people run the company also, so it doesn’t die with them. (Eventually we’re all headed there, right so…)
I feel like your argument is just "Jensen Huang was Nvidia, and without him the company is doomed", and that's a very strong claim that needs a lot more explanation, because it's certainly not an argument that any shareholder is interested in considering when the company continues to exist, its products remain important and in-demand, and there's a CEO vacancy to fill.
What skills, specifically? I can't imagine he's the only one who knows how to set up an incomprehensible corporate structure, nor do I think that's what people value about NVIDIA.
Maybe not entirely, but just partially written off?
Might be one of the greatest CEOs in the history of business.
Might be, also very well might not be. His jacket was nice though.
I cannot and that question is irrelevant to the situation. The dude is going to be getting investigated and spending the next couple of years doing interviews and legal stuff (there's already a securities lawsuit). He literally cannot run the company even if he wanted to. He's also no doubt going to be under congressional and DOJ and Department of Commerce investigation for sanctions violations.
It should not be a job - that's the whole point. Kings demonstrated how bonkers is having a single point of failure like this so it's insane people still don't get it today.
A single point of failure is also a single point of success. There’s real reasons run by committee is considered a joke.
I really dislike the cult of personality the rich set up around themselves. The entire company is not just one guy. NVIDIA hires a lot of smart and talented people who contributed to its success and many other CEOs would also have been successful given the same parameters.
Jensen might be the best person to lead NVidia at the moment, but that doesn't mean that NVidia dominating the market and being able to demand gigantic margins is a good thing for the overall economy.
You and I and many of the commenters would be on there. People think these CEOs are wizards performing black secret magic we'd fail to understand.
No. They have the same 24 hour day as you and I. They think at the same speed and talk at the same speed. Their "workload" whatever it may be, is finite, evidently finite enough to juggle several romatic relationships at the same time, with much actual work and decisionmaking delegated and informed by domain experts who will be there no matter the CEO.
So yes, you or I could in fact be CEO of NVIDIA. It would be easy. Reports would be made for us by the worlds experts in the fields on what is going on. Departments would be ran by the best available talent on earth. My emails are being read and written by a dozen plus secretaries. Every presser I make I have an ivy league grad writing me the speech making me look like Hemingway out there. Every decision I'd make informed by a team of experts. Every plan thought of already by a hundred people smarter than me. All we'd have to do in the role as NVIDIA CEO is smile, waive, and read the lines handed to us on the sheet of paper by someone else. The ship runs itself even though we all pretend it's the CEO paddling 24/7 making it possible.
Really, that's all any of these guys are doing. Very similar to say the job of a pop star. Are you charismatic? Can you read lines? You'd make a great CEO then.
That's a fairly hysterical reading. It's a company, no one is irreplaceable.
He has no magic, but he did make some good strategic decisions.
Everyone is a god and a genius (in retrospect) if they found a multi-trillion dollar company, but the causation seldom runs that way.
Jobs founded Apple to great success, left and failed then returned to Apple to great success, then he died and Apple was fine. The company is more important than the individual. Nvidia will also be fine.
And clearly the US economy doesn't rest on the shoulders of Nvidia or AI, no matter the level of hype.
Huang was also well know in industry for awful decisions, which is why most companies that ever worked with Nvidia, worked with them once (with some exceptions tbf).
Sometimes there’s just events that trigger action on what “the market” was already starting to think.
We had Democrats who are more skeptical of data center construction elected and now the CEO of one of the largest AI companies forced to step down.
If investors were already wondering if AU stocks were over inflated, these events could have been tts impetus they needed to act.
So what mechanism do you propose?
Huang has served as CEO for a whopping 33 years - hard to argue he wasn't crucial to NVIDIA's success, and how many of the board members are the original from when he was first chosen-selected and continued to be hired as CEO over the crucial early decades?
What nuanced knowledge-understanding does he have that no one else can have?
Maybe sleeping with spies was a necessary part of survival, perhaps if he wasn't prone to that then he'd have been assassinated and potential replacement CEOs who are toeing certain lines may have been attempted to replace him after his murder?
> Maybe sleeping with spies was a necessary part of survival, perhaps if he wasn't prone to that then he'd have been assassinated and potential replacement CEOs who are toeing certain lines may have been attempted to replace him after his murder?
This is, frankly, an outlandish statement.
How do you know it's outlandish? You made a claim but provided no supportive arguments. Is it not a logical conclusion? You do know assassination occurs, right? And if less violent methods don't work then strategy escalates towards eliminating people in positions?
Huang is known to literally respond to low-level e-mails between ICs. The idea that a CFO can take his place is ridiculous. People need to be real.
What's happening now with this situation is why communism and similar has historically been able to take hold.
You're really going to need to explain this crazy take. I can't even begin to see the parallels between Jensen Huang being ousted for sleeping with spies and subordinates and the rise of Communism.
they think there are no other hands on leader types. this is fairly normal. just that most of them exit early because its not needed to work all your life if you do this well. early retirement with few million rather than going for billions which is greedy as fk.
Not the fact that he was fired but the reaction of the ideological bent, where statements like "Doesn't this situation demonstrate how bonkers it is to pin the fortunes of the stock market and potentially the entire economy on the behavior of one person?" highlight that's not actually the reality, but this surface shallow narrative is what people are believing - in part driven by fear, but still misunderstanding - and so also prone to false and shallow narratives.
> Highly successful businessman.
> Behaves like a fool, risks national security to get his dick wet, has unethical affair with subordinate.
> The problem is that people like this get held accountable for their misdeeds instead of being left to do what they want!
but think of the shareholders! think of the executives who have layoffs in the hopper but can't pull the trigger yet!
> Maybe sleeping with spies was a necessary part of survival, perhaps if he wasn't prone to that then he'd have been assassinated and potential replacement CEOs who are toeing certain lines may have been attempted to replace him after his murder?
Respectfully, I don't engage with conspiracy theorists
Ironically you just did, so you lack self-control and needed the dopamine hit. P.S. I'm not the one who downvoted you, I don't downvote anyone's comments.
This could've been said of Cisco in the telecom bubble days. Or Nortel. Or a handful of other key players who were all inflating that bubble and playing games with their financials that made the bursting of the bubble worse.
Pumping billions of dollars, the source of which is obscured, into it looks like a cut out, is not just a national security problem. It undermines confidence in the numbers that you claim are the basis of shareholder value.
name the leaders in those companies (Cisco/Nortel) who were as passionate, influential, visionary?
what kind of argument is this?
the stock value just represents what people think the company is (or will be) worth, them selling products at 50% margin is what brings the money, the stock value doesn't give NVIDIA extra cash (unless they're selling or leveraging their own stock reserves to get even more cash?). And definitely shareholder value is not the economy.
and also, how is the efficiency bad now? surely that allows for innovation and other companies and people to get cheaper hardware (assuming they somehow have to lower their margins because Jensen left, still don't get that argument)
NVDA losing 90% would bankrupt the entire AI sector and plunge US into a deep recession.
It's not just a chip company. Those trillions of value represent bets across the entire economy. When the casino goes bankrupt, all bets are off.
Counter-hypothesis: It wouldn’t be that deep, but it would fix inflationary pressures pretty quickly especially for assets.
Also you act like those bets were group / government decisions. They weren’t my bets. They were NVIDIA’s bets. Equity holders should lose value if the bet fails - that will not be most of the economy by a long shot. The stock market is not the economy. The Casino should not have existed in the first place at the scale it did. This is the correction everyone has been talking about when discussing “bubbles”
Giving Jensen credit for creating literally all of the value from Nvidia seems really over the top. He happened to be running the biggest GPU company during the biggest GPU boom ever. Sure he had an impact on the numbers and the timing, but if Jensen had never been born someone else would be heading a giant chip company around this period of time that saw it's stock take off like a rocket ship. This would happen even if the counterfactual CEO was incompetent.
Isn't he the entire reason Nvidia invested so heavily in tensor cores before AI even became a massive market mover? He definitely deserves credit for setting Nvidia up with a massive lead in this emergent industry.
It isn't like he is the one who did the research to lead to that decision though. That just isn't his job. He isn't an analyst. He is CEO, who reads reports or sat in presentations made by his analysts, whatever their specific position titles, who are really the ones who did the work weighing and making this decision. His role was to say yes to these people whose job it is to actually figure this out.
So indeed, if he was not CEO, likely whoever would have been would be given the same information as Jensen that lead to him saying yes on tensor cores. And in all likelihood, the same exact decision would have been made, or at least a coinflips odds chance if it really were a matter of "yes" or "no" with no clear winner.
My experience in corporate America is that, no - it would NOT be likely that a different CEO makes the same call.
Many, especially the "non-founder" CEOs, are risk-averse.
There's likely many CUDA-like ideas from internal engineers shot-down or ignored by leadership at companies like Microsoft, Google, etc.
While Tim Cook certainly drove the valuation of Apple up during his tenure, one of the most common criticisms was that Apple stopped innovating and more recently their quality bar has been dropping.
I feel like it's worth repeating that he gets credit for the decisions he has made, while it's also true that someone else would also see this demand, maybe earlier maybe later, and that the economy and shareholders would benefit. The point I'm making, and I think the one you're responding to, is that he didnt do something so magical that wouldn't have been done otherwise. It's a counterpoint to "this guy did so much, we would be nothing without him" and using that as a way to excuse his bad decisions.
Again, credit for putting yourself in the position to capitalize. Credit for executing. But it's pretty likely that the world would not be substantially different if Nvidia has been another company and Jensen was some guy working at MS.
I think the Tensor decision was very impactful to both the direction of AI tech and Nvidia as a company, though. I can't judge how much of the decision to invest in that technology was his but assuming he had a significant proportion of influence in that decision, he deserves a significant portion of the credit. A different person in the same position might not have seen the potential of machine learning at scale and not been willing to point their GPUs at the problem.
They basically invested in pickaxes a decade before the gold rush, and people only found out about the gold because pickaxes were pretty convenient
Not really. Nvidias gpu architecture was tensor.. It is useful for other things like AI. That wasn't a decision to create AI other than it was what they had. They landed on their feet. They didn't invest in pickaxes, they had the right pickaxe at the right time.
Revisionist nonsense. Turing introduced tensor cores which were largely useless on launch, but massively increased transistor count and die size. It was entirely a bet on future and emerging applications.
> Giving Jensen credit for creating literally all of the value from Nvidia seems really over the top.
He was the cofounder, president and CEO since 1993. Nvidia hired/created CUDA in 2004 and made it central to its strategy. That’s almost 20 years before the current AI boom.
GPUs, as you know, are just Graphics processors and there is no reason to use them for AI. The only reason for their popularity in AI is CUDA. Because in 2012 Alex Krizhevsky, along with Sutskever and Hinton trained AlexNet to win the ImageNet competition and started the current AI revolution. One of their secrets was using a graphics accelerator (GPU) as a supercomputer to train larger neural networks. This was only possible thanks to CUDA. After 14 years CUDA is still the industry standard for training neural networks.
That strategy converted the 90s 3D accelerator startup into the most valuable company of the world today. But after today, they’re just a standard chipmaker with no vision.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUDA
[flagged]
Can you please make your substantive points without swipes? Your comment would be fine without the "Bruh", "You are making it sound as if", and "This is ridiculous" bits.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It's easy to dismiss someone's life's work when you aren't the one in their shoes.
> This would happen even if the counterfactual CEO was incompetent.
Tell that to Intel's ex-CEO.
> Jensen has created more shareholder value than nearly any human on earth.
Nonsense. Nvidia's employees created that value, not Jensen. Jensen personally is all but certainly responsible for almost none of the value created, just like in every other company. CEO worship is absurd.
Like it's an extremely common sentiment when working for a large company to look at the SVP or CEO and go "that person is a dumbass, everyone in charge is a dumbass". Yet when looking at other companies somehow we forget about that and put the companies success on the CEO or top level execs. Instead of remembering "no, it's probably the small army below them figuring out how to manage upwards to prevent the idiot in charge from tanking everything"
> Jensen personally is all but certainly responsible for almost none of the value created
That's a very limited view of value creation. Have you ever lead a team of people? Coached someone? Raised a child? Written a technical architecture?
A lot of people play crucial roles in a company. HR, accounting, leadership, PM's, engineers, support, etc. All of them contribute to the value creation.
If you've ever been in a company with poor leadership and one with great leadership, you'd see the impact of it on everyone working there and on the value being created.
>> Jensen personally is all but certainly responsible for almost none of the value created
>That's a very limited view of value creation. Have you ever lead a team of people? Coached someone? Raised a child? Written a technical architecture?
I can assure you that the people you are targeting the question at, have never/rarely done any of the things you asked. I call them the socialists. They sit in judgment of people who do things while they lead their petty lives and all they look forward is the next Superbowl game, or next Netflix series.
(p.s you might like the writings of author by name Ayn Rand, Disclaimer: I'm no worshiper of Rand)
This is hilarious because Jensen’s idea of leadership is petty authoritarianism. I’m not sure if this is just HN being emotionally bought in to great man theory or financially bought in to NVDA, but most of their value creation is on the back of gamer chips being useful for crypto and later AI.
The children yearn for a tyrant I guess.
> HR, accounting, leadership, PM's, engineers, support, etc. All of them contribute to the value creation
Not sure about HR TBH
> That's a very limited view of value creation. Have you ever lead a team of people? Coached someone? Raised a child? Written a technical architecture?
Yup, all of it. And at no point have I considered myself as 10,000x more valuable than any of the team members I led. Yet that's exactly what is done to billionaire CEOs.
You'll notice I did not say Jensen didn't create ANY value.
Companies rise and fall based on leadership decisions. You inability to see that highlights your lack of thought needed for true leadership.
Critical / hard decisions are worth more than just a manager telling / trusting his team to execute on x,y,z task.
Sorry, what hard decisions did Jensen make, exactly? "Hey team, I'm going to make the tough decision here to propose that next year's GPU is faster than last years"?
Do you know for sure that Jensen personally was involved in recruiting Ian Buck and starting up the CUDA project? A project that's largely attributed to John Nickolls? What other major decisions did Nvidia even make over the last, say, 15 years?
The decision to support CUDA and include it in retail GPUs so that he could create a massive installed base, even in the face of criticism and loss of stock value, for years. Sort of like Tesla building superchargers to cause BEVs to become viable.
Okay, but why doesn't AMD have a CUDA equivalent in quality? Luck?
AMD was borderline bankrupt? While nvidia was doing CUDA, AMD was selling off assets like their fab business to keep the lights on.
Those employees didn’t create it when a huge number of them worked at AMD, Apple, Qualcomm, Intel, or TI.
It took the corporate structure and top-down direction decision ATTRIBUTABLE TO JENSEN to allow them to work so productively together.
Leadership matters. Labor Talent is only able to operate at 10% effectiveness with shitty leaders in place.
You think he hired everyone personally?
CEOs in large companies do not play a role like that.
He founded the company. Everyone there is either hired by him or hired by someone he hired.
If the origin of the people who created value is the metric, aren't his parents and ancestors those who truly are responsible for creating all that shareholder value?
I prefer the view that the engineers that made GPUs have a bigger hand in the value creation.
> Everyone there is either hired by him or hired by someone he hired
If you think about that for 2 seconds you'll see that this is just wrong?
Req hoc ergo propter hoc, eh?
Elon personally hired the first 3000 SpaceX employees- you don’t think that was a huge part of their success?
This tendency to credit an entire technological breakthrough to the top of an org chart is such a bizarre cliche from a systems perspective. Breakthroughs are not conceived from whole cloth within the corner offices of isolated autocracies; they are the product of horizontal networks of social capital as engineers continually circulate across firms.
Besides, individual contributors aren't incentivized to innovate insofar as we're not structurally positioned to capture a windfall.
I recognize the narrative that an army of world-class engineers is essentially inert until an executive visionary breathes purpose into them, but that's a structural property of the firm. It's a choice to route all surplus through the board and major shareholders, and to starve out any innovation that happens outside of those venues.
Perhaps research nVidia and Huang a bit more before deciding general rules apply to specific cases.
> Those employees didn’t create it when a huge number of them worked at AMD, Apple, Qualcomm, Intel, or TI.
I agree: we must do everything we possibly can to aggrandize the already wealthy and powerful. The glory must accumulate in their account, and the less that goes to their subordinates, the better.
You can’t convince these people. A large portion of the population is hardwired (by DNA) to be subordinate and hierarchical, for better or worse. Probably best to simply let them believe in Superheroes.
I mean Jensen even said that he does not mind the California billionaire* tax. To believe that CEOs and Founders are not replaceable is hyperbole but so is to believe that they are totally replaceable. NVIDIA clearly has a moat and are the belle of the ball, of the world economy
lol
I agree that CEO worship is absurd but it’s a big stretch to say they are responsible for none of the value. Jensen AND the employees. And he probably created a disproportionate amount of that value compared to the average IC, I don’t think that’s in question. But is he responsible for most of it, or even 10% of it? Unlikely.
So fire all CEOs, let employees run the company then. Blind CEO hatred is equally stupid.
They should fall first to AI replacement as they're the least useful people in a company and most susceptible to ruining the company's reputation by screwing a Chinese spy and a hot local chic.
If you think CEOs are useless, why dont you create a company without a CEO and simply outcompete Google and Amazon?
sure, lend me a million dollars
> as they're the least useful people in a company
Tell me you know nothing about running a company without telling me. Just because one CEO got caught screwing over a Chinese spy that doesn't mean all CEOs are useless people. That's just lazy generalization.
Edit: Guess I am arguing with a bot lol
At least you aren't arguing with a socialist...
This sort of empty bitterness is a very pernicious thing. It reads as knowledge / experience, but really it’s nothing more than angry drivel. It doesn’t say anything that hasn’t been said before a million times.
You're right, it takes a company to deliver a value. With that said, you are *seriously* underestimating how hard it is to organize and run a large company. Jensen is not perfect by any means, and I don't even particularly like him. I just hate this anti-billionaire narrative being thrown around a lot lately that leaders don't matter.
But what do you hate about it? They can stick up for themselves surely? They don't need you to protect them do they?
Sure it might be hard to run a company - it wasn't like he actually did most of that though was it?
Yes, this cult of personality I find completely insane. Mostly the egotists get in the way of the technical people making progress.
If efficiency is a risk for the economy then the economy is of course. Hopefully the correction can be soft and not a catastrophic pop. Maybe a slight cooling of Nvidia, caused by isolated factors, can help without crashing the whole sector.
Sounds like a perfect fix for inflationary pressures to be honest - at least when it comes to assets and equities. Takes trillions off the board, stops the money machine cycle, and only impacts equity holders. Probably missing something here but that seems about right to me.
surely the telegraph was the biggest value creator ever?
Or the steam engine, or writing, or... Shareholder value is such an obtuse way to look at the world.
The Roof was an invention the allowed us to delay the rotting of all our harvests. Pretty good.
That's a good one, I haven't thought about needing to invent a "roof".
Also keep you dry when it’s raining, pretty cool.
My “history of technology 101” course was pretty clear that this title lies with the invention of the bowl. Be that pottery or wood. Something to store excess food in for tomorrow.
Jensen created some shareholder value, but in reality it's the AI labs (and crypto before that) that led to the huge valuation. None of this is his making, he just got lucky.
Any other idiot in his place would have made the same amount of money.
The stock market isn't the economy.
Don't worry, it took Intel a decade to fall from dominance. Nvidia probably has another 10 good years left. This gives us just enough time to see if China's Huawei is all talk or actually has what it takes.
I'm a normal person with a beating heart and conscience, so I don't give a damn about how much shareholder value someone has ever created, and I never will.
So you are not planning to ever retire? You never buy anything? You dont have a job?
Unless you are a subsistence farmer, everything you have in your life is thanks to the economy and "shareholder value".
Its strange to me how many people will say stuff like "who cares about the economy, I care about people" when the economy is the thing that ensures people have food and shelter and dont starve.
>> everything you have in your life is thanks to the economy and "shareholder value".
No it's not, shareholder value as understood as owning a piece of a publicly traded company doesn't produce anything on its own and it's definitely independent of the economy of a society. Could even be argued that the wealth stuck in the shareholder value is reducing the investments that could be being made in the interest of the rest of the economy.
I can easily make something and sell it to you without creating shareholder value.
So why haven’t you created a private company that redefines a market segment if it is so easy?
Huh? Who's talking about that? OP argued that everything we have is because of shareholder value. That is false.
No one is talking about anything being easy or redefining a market (which, since you bring it up, has been done infinite times by private and state funded companies as well)
It's just that "Jensen has created more shareholder value than nearly any human on earth", to many people, sounds a bit like "McDonalds has created more calories than nearly every company on earth". Sure, you need calories to survive, but that's not exactly the issue people are having here.
And poof just like that the myth of the founder led company being untouchable has imploded. All other founder led CEOs will be watching this closely.
Alternatively if the company tanks the board will have a reckoning similar to the OpenAI debacle.
If you own 51% of the company's voting rights, you're good.
The Congressional hearings haven't even started yet.
Didn’t that myth implode with Jobs decades ago?
On paper, sure.
Let's find out if the money exists next week when everyone tries to cash in.
Monopolies are a plague on healthy markets.
I don't care about shareholder value. There is Schaudenfreude in seeing an AI/tech billionaire go down.
Fully agreed. The more we take these people down, the better society is will be.
The more people who exist that witch-hunt for no actual reason the worse our society is.
He's still one of the richest people on earth. I wouldn't exactly call that "going down."
Well, he might very well end up in jail.
> he might very well end up in jail
That's incredibly unlikely. NVidia and Megaspeed's relationship has been under constant separate parallel investigations by the Justice and Commerce Depts going back to the Biden administration. There have been no charges and Megaspeed was never even added to the blocked Entities List which would instantly ban all sales, despite the US govt being free to do so at any time with no justification or explanation needed.
It appears two things are simultaneously true:
- Thousands of banned GPUs were diverted to China.
- NVidia meticulously verified export licenses and complied with every U.S. law, export control and KYC regulation.
The under-reported fact is that while the US Govt chose not to add Megaspeed to the banned list, NVidia voluntarily placed Megaspeed on their own blocklist and stopped selling GPUs to them in June 2025. This was because the law requires NVidia to block any company they "know or reasonably suspect" is violating export controls. There is an extensive framework of Red Flags a supplier is required to check and certify are 'cleared'. The penalties for failing to do so are the same as violating export controls on cruise missiles (up to 20 years in jail, $1M per GPU ). And they can apply personally to each employee who knew. So, NVidia cut off one of their largest South Asian customers ~18 months ago, despite Jensen banging the customer's board member.
No, I can't explain it either. But those are the facts per WSJ & NYT reporting. The meta-subtext here is there have been two opposing factions on China policy inside the White House, NSC, and U.S. intelligence community since the Biden era. They are each constantly trying to sway Trump, who vacillates between them (as seen by inconsistent US policy swings). One of those factions leaked the 6 month-old Alice story a week ago in the hope of blocking Jensen's influence and access to Trump. It worked (probably better than expected). Now that Jensen is both out of NVidia and politically toxic, neither faction cares about him.
Why is this down-voted, it's the most informative comment I've found here?
Yeah, I was disappointed too. I think there's an increasingly large part of HN that mostly just wants to get (or confirm) a simple 'black hat' / 'white hat' morality tale and then move on. Really understanding nuance is hard and when all the hats are varying shades of gray, it's a lot more work for an unsatisfying outcome.
And this mess around export controls on GPUs is an especially confusing and conflicted situation with layers on layers. Since posting that I've been reading and cross-reference papers written over the past year by foreign policy and trade analysts and gained a lot more detail and insight on the dynamics. The one thing in my post above I now know was incomplete is the part about NV banning Megaspeed (MS). It's true they did but there was an exception (the "Affiliates Rule") enacted by a one-year waiver on 9/30/25 which expired on 11/1/26. But the U.S. extended it for two more months three days ago. That waiver permitted NV to keep selling to Megaspeed affiliates. That exception was not a mistake. So NV blocked MS but the rules allowed them to legally keep selling to MS affiliates - and they did (and probably still are). With the full knowledge and approval of the US Govt.
That seemed crazy to me but it got clearer once I understood how the US government is split on this issue. The Commerce Dept, White House trade policy desks and external advisors are aligned on one side and State, Treasury and Defense Depts on the other. The forcing function for why the leaks of ~6 month-old intel about Jensen happened now, is the H200 waiver extension and the Trump–Xi summit in Shenzhen on November 18 where the U.S. and China will negotiate whether to extend that waiver after January.
The Commerce Dept side wants to include extending the waiver as possibly 'negotiable', if China is willing to give enough value for it (like rare earth metals and major trade concessions, limiting oil purchases from Iran, etc). The State/Defense side wants it 'non-negotiable' for any price. NVidia's interests are obviously aligned with the Commerce Dept/trade policy desk faction and Jensen's personal relationship with, and ability to potentially sway, Trump was a wildcard variable. The leaks have taken Jensen off the board before the negotiation. I actually hate how much this sounds like a 'crazy uncle' conspiracy theory but serious policy and trade analysts all agree this is the basic dynamic that's been unfolding over the last year. Just ask your favorite LLM to give you a list of links on this and look for yourself. It's really complicated but my takeaway is no one related to this mess looks remotely good. The perverse thing is I'm still pretty sure NVidia fully complied with every rule and reg. Yet thousands of GPUs were diverted because the regs were designed to be swiss cheese-like and then got waivered on top of that. NVidia made billions but that was intended to happen and explicitly made legal.
[Edit to add: ... and WSJ just posted 3 mins ago that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is "Fighting for His Job Due to Blame for NVidia Fallout", so looks like the leaks not only took Jensen off the board but now the leakers are trying take down Lutnick too. No way the B200 waiver extension happens now. Marco Rubio's gotta be dancing on his desk. God, this really should be a movie someday. ]
And again the most informative comment, thank you!
Yeah, show me people are not buying Nvidia GPUs because of this and maybe I'll sell.
> A) He never made a single product himself
This is demonstrably untrue. Jensen is an engineer through and through, and contributed significantly to Nvidia's early accelerators: from the NV1, at least to the earliest GeForces.
Don't even engage with these types of people. They think CEOs provide no value and anyone can do the job
Ha, I was wondering if someone would bring that up! Pretty funny. How much of the shareholder value of NVidia is represented by his share of the NV1 and the earliest GeForces?
All of it? If those had failed and the company gone bankrupt, Nvidia's market cap would be $0.
> B) surely we can see in hindsight that this is a pretty goofy metric for success...? Like, "shareholder value" isn't exactly what we need at this pivotal moment in the terran story.
In the slow evolution of the human race into the Ferengi, it is absolutely a milestone!
Neither did Elon. What’s the point of A?
Long term we want efficiency. The market is SUPER inefficient right now. People are buying GPUs and stacking them up in warehouses so that they get their allocation. Companies are taking retired jet engines, and turning them into very expensive generators. SoftBank just defaulted on a bunch of power generation orders (increased cost for everyone, but didn’t create the value). My point is that it will be a painful road to get to the efficient market which will likely be a recession because of a massive slow down in spending
A is a reddit meme-argument. It assumes that the labor-theory-of-value is a fact and implies that only fungible IC's add value, whereas irreplaceable great men who organize multi-trillion-dollar companies from scratch contribute nothing. It's a way for them to advance for their silly worldview while obscuring its absurd foundational assumptions.
Your argument sounds like a satire of itself. Surely it's begging the question to say that CEOs are great men who are irreplaceable and individual contributors are fungible.
What exactly have any of us regular people gotten from more Nvidia shareholder value? More expensive chips and AI slop?
What on earth are you talking about. The exponential growth in the 1990s, percentage wise, far outpaced the AI bubble. Go look at Intel, Microsoft, lucid, etc from the dot com boom. This is the problem with 20-somethings’ hot takes on the market: no history.
The '90's bubble is what the AI "bubble" would be if everyone you spoke to was glowing with excitement about AI, and a few niche analysts were raising concerns about capex.
Instead this "bubble" is packed with people who detest AI and have extremely bearish views on it's future. If this "bubble" does pop, I think it will be the first one in history that every single person saw coming.
Almost every bubble ever had its detractors. Yet they still happened because those who actually had decision power and market shaping power didn't care about any downsides from popping a larger bubble so they just wanted to make money.
>Almost every bubble ever had its detractors.
Absolutely correct. That's why I mentioned the niche in my comment.
But no bubble ever has been predominately detractors.
And AI isn’t either.
Bubbles are driven and crashed by people who put their money where their mouth is.
So online discourse doesn't matter much.
This slavish devotion to shareholder value above all else is pretty gross.
He cheated, multiple times, he is scum for that.
He seems to have consorted with a spy and evaded export bans. He is a criminal for that.
Oh, but he made people a lot of money? All good! /s
Throwing all morals and ethics out the window because of the eCoNoMy is insane.
The cult of personality around CEOs is unhealthy.
Both can be true. What if Jensen is a guy who did bad things and Nvidia triggers a recession because it loses its central status on AI?
If a single person was keeping the market from a recession, then that itself is the issue, not the removal of that person.
not necessarily. One athlete's performance can be the difference between a team winning and losing. One general can make the difference between winning and losing a war. No risk also comes with the downside of no reward, artificially constraining high achievers so we dont become too reliant on them just means everyone is equally low achieving
Trillions of investment across people's retirement accounts being vulnerable to one heart attack, stroke, or car accident isn't resilient.
We need better markets and recessions are the cost of cleaning markets up, unfortunately.
I never said there wouldn't be consequences to the economy. I said it's crazy to put up with such bad behavior to spare the economy.
The economy is everything. Ask Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
The comments in these threads are somewhat sickening. That so many commenters here see no problem with his behavior is troubling.
Welcome to HackerNews!
Hero worshippers.
Par for the course on HN, unfortunately. I once thought the stereotypes about "tech bros" were overblown, but HN users seem dedicated to proving them right. Something's gone wrong if you're making comments complaining about how ethics don't matter at all in life and money is the only thing to ever be considered.
Totally agree. And that's late-stage capitalism for you. For a site named "hacker news" the hacker spirit is noticeably absent here. Instead you have simps for billionaires.
If anything Jensen Huang is the exact embodiment of the hacker spirit. An engineer who singlehandedly created one of the most valuable companies on earth by creating the chips that AI runs on.
I dont get how you can talk about the "hacker spirit" but then talk about "late-stage capitalism" (essentially the flat-earthism of economy) and tech founders.
> I dont get how you can talk about the "hacker spirit" but then talk about "late-stage capitalism" (essentially the flat-earthism of economy) and tech founders.
Can you elaborate on why you think not a single aspect of late stage capitalism is true in any capacity, like flat-earthism?
What are you smoking?
> An engineer who singlehandedly created one of the most valuable companies on earth
Nvidia has 42k employees.
Nvidia chips are not the only chips AI runs on. Google for example runs everything on their own TPU's.
I don't know how you can talk so much out of your ass. Simping for billionaires is not "hacker spirit".
How many employees did it start with?
3 employees. That was 33 years ago. If you seriously think he is solely responsible for nvidia’s success I am willing to bet that you also voted for Trump.
Also, solely, no. Majorly, is obvious from the history.
You would be wrong but way to live up to the stereotype.
The thing to remember every time you see the orange, so you don't forget, is that you are posting on the promotional website of a multibillion-dollar private equity firm.
This is of course true that YC provides this platform but, tapping in to my religious upbringing, it's a bit like confusing a church for the building it's in. Ycombinator owns the building that the community meets in, but the community is bigger than the landlord. The landlord can set some rules and influence what happens in the building, but if they impose too much on the community it will find a different building to meet in.
If you think that the values of a church have nothing to do with the discussions that happen inside of the church, I'm not sure what to tell you. If you believe the opposite, that's exactly the same point that I was just making.
I think we almost certainly agree at least about the nature of YC, but I didn't make my point clearly. A church is a community that meets in a building; the building the community meets in is not the church. Many smaller churches meet in neighborhood centers that are state-owned, if the state imposed a no prayer rule on meetings in the neighborhood center, I suspect the community would find a new building to meet in.
By analogy: the amoral VC nitwits that own the HN servers could try to enforce their values on the discussions here, but doing so with a heavy hand would quickly drive the true 'hacker' community elsewhere. Dang has a very light hand, especially when it comes to topics around YC that get discussed here.
Sure, there are no shortage of bootlicking CEO cargo cultists here looking for the right turtleneck/leather jacket combo to ascend to their rightful place at the top of the pile with PG and Sama... And being associated with the HN community's ethos certainly gives an undeserved glow to YC, which like all VC accelerators really is just a predatory tool of the wealthy investor class to maintain control of capital (a poor kid that grows up and founds a company that creates a ton of wealth could have dangerous ideas, best to capture them early and give them an approved board and structures to constrain them...)
That said, I frequently come across things here that subvert the platform's owners. For example, I think pretty much every member of my anti-VC founder alliance [0] found it through my own comments here. I get personal joy from promoting that here, subverting YC's own platform to challenge their golden goose.
So yes, know whose house this is, but stay aware of who has the power (us).
[0] https://NOVC.fyi
> This slavish devotion to shareholder value above all else is pretty gross.
Anti-capitalists appealing to bourgeoisie values in their zeal to destroy a capitalist icon is pretty freakin' rich.
And we get to buy GPUs again in normalized prices. How's that bad for the economy exactly?
I’m stoked about my next computer. It does kind of suck to see one’s retirement account get cut by 30% even when in mutual funds…
How is it going to get cut by 30%? NVDA is only 6% of SP500.
Everyone else depends on them.
Nvidia stock price is now lower than it was a year ago. Has been declining for about 6 months, highly volatile, with a step sell off starting a month ago.
Cisco's stock price was similarly very high during the dotcom boom, but then collapsed, and took 17 years to build back up.
The thing people keep forgetting is nvidia makes graphics cards. Not CPUs, not a range of different products. Graphics cards. With a software moat. Their only business advantage is that people currently want a lot of their graphics cards and are currently dependent on their software. All that can be competed against. China is already putting out their own cards. Google has TPUs. AMD makes both CPUs and GPUs. The memory prices will soon fall as more capacity comes online.
It's practically a certainty that this stock price will keep falling. They're valuable, but in a competitive market, likely not 10x more valuable than their $17 stock price in 2022. When they fall harder so will the AI economy.
Nvidia makes a lot of CPUs, my dude. And network switches. They’re full stack.
Wtf why is everyone assuming Nvidia skirted an export ban and treasonously sold chips to China? It was done legally with the US government taking a cut: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/07/business/economy/nvidia-c...
Nvidia is a profitmaxxing company in a profitmaxxing economy and so it is going to profitmaxx; the criticism should lie with the US government: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/republican-senator-urges...
Everybody has a responsibility to uphold rule of law in any democracy. I'm tired of the narrative that U.S. companies are helpless entities that can only seek profit at the expense of everybody else. Ok then, if it was profitable to wipe out the entire planet with a nuclear war (Vault-tech) would you be fine with a company doing so?
No, that's literally how it works. Companies are amoral and the companies that compete the hardest within the bounds of the law (or outside of it when corruption is allowed) will win over time. They have an advantage and it's why you see most companies are that way. Any of them that did not take those advantages lost.
Universal claims require universal evidence, of which you didn't present.
- Volkswagen didn't win with Dieselgate. ($30b+ in fines).
- BP didn't win with Deepwater Horizon (65x their yearly net income paid in fines and settlements)
- Enron, Theranos, Bernie Madoff, FTX, Fyre Festival, Lehman Brothers, etc.
There is a MASSIVE graveyard of companies that flagrantly broke the law and didn't "Win" over time. Just because you can name a couple of companies that broke the law and still exists today speaks to survivorship bias, not a universal conclusion. Even Silicon Valley Bank, which didn't break laws but played "fast and loose" with customer funds did in fact, not get out ahead of other banks.
It's not really "Just a narrative", AFAIK it's based on two rulings: 'Dodge v. Ford Motor Co.' and 'eBay Domestic Holdings, Inc. v. Newmark.' One legally enshrined answer to this is Benefit Corporations AKA B Corps. I'm not saying they're without their own flaws but they are a step in the right direction.
This is often repeated on HN, but it's a popular myth. [1] Executives have a fiduciary dury to act in the best interests of the company, but "maximize profits" is not something enshrined by law or legal precedent.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...
When I registered my single-member LLC I had to come up with the by-laws and in the template I used it said I "have a fiduciary duty to maximize the benefits to the owners of the company" or something like that. I think that is based on some US Law.
Ever since then I have tried my best to abide by my fiduciary duty to myself. :-)
If you read dodge v ford, it doesn’t say you must maximize profits but you can’t defraud your investors. The profit maximization myth needs to die and maybe less people will act like they should try it
But it is "just a narrative". Example from this year: Warner Brother's shareholders voted against an excessive pay package for David Zaslov, CEO. For you "corporations have to maximize profits for shareholders" nitwits, that's the shareholders voting against pay package to save the corporation money and add to the profits of the company.
The board gave him his pay package.
Corporations are not always obligated to maximize profits. They just say this to justify unpopular things they do. They ignore it when it reduces the pay of people in the C-suite.
https://deadline.com/2026/06/david-zaslav-2025-pay-rejected-...
Whilst I agree with the idea and sentiment, what do you suggest as a mechanism to enforce such responsibility? How do we handle companies that do not act responsibly?
We throw the leadership in jail? They either knew or they were negligent.
If I, personally, were to ignore international trade bans, I'd almost certainly go to prison. We can't send companies to prison, and companies are designed to spread responsibility, so we send the ones who have symbolic responsibility to prison instead, alongside anyone who can be shown to have engaged in individually incriminating behavior. If you're steering the ship, you are responsible for what ship does and what happens to it.
Change the wording of the law so companies that sacrifice long term value for short term gain can be sued for securities fraud. Make the law so "fiduciary responsibility" means over a long term time horizon. Judges are already making best effort rulings on if they think a company's actions were positive or negative for shareholder value in current security fraud cases, so this change would not add additional subjectivity.
Fines and jail.
Therapy /s
This is Adam Smith's invisible hand - not only that self-interest leads to community interest, but that normal people are "forced" to do evil by the logic of the markets.
Getting approval from the Commerce Department seems exactly like upholding the rule of law to me.
If somehow we were stupid enough to make it legal, then yeah, I guess I can't fault the company for blowing us all up. We would deserve it.
We're a nation of laws. Elections matter.
Laws are not sufficient for a society to survive. There have to be shared norms and morals layered on top. If we are a nation only of laws, we are doomed to extinction.
I don't get this line of thinking. What is the point of profit. Why do we pursue it? And what good is it if the society in which it is useful no longer exists or cannot function to let you benefit from such profit?
There is something really wrong with all these "extrapolate a single part of society to the max because law allows it". Systems don't work this way, every single system requires balance and that balance does not depend on law. Law was created so we could strive to achieve balance in the system. It's imperfect but somehow we think the imperfection is intentional. It's backwards.
>We're a nation of laws
It's the people who protect the law, not the law that protects the people. If your entire country consists of sniveling profiteers who use laws as an excuse to abdicate their own judgement you don't have a nation and you don't have laws.
The company can do it because the law said so, the CEO can do it because the company said so I can do so because someone else said to etc. Responsibility isn't a game of musical chairs
>Elections matter.
The last thirty years is proof that it doesn't. At least at a policy level. It does matter for containing discontent.
I cannot condone this blithe abdication of responsibility. Even agreeing with xenocide?! I hope you wouldn’t be pushing the button when it actually came time to launch.
You conveniently left out the “done legally” part
So we're potentially looking at a much different story, where the government took a bribe to ignore or enable an end run around an export ban. "CEO had affairs" is a far less damaging story to the United States than "our laws and national security are for sale".
> treasonously sold chips to China? It was done legally with the US government taking a cut
This is still treason, just with additional players.
The question isn't whether NVIDIA skirted an export ban. Companies are permitted to sell certain quantities of certain chips to certain Chinese companies.
The issue is that the _optics_ look suspicious if newly formed companies without proper vetting were able to receive very large quantities of these chips (either directly from NVIDIA or routed through shell companies linked to Alice Huang).
Where there's smoke there may not be fire, but the prevailing perspective I see is "needs more information"
It’s also not unreasonable to think the board knows more than we do (as they should).
I think your article reference another company (New Matrix) and not the one of Alice Huang (Megaspeed).
Right, because MegaSpeed is a Singapore-based company. Now that company may have channeled those chips to China, but officially Nvidia was not responsible for that unless it is proven that they knew about it. Investigations are ongoing but seems there is no concrete evidence for either the first or second part yet.
The basic allegations are:
* Megaspeed was evading US sanctions against China
* Megaspeed CEO was a Chinese state agent
* Huang was sleeping with Megaspeed CEO
Therefore, one of the following must be true:
(1) [Unlikely] Huang knowingly supported the evasion of sanctions. If so, he should be fired for breaking the law.
(2) Huang was tricked. If so, his judgement is now suspect.
Huang's argument is (2). In this case, the evalaution of his judgement is:
(A) Is this a one-off mistake? If so, he should be retained - he's human.
(B) Is this a pattern? If so, he should be fired - he's an ongoing risk (e.g., via regulatory action).
Huang resigned because the second affair indicated (B) - he's an ongoing risk.
As a result, the question of "who knew what when" is actually beside the point. Retaining Huang risks ongoing, overwhelming government action for evading sanctions - and the board members want 0 personal liability in that investigation.
"""Therefore, one of the following must be true:
(1) [Unlikely] Huang knowingly supported the evasion of sanctions. If so, he should be fired for breaking the law.
(2) Huang was tricked. If so, his judgement is now suspect.""
No - it's absolutely not a choice between those two things and neither are likely.
A company bought some chips from Nvidia - and illegally moved some to China.
That's it.
Jenson knows many of Nvidias customers. Probably thousands.
He's not 'tricked' because he doesn't have some magical 'judge of character' - the insinuation is preposterous.
--> Companies do illegal stuff all the timee; this one was skirting export laws.
That's it.
He's not a mind reader, and she's probably not a spy either, I'm sure she told the CCP some things because that's how it works in China, just as US citizens tell US gov a lot of things as well.
Ultimately he bears some responsibility, and there's enough concern to look into it, but this is Occam's Razor - the lady was back door shipping gear, just as thousands of business do.
Just as more than 50% of the materials in Russian cruise missiles are 'made in USA' - and illegal 'smuggled' into Russia, and by 'smuggled' I mean sent in the regular mail.
Did they even move the chips to China? What if they just rented the GPUs out from Singapore?
Based on my understanding, running a data center in Singapore that leases GPUs to Chinese companies is perfectly legal. (Strange, right?)
If the Singaporean data center company is owned/controlled by China, that might make it illegal.
This is a good explanation of the nuance. Should be top level comment.
As both of the people you're talking about are named Huang, shortening to just that name is a little confusing.
Every Huang in their comment is Jensen.
From three allegations, you can't say anything is true. We do know that one of the allegations is true (they were having sex), but that doesn't really tell us much.
Tell us a client CEO had very close undue access and possible leverage. Should be enough for a firing.
I can't think of an example of that.
He should be arrested for evading billions in sanctions and the companies leadership arrested as well for enabling the behavior. This is far beyond just being fired.
Or 3) Huang knew what Huang was doing with the chips and looked the other way because he was sleeping with her.
US sanction law seems to be really scary. Everyone is scared of it.
I used to work at a company where the sanction was around something mundane like Excel or something, and we had to make it an urgent priority to ban all users from Russia to access ... spinning the wheel ... our spreadsheet functionality.
My co-workers and I found it funny that US decided to ban Russia from using an online Excel-like functionality.
If Huang is compromised, a national security risk and must go what are the implications of knowingly flying said national security risk on AF-1? Is it a pattern?
(2)(A)(i) Did he and others at Nvidia try to cover it up?
Him not knowing the sanctions were being evaded seems absolutely unreasonable to me. we're talking about millions of 60k$+ gpus.
The idea that he would somehow not know that they mostly end up in China is ridiculous to me. That guy must be connected up the wazu
Passing a law against selling a chip to China is no different than prohibiting a farmer from selling food to Chinese soldiers. Neither seller is giving China munitions that could kill Americans.
That may not be entirely true. KYC laws exist for this reason.
The United States should be sanctioning that company and possibly Singapore.
I would agree, and even Nvidia if it can be proven that they knew about this. But my point is that so far it hasn’t been shown, yet people are assuming it as fact.
famously, lutnick did nothing about it
original article: https://www.axios.com/2026/11/11/bessent-lutnick-megaspeed-n...
full article: https://archive.is/tAVBq
Lutnick has to go
https://www.ft.com/content/190e5eea-7461-4b26-8b69-17a3288e3...
> Now that company may have channeled those chips to China, but officially Nvidia was not responsible for that unless it is proven that they knew about it.
It is almost adorable how naive this statement is.
For export controlled items like weapons, nuclear materials, GPUs, etc. you have to file for an export permit where you attest that you have performed sufficient due diligence and KYC that you strongly believe the person you are selling to is the end user.
You are literally accepting 100% liability for the items until they are returned to the US or irreversibly destroyed.
Your allegations are unfounded. No one but a few people really know what was going on, and one certainty is that the current us administration isn’t going to take the blame for it.
I wonder if he was skirting the cuts he was supposed to be giving to the US government?
He used his influence to get the US government to do this. It's not like profit maxing takes priority over national security and laws. It's a vector of attack properly used by China.
It's not clear from the article you linked whether MegaSpeed was an approved buyer of NVidia chips or not.
Megaspeed is (was?) an official Nvidia Cloud Partner and Nvidia sold them on the order of 140,000 GPUs.
Megaspeed was not supposed to take those chips and immediately send them to China. That's the part that matters.
But we don’t know that megaspeed did that. Right now, it looks like they rented compute to Chinese entities. Which is legal.
Sure. But they absolutely were authorized by Nvidia to buy them for their Southeast Asian data centers, some of which actually even have existed.
I encourage you to browse some of the BIS settlements and court cases to learn how these things go. Simple diversion is quite literally the least sophisticated approach to circumventing EAR. This entire scheme was blatantly obvious, and under a different administration it wouldn’t have happened at all.
They were smugglemaxxing
Smugglemaxxing and snugglemaxxing has lead to strugglemaxxing.
who are you trying to convince, me or yourself?
What do you expect Nvidia to do, post armed guards in Asia to make sure the GPUs don't move around? He sold to an eligible entity. Unless he had foreknowledge they were planning to smuggle the chips, he shouldn't have any responsibility for what happens to them.
Nvidia is expected to have an export compliance program to verify that their products are going where they were intended to go.
There's no evidence I've seen the products ever left Singapore.
That would be a much more convincing argument if he didn't have an affair with an executive there who is also a spy. My guess is he did know, the board knows he knows. At least. Helping facilitate the smuggling wouldn't be totally crazy either given these circumstances and his public positions.
> What do you expect Nvidia to do, post armed guards in Asia to make sure the GPUs don't move around?
Yes. Some companies that deal in export restricted items will have entire teams of US citizens that regularly do inventory checks in foreign customers facilities. If a single item is missing and it can't be located within 24 hours they pack everything up and put it on a cargo plane back to the US.
It is a trivial amount of money when you are talking about $100m+ deals.
For real. And if the US government assumed MegaSpeed's executive was a Chinese spy for the past year, then why didn't they do anything to stop this or add MegaSpeed to export controls? The whole thing wreaks.
I have a pretty easy answer for that. I bet all the money Jensen donated to Trump might have something to do with it. And my suspicion is that someone that doesn't like to do look the other way when someone is colluding with China might have blown the cover on this, let's say Marco Rubio that has presidential ambitions (it will never happen, but still he really wants to).
Believe it or not, companies are legally required to do due diligence on such things. For example, I work for a huge bank and when there's even the faintest hint of money possibly being funneled through an intermediary to a sanctioned state/person or a company on the Entities List they will absolutely send someone to investigate. Physically, if it is deemed necessary.
A multi-billion dollar deal in Singapore would absolutely require some folks to physically go out there and do some inventory at the very least. It needs to be in the realm of, "We walked the data center and counted how many of our products were installed and we were shown their yet-installed inventory" documentation. "It matches what we sold them." A great big, fancy report. With pictures.
How much would that cost? Basically nothing compared to how much trouble they could get in for not doing that due diligence. Compare how much it would've cost against how much their stock just dropped.
There's still no evidence I've seen that the chips ever left Singapore. I believe the Singapore company rented out compute to some entities in China. What then? You can't expect nvidia to enforce draconian controls on the usage of the GPUs once they've been delivered.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/megaspeed-statement-n...
give it time, I think there's plenty of evidence already that Megaspeed was not the company it pretended to be.
> What do you expect Nvidia to do, post armed guards in Asia to make sure the GPUs don't move around?
I expect them to follow the law, which, in this case, appears to be a bit more complex than "you can't sell to china but it's okay if you sell to someone else who sells to china."
Not to mention the fact that he was sleeping with the Megaspeed exec makes it all extremely suspicious.
You think maybe schtupping the CEO of said company might impact his willingness or ability to do due diligence?
There’s a thing called know you customer (KYC) law. You can in fact be held liable if you can’t prove you sufficiently vetted a customer before engaging in a transaction with them. Saying that you’re right there’s only so much they can do after vetting.
But like is Huang supposed to personally vet every customer, seem preposterous. The only real culpability angle is if Huang influenced the process to not vet this specific customer due the ongoing relationship not if nvidia compliance office was systematically undervet companies the disenfranchised is subtle but the framing is important because changes the kind of proof the market will expect
We don't have to determine that. The decades long prison sentence linked to this court case will do it for us.
Ill bet my life savings, and all future earnings that nobody spends a day in jail over this.
Even the DOJ refuses to acknowledge this lady was a spy.
The journalist in question at the NYT that broke this story has done many stories on AI and all their sources for all their scoops have been from founders/employees at Anthropic.
Anthropic spent $40mm getting some select politicians elected who would do their bidding. They're calling in those favors day one.
Westerners are so one shot by Hollywood that the NYTs can just show a pretty chinese women next to a tech CEO, accuse them of being a spy and everyone instantly believes shes the equivalent of a Chinese Bond women. Literally zero evidence presented she's a spy.
The only suspicious link of Megamind to China is a random website that has their same design for a random company based out of Hong Kong. Anyone could have staged that website.
There's literally zero evidence presented but the public has already convicted all these people based on a few anonymous sources from articles written by Authors with ties to AI labs.
The whole thing reaks top to bottom as a political hitjob.
Lets be a little more level headed here and not let media outlets think for us.
We can and should hold both to task.
Jensen's job as a CEO was to generate revenue. He was doing "sales" using the reverse-honeypot strategy. He got the chips sold, they were permitted by Lutnick, he came home, shook hands with daddy Trump. My god, what a way to create shareholder value. The revelations of the other indiscretions were the 2nd and 3rd wave assaults in case he was withering the 1st attack of the classic tried and true "alleged spy lover" offensive. The drip drip leaks (NYT+WSJ+FT we see you) were timed after the midterms when it became clear that Trump had no more linebackers to defend the line. Jensen had no fighting chance at that point.
With Jensen's reputation and tenure at nv, I was sure they wouldn't fire him. I also think that the new political climate has some influence on this decision.
> Wtf why is everyone assuming Nvidia skirted an export ban
Because the woman he has an affair with happens to run a shell company that funnels chips to China and skirts the export ban. What a coincidence, huh?
I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that.
Affairs don't take down CEOs of major public companies. It's kind of assumed that they all do it. Like, how many subordinates of Elon supposedly had one of his kids?
Everyone involved has to be CYAing. It's pretty likely that a whole boatload of people were involved and none of them want to be the scapegoat that gets to go to jail for it. If they can sell this as something as simple as Jensen getting tricked by a cute spy, then everyone involved can sleep easy and Jensen will probably keep controlling things behind the scenes for a while.
Affairs with direct reports will absolutely take down a CEO. Add the spy to this and the fact that it's multiple women and it's easy to see why this happened - and it should. Public company CEOs don't get to do whatever the hell they want, including break all company policies and ethics because the stock price is up. Especially not when it has all been made public.
My guess is that someone knew this and leaked it because they also have insider information that Nvidia is about to be forced to write down the AI trade anyways and they 1) don't want Jensen walking away with a golden parachute and/or 2) want to use the spectacle of Jensen's infidelity to color the narrative or distract from something.
> with the US government taking a cut
Historically, this is not a guarantee that the conduct is question is legal.
porque no los dos?
Because a Hacker News is autistic and can’t read between the lines
lol reading comprehension isn't your main skill is it? maybe you can readmaxx or learnmaxx or trymaxx to understandmaxx what the fuckmaxx your talkingmaxx about
It's bizarre to me how many people here seem to seriously believe this is actually about cheating on his wife. It seems pretty clear that this is related to the glaringly obvious, continued export of GPUs to China, expressly violating an export ban. Combine that with having an affair with a woman who just so happens to be integral to the smuggling operation. It just looks too bad. Opens Nvidia up to a world of hurt once the dems take over in January, and Huang himself to serious criminal charges. And that's just the stuff that's public information. We have to assume the board knows more than us.
This stuff has probably been going on behind the scenes for a while. The leak about the affair is just the catalyst that accelerated it all.
>>> seem to seriously believe this is actually about cheating on his wife
Sleeping with subordinates exposes the company to risk from employment-related lawsuits. He'd be in just as much trouble if he'd done that while single.
He didn’t resign until after it was known he was having a second affair with a direct report. That’s a huge liability for a sexual harassment lawsuit
What does “huge liability” constitute for a company of nVidia’s size? Change from the couch pillows?
As in they’d have to let him go anyway, same as the Coldplay concert guy. The dollar value of the legal liability is not as relevant as the reputational and stock price hit they’d take
Worse: now that they know, there's personal liability for the directors that no insurance would cover.
Media is reporting a third affair with a different employee now lol.
> serious criminal charges
I’ll believe it when I see it. In the wake of the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, a single low level executive was prosecuted during the whole ordeal.
I doubt any GPUs were sold to China because of this woman.
China just needed her to sleep with Jensen, so they could get him fired. Nvidia is at a loss without him. Knock Nvidia down a peg.
If China wanted more Nvidia GPUs you really think sexy spy was their strategy? You think China is upset right now they lost their sexy spy? No, this went all according to plan for China - Jensen is gone, and a weaker Nvidia remains.
This is like Apple losing Jobs. The company remains, but the vision is gone.
I don't think this is necessarily planned by CCP.
It might just as well come as a big surprise to them how much chaos an incompetent board can bring that far exceeds a spy's capability.
With thousands of subordinate and a board of directors above him - you really think Jensen could sneak thousand of GPUs anywhere? You really think an old billionaire in a fast paced industry has time for those types of games?
I think this just confirms that he had knowledge of gpus going to China and the board wants to minimize the damage now. His infidelity does not help but I doubt the board would have ousted him for that
I think the point is that whether he did or didn't, there's so much smoke now, that Nvidia is going to be spending the next few years getting drilled by absolutely every law enforcement agency and government. Even if it genuinely turns out that nothing even slightly bad happened, it's quite damaging the amount of scrutiny Nvidia is going to be under for the foreseeable future.
> Nvidia is going to be spending the next few years getting drilled by absolutely every law enforcement agency and government.
Sounds like this was known or suspected at the highest levels of the administration (Rubio was discussing it per recent reporting). So the question becomes: did Nvidia use a cut out to knowingly avoid the export ban, and if so, did the administration know this?
Yes, they did. Trump talked about an AI CEO committing a crime in the 60 minutes episode, and it is speculated that he was referring to Jensen. And Marco Rubio was frustrated and kept flagging it, but Trump and Lutnick squashed any investigations into it.
Especially after Democrats now control both House and Senate, that too by a wide margin.
It’s not the infidelity part, it’s the undisclosed relationship with a subordinate part. That’s covered in HR training and is a fireable offense in every company I’ve been part of.
While it's a fireable offense, my experience with senior management has been that the company is more than happy to help cover it up for them... until they do a bad, and then it becomes a quick ticket to can them without having to admit the real reason for canning them.
Seems like that could actually map pretty well to this case.
That's what everyone keeps saying. INAL but that would give any fired executive hella leverage when the board finally decide to unveil what they've been hiding. I mean, they'll go to discovery and ... perjure themselves? Really?
What claim would the executive have? They can be fired by the board for any reason (except for a few explicitly prohibited reasons), so "they lied about why they fired me" doesn't work as a claim unless you're alleging the real reason is because they're racist or something similar.
Three things: Selling GPUs and knowingly avoiding legal restrictions
A relationship with a foreign agent
An inappropriate relationship with a subordinate
Two of these potentially have serious legal consequences.
>That’s covered in HR training
Oh sorry Jensen you broke one of the rules in the HR handbook we have to fire you now nothing we can do.
It's in the handbook so that people who ignore the law don't have the excuse of ignorance.
It isn't an arbitrary policy.
Dating a subordinate isn't against the law.
Was he the only one who knew?
This.
It makes absolutely no sense to fire him strictly for the relationships. So it's either deeper legal concerns or the board has other grievances and is using this as an excuse.
Everyone on that board will have had knowledge of GPUs going to China. Everyone on on THIS board has knowledge about GPUs going to China. Jeez.
I'm going to suggest that everyone or a lot of people on the board likely knew about the affairs as well. Jensen wasn't exactly hiding it.
This is a CYA move by the board as all this is becoming public.
If the reporting is to be believed, they ended up selling around $7.5B to China through Singapore.
They did ~$90B in revenue last quarter.
I sometimes can't imagine the avarice it takes to do things like this. Could you imagine having a $100 bill in your hand and going "Yea, I'll break the law and possibly destroy my life to steal $7.50"
The difference between 100 billion and 107.5 billion is a 7.5 BILLION dollars.
Another way to put it is the difference between 75 MILLION and 7.5 BILLION is rounded to 7.4 BILLION.
The scale of numbers is huge and it is not just another 7.5 billion dollars.
>"Yea, I'll break the law and possibly destroy my life to steal $7.50"
It's worse than that. Much much much worse than plain greed. Supply of manufacturing capacity for this kind of hardware is severely limited. TSMC can't produce enough to meet all that demand. NVIDIA not selling 7.5B worth of chips to China does not mean they would lose the 7.5B worth of chips. They could have sold them to American companies, which are all in a frenzy to build datacenters.
No, this is just a classic case of treachery. Jensen Huang, whether bought, blackmailed or because of tribalism, has decided to support China. In an interview, he was getting very angsty when someone asked him why sell chips to China, and said "victimizing them, turning them into an enemy, likely isn't the best answer":
https://youtu.be/Hrbq66XqtCo?t=3517
People refuse to believe it when it's a billionaire, but they too can be very tribal, even if they lived most of their life in the so called melting pot of the United States of America.
They had some amount of plausible deniability until the "spy" story made the news then they didn't.
So, you think that crime is good? What's your point here?
Yeah it’s great.
It'd be so funny if he started actually sharing knowledge to China out of spite after all these. I know he is way too rich to do that, but one can dream.
sounds like the administration knew it too.
The unwarranted suspicion of every semiconductor CEO of Chinese descent, from Intel to AMD to Broadcom, could be a real risk going forward.
Jensen’s missteps have been many, but I do hope it does not become a cloud over an entire group of leaders.
and of those married to people of Chinese descent..
I've already seen racist memes about Zuckerberg and others.
The number of people here who don’t take sexual harassment in the workplace by the CEO of a world-leading company to be a serious, fireable offense—and the fact that so many of you claim to care about things like women’s rights and social justice—is mind-boggling to me. This is a man who could be fired just for OFFERING to have sex with a subordinate. The fact the he did it, and that she got promoted seals his fate as a predator in my mind. But we live in an age where the only truth people believe is the one that makes them feel a certain way, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.
> sexual harassment in the workplace
I had only heard about a consensual relationship.
Which most company policies allow in some form. Peer-to-peer is straight forward. Supervisor-subordinate (relevant here) is less tolerated. You just have to disclose it and maybe sign a "love contract."
Parent is oblivious to this and has already made up their mind that these policies don't exist
> The fact the he did it, and that she got promoted seals his fate as a predator in my mind.
I'm very aware that these policies exist, and I'm certain the CEO of Nvidia was also aware. That he decided to circumvent them says all you need to know, really. Even if it's consensual, what happens when she decides she wants to move on from the relationship? What about her peers that didn't receive promotions while she did? This is why these laws exist.
Your hypothetical makes zero sense as your questions have simple yes/no answers.
> Even if it's consensual, what happens when she decides she wants to move on from the relationship?
Then they're no longer in a relationship and still have to follow HR/company policies.
>What about her peers that didn't receive promotions while she did?
Did they follow the company policy (e.g., hiring committee recusal) or not for the promotions?
>This is why these laws exist.
Did the company policies follow employment regulations when setting and enforcing their policy?
The implication here is that they didn't follow company policy or else this wouldn't be an issue. HR would have said, "Yes we're aware of the relationship, all of our policies have been properly followed in relation to it." The fact that we're not hearing that means the answers to all these questions don't have pretty answers.
> The implication here is that they didn't follow company policy or else this wouldn't be an issue.
I see your opinion. In MY opinion, this wouldn't be an issue but for the spy scandal. Now, anything that comes up (complying or not complying with policy) triggers more urgency by shareholders and the board to make change. They don't care about HR due process.
That’s a fair point. It is hard for me to get past the idea of someone in his position somehow stumbling onto this set of choices, though.
Well, I guess they should fire her, then.
To be honest, even with those policies, a supervisor-subordinate relationship can be problematic. There is an undeniable power dynamic at play, so even when it looks consensual it's hard to be sure. I'm not saying it wasn't consensual in this case, but when person A can impact the future of person B, person B might feel coerced to "consent".
Anyway, not sure if that's the case here but it's hard to rule out entirely.
yall got it backwards. pussy is the power dynamic. men need it, have to have it, totally controlled by it. man not using woman for sex. everyone like sex. woman use pussy power to get promotion
But we don’t know when, it could have been well after she was promoted
I think we can all read between the lines that no such thing existed in this case because he was married.
Interestingly, no!
These policies are intentionally narrowed to workplace conflicts of interest. HR doesn't want to manage morality clauses or stuff outside the workplace.
If you want to have a consensual relationship with someone you need to guarantee they don't work for you somehow first, really.
I think the real world is not that black and white, really... There is nuance in those interactions as well.
There is zero nuance in a boss sleeping with someone who is a subordinate which is why every company very explicitly forbids it. Companies don't even allow people who are already married to be put in a situation like that.
Once one person has the ability to get the other fired, ruin their career, blackball them from the industry, etc. you can't know if they actually freely consented or not. Once you have coercive control over someone how could you even know that's not why they "consented?" Even if they initiated you can't know if at some point they wanted to stop but now felt they couldn't because of fear of retaliation.
No such thing as consensual when saying no to the boss could result in getting fired.
If you go that route you can extrapolate to some absurd degree. Basically any relationship with a power imbalance becomes sexual harassment.
Yes, you can extrapolate, and our society does. This is why ministers aren't supposed to have relationships with their clergy, therapists are not supposed to have relationships with their clients, lawyers, doctors, etc. The list goes on and on.
Can become, yes. Depends a bit on what exactly the nature of the power imbalance is. Which is why there are usually strict rules about relationships with your reports and how to resolve the situation. Like reporting it to HR so the work positions can be shifted in a way to move positions so that there is no longer a reporting relationship between the two.
Exactly. At every place I've worked or consulted at, bosses dating subordinates is not permitted. I have seen multiple instances where people have to move teams/managers because they start a relationship.
These restrictions exist in most workplaces. Boss/subordinate relationships can result in extortion and bad behavior, regardless of which party starts it.
Congrats you just figured out divorce laws and alimony from first principles.
Wow you are mere inches from understanding the concept of sexual harassment. Keep going!
You mean infantilising adults and denying their agency to feel better about yourself.
Obviously it depends from case to case and there are certain lines that shouldn’t be crossed but otherwise consenting adults should be free to make their own decisions.
You do understand the issue of mixing consent with power imbalance?
So is Huang only allowed to have sex with Lisa Su or something? But even then Nvidia dwarfs AMD in power.
There is always Elon I guess…
100% of his relationships have been with nvidia subordinates and business partners. You realize there are more women on the planet right?
> 100% of his relationships
*that we know of
Got it, that's why I only date girls who meet the following criteria:
* My age, +/- 2 years.
* Comparable emotional and intellectual development.
* Same level of education.
* Earn within 10% of what I earn.
* Total net worth within 10% of mine.
* Muscular, so we're of comparable strength.
* Exact same cultural and ethnic background.
* No chronic diseases or disabilities, since I don't have any and that would be an unfair advantage.
* Read Hacker News just as pathologically frequently, so we both know when to short NVIDIA at approximately the same time.
In attempting to be intentionally obtuse you almost wrapped around to getting it again.
The strength differential is why the domestic violence procedure is what it is and the financial differential is why asset division and alimony during divorce exists. You made a joke and then basically described the foundation for an equitable marriage.
How do you reconcile "love contracts" [0]?
[0] https://www.woodsrogers.com/insights/publications/this-valen...
I've never worked at any company that used them or heard about them. Instead we take yearly training saying that even flirting with the idea is a cause for immediate termination.
Do you have stats on how common these are? Is it more popular in some non US country maybe?
Your companies had zero tolerance for consensual relationships at the office? Not even married couples? Possible, but the exception because that really constrains your talent base.
Good idea about stats. Please share what you find.
Do you suppose Jensen had a love contract with his subordinate, when the breaking of the news of their extramarital relationship led to a 20% drop in stock and the removal of Jensen as CEO?
You're asking a leading question with flawed premises and assumptions.
1. The subordinate story broke yesterday. The stock dropped 12% (not 20) and recovered half.
2. But for the spy/export control subversion, do you think a CEO would be stepping down for banging a co-worker? LOL...
Considering he was fired it's the other way around. This at most only applies to very small companies or to people at the very bottom on the totem pole.
How do you know the boss initiated?
Yeah. It’s not like being an ultra chad billionaire with great biceps and confident personality is NOT attractive to women. Maybe her husband wasn’t doing it for her (legit feel bad for that man, whoever he is, today).
I have only met the husband a few times but he is a great guy. Feel bad for him and their kids
Or when saying yes is good for your career, which is quoted to be the case upthread.
Everyone loves to jump to this conclusion when I think that should require some heavy evidence.
You could just as easily say she did sexual favors to get a leg-up over more qualified peers and get/maintain her position.
If anything, the fact he got fired seems to imply she has all the power in their relationship being outed. I haven't seen anyone calling for her head.
> could result in getting fired
When did they discover the quid-pro-quo aspect of this particular relationship? The news is moving so fast that I must have missed that part.
If there is an asymmetry in power, hardly consensual.
Asymmetry is more or less guaranteed in all sexual relationships, due to human evolution, yet that has little to no bearing on consent.
Wokeness demands the most uncharitable interpretation of events.
In any scenario it’s not appropriate. Among peers, everyone knows about the “special relationship” and it directly attacks any perception of fairness and enables others to justify similar or worse behavior in the org.
Not sure about the sexual harassment angle you're pushing... it's about trust isn't it? If you have consensual affairs as a CEO, you are still liable to be fired if it becomes public, that's my opinion anyway.
When the CEO starts hitting on you the word "consensual" doesn't really fit anymore.
Maybe she hit on him. He was not hiding being open to affairs so she may have shot her shot. We just don’t know.
It doesn't matter, he was in a position of extreme power imbalance where he could show her both favoritism or fire her depending on how things went. It's improper and inappropriate at best, and illegal at worst.
Yeah you don’t want to be hit by your CEO. But that doesn’t immediately mean the specific case with Huang and his subordinate was a harassment.
What is known now is described a conflict of interest (which is bad already for a CEO). Whether it was a harassment - investigation should show.
This whole thing is making me question whether I should continue reading HN. It's not just this story either, it seems a sub-section of the HN community has taken a hard-right swing in the last couple years.
People in these threads are pretending that 75% of the story doesn't exist and it's just about an affair... insane.
EDIT: Is this just X infecting HN? I don't go on X so I don't know what it's like.
People here are so weird now about AI. Bizarrely sensitive to even the slightest criticism of AI or the associated companies. I don’t know if it’s bots or what, but it’s legitimately scary.
Both, but you don't need to worry. Nvidia will release a new LLM model in a few days time and everyone will all be happy again.
This one tip gets you off the hook of any company slander; just release a LLM model.
Yeah, the election made it pretty clear that people on X are in an insane bubble world (rather than some of the other online communities X accused of exactly that), and that the venn-diagram of HN and terminally-online X users is basically a circle.
The Demographics of HN are coming very sharply into focus the past few weeks, and it's awful.
It does sort of explain a lot though.
A shocking amount of these comments are very loudly ignorant of basic concepts of consent, and some seem to be rather proud of it.
Please don’t be sexist here.
Are you sure this is the comment you meant to reply to?
This is a VC message board after all so money is king above law and morality, those things often get in the way of profit. Marx had some good points.
A good point and the line of thinking you're describing implies that power should override anything else. Rather than rules that apply to everyone, what level of power within a company should no longer be subject to firing for engaging in a power-abuse sexual relationship?
Misbehavior without consequences seems to have become more noticeable in politics within the past ten years, with mainstream news outlets reporting on insider trading and potential bribes for favors. This ethos of power over accountability seems to be having a trickle down effect on general sentiment.
This is really dependent on the company. Musk, Brin etc. have not been canned due to some combination of corporate culture and stock ownership structures.
Famously, Mark Hurd was fired for this, but immediately hired by Larry Ellison at Oracle because he didn;t give a shit.
Do we know that he offered? It is possible that she went after him. These things aren't always so cut and dry.
Any company that wants to pass one of the many audits I'm sure Nvidia is subject to has policies around this. They would both know that not only do all employees need to disclose such relationships but that such a relationship is not appropriate if one is above the other on the org chart. Since the CEO is above everyone, that pretty much means if he wanted a relationship with an employee they would need to resign first.
HR policies around these things have never at all cared about which direction the relationship goes and it really shouldn't be hard to understand why. It's entirely irrelevant who initiates.
What's very "Cut and Dry" is that so many of you are very obviously not paying attention to the yearly training, which isn't exactly complicated or difficult material.
Nobody offers to have sex, unless they are sex workers.
Of course not. They have sex, wake up in the morning and decide what to do about it. Instead of going through the appropriate channels they decided to keep it secret. Big mistake.
I think the angle is more so on lack of equal accountability.
Musk has done worse, yet nothing has really happened to him.
I agree there should be equal accountability. The response to that shouldn't be letting everyone do whatever the hell they want, though, in my opinion.
> The number of people here who don’t take sexual harassment in the workplace by the CEO of a world-leading company to be a serious, fireable offense—and the fact that so many of you claim to care about things like women’s rights and social justice—is mind-boggling to me.
It's mindboggling that you describe an apparently completely consensual affair as "sexual harassment". That's absurd.
Maybe you should expand your understanding of the term, then. It's a well-known thing, especially when it comes to extreme power imbalances.
The term already has a well-established meaning; we shouldn't change our understanding of it. If you mean something else then use different terminology.
Also, I don't think there was an "extreme power imbalance". If anything, she had far more power over him than the other way around, since he had much more to lose and she could blackmail him with making the affair public or other allegations.
I am referring to the meaning established in the law. Many things fall under the legal umbrella of sexual harassment. If you want to describe it as something else maybe you should be the one looking for a new term to coin.
No. The law does not describe a consensual relationship with a subordinate as "sexual harassment".
Obviously the situation isn't that simple, and neither is the law. If you really want to have a relationship with a subordinate there are legitimate ways to make that happen. He chose to circumvent those (ostensibly repeatedly, and while paying off people who found out about it), and the set of reasonable explanations that don't involve some form of harassment is vanishingly small.
It's not just not "vanishingly small", there is zero indication that any sexual harassment was involved.
What are you on about? She wasnt an employee of nvidia, but a client of sorts. No, this is not what you want it to be about.
He was banging multiple women. One of which was his Director of Health Care (or some similar title).
I mean I said in 2016 Hillary basically behaved this way with Bill in regards to others (notably monica lewinsky) and against basically anyone else (i.e. say whole democrat party field) except Trump that should have been a disqualifying thing (and worse, if the republicans put up a decent person, I suspect Hillary would have won!)
At the end of the day, I wouldn't bash everyone here too strongly when everyone who lined up early behind Hillary basically acted in the same way. (And yes, even though Bill did the act, Hillary lined up easily to defend him, much like the people you mention here)
The number of people here who don't think women can consent to sexual relationships is thankfully not quite as high.
Even if it were about consent (and it's not), it's difficult to show that a relationship with such a power imbalance is consensual. If it were consensual it should have been disclosed. And as a CEO he has a greater responsibility to follow these kinds of rules. He knows it, and he did it anyway, and then he got caught doing it. There's really no other action to take besides removing him.
Maybe it's a generational thing? The younger generations seem to have some sort of anxiety with respect to consent and power dynamics, where even something as trivial as a modest age difference is viewed with suspicion. The movie Obsession can be seen as that anxiety translated into the horror genre.
To be fair though, a CEO having an affair with a subordinate should be seen with at least some suspicion...
IDK, if you look at the messaging around Clancy where women are completely subordinate to hormones to the point it excuses chasing down three children and systematically murdering them, or the Cornell 7 case where a woman can willfully engage in sex with multiple men and then only decide it was rape retroactively after explicitly negotiating with the men what was ok during and after with text messages where she defended her own actions but then when rumors started she decided she didn’t actually give consent…
The people saying you can’t trust women… are mostly coming from women.
Wild time if you are dating! Yes could mean No if later she decides she didn’t like something about it.
> But we live in an age where the only truth people believe is the one that makes them feel a certain way
The irony is so sweet here.
The imposition of "sexual harassment" upon a woman who has not made any such allegation or claim is just dripping with paternalism. Let her decide whether she has been abused or harassed. She doesn't need you for that. I know you think you know better than she does, but most of us consider her to have agency of her own and do not feel the need to substitute our own baseless opinions in place of her own.
It’s not necessarily about her. How fair do you think her associates feel they’ve been treated after finding out Huang and Powell have been skulking around romping in hotels? And how many affairs does it take before it goes from “he had a mistress” to “he is using women to fuel an addiction”? We are up to 3. I’m just saying where there is smoke there is often fire, and I can’t imagine writing a comment on this website defending the man.
money before principles. Not to be crass but this is the ycombinator forum, not bluesky. do not expect principles before money, this is the absolute opposite of trying to preach to the choir.
wait who said hn supported social justice and women's rights generally? that's not really been my impression wherever it comes up
Who do you work for? Curious why you're pushing an unproven narrative? In America, we are innocent until proven guilty. Let's not forget that :)
Who do you work for? Curious whether they have annual sexual harassment training or not. I'm not pushing a narrative. Based on the facts that are public alone this is pretty cut and dry sexual harassment. You may not like the connotation of those words, but they contain a pretty broad set of improprieties.
Cornell 7 would like a word. That’s just the latest. The facts of that case so strongly outweigh the narrative of “poor drunk unconscious college girl rapped by men for hours” that it’s comical that somehow innocent until proven guilty is now “misogynist rape culture” or something.
They.. are.. different.. people.
The sex is a nothing burger. He would have been fine if they were for instance, latin American and not Chinese.
This is blatant racism. It has nothing to do with race.
Of course it has nothing to do with race but it has everything to do with geopolitics. Latin America doesn’t have chip foundries.
If a billionaire can't have consensual sex with women what is the point of it all?
"Subordinate", get a grip!
That chick could very well be an American spy who did everything she could to get him into bed, you have no idea what the truth is.
Let's dispense with the theatrics. Having a relationship with someone in your chain is not even close to sexual harassment. Yes, it can lead to it but generally it doesn't. It's not at all illegal either.
When I entered the workforce not so long ago most companies didn't even have policies against it. My university didn't make a policy about it until 2012. I know a very happily married couple who got married this way (a little earlier - perhaps around 2006 or 2007). I don't think they'd be happy if I referred to their behavior as "sexual harrasment".
I think it's a good policy and it's fair they enforce it, but equating it to sexual harassment is nonsense.
They may not think about it that way, but if one of that couple got a promotion from the other then every other person on the team pretty much has grounds for a law suit. There are reasons these rules exist, and the CEO of a high profile company has no excuse not to know them all.
She was a direct report of the CEO. There are no promotions possible. She was max level already.
But was she a direct report when the affair started?
> but if one of that couple got a promotion from the other then every other person on the team pretty much has grounds for a law suit.
Extremely rare (winning such a lawsuit). Prior to these kinds of rules becoming the norm, how often did anyone win such a lawsuit? It's a rounding error close to 0.
There are plenty of publicized cases where one party openly stated she got promotions because of her affair with a senior. No lawsuits were even filed in the ones I know.
I'm in favor of such rules precisely because it's hard to win such a suit.
You can't prevent people from having relationships. It's not realistic. My company has specific rules about this. Typically, "problematic" relationships need to be disclosed to HR and leadership, but they're not forbidden per se.
I'm... not shocked. Politically, HN skews pretty heavily right. Some of them will claim otherwise, putting rainbow flags in bios and such, but here is where the rubber hits the road. I also believe that the affair with the subordinate was the big problem. He can paint himself a victim of a Chinse spy.
Consider the case of Regina Santos-Aviles [1]. She committed suicide by setting herself on fire and had revealed that she'd been having an affair with her boss.
The power dynamics here are insane. Huang was the CEO and a billionaire. The legal liability that NVidia has or could have because of this is huge, particularly if they did nothing. Now there are big questions about who knew what when.
The reporting says somebody say them in a San Jose hotel and was basically hushed with an NDA, and probably a big payment (I'm guessing; I don't know). Was that from NVidia or Huang personally? What NVidia staff, if any, authorized that?
If the board wants to really clean house they should authorize a thorough external investigation of that and any other possible affairs.
[1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tony-gonzales-aide-affair-texts...
> Politically, HN skews pretty heavily right.
I've found HN to be pretty hostile to DOGE (whereas conversation is usually respectful even for fringe viewpoints; something special happened here).
DOGE was less popular than most of the admins stuff, and more scandalous at various levels (the stuff they did cut was fairly popular, they didn't manage to cut the stuff people might have really seen as wasteful, they went about accessing data in strange ways, some of the employees were quite young and looked unqualified).
I don't think you can assume much just by knowing somebody disliked them.
That's totally fair, nobody is happy with DOGE at this point and a lot of people were skeptical and nervous as it was happening. I just don't recall anyone popping in to say "damn it, they're doing it wrong!".
lol, do you think it is a coincidence that going after DC’s money was met with more media attention than other things? I don’t.
The things they got the most attention for like USAID weren't really core dc money. if anything I think they failed to really touch federal programs much in the end, but they did wildly swing at other stuff (like infamously just word searching to cancel research grants etc).
One may interpret this as the Overton window having shifted quite a bit over the last several years. As in "HN skews pretty heavily right" can be correct *and* it can also be true that the wackadoo faction of the right has dominated the discourse for a while.
To spin it another way: if we ignore the rise of the faux-libertarian (you know, the more typical brand now, libertarian but all for a strong military and christian nationalism), I'd argue that the typical HN skews more old school small-l libertarian on the right wing spectrum. That's quite a bit different from the MAGA, christian nationalist, style of right wing politics that has been in vogue lately.
But DOGE (as conceived) is the wet dream of a libertarian from any era. If anything it's a bone that Trump threw to libertarians. It's not especially MAGA imho.
On paper yes, but anyone with half a brain saw that the opposite was true in real life. They went in, made things worse, didn't save any money, and absconded with a lot of private data. My recollection from that time period was the tenor here shifted rapidly from generally positive to generally negative.
Yeah but on HN in particular I never recall anything positive or hopeful at the beginning. I may have missed or forgotten about it though.
> Politically, HN skews pretty heavily right
If you truly believe this, you're living in a bubble. Economically it might be pro free markets, but socially it's heavily "progressive" -- see any discussions about Omarchy, LGBTQ, Elon, or Trump.
Every time Musk comes up there are a bunch of people excusing his behavior just like what is happening with Huang.
Leftism begins with anti-capitalism. This is so far beyond the American (or even European) Overton window. The American political mainstream is a choice between center-right and far-right.
Politics is about economics. All of the so-called "culture war" issues (eg LGBT rights, bodily autonomy, etc) don't make you left wing if you are still an avowed capitalist. The success of the Republican Party hinges on the success they've had in propagandizing culture war issues to avoid talking about economics. And the establishment Democrat Party is complicit because they have the exact same paymasters.
On this issue you see a ton of people in the comments saying "yeah but Jensen made so much money" as a reason why he shouldn't suffer the consequences. If making money has primacy in your decision making well... you're right wing, definitionally.
As other commenters have noted, every time Elon comes up there are a ton of HN defenders, despite him being a complete fascist (in technical terms, not a pejorative) and doing the Nazi salute on national TV (twice).
> Economically it might be pro free markets, ...
Well, first there's no such thing as "free markets". Second, you're basically saying "capitalism". As I said, right wing.
I'm socially progressive but economically conservative. That's why, whenever there's a tough situation where compromise is needed, I always compromise on the side of "let the free market run amok".
I’m entertained by how far left one must be to think HN “leans pretty heavily right”. Even the most die-hard socialist should be aware enough to find that funny.
I think media, social and traditional, has really done a number on people’s perspectives. I’m not sure why ideology replaces self-awareness.
Die-hard socialists often consider "liberals" to be soft-core right wingers. I'm not sure there's an objective center, it's all a matter of perspective.
Yes, this is basically correct. I drew a diagram [1].
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50164265
lol, DSA as center huh? Interesting take. How fascinating that there is no far left according to you.
> and a billionaire
That means he can’t have any affairs with anyone who isn’t a billionaire without it turning into sexual harassment due to the imbalance in power?
> basically hushed with an NDA, and probably a big payment
So depending on how big the payment the alleged victim might be pretty happy with the outcome?
I mean if the board believes that the actions of the CEO resulted in financial damage to the company it’s up to them to investigate and deal with it. I just don’t get the whole morality police angle as long as the affair was between consenting rational adults.
Jensen, even after decades, remained deeply involved in many operational decisions with 40+ direct reports. He had a long-term mindset, investing heavily in Tegra and CUDA in 2009-2010, even as he was plagued by write-offs from faulty chips.
This is a terrible decision for NVIDIA and the broader economy. Jensen gets to retire with $100B+ and not deal with the crap.
I doubt there is anyone close to his caliber that he can be replaced with. Engineers with strong leadership skills are hard to come by. Airhead CEO's with no clue when it comes to engineering are easy.
Case in point: The new interim Colette Kress is a finance MBA. China is laughing at us right now. Many engineers at Nvidia are looking at the exit.
He should be thankful he's not in prison. Even without the spy and affair scandals, his lobbying to sell chips to China is treasonous due to how geopolitically critical AI will soon become. (That alone is not criminally treasonous, but with the MSS influence operation, it might be.) He should've resigned days ago.
I'm no pro-US nationalist or anything, but I am very very much anti-CCP.
There is a competition in the market share for AI chips and R&D money. Including with China.
The 1st Amendment has something to say here.
I elaborate here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50472894
Him doing that is not criminally treasonous (although if influenced by a spy there might be some sort of crime; if he knew she was a spy then it might be criminally treasonous). I say it solely in non-legal, subjective, moral terms.
CCP #1
By the way, do we actually know if Alice Huang is actually Chinese spy, or just merely sees good money in reselling NVIDIA chips to them? Because you don't really need to be the former to do the latter.
> He should be thankful he's not in prison. Even without the spy and affair scandals, his lobbying to sell chips to China is treasonous due to how geopolitically critical AI will soon become. (That alone is not criminally treasonous,
He should be thankful he's not jailed for advocating something which is not even declared illegal yet? Is that the famous "rule of the law" I heard so much about?
The jail part is assuming the woman is in fact a spy and did in fact influence him to do this. Neither are proven.
The other part is me subjectively calling him treasonous, unrelatedly; not in a criminal way.
I should've said "depending on the results of the investigation, he may end up just being thankful he won't get a prison sentence". (Or maybe he will get a prison sentence, depending on what the investigation finds. We'll see.)
> Is that the famous "rule of the law" I heard so much about?
We're in the find-out phase of the merger of the corporation and the state, where everything is permitted as long as you send some considerations to the dear leader...
Until it's not. :)
> Is that the famous "rule of the law" I heard so much about?
Yes, the famous "rule for thee, not for me".
> He had a long-term mindset
Did he? A singular CEO with 40+ direct reports and no succession plan... that alone feels like a very short term mindset to me. He could have been hit by a car tomorrow, what's the contingency plan there? Not to mention the whole 'violating export restrictions' thing, that's typically not great for the long term viability of a company either.
Not sure it’s as much “short term mindset” as it is power consolidation. He doesn’t own a big voting share (only 3.5%) or a special share class like Zuck, so it’s in his interest to not have a clear #2 lest they and the board get any ideas of collaborating on a coup.
Sounds more and more like he had a "me" mindset, not a long-term one. Not exactly mind blowing that the board wouldn't love that.
Yeah the whole “long term mindset” idea is definitely just hagiography done with the benefit of hindsight. Indistinguishable from luck empirically!
He spent a decade supporting CUDA despite much criticism and share price losses only to ultimately be proven right. If that isn’t a long term bet, what is?
Without naming names, as that would be too identifying, the issue there is actually that Jensen was a bad and weak manager. Part of the reason for his accumulation of direct reports was not straightening out interpersonal issues amongst his reports - he has multiple sets of multiple reports each where they would naturally have a single owner but because they hate each other he couldn't have any of them report to any of the others (looking at you, Mellanox). This is a basic failure of managerial skill.
Jansen was once an engineer and a solid evangelist, but he doesn't really appear to have any skill at managing people.
> He had a long-term mindset, investing heavily in Tegra and CUDA in 2009-2010, even as he was plagued by write-offs from faulty chips.
He didn't seem to have a long-term mindset when he knowingly violated export control laws (the feds are, in general, super serious about export controls) and securities laws (the feds are also, in general, super serious about whatever they consider securities fraud) over the course of at least the last six months.
It's frustrating because it was so easily avoidable. Just don't do crimes with nation-states.
>He didn't seem to have a long-term mindset when he knowingly violated export control laws
Why do you say this? Perhaps he did but I haven’t seen it in the news. There were no export controls against a a Megaspeed.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he did because it would clarify NVIDIAs decision to get rid of him.
Thousands and thousands of employees played a more direct role. And in fact, many would've done things different, like not violating export controls and having affairs with reports. Don't simp for a CEO, you're weird
Good leadership 101: Take the blame, leave the credit
I have to imagine that Jensen is under an enormous amount of stress right now. I hope whatever he's going through he's got support. This all seems to be happening way too quickly to be just.
Like, maybe him stepping down is the right decision. But it feels like a hit job and something that was pushed through, rather than something that was properly considered as what is actually best for the company.
He's the chief architect of this. I hope the ones he's hurt along the way have support.
He’s also the chief architect of one of the most influential companies in the world. How many people has he positively affected?
He makes overpriced computer chips... he isn't gandhi.
He is changing the course of history, maybe even more impactful on a global scale than colonial conflict
I'm dying to know how other tech CEOs rank on your "historical figures ordered by importance" list. Like, do you think Steve Jobs was more or less important then Harriet Tubman?
Globally? Honestly he probably was. Hundreds of millions of people have access to heath and finance resources they wouldn’t have got without the modern smartphone form factor and forced negotiation of unlimited data plans.
Ask someone in Bangladesh who the fuck Harriet Tubman is.
AIUI, the rise of mobile telephony in the Third World was driven almost entirely by feature phones, not the kind of smartphones that Jobs helped to drive.
Telephony, yes. The services that are making massive impact now are dependent on smartphones.
Bro... get a grip. He's one dude whose jobs is to boost stock prices, the company will be fine.
Screw the stock price. If you looked into the history of how the company survived you know the company is now Intel. The US has probably lost yet another industry to China. Wonder if the Taiwan investments into the US fabs will now slow because a lot of them were relationship based...thanks to Jensen.
I hope I am wrong but I am starting to think the US left is about to walk into a historical economic collapse that they are inevitably increasing the chances of by 'doing the right thing'.
You don't seem to understand how the economy and competitive forces work, nor how hierarchies of competency function and work.
I suspect you hypocritically have and will continue to benefit from his work that he started as their CEO 33 years ago.
I just shed a tear thinking of how much shareholder value he created over the course of his career.
I'll be sure to tell that to my kids while I put them to bed today.
Truly a tragic moment those poor shareholders and the way out of poverty that NVIDIA offered them.
I wasn't referencing shareholder value - but it sounds like you have an Overton window dismissing the value that AI CPUs have provided-facilitated, if you weren't able to understand what I was referencing holistically; so you seem to have a bias.
I think you have a bias yourself, GPUs are cool and etc., but the man didn't discover fire, penicillin or the meaning of life.
Depending on the future of LLM AI the impact may be larger than all of that.
Re: "... but the man didn't discover fire, penicillin or the meaning of life."
This is called a straw man argument, nobody claimed such.
Or maybe they understand better than you.
I hope this kicks the legs out from under the "circular financing"[0] that has enabled slop to permeate seemingly everything good about computing.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Check_kiting
Maybe but their conclusion(s) points to they're not including the full picture, and most people on here don't actually engage - or not in good faith, or I-you'll find quickly they fall for logical fallacies, etc.
I agree circular financing is a problem - but the CEO will have practically zero to do with that, and that they have to play the game everyone else is playing.
There's far more serious financial fraud strategies being use, that even Elon was afraid to specify on Joe Rogan podcast awhile back - afraid it'd get him assassinated, which he said in half-jest.
And you don't think US intelligence agencies knew immediately the CEO of Nvidia was being courted by a spy - but allowed it to continue? Who knows, maybe this has all been long-term pre-planned, all part of theatre towards what end - God only knows.
Really shows you how out of touch the tech world is with humanity and what average people care about.
And how many has his influential company affected negatively?
That isn't the way the world - or most morality systems - work.
A surgeon who saves a thousand lives doesn't get a pass for the one murder they commit.
If the person who eventually cures cancer also happens to be a rapist, do you remember their name with awe or pity?
The sort of Felicific Calculus practiced by the "Effective" Altruists is a tawdry trick designed to excuse despicable behaviour.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_neglect
Ford and Edison seem to have done pretty well in the view of history.
And yet you've a convicted felon who vacationed on Epstein island sitting at the highest office in the land, or even in the world.
> How many people has he positively affected?
I honestly don't care. It's not a balance sheet to me.
> How many people has he positively affected?
What's your definition? People he sold a GPU to at extortionate markups?
What’s the revenue target I need to hit to get a free pass for sanctions avoidance? What other rules, regulations and laws do you think he should be absolved from considering NVIDIAs quarterly profits?
He's no saint, of course. That being said, he is human and he's going through a lot right now. Its easy to dismiss someone's struggle because he's wealthy and powerful, and because it is his own fault, but somewhere buried in this story there is a human person who is suddenly the center of a lot of very negative attention. It is not wrong to hope that he is okay.
To call it a hit job is absurd. He is smart enough to know his actions could have severe consequences. He took a massive risk on behalf of millions for his own momentary pleasure.
Not a single inch of empathy for his wife and family, nor the misled investors and staff.
I think you're misunderstanding - I think the suggestion of a hit job is because of the timing of all this coming out.
His affairs have been going on for months or years, so much so that various places knew about it, did nothing to stop it, and didn't leak it.
I think it's a fair question to ask "why is this all coming out together now?" Nobody seems to know. In the absence of any other explanation, suggesting "hit job" isn't absurd.
> I think it's a fair question to ask "why is this all coming out together now?
1. Got too well known to hide
2. Republicans just badly lost the midterms. There is a lot of info that the President and head of Department of Commerce also knew about all of this the entire time and did nothing. They won't be able to stop investigations, and they don't want to be seen as getting in the way of them.
If that's true, the bigger story is not just that Jensen did all this, but that the administration likely knew he was guilty of Espionage and actually helped facilitate it by knowing but not acting. That is a real possibility.
To clarify, there is a possibility that the President of the United States and members of his team knowingly concealed and aided Conspiracy and Espionage against the United States.
My guess would be it having to do with Jensen's friend in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue recently losing a ton of power.
I'll tell you what's absurd: Believing the Chinese government sent a spy to honeypot Huang into providing chips to Chinese companies, while everything about their public policy has been designed to prevent exactly that.
The Chinese government wants Chinese companies to buy Chinese chips.
Indeed it seems absurd, but maybe the Chinese government sent a spy to honeypot Huang into destroying (indirectly) its own company instead - knowing how western culture react to such events.
Mission accomplished
Do you find it implausible that there is any reason the Chinese government would want to spy on NVidia?
He cheated on his wife. More than once. Fuck him, let him be stressed.
Who says she's didn't know or even if she cares?
> I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry.
I don't understand what compels people to make up scenarios to defend people who have come out and said the opposite.
Not defending, but it's also clear that the statement is meaningless.
> Not defending
You are, in fact, defending.
Probably more meaningful then something you a third-party/bot just made up and shared on a message board though...
I think the "formal apology letter" wouldn't have existed if this was some sort of open-relationship situation. In that case, Huang violated an important agreement, and cannot be trusted to not violate other important agreements.
He’s forced to even if she were a full poly lesbian, because they both live in The United States.
Well you could read the letter he wrote but why when you can just ask empty edgy questions to farm karma.
Framing a pretty basic question as "edgy" is pretty silly.
The world as a whole is pretty conservative, people like to project the happily married couple image regardless of reality of the relationship.
it's the empty part that makes it edgy.
Ah. So you know their relationship? Whether it's an 'open marriage' or not? Whether the wife cheated first, or not? You're of course, in the know, so you can judge, yes?
He could have done a wrong thing. Or the affair could have been perfectly fine with his wife. Or the marriage could have been on the rocks for years, and they both agreed to not divorce, with all the drama and media attention, and just live their own lives.
But you know all this is true, or not true.
Yes?
I agree with your sentiment in general: we should not make assumptions about the parameters of others' relationships.
But in this case, Huang himself explicitly mentioned the hurt that he caused his family. I don't think it gets much clearer than this.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/11/08/nvidia-jensen-huang-email-bo...We don't know how much of that is "what public expects" in such situation vs what is actually true.
Even if his wife doesn't care it would be wise to keep this apology style, rather than try to go with cliche "its not as bad as it looks".
This is just some basic PR letter, no one from his family actually cares about corporate theatrics
He wrote himself a press release saying he was unfaithful and because of his actions he hurt his family... it sounds pretty clear that was not a consensual non-monogamous relationship. https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/a-message-to-our-company
If it was an open marriage, why would his first statement have been an apology to his wife and family? I don't see any reason to start assuming it was actually fine. In any case the affair becoming public in such a way would still be hurting them - the media attention you're speaking about. Much worse than a divorce, right?
Because the public sentiment towards open marriages is even more negative than towards infidelity? One is seen as a mistake that one can atone for, while the other is seen as a rejection of the institution itself in a country that has strong beliefs in it. Still only 65% of Americans support gay marriage, for example. Marriage following strict rules remains deeply important to a lot of people.
> the institution itself in a country that has strong beliefs in it.
It could be argued much of that is performative. The most vocal group for this in America voted for someone who is well known to break oaths.
Absolutely it is performative. Writing a public "apology" for spending time with another person in their free time is also performative. Nobody actually cares what you do with your life. They aren't thinking about you at all. But when performing, the performance has rules of engagement.
Bond: I doubt if she'll remember me. M: Remind her. Then pump her for information. Moneypenny: You'll just have to decide how much pumping is needed, James.
If it wasn’t an affair they would just say that
he wouldn't have publicly apologized if all of that was "perfectly fine" with his wife
Might wanna google the term “affair”
People don't need facts when they just want an excuse to attack someone from the outgroup.
He publicly stated he broke his wife’s trust, buddy.
Was that a statement from him or nVidia?
Yes, I'm completely sure his wife never ever cheated on him, lol
That wouldn't justify anything.
LMAO this guy feeling bad about a billionaire who cheated on his wife. Is he projecting muc
No, I just think honesty is cool.
Actions do have consequences and unlike his family, he made those decisions. They also are affect by them despite never having a choice.
I think finding humanity in our villains can help us gain perspective so I’d agree on your first point.
However let’s hold both thoughts at once, this was no hit job. Nvidia was forced to act quickly to mitigate business and legal risks. The eventual fallout they’ll face is still not fully known.
There is no support for people like him, CEOs of such big companies, or even any respectful CEO. People would only use him. That's human nature for you.
The public fall may seem quick but from my read of the timelines this has been ongoing for a lot longer.
The idea his fall is related to his affair also seems more like an attempt to minimise the fact that NVIDIA have been covertly selling to China when they were not supposed to.
It's only the beginning of his problems. Congress hearings and an investor class action lawsuit are being prepared.
now the entitled vultures will come to pick him to bits
Such a bizarre take to me. Yes, it's a quick fall.. but can you really trust him after he's been caught having an affair with a supposed Chinese spy, _and_ potentially another one with an employee? There is zero chance any normal business would keep a CEO after this...
If there were a dozen more affairs I would not be surprised.
Yet the choose to publish this one throwing Powell under the bus. Did she deserve that as well?
Normally this would never come to light, the admin has known about the Chinese agent since 2025, and there is an extremely high probability that they know of any other affair partners as well as what he had for breakfast and how he’s doing with the fiber in his diet.
If you think that billionaire execs of highly strategic companies don’t have the CIA nonconsentually implanted in their colon you are extremely naive. He misstepped politically.
I’ve known a lot of execs, and I can probably count the ones that were highly successful and never cheated on their wives on one hand. The temptation comes with the territory, and the opportunities are endless and disarmingly charming. It takes a man of outstanding moral character to be unfailingly perfect under those circumstances, and unfortunately outstanding moral character is often not what gets you into the c-suite. It’s a lot like rockstars in the 70s, actually, but with more boring clothes.
I think the external event maybe moved quickly, but I read there was an internal event as well.
I’m sorry but this shows wildly inappropriate decision making. Say what you will about honeypots (I received specialized “warning” early in my career, but I recognize that is abnormal), but we all are forced through training every single year about how relationships at work, especially with imbalanced power dynamics, are inappropriate and should not take place.
I don’t care about the infidelity, but he represents the company at its pinnacle. He had to go.
I'm sorry, but a hit job he conducted on himself?
You can agree or disagree with his position on exporting to China being good/bad for nVidia or the US. But actively working closely with a company (Megaspeed) where, from a thousand miles away, it was clear that their primary goal was to get around and/or bend US export controls... that's a bad idea. Megaspeed was clearly working for the direct benefit of the Chinese government.
Add onto that having an extramarital affair with the representative of that company? Come on, it's extremely likely she's an agent of China, and if not it's a gigantic business risk.
Then, on top of that, you have to remember that he's married. A divorce results in half of his shares going to his wife, who would then have a grudge, probably not in the best interests of the comapny.
It is as much of a mistake to anthropomorphize billionaires as it is to anthropomorphize LLMs. People with resources greater than nations are .001% human and the rest is closer to a lovecraftian god. Consider that he can shatter markets or send massive trading companies under simply by having an affair. The empathy is misplaced.
The mistake is to direct your empathy only one way
Absolutely not. The value of empathy is not "have empathy because empathy is good", it is in the pro-social outcomes. Empathy is wasted, and counterproductively so, on the non-empathetic, especially on the powerful and destructive. It is a peace treaty, much like tolerance.
He actually built something amazing. That is why he should be thanked and left alone, not thrown under the bus.
So much hate for him, it is sad.
He jumped in front of that bus himself. If the investigation turns out he was definitely orchestrating defying export controls then it's more like he drove one bus into another. He deserves every bit of embarrassment and ridicule no matter how impressive his business accomplishments were up to now.
He quickly threw a small but original market under the bus without hesitation. I'm sure every man, woman, and child without a 5090 is chuckling
Are you saying Jensen had godlike sex with that Chinese spy?
Are you and I looking at the same thing? Huang is a human, in every way you and I are. If he took a DNA test it would say he's human. Right now he is a human having what is probably the worst week of his life. A pretty good life? Sure. But empathy isn't about weighing what he "deserves" or making arbitrary judgements about how he should feel in regards to the level of wealth & power he wields. The fact is he's a human being who is experiencing a lot of pain. You should feel empathy for him and for the people he's hurt. If you don't, maybe you're more like an LLM.
You’re that sympathetic for a billionare having multiple affairs?
Are you serious?
> I have to imagine that Jensen is under an enormous amount of stress right now. I hope whatever he's going through he's got support.
Jensen, if you are reading this and need support you can try looking into BetterHelp. You can even get 20% off using certain partner links. No one should have to go through the stress of loosing their job from Chineese spies alone and with BetterHelp you're just one click away from your very own personal therapist.
This is the funniest thing I have read for a long time.
Hopefully his wife has support. Jensen gets to reap what he sowed.
He's spending some time in what he calls Jensen Jail.
Sympathy for the guy having multiple affairs, including with a direct report, including with a spy and credible allegations of doing an end-run about valid export controls imposed by his country?
I have a lot more sympathy for the victims, not the arsonist!
For real, are these bot comments?
I think with personal wealth in the billions he'll be just fine.
Money is not that helpful when a 40 year old intimate relationship dissolves. Being able to buy things does little for memories that can no longer be shared.
womp womp. Shoulda thought of that before he went and got himself some strange
Just like Jensen built nvidia from scratch, he did build this situation from scratch too.
> I hope whatever he's going through he's got support.
He's worth like $140 billion. $70 billion if he gets divorced. He'll be fine.
maybe he shouldn't have been putting his dick in people other than where it was supposed to be?
I mean yes, he shouldn't be hounded, but if he'd kept it in his pants, he could have avoided all this nastiness.
> I hope whatever he's going through he's got support.
You don't get to cheat on your wife, company and country and get support lmao, what a strange things to say.
Which country? The country of Taiwan where he’s from and where all his products are made? Or the USA whose diva in chief has had a fit about selling said chips to the country who produces all the USA’s stuff?
Some very harsh words being thrown around for Jensen’s very human failings. Try walking in his shoes, or at least having some degree of understanding and empathy.
> Try walking in his shoes…
Chances are I could just sell them and live for a year or ten off it.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/17/leather-jacket-worn-by-nvidi...
Which illustrates the gap between his life's challenges and everyone else's nicely, IMO.
Will his wife gets half his leather jacket collection in event of a divorce?
Try walking in his shoes? He has an easier life than 99% of people lol. People always quick to jump in to defend the shittiest behaviour, maybe have some empathy for his wife?
Really shows you how much we need to kneecap these CEOs for societal good. The idea that they are hard workers is laughable. Everyone working in retail or a restaurant or in a call center is a harder worker than any executive on the planet.
Well conversely you’re labelling and attacking what you consider the shittiest behaviour, when you only have a sliver of detail. Try pondering what it’s like to create a $5trillion company leading the 21st century’s biggest boom, and consider what weird and unthought of and irresistible demands that might come with. The guy started in Denny’s.
All of this sounds easier than everyone’s life. He has no consequences possible in his life. So many people, even in western countries, live cheque to cheque. Why would I feel bad for someone who chose to do what he did? Irresistible demands? Not cheating on your wife?
Won't someone please stop and think about the poor guy who will face the terrible consequence of never having to work again and still having enough money so that the next 10 generations of his family will never have to work either.
99% is too low. He has an easier life than anyone. There's maybe tens of people who have an even easier life.
Crazy talk. I’m sitting on a beach in Italy right now. My life couldn’t be easier. The stress and pressure of running a company like Nvidia is off the charts.
And you’re a bot so as if you’d know.
Nah, not a bot. I do abandon my account here after a week or after I get a few hundred karma though. I hate this site, but I haven't found a spot better for the sorts of things that come through. So I abandon my account once I find myself checking karma, only to make a new one once I see insane shit being posted. In this case the insane shit was people white knighting a billionaire serial cheater who sold products illegally and ripped off consumers while simultaneously fucking a direct report.
> I’m sitting on a beach in Italy right now. My life couldn’t be easier.
You're choosing to argue with strangers on the Internet while on said beach. Your life could be easier.
Huang is choosing to make his life easier by resigning, and has the resources to do the beach thing - at essentially infinite luxury - indefinitely.
Pleaze. Even relaxing on the beach one can read the news and gauge sentiment for their investments. And you’re right, maybe I’ll see Jensen hanging out in Taormina next week. Good place to hide actually.
He put out the hit on himself when he stepped out.
If only there was something he could have done to not do it
Imagine not having a full picture and defending someone going around sanctions for profit. Wild stuff.
Won’t someone please think of the poor tech CEO
> This all seems to be happening way too quickly to be just.
Oh know, the consequences of my own actions have found me!
> But it feels like a hit job and something that was pushed through, rather than something that was properly considered as what is actually best for the company.
BUT THE COMPANY WON'T SOMEONE THINK ABOUT THE COMPANY
"I sure hope the billionaires are doing okay"
All humans have the same feelings and emotions.
I for one hope all humans are ok, regardless of their status.
It is baffling to read comments that this is excusable or he should be retained 'in interest of the shareholders'. Setting aside the obviously poor judgement, the appearance of impropriety has serious ammunition behind a situation that already looked weird. More practically, he's compromised now. Whether it's further scandal or the impending criminal investigations, there might be further hooks people have on him.
The quote about succession planning is also a little out of context, he phrased it more that there should be continual information and responsibility sharing such that succession planning is effectively redundant or unnecessary.
I always wondered why investors were ok with not having any control due to dual structure shares and board composition. A "Great Men" theory of the world is a convenient and satisfying narrative, but it's usually not the best at explaining things. As the saying goes, "The cemeteries are full of indispensable men".
A lot of people here hold NVDA shares, so there is a lot of conflict of interest in the comments.
Which is exactly the right attitude to have. He's not a hollywood celeb, nor is he even a politician. He was involved in a private scandal, that doesn't compromise his ability to lead a company to profitability, no matter what I think of him a a person.
The market has reacted this way for a reason - Nvidia share prices fell a lot over the past few days.
If the espionage probe was serious (and it was known about in intelligence circles going back as much as a year), it would be handle much differently, with charges brought agains him or his company being sanctioned.
Person A having an affair with Person B when Person B is a direct report or directly within Person A's power in the company is a disqualification for leadership. Full stop. It is an abuse and shows that Person A is willing to abuse their position for personal gain. They cannot be trusted any longer.
You're entitled to your opinion, and I'm not saying I disagree, but you should be aware that it's just an opinion. You're stating it as if it's some sort of objective fact.
Many people could just say the exact opposite of your sentence, i.e. "not a disqualification" and "can still be trusted". Furthermore, These people could supply many historical examples of leaders who did similar things and went on to remain great/effective leaders of the things they were charged to lead.
>> You're entitled to your opinion, and I'm not saying I disagree, but you should be aware that it's just an opinion. You're stating it as if it's some sort of objective fact.
It may not be a fact per se, but in the United States it is widely agreed upon that romantic relationships with subordinates is a big no-no from an ethics perspective (due to power dynamics and high potential for abuse), in addition to being a serious liability for the company.
Exactly how would this constitute a “serious liability” for the company?
When a manager has a romantic relationship with a subordinate they could, theoretically, show that employee favortism and/or make their work life miserable. Now any promotion or raise or privilege or punishment the employee receives is under scrutiny. Did the Manager have any say in it? Was another employee dismissed out of hand for the position because they passed on the manager's advances? All of this is a problem when the romantic relationship is known and on the level, when its an affair it is VERY problematic. The employees involved in the affair may sue for retaliation due to some circumstance, or another employee may sue because they feel they were passed over for a promotion or position. Others might have suspected something and been made to feel their job was in danger if they asked questions.
I've seen people date their bosses and/or subordinates, and it was not an abuse of power, they just happened to like each other.
This is moral grandstanding with no substance.
What would make it have substance?
Oh, like Bill Clinton?
Yes, like Bill Clinton.
Also irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Another powerful person wasn't punished while the woman he took advantage of was. That doesn't make this okay. It is a thing that happened and that we should strive to eliminate.
The one who was impeached?
For lying under oath, right? Not for an affair.
Was he removed from office?
> If the espionage probe was serious (and it was known about in intelligence circles going back as much as a year), it would be handle much differently, with charges brought agains him or his company being sanctioned.
My pet theory about why it was leaked is because the very serious reports were sent to the White House and they then did absolutely nothing about it. Just because this, wildly corrupt, current administration has not brought charges does not mean it won't happen in the future.
The current DOJ is not a serious organization, so them not pursuing charges doesn’t really say anything
It’s also absurd that you’d think this is totally fine when the smart shareholders will be suing Nvidia for their malfeasance in evading export controls and incompetence in making sure their CEO doesn’t violate sexual harassment laws
I don't get it; why would shareholders sue for evading export controls? That was a profit-chasing move, that lead to a higher share price. It was not illegal either.
Also dating your coworker is not sexual harassment - sexual harassment is when you make unwelcome advances
> with charges brought agains him or his company being sanctioned.
With a sane administration that hadn't possibly looked the other way due to emoluments (allegedly), maybe. Who knows what the response will be from the current mob (gentle pun intended).
Spoken like someone who puts all his eggs in something he has no control over. It's crazy how oblivious you are to this insane situation "investing" has become in this country. It's gambling. You don't control anything. You just hope for the best. It's all a house of cards.
I dont understand this argument, its either a shareholder concern or a criminal concern? a "conflict of interest" is a term used when a 3rd party needs to be unbiased ex government or law. You wouldn't say its a conflict of interest if your favourite sports team trades their best player
Do you make money when your favorite sports team does well?
Being a Manchester United fan, apparently not
I mean, doesn't basically everyone with a 401k?
We're taught in school that ad hominem is a logical fallacy, but you know, sometimes it's not.
If someone holds NVDA, nothing out of their mouth about NVDA matters to me. Even if they're stating a fact, cool, I can find those from someone else. The only exception is if they're willing to double down after, then I'll listen.
People have a lot of net worth tied into the economy. Nvidia is a lynchpin in the economy. People are biased towards keeping their net worth up. It’s not that deep, people want the tendies to continue printing.
Yeah it is that deep. The second money is involved so many people are willing to look the other way. If you don't see an issue with that then you are clearly part of the problem.
I find it interesting to see so much blame being directed at the act of removing one person who may have been holding up trillions of value in the stock market, rather than at the market and industry conditions that led to so much value being supported by one person in the first place.
I agree. I certainly don't believe in the efficient markets hypothesis. HN AI glazers certainly do though.
> baffling to read comments that this is excusable or he should be retained 'in interest of the shareholders'
If you want Exhibit A for the moral corruption of Silicon Valley’s culture, this is it. And it’s not tied to shareholdings. It’s the quasi-monarchic strain of worship that has been poisoning Valley culture for at least a decade now.
I mean the guy had an affair. Or two. Or more. Not cool and that one turned out to be a Chinese spy makes it quite impactful. But from a pure "moral corruption" standpoint this is not worse than your average college frat house.
The affair(s) were tied to skirting export bans. The moral corruption is bigger than Nvidia because it seems Trump administration was involved. Laws shouldn't be applied selectively like this.
One of the greatest fallacies of modern times is that people are not human. There is this expectation that people will be perfect and flawless and make zero mistakes. That is incongruent with human nature. The dude had two consensual relationships outside his marriage. To err is human... this is all so overblown.
Meanwhile we have a felon in the white house (sexual assault) among an immeasurable number of other supposed crimes
This isn’t a unique situation. When your error is sleeping with a subordinate, you get fired. That’s universally true in the corporate world. No reason this should be any different from the countless times it’s happened before.
I do believe a lot of people in here will be selected to be the kind who sees themselves as the next billionaire ceo (some might even be) and want it to be ok to have affairs with anyone they want. Want the CEO to be infallible and super special as this would apply to them too.
This guy had a cult of personality I did not know about until this comment thread.
"He created so much shareholder value."
"Unlike Elon he shared the wealth with the company."
"The US is worse off without him."
I'm sorry but a patsy who is this gullible, or a CCP-friendly traitor that is this slimy (the jury is still out), should not be in this position of power.
Cool for all he accomplished so far. This isn't a situation that deserves a second chance.
Not everyone believes in the idea of nations or national security.
I don’t care one whit who he sells chips to, or who he’s fucking when he’s not selling those chips. The US government’s geopolitical agenda is not my geopolitical agenda.
That isn’t immoral, it’s normal and reasonable.
I only care that Nvidia gets to do this while nobody else can.
What's really inexcusable about it? It might be part of the standard US corporate culture, but still idiotic.
He'd get more of a free pass if he had gone to JE island
"Appearance of impropriety". Fuck all you puritans.
Ah yes. Being gay disqualified you from security clearance. Why? Because if you are gay, then you can be blackmailed. Why? Because you might lose your security clearance.
Being gay is not a choice. Sleeping with your subordinates and clients is kind of a choice. A bad one, easily avoidable and pretty sure well known as the wrong move.
Employees can be fired for tweeting something bad. The ceo should be held to some standard.
The board was even backing him on the first affair, got a big problem on the second, Reuters is now reporting a third (also employee).
Puritanism aside, he gone.
A company is not required to maintain a look of propriety. A company is not required to not look fishy. A company is not required to care how it is observed by the public at large. It is required only to maximize shareholder value.
There is no doubt that his sexscapades were stupid, but at the same time there is only one question that should matter for the board. Will the shareholders make more money with him or without?
“Modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not.”[0]
Supreme Court disagrees that a company is required “only required to maximize shareholder value”, do you have any evidence to support your claim otherwise?
[0]https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-supreme-court/13-354.ht...
This person does not have any evidence to support their claim. The notion that shareholder primacy is enshrined in settled law (when in fact, as you point out, the opposite is true) is widely believed in the HN comments pages.
It's a simple concept to understand so pick stick to it as being the truth.
Within the constraints of the law is my understanding.
> There is no doubt that his sexscapades were stupid
Sure, but his selling into China might be criminal. Or would you also excuse criminal behavior that's profitable?
Maybe the board knows more than we do, but so far there is no public substantiation of these points. Obviously if he’s convicted, he can’t be CEO from jail, but why make company decisions a day after a new story broke?
Of course the board knows more then you and me.
Sure, of course they know more in the banal absolute sense.
But do they know more material information that we would all agree makes this not a hysterical witch hunt I don’t think we can be so confident about that.
Even if their information comes from American security personnel that should still be taken with the grain of salt.
We all remember Iraq, don’t we?
Have you seen this from earlier this year:
https://culperresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Culper...
> there is only one question that should matter for the board. Will the shareholders make more money with him or without?
I think "can we trust this person to act in the best interests of this company?" is a more accurate question
I don't think these scandals are in NVidias best interest, and the hits the share value have taken seem to support that
Shareholder primacy at the expense of everything else is a ridiculous and relatively new idea. There is no reason that it has to be that way other than that Milton Friedman thought it was a good optimization problem.
Can't help that it leaves a bad taste in my mouth that the China hawk fraction of the US government and associated entities (i.e. Anthropic) obviously brought the hammer down on Jensen here, even if he arguably brought about his own downfall with the affair.
I assume leaning on Nvidia to integrate chip verification and tracking to not let any unmonitored compute exist in the world is next, which is also in line with what the leading US labs want.
There might have been no such intervention. Put yourself in Huang's shoes for a minute, or a board member if you prefer, lick your finger, put it up to see how the winds are blowing and think of what you'd find. No need for pressure, just glance at the news and realize that the pressure will be forthcoming, and it won't/wouldn't just be "the China hawk fraction" (sic) but widespread.
But the valid decision is voted by board of directors, 10 individuals in total. To intervene, the gov practically needs to persuade some of them to change their vote.
I don't think the hawk fraction holds actual leverage on any of them to intervene.
I think the situation is just the board gets overwhelmed by journos, panicked, rushed to a decision, and Jensen resigned knowing he has to leave.
It is also tanking the Nvidia stock price causing many to sell, freeing up a lot of capital ... just before the Anthropic IPO...
Surely an AI market falling from this is not a good environment for Anthropic's IPO?
I'm actually surprised at this. I figured everyone would justify keeping him because he made Nvidia (and investors) so much money. Money > anything else
Affairs are commonplace. Most likely the internal findings from the investigation point to something more troubling/illegal
I'd go as far as to say the second leak helps him a bit, by reframing this as a cheating scandal rather than it being more about him knowingly evading an embargo.
Having an affair with your direct report also wildly increases the risk that Nvidia would be embroiled in high-profile lawsuits, either for sexual harassment or favoritism
>increases the risk that Nvidia would be embroiled in high-profile lawsuits, either for sexual harassment or favoritism
Firing him doesn’t make them any leas liable for any potential sexual harassment or favoritism that already happened
Whether the board knowingly allowed the problem to continue can absolutely factor into the company’s liability.
Which is still better than prosecution for evading sanctions on China by working with a Chinese spy.
I suspect that there gotta be something else going on with that as well. Maybe someone in the company wanna take his position or something.
A CEO admitting to an affair with a customer after previously denying it, seems like a sufficient reason for removal, even before you add the geopolitical intrigue.
I don't follow this logic. Why is an affair with a customer grounds for announcing a resignation that caused an instant 10% stock price drop?
Because the customer in question raises questions of the CEO's judgement, plus the possibility of knowledge that the target was violating sanctions. We don't know. That's why it's a bad situation for the stock.
The stock seems to be responding more heavily to the potential loss of Jensen than it does to the potential continuation of Jensen given new knowledge.
It also seems like there’s a high potential for half of Jensen’s position to be granted in a subsequent divorce decree, meaning there could be enormous selling pressure in the next several years.
Doesn't he only own like 3% of the stock? His wife would get 1.5% of the company and I see no reason for her to liquidate all of it right away.
I don’t think she’s likely to sell it right away, but I do think she’s a lot more likely to sell it sooner than they would have together as of last week.
That change is still material to the future outlook as the price is the intersection of supply and demand and the predicted supply of $NVDA shares for sale just increased by scores of billions of dollars worth.
He didn’t come clean on his own accord - he was faced with irrefutable evidence and admitted it.
How can you trust anything he says after this?
Why should regulators or other customers believe any promises made by him?
His credibility is shot - the day to day stock prices changes are irrelevant.
Morality is not a straight line, once someone has cheated they sort of accepted it for themselves after feeling guilty but that doesn't transfer to other places where someones morals are challenged.
He’s a dork with 100’s of billions, testing the rules. A bit like a teenager given infinite resources.
Imo that’s danger zone shit for the company, whether you’re offended by the morality bits or not.
You should never trust any CEO in first place, don’t know why everyone is trying to treat this guy as a school teacher.
He's baggin baddies, and blowing up stock prices. I honestly don't see the problem. Bought more NVDA, this dip is just free money.
You mean the short trader who wrote a report and pushed it is the good guy?
Maybe he will donate his proceeds to charity...
Keeping bad things hidden in the name of shareholder value is not free market
Relationships and stock price are built on trust. An affair, a relationship with a customer/subordinate, and an attempted cover-up are all breaches of that trust.
Because it potentially gives the affair partner a lever to bypass internal company controls.
> Why is an affair with a customer grounds for announcing a resignation that caused an instant 10% stock price drop?
OP said
>A CEO admitting to an affair with a customer *after previously denying it*, seems like a sufficient reason for removal
It's not the crime. It's the cover up.
In this case Jensen either 1) lied to the board about the affair, 2) directed the Nvidia PR to publish a materially false statement about it, or 3) both.
From a company governance standpoint it's incredibly hard to trust Jensen when he's either lying to you, using the company to protect his personal life, or (again) both.
Admitting to the affair with a customer is a nothingburger. Directing the company to release a false statement about it, and that customer turns out to be a Chinese asset if a BIG fucking deal.
Lying about it served no one's interest but Jensen's, and ended up hurting the company significantly.
Nvidia's previous denials are a significant issue from a board of directors position. He either lied to the board about it, directed the company's PR people to make a false statement about it, or both. And that lie turned out to be material (in a SEC sense of the word material).
It would be very difficult for the board to regain trust in his ability to make choices that are correct for Nvidia, rather than himself.
Two back to back including one with a subordinate and one involving a person violating export controls though are pretty tough to weather. And I doubt that's the end of the affairs too, I'm not a Huang is months away from having dated every woman on earth extrapolationist but I also doubt he's only had (or has) 2.
edit: Two with a subordinate now.
Like selling hardware to potential competitors of US AI inference services? The extent of the compute laundering has been pretty well covered.
I have a feeling we'll know the reasons for certain when Nvidia's stance on open models and local AI does an about-face.
Could be that breaking embargo and sleeping with spies had something to do with it. Wild guess, I know.
I don't know why you're getting downvotes. The parent comment, "Most likely the internal findings from the investigation point to something more troubling/illegal", is comical. The information on the public record already points to something troubling/illegal, as you just pointed out!
Plus Jensen Huang is an immigrant from Taiwan. And this administration does not like people who haven't been born on this geographical soil (being not born on US soil, I am obviously not against it, just pointing out obvious animosity of current US administration towards immigrants in general)
Trump likes successful ones:
Musk, Vivek, etc.
you mean financially successful right? Otherwise both are terrible parasites and recently we just seeing tip of an iceberg when it comes to Vivek (I know 2 people that worked for him, but I will leave it at that).
The absolute obliviousness of computer technicians to how business or politics work.
This is what I keep coming back to. The board is not some random board. They know Jensen is their golden goose, there is no NVIDIA without Jensen. What they saw must have been company-existentially-illegal for them to throw their golden goose under the bus as a survival tactic.
edit: btw the board has a director that’s ex-Cooley, no greenhorn I imagine to congressional investigational scrutiny. It had to be something that made them realize cutting ties with Jensen immediately was the only way to survive.
The board probably determined it would impact the stock too negatively to keep him on.
That certainly won't be the conclusion of the board as less surprising firing Jensen - stock-wise the best-performing CEO of this decade so far - affects the stock way more negatively than sex affairs with spies and employees made public because shareholders don't care about your sexual moral or code of conducts for regular employees (of which neither Jensen nor Kimberly were). So there is more to it than the public will be let known.
Wouldn't this open him up to blackmail and espionage? The people he cheated with whether they exploited it or not had kompromat on him. Not only that but the new allegations show he has a pattern of acting a way that would let people get kompromat on him, and investors were probably not previously pricing in that the CEO himself was a huge insider risk, and now that the cat's out of the bag, they are. Even if he leaves now that wouldn't undo one of his affair partners stealing proprietary info.
If the Huang has a secret relationship with a report then he's in a lot of trouble and the company is in some trouble. If the companies response to that relationship is to do nothing - now the company and Huang are both in a lot of trouble. Heck the problem with the first affair isn't the is she or is she not a spy - if Huang could convincingly argue that he didn't know then he's a victim - the problem is having a relationship with a customer, that's actually not much better then with a report.
Define “a lot of trouble”.
I also think the info the board used to make that determination is not yet public
I think they go spooked because he's been a proponent of relaxing export controls to China and it turns out it's because his mistress/gf is a chinese spy who is influencing him. And NVIDIA is making what currently is probably a product of national security importance.
If I was them, I'd be worried that the government invoke the Defense Production Act (DPA) or impose National Security Agreements and Clearances which would require NVIDIA to isolate sensitive R/D, restrict foreign nationals from accessing specific chip designs, and place government-vetted compliance monitors on its board or security teams. ALSO there definately will be subpeonos and probes and those are never fun.
Easier to say we cut out the guy responsible and hopefully that lessons the troubles
I think internally they know that the violation of export controls is gonna be sticky and it’s almost zero percent about an affair
After the news about a potential foreign compromise, disclosure of an affair with a subordinate is pretty damning. One can be discounted as poor judgement. Two is a pattern that's hard to dismiss. I wonder if we'll learn of other shenanigans or whether kicking him out stops future (possible) disclosures.
Poor judgment? He was larger than life persona, many times compared to Musk (minus huge Twitter follower) who is also very well known for his extramarital affairs.
the second one being with an employee, and a direct subordinate at that, is inexcusable to the board
>> he made Nvidia (and investors) so much money.
Right now, he made them lose 700 Billion dollars. So the investors lawsuit also will be the biggest in history.
Did he do that, or did the board’s actions do that?
I mean, cheating is not nice and not morally great, but who cares for a CEO. He isn't hired for being a good husband.
The spy thing is juicy, maybe it's surface level, maybe it's deeper.
I'm not sure why you think a person's lack of honesty and integrity in their personal life is unrelated to how trustworthy they are in business.
If they are willing to betray their own spouse then they are absolutely capable of deceiving and betraying their employees and shareholders.
This separation you seem to see between business and personal life doesn't actually exist. That's an unrealistic fantasy.
We may conceal parts of ourselves at work for politics and professionalism but you are the same person inside of work and out.
World is not so black and white. Morality is not 0 and 1.
There is nothing black and white about the view in my post, and certainly nothing about morality being binary.
I merely pointed out that patterns of poor judgement don't disappear just because you put on a suit walk into an office.
Its like saying: I mean, molesting children is not nice and not morally great, but who cares for a priest? He isn't hired for being a good person, he is hired to conduct worship services during Sunday mass.
No, not even remotely the same thing. Lack of consent aside, no one would ever say that about a priest.
I didn't know Huang's wife consent to his extramarital affair.
No it's not like that at all.
An adult woman being wronged by infidelity is not remotely like a child being molested. Wth is wrong with you?
No one cares about the sex life of a ceo of a company that big except their own direct family. Investors don't care, customers don't care, vendors don't care, the government doesn't care, and that's the entire list of people that matter. His wife and other immediate family care and that's it.
The only reason anyone (of any relevance or significance) cares in this case is becsuse of the embargo & national security angle.
Not the same thing at all.
If we fired people for infidelity the entire stock market and greater economy would tank and most of congress would be empty seats.
ok bunch of people doing bunch of horrible things. But what's your point?
My point is that we don't care about infidelity, at least not enough to fire them.
Yet C-level execs get fired for it all of the time.
You've seen the picture of the couple holding one another at the concert, right?
> C-level execs get fired for it all of the time
No they don't. They get fired for undisclosed workplace conflicts of interest and fiduciary liability, not infidelity.
Just a sad state of affairs. Jensen was by far the biggest voice pushing for open weights and keeping the Anthropic / OpenAI doom narrative from getting out of control.
Now without him there will be a vacuum for the ideologies of Dario / Elon / Sam to fill the void.
Only because it benefits NVIDIA to have more potential customers in the shovel market to mine gold individually versus consolidating within a few providers (where the backend tooling becomes irrelevant to the consumers, and OpenAI & Co could freely change GPU manufacturers on a whim or move things in-house).
Yep, it's kind of the old "if you owe the bank $100, it's your problem. If you owe $100M, it's the bank's problem." NVIDIA would love to diversify its customer base.
No he did it because he was such a good guy!!!!
Wait, so you're telling me that NVIDIA has a profit incentive to bolster the AI market to be full of competitors and not turn it into a monopoly?
And that as a byproduct we profit by not living under an Anthropic quasi-religious doom cult monopoly, with open access to competing models?
It's almost as if the competing self-interest that drives the invisible hand of the market is a positive force for value creation in the world.
They should be taken down next.
Open weights might simply be what benefits Nvidia the most. Guess we'll see what his replacement says.
Perspective is a hell of a thing.
I've consistently seen Jensen as a transparently self-interested shovel salesman while we dig our own mass grave.
For a person in his position, he has been exceedingly slow to wake up to the prospect of AGI - he seemed genuinely surprised by arguments from informed layperson Ezra Klein, for example, like he'd never even heard of it before.
Don’t worry. They are next.
This is exactly why he was taken out. They waited until after the midterms and then dropped the news
And if you look at his replacement she’s going to be even friendlier to western political alliances
Which is why he got railroaded.
Entirely preventable on his part. If he had kept his dick in his pants, he wouldn't be in this mess.
It wouldn't matter.
There would be another smear campaign, sexual assault allegation or shady dealings.
It's easy to find dirt on everyone and coordinate the media to take them down. He had to go because of geopolitics due to US/China relations and the AI race.
It has nothing with his "dick", that's just a story they sold to public.
No I'm pretty sure it was him hooking up with a Chinese spy
> He had to go because of geopolitics due to US/China relations and the AI race.
Why? By all accounts everyone in the US loved him and thought he was the "le face of AI" or whatever. Would he have been ensnared in this scheme to smuggle chips to China if he hadn't slept with a Chinese spy who just happened to be a top exec at Megaspeed? If he didn't have this proclivity for affairs in the first place? The world may never know, but it can speculate.
He wasn't on great terms with Anthropic by most accounts.
If it does turn out that Jack Clark (Anthropic cofounder) was a major source behind this, the timing starts to get a bit suspect
If you want somebody removed at that level, and you actually can, you can invent reasons. Jensen having an alleged affair makes it easier for them, and that's it. It's also probably less bad for Jensen that it's only an affair that Jensen is going out on, as invented reasons could be worse for him (like sexual assault allegation by three different women, for example). Just saying, I have seen it happen.
Stop with the gaslighting. This was nowhere close to an "invented reason."
He fucked a communist spy and he admitted he did it.
Not only that, everyone in his orbit was running interference for months before that on a DIFFERENT affair with a subordinate[0]. Why was everyone covering for him if there really was some conspiracy to "railroad" him? Or maybe Sam Altman's coordinating with China to honeypot CEOs because reasons?
0. https://www.axios.com/2026/11/11/nvidia-jensen-huang-affair-...
No, you misunderstand me. I am not saying it was invented. I am saying, had Jensen not provided an easy ramp, reasons could be invented. I have seen it happen.
I am saying it here:
> Jensen having an alleged affair makes it easier for them, and that's it.
That’s not what that guy was saying; you’re taking hypotheticals literally. He was saying that even if he hadn’t had an affair or sold chips to China, a reason to oust him could have simply been fabricated if his rivals wanted him gone badly enough.
“Show me the man, and I will show you the crime”
I don’t think he was even making the case that his rivals were involved in this, only that if they really wanted him gone for advocating for open source models, it’s not like they needed this specific scandal to pull it off.
>He fucked a communist spy and he admitted he did it.
The communist spy is the invented reason. There has been zero evidence presented that Alice Huang is a spy for the CCP[1], and if they did have evidence it would have been more appropriate to charge Jenson last year when the Trump administration was made aware of the relationship.
Everything about Alice being a honeypot has largely been hearsay.
To me, it's far more likely that someone in the state department did not like that Jenson was circumventing export controls and manufactured this to bury him.
[1]https://www.politico.com/news/2026/11/11/jim-himes-alice-hua...
So you think there is no there-there with Megaspeed?
And you think he was stupid enough that he thought that these would never be caught?
Are you suggesting that Jensen planned to get caught?
Appeal to conspiracy, the deep state didn't make him have an affair. Who, exactly, was trying to oust him? To what end? It's surely not China since he was helping them get their hands on chips. It can't be the Trump admin since Trump likes the guy and invited him onto his trip to Beijing despite Rubio's memo noting he was probably already compromised at that point.
Trump worrying about someone else being compromised is a hilarious yet wholly unfunny irony.
They'd find another way to nail him.
you random people have no idea have billionaries live btw. you eat media BS instead
You're not a random person at all. You're the main character!
Enlighten those random people.
I can't cause I met few, several times + signed NDA. Too serious to share via comments here? I don't wan to be sued but I believe what my eyes saw
Wow, you're very wise and mysterious.
I too have a girlfriend from canada
your nick should be kingvagueposter instead
Only if he was fired for the affairs. He could have funneled chips to China fully clothed.
It seems like the two things are pretty tightly interwoven. Would he have funneled those chips if he'd never had an affair with a Chinese spy who happened to be a top exec at Megaspeed?
Interesting that 18% of Nvidia's revenue comes from their 2020 Mellanox buyout. Might rank among YouTube as one of the most profitable corporate buyouts ever.
About their new interim CEO Colette Kress:
Jensen bought Mellanox for $7B in 2020. In Q2 2026 it generated $17.5B in revenue or ~18% of Nvidia's total revenue.He wanted to have the cake and to eat it at the same time. I've seen CEO's who handled this in a much more orderly way, such as: getting a divorce, then announcing internally to the company that he is getting a divorce, then announcing he has found new love with a certain person at the company and in the same sentence announcing that the certain person effectively no longer answers to him, but to the board or something like that.
Still icky, but this person still enjoys success as a CEO of their company. Huang not anymore.
The apologists in this thread are absolutely shocking. Jensen is a ruthless CEO who clearly lacks moral fiber. Why do we idolize and "feel" for people like this?
Can't speak for everyone else but for me it's because:
1. The whole spy / compromising national security thing are as far as I know unproven.
2. Affairs by themselves, while not ethical, are fairly tame compare to other prominent tech figures like Musk.
If it comes out that he did indeed compromise national security knowingly, then that's a different matter of course.
unproven?! https://culperresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Culper...
The most importance sentence from your report is this one from the top of page 6:
> We believe that despite essentially no direct compute sales into China after April 2025, Nvidia continued to service Chinese demand via sales to non-restricted intermediaries and diversion.
That’s not at all breaking export control laws. In fact it is the government’s responsibility to identify these non-restricted intermediaries and make them restricted. The government has done this plenty of times in the past and it should again do so here. It is not a company’s job to infer what the government wants it to do. The difference between selling to China and servicing China-originated demand is huge.
And then in a massive game of telephone many people on this thread actually believes that Nvidia allowed direct sales to China, which is how they conclude Huang is breaking the law.
Its a 40 page report. There is no 'most important sentence' that justifies hand waving nuance in evaluating the veracity of claims.
I did skim all 40 pages. None of the remaining nuance is as important as this sentence in the context of this thread. I made this importance judgement myself. You are of course free to read the whole thing too and point out which other nuances are pertinent to the current discussion.
Yes unproven, hence the word “alleged” in all the articles. Your link provided no evidence evidence she’s a spy for China.
No, she just helped them evade export controls and got in bed with an incredibly powerful foreign business leader
Whether or not there's proprietary information espionage going on, there are no other explanations on the table for Megaspeed being able to buy billions of dollars of Nvidia chips other than that they are cut out and smuggling channel.
I'm not even that bothered about those chips going to China. But, like a lot of other aspects that leave us wondering how big and how fragile an AI bubble exists, the fact that billions of dollars of Nvidia revenue is from a reportedly priority customer that isn't actually using the chips is the problem.
To quote a fictional president: "That's the problem with the american dream, it makes everyone concerned for the day they're going to be rich..."
The apologists probably hold NVDA stock. Same thing happens with other popular companies and their voices are very loud online.
I bought more this morning, it's just on sale.
I have NVDA stock, I think this is neutral at worst. Obviously bad short term, but the fundamentals are what they are. They are gonna print money for at least the next 5 years no matter what happens.
I would invest but my concern is nvidia getting dragged through investigations, who knows how deep this goes.
The reality of the situation is they can be guilty as fuck, but they are so important to the world and us economy, that any sanctions they have will be symbolic. Nobody wants to kill the golden goose, even democrats.
There will be a lot of noise, it will be embarrassing, but I just can't imagine a situation where it significantly impacts their bottom line.
The bear case here is pretty much that you think AI is a bubble anyway, and this just accelerates it.
He sucks but even if I take the worst interpretation of what it looks like this guy did and assume there's a bunch of other affairs I just don't have enough energy to get worked up about something so comparatively small potatoes. I don't idolize or feel sorry for him, but he was a competent leader of his company. Nvidia will be a weaker company without him and I think the fears of an inference lock on GPUs to prop up slime ball American AI companies is more likely to come true with him gone. The next CEO is more likely to accept a bride to make it happen.
So you think quid pro quo sexual harassment in the workplace is no big deal? People should be able to fuck their way to the top, and bosses should be able to demand sex from you to keep your job?
To which kind of morality are you referring to? The extramarital affair, the puritan angle, or something else?
The sleeping with a spy and selling chips to china part.
Not sure if the second part qualifies as morality, even if I think it's the real cause of this.
In order to see this as a bad thing you have to first agree with the export controls. Like Jensen, HN loves chinese models, that's why the outrage does not resonate.
It would be hypocritical to both use DeepSeek and also be outraged at the (alleged) mechanisms through which China acquires GPUs.
No, you only need to agree that the rule of law is important to uphold, whether you agree with all the laws or not.
I personally could care less if he sells chips to china, morally, but they do have to follow the law.
And having an affair with a subordinate. That alone should be grounds for being instantly fired.
I wonder if people haven't seen his interviews or public appearances in the past 1-2 years, especially when anything to do with Trump came up. I don't find CEO interviews particularly interesting to begin with, because they're performing a role and can't give honest answers. Jensen took that dishonesty to a pretty high level.
Ezra Klein interviewed Jensen about 1.5 months ago and I had an off-putting feeling from it, and thought a lot of his answers were laughable. He sounded like he was obviously lying. A few days later, Klein interviewed Bill Gates and sort of anonymously brought up the arguments that Jensen made. You could see a visible disbelief of the arguments in Gates' face and posture, even saying "I almost can't believe you're asking that". (Not that Bill Gates is some paragon, but it wasn't close to a respectful disagreement.)
You could tell Ezra was frustrated in that interview. I thought his first two questions were pushing for a real answer from Jensen and he just sort of let it go because it was clear he wasn't going to get one. The notion that societal shifts were going to be fine and we were just ignoring human ambition, end of answer, was intellectually pretty wild. I also thought the subsequent Bill Gates interview was the perfect follow up.
In other contexts we expect some transparency if you have a stake in what is happening. This thread is full of tech workers, and would look very different if each comment was prefaced with some sort of 'Hello, I am John Doe. Nvidia represents 35% of my retirement portfolio, and the semiconductor industry overall represents over 70%. This is why I do not care to rock the boat, and think he did nothing wrong...'
What kind of investment strategy would have 70% in semiconductors? We all need to diversify more again, huh.
> ruthless
Really now. Let's get some examples of his being ruthless.
It's insane. I bet none of the commenters here would spare a thought for a manager at a 7-11 who got fired for having sex with one of his subordinates and ended up on the streets because he couldn't pay his rent.
But one of the wealthiest people on the planet gets fired, suffering zero personal hardship as a result, and everybody's up in arms. How could you do this! They all do this, how dare you single him out!
I think that there's a pervasive idea, especially in the tech/startup space, that making money is a moral good. Not merely that making money is compatible with being a good person, but that it makes you a good person, and the more you make the more good you are. Firing an ultra-rich person is therefore basically an affront to a saint. Never mind that it doesn't put them under any hardship, that they and their heirs will still be wealthier than any of us can even conceive of. It's morally wrong to do anything bad to such a good person.
You're asking why posters in a VC forum, in an industry that is despised by the public for its wanton greed, societal destruction, and complete disdain towards humanity would want to protect one of their own?
Bro, this is what the tech industry is all about: fucking over society to make a dollar.
NVIDIA without Jensen? That’s a huge risk. The company may be bigger than ever but replacing its visionary won't be easy.
I don't think there is a more hallmark visionary CEO than Jobs, and Apple isn't exactly doing poorly today.
Maybe the veneer isn't there, but it's very hard to make the case that Apple has in any way failed following the loss of him. Cook was pretty mediocre, and it shows that when you have a strong ship sailing, you just need a "not total idiot" to keep it going.
The counterpart is the state of Apple after Steve Jobs left in 1985. Apple was in dire straits when Steve Jobs returned in December 1996. Granted, Jobs wasn't CEO in 1985, but as co-founder, he had tremendous influence over Apple, though he didn't have absolute power; he left due to losing a power struggle against John Sculley and Apple's board.
I'm also reminded about the state of HP once the founders retired. My understanding is that John Young and Lewis Platt preserved the HP Way. However, Platt's successor, Carly Fiorina, moved the company far away from the HP Way, and HP hasn't been the same since.
This is a sad time for NVIDIA. I hope NVIDIA is blessed to get a Platt and not a Fiorina.
I think you are not giving enough credit to Cook. He trained under Jobs and is a world titan when it comes to supply chain. He is not some mumbo jumbo marketing/sales guy. Yes under his leadership Apple released some bad bets but he deliberately invested in a vision that Jobs created and spent years teaching him. This couldn't have been sustained post Jobs death unless Cook continued to instill the culture Jobs had created. Else you wouldn't attract the people needed to create marvels like their CPUs.
If someone else that wasn't directly trained by Jobs for years was hired, i'd argue that the culture would start to falter because one thing slides somewhere, then another, then another an soon enough 'A players' don't want to sacrifice their core years at a company that isn't instilling the values they want to work under. Cook himself almost went down that path with his budding career at Compaq. His family thought he was nuts to leave the growing company for Apple of all places. They didn't see the values that Cook saw in Jobs.
Cook was a good CEO. Definitely A tier.
I don't think that Nvidias board will have any problem though finding an A tier CEO to run the company.
They probably will not get an S-tier visionary, but mature companies with deeply established roots don't necessarily need that like nascent companies do.
Hard disagree. Jobs polished things that already existed. They were never on the bleeding edge of hardware design and manufacturing when it comes to actual performance and capability.
Right, and he had the knowledge to know that consumers don't care about that stuff. So we got iPhones with excellent usability instead of windows phones with HD displays.
Building products for consumers and building products for engineers are seemingly not the same endeavor. I loved having physical buttons and a keyboard on the early smart phones. They were proper communication devices. Now they are consumer devices.
Hard disagree with your disagree.
Apple was saved because it abandoned all its pre-1997 software and adopted NEXTSTEP, which Jobs created.
Jobs used Free software to build NEXTSTEP.
Tim Cook was a lot more than just “not a total idiot”
Yeah there is probably more to the story. Like evidence he actually did something very damaging to NVIDIA/National security. Knowingly helped smuggled chips, divulged trade secrets, etc. An affair and unknowingly selling chips to a company smuggling into China would not be worth the risk of getting rid of him. He must have already caused pretty large damage that is has yet to metastasize.
NVIDIA would be without Jensen some day anyway, and he still owns a lot of stock.
Temporary setback maybe, but I guess I don't see how an organization this large can depend so much on 1 person
That's not a useful defense. I think everyone here knows that Tesla and SpaceX without Elon would trade at a third or a fourth their current valuations. People are invested in breathing Elon's gas. But if it's bullshit, like selling chips to a cut out, and making that cut out a priority customer, that undermine's confidence in all the reported financials having to do with AI.
Obviously, only him could have great visions about NVIDIA. I am expecting a 'we are going to stagnate, at best, without Jensen' worded admittance now from those poor folks remained in the organisation, with all those visionary thoughts taken away from them so abruptly. CEOs are the one taking the companies forward!
Lot of comments here stating with absolute certainty that China wanted Nvidia chips (they've previously ordered Chinese companies to not buy Nvidia chips https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-17/china-age...) and that Alice Huang is a CCP spy (zero public evidence of this).
> zero public evidence of this
is a bit of a stretch, given the reporting, intel briefings, comments from members of congress after the briefings, etc...
People who have worked in the national security sector in the US know how China operates. Any Chinese tech personage who is not a CCP spy but who somehow rises to a position of international influence will be recruited to work for the CCP by being made an offer they cannot refuse. In a typical case, there is plenty of evidence but most of it will never be made public for security reasons.
Of course China always denies this, but the evidence for this behavior over thousands of cases is such that the burden of proof is on those who claim such a person was not a spy.
This does not imply that the Chinese people or even its government are "evil" or that we shouldn't do business with them. It's just something that everybody who deals with China needs to be aware of.
I think my pedantic gripe here is that I don't see the people who are made offers they can't refuse by China and are Chinese citizens as "spies" as conventionally defined - they are generally not pretending to be anything other than Chinese business people, and business people passing info along or being asked to do things for/by government don't really make them "spies" IMO - at least not until they've changed citizenship or are working directly in something sensitive. Starting a business in another country to serve the interests of the home country with home country money is more akin to the British East India Company or something like that than being a secret agent as I see it.
> zero public evidence of this
yet it was an open secret among those in the know, both the affairs and the export violations
My understanding is that NVidia's organisation is very flat and Huang has his fingers in every pie; he's not the hands off type. Moreover there was no succession plan. I get that having an affair with a spy is not great but isn't it risky to replace him now?
I'm going to guess the 2nd affair with a direct report who rose quickly through the ranks is from the board's perspective the more egregious of the two failings.
And: the public only knows what's made it out. Who knows what else has come out in private.
I think that's a nothing-burger but it's enough to force him out. They probably have more cards in the play. Unfortunately we will never know of them.
Having sex with a report is a very serious no no. There are very valid questions of one's ability to consent when your boss is also your partner.
Oh come on, having sex with a coworker is rape now? This is getting ridiculous. Why not just go the whole way and require all sexual activity to come with with a signed and notarized consent form?
No? Having sex with a coworker is not rape, and no one said nor insinuated it was.
Go forth and consensually bang your coworkers. Knock yourselves out.
When you have the ability to fire or promote someone, however, you hold significant power over their life -- potentially impacting their ability to eat, house themselves, etc. In those cases, it's valid to ask, "Is there a possibility someone is being coerced into sex because they can't afford to say no?"
This is question of consent. It's not an allegation of rape. It's only a question and there are probably times the answer is no.
You don't have to knee jerk react to someone pointing out an obvious potential conflict of interest and go "so everything is rape now?"
Quid pro quo sexual harassment is not a “nothing-burger”.
No sexual harrasment has been suggested, except by you, from your imagination
Ok, well there’s already a third mistress reported so why don’t we both sit back and see how my position ages :)
Are you genuinely confused over the difference between "mistress" and "sexual harassment"?
No, I don’t think I am. You can disagree with me without me being confused.
Someone skipped all their HR trainings
Who? Me or that other guy? If you want to insult someone, at least make it clear who you're trying to insult.
You don't think the board of a listed company care about the CEOs bit on the side is being promoted? That's really not a good look for a company to admit that.
It's one thing to happen and another to put that out in the open.
Officials are corrupted? CEOs sleeping with other women including his subordinates? Snow is white? What's the deal? People at that level are basically playing politics, not laws.
However, the fact that someone decided to release all those information as PUBLIC, and followed that up with ANOTHER scandal, means that they are determined to get rid of them. As you said, it is indeed serious matter.
As the Chineses say: "Something weights as light as a quarter of pound if it's left alone, but can weight a thousand tons if put on the scale".
> CEOs sleeping with other women including his subordinates? Snow is white? What's the deal?
The problem is that you don't think it is a problem. It goes on because there are no consequences.
Maybe in '29 the Epstein perps will actually be prosecuted
Because reality deems that this is not really the problem, I was about to mention the Epstein thing -- everything in that file is 100x worse than what Jensen did.
If we (the common people) really want consequences, we will need to do a LOT more and put things in our own hands instead of relying on our representatives -- oh but that's too populist for HN's taste.
> we will need to do a LOT more and put things in our own hands instead of relying on our representatives -- oh but that's too populist for HN's taste.
I'm with you on the first half, and see the second half changing. The fever may have broken in the US electorate.
But the original news was not what sealed the deal, it was the follow up.
Nvidia will be just fine
I feel like "not having a succession plan" should be a fireable offence on its own.
Otherwise you end up thinking "should I start an affair with this Chinese spy I've been breaking US laws with? What are they going to do, fire me? They can't, I've got them trapped so I'm untouchable, I can do whatever I want. And if I'm in a helicopter crash then it sucks to be them, I'll not care when I'm dead".
Imagine having to explain that line of reasoning to Congress in four months. "Yes, Senator, we know our CEO was facilitating chip smuggling to China while in a relationship with a Chinese spy, but we figured that it would just be too risky to replace him at this time."
> Huang has his fingers in every pie; he's not the hands off type
well, yeah.
"an affair with a spy is not great" rather undersells the situation - there could be criminal liability.
For all his faults, I do feel for Jensen. He built this thing from an absolute scratch. He had a lot of luck on the way, from crypto to CUDA. And who can forget his spat with Jobs all those years ago.
> "And who can forget his spat with Jobs all those years ago."
Apparently I am able to, what was that?
Apple used nVidia GPUs in most of its computers. Around 2008-2009, nVidia produced a line of faulty GPUs that were used in the Macbook Pro. This led to widespread hardware failures, and was known as "Bumpgate" because the problem was caused by faulty solder bumps inside the GPU chip. nVidia refused to fully reimburse Apple for repairs because it wasn't contractually obligated to do so. In response, Apple switched away entirely from nVidia GPUs.
I think it was well into 2013 because both the 2011 and 2013 MBPs I had suffered from it. but I thought that was an apple issue (ie not soldering the dicrete gpu well enough to save money on it)
after the 2 faulty products in a row, I haven't bought an apple product since.
You are missing out, the M series laptops are insanely good. Now wondering how the field of ML would have developed if Apple had had Nvidia chips all the way...
This is not 2020 and nobody is missing out not having to deal with macOS in 2026.
This is truly the year of the Linux pcs and you’re missing out running anything else.
No, it was Nvidia because of the way the BGA solder was done. The problem was across manufacturers.
The infamous early 2011 MBPs had AMD GPUs that basically crapped out the entire logic board. That was what got me to switch back to Windows.
And that's kidna funny because now Apple Sillicon has pretty great graphics on their own.
Maybe that's the lesson he learned and why he _supposedly_ was making sure his GPUs were still getting to China. Because he knows that the alternative would lead to good Nvidia Chinese competitor later on
I don't remember either, but I do remember Linus Torwalds not being entirely satisfied with NVIDIA. That is actually something very hard to forget.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYWzMvlj2RQ
Every time I have to reinstall CUDA, I fondly remember this video.
Nvidia eventually had a spat with just about any corporation it has ever worked with. Their only partnership that stood the test of time is probably Nintendo.
TSMC?
from what i remember, morris chang is a close friend to hueng.
i wonder what will happen to nvidia's relationship with TMSC now.
Morris is almost 100 years old. His role at TSMC was instrumental, but now is more of an ornamental figurehead.
> Their only partnership that stood the test of time is probably Nintendo.
But even then, the original Switch 1 homebrew relied on an oversight in NVIDIA's Tegra chip that blew open the whole platform due to the ability to execute unsigned code. The Switch 1 was actually pretty locked down. Nintendo worked hard on securing it properly, only for it to all be for naught due to their SoC vendor making a massive blunder.
I wish I could have seen what was said in the meetings between the two companies when the first Switch exploit was released, considering it was fully on NVIDIA.
Yeah but that was only 1st gen and Nintendo can be just as much to blame for exposing it so easily. They fixed the second rev.
Megaspeed? :-P
He worked at Dennys in Portland for a while, so... He can always lean on that experience if needed.
I think he will be ok with $50B+
In this economy, that might just cover his rent until next month.
This is undoubtedly the most painful professional moment in his career which has been almost entirely Nvidia.
and entirely preventable. FAFO
> I do feel for Jensen
Why? He caused this. He chose to have affairs with a spy and a subordinate. Now he has to deal with the consequences.
It remains possible to feel sympathy for people who have done wrong. He's one of the richest men on the planet, he's acted with hubris and ignominy, he's betrayed his loved ones, and he's also probably feeling pretty terrible right now.
Why would I have sympathy for him? Sounds like he got what he deserved
Because its the human thing to do.
The human thing to also do is not pushing AI everywhere for the benefit of themselves and their stakeholders, to the detriment of literally the rest of humanity
Have you never been in a situation where you made mistakes, felt guilty, and appreciated the empathy and sympathy from fellow humans in light of all the shame and vitriol you received counter-wise?
Yeah but I'm not also a multi-billionaire who ran a company that is going to crash our economy
And do you only judge whether people deserve your humanity by how rich or poor they are?
probably feeling pretty terrible that he finally got caught?
based on the reporting about the second affair, it's possible his security has had to shut down similar witnesses in the past.
> It remains possible to feel sympathy for people who have done wrong.
It does remain possible; he's a parasite and someone who's just had an affair. He wouldn't value the sympathy given, Neither himself or Nvidia would return the gesture.
They give null shit about you.
> He's one of the richest men on the planet, he's acted with hubris and ignominy, he's betrayed his loved ones, and he's also probably feeling pretty terrible right now.
He chose to have the affair and as having my father do the same to my mother; you get no sympathy for cheating. Let them feel pretty terrible, maybe they will find what it's like to be human for a change.
Nothing more than a parasite in the corporate playground. His actions caught up with him; woe is me. What will I ever do with so much money.
Sympathy isn't absolution. Do you not have mistakes you live with? I hope he's okay in the same way I hope everyone is okay.
No, I don't. I've been working on my mistakes from the bottom of the barrel for the past twelve years of my life.
Changing everything to get out from rock bottom.
Some billionaire cheats on their wife and I am suppose to mourn for them?
You want me to be empathetic for a sociopath? Blow me.
Congrats on the work. I wasn't trying to accuse.
I think you have misunderstood me. I'm not telling you to feel anything and I'm not going to sleep tonight feeling sad for Jensen Huang either.
It’s possible to have empathy for sinners. We’re all human.
I agree. I think the biggest issue is to not have empathy for sinners and you think you are a saint…
> I think the biggest issue is to not have empathy for sinners and you think you are a saint…
At least that's only hypocrisy (assuming you are not, in fact, actually a saint--you might have developed habits and values that mean you are not likely to sin in that way.) At some level it's not even a problem: you want to aspire to be a better person than you are right now, which means you will hold values that you do not currently measure up to.
But thinking you are a saint because you have empathy is perniciously self-righteous. You can see something similar to this in the progressive movement right now, for instance.
I'm not religious. I do agree though.
But you shouldn't have empathy because you like him or anything.
You should have empathy when he proves he's changed. You can make mistakes, we all do. You don't deserve empathy.
He sells GPUs, he's not a rockstar.
It's like if, after a shooting, you were worried about the shooter having to go to jail instead of wondering about the people shot.
Indeed, except, not at all like that
spending your empathy on billionaires rather than people being screwed over by billionaires is a choice.
Choosing who deserves empathy based on their bank account is also a choice.
Genghis Khan probably had bunions and I could have some empathy for the pain endured, but I don't because spending a second feeling anything for him is a second I'm not invested in empathizing with, and better yet, helping people that actually need it.
DO you feel for how depressed that WW2 dictator was before he took his own life? How sad and lonely the big "H" was? That stirs empathy in you? Not me. I make choices about who I spend my mental and emotional efforts on.
I think a lot of people might also disagree with the consequences. Something along the lines of - if it’s all consensual then why does it matter. Disclosing trade secrets (wittingly or otherwise) or skirting export ban is a separate matter that does have real legal consequences if proven true.
This is his identity. Sure, he’s made some poor choices. Imagine Jobs resigning at the height of iPhone phenomenon or Gates at the very peak of Windows. Not sure if Jensen can bounce back from this psychologically. He’ll be broken for awhile.
Let's not forget him most likely knowingly breaking US export laws. Some might even call that treason.
Most likely based on?
"with a spy" where is the proof that she is a spy? It seems to be perfectly ok for CEOs to profess blind allegiance to a terrorist state, like Larry Ellison does, seems like a double standard.
You mean he knew she was a spy?
Exactly. I don't feel bad for a billionaire who operates in an extremely unethical fashion.
> For all his faults, I do feel for Jensen.
Me too. If he needs somebody to take his place he can reach me at my HN profile page. I'll take the bullet and try to struggle through with just billions of dollars.
I feel for his wife, personally
Wonder if he'll enjoy his retirement or end up like Marlo Stanfield at the end of The Wire.
Not to hate but he didn't build any GPU tech really.. He just came up with the name "GPU" (like CPU but with a G").
> He built this thing from an absolute scratch.
Pretty sure all those nVidia employees over the years had a bigger hand in building it.
I mean they obviously didn't because they never would have been working together without the founders.
Right. I'm sure if you got all of those employees in a room together with no vision and no Jensen, Nvidia as we know it today just pops out, right?
“The graveyards are full of people the world could not do without.” -Elbert Hubbard
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/11/21/graveyards-full/
Aha. So now we know why the world is in such a sorry state.
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of AI chip startups right now. So yes is a very reasonable stance to your question
It's CUDA, indeed, only Jensen can do it
Allegedly Ai does it better now, and there is more than CUDA these days
The idea that only one person matters is a plague on society
This is why socialism/communism won the Cold War. They got rid of entrepreneurship, yet new and innovative companies just spontaneously self-assembled for the greater good!
I, too, feel for the billionaire adulterer.
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Success in some areas of your life does not insulate you from tragedy. The guy still puts his jeans on one leg at a time. Probably very expensive jeans he throws away after one use...but still. The human condition cannot be escaped.
This includes his family and the family of those involved in the affair. Many lives were turned upside down.
The guy has enough money to buy an island in French Polynesia and never leave it for the rest of his life. You are correct he is still human, but he can do pretty well at making a new life for himself where he doesnt have to ever think the word Nvidia again.
In 10 years he will have a new family and new friends and this will be a distant memory for him.
Yeah, it's just potentially a little light treason, what could go wrong
Treason has a legal definition, you don’t just get to call behavior you don’t like treason.
Yeah, pretty small potatoes compared to the current US president.
But the President is an untouchable. Huang isn't.
Trump will get away with everything he's done. Rubio, Vance, Kennedy and Hegseth won't.
Trump will pardon every one of those people on the way out.
They'll get indicted after he's left office. He can't pardon retroactively.
I don't think it's been tested yet, technically?
https://www.criminallawlibraryblog.com/preemptive-pardons-co...
> Trump will get away with everything he's done. Rubio, Vance, Kennedy and Hegseth won't.
Well, there's a first time for everything I guess. Trump can just pardon them in return for a bribe after all.
The current chair of the House Foreign Affairs committee proudly wears a foreign military's uniform on Capitol Hill, so probably nothing.
It isn't the tragic human condition to have affairs. It's a choice he made with his free will. There is no need for apologia; he could simply have not done it.
Humans being fallible and not being able to resist our urges is indeed part of the human condition.
Not my clearest comment. What I mean to say is: "it's the human condition" is being used as a defense/absolution of his affairs, as though it's somehow a matter of course that he's going to commit infidelity. It isn't inevitable, because he could have simply chosen to do otherwise. It may be the human condition to experience temptation, but in the end it's irrelevant. He made a choice. That's what matters.
Nothing here makes sense.
One thing is clear: his extramarital affairs are not the reason why he did it.
There is something extremely important we don't yet know and may never know.
I don't understand. Who's driving this change? The board, the administration, or who?
Given the report that the US gov knew about this for a while, it seems more likely that it's coming from the administration?
China hawks in the admin. Trump was on board with loosening the export controls so that Nvidia could stay in the game, which ironically would've prevented China's domestic chips getting off the ground. The Stephen Miller types (and whoever connected to ant/openai) didn't want to concede anything. This is beyond personal vendetta stuff.
More likely the hardliners/security establishment. Rubio reportedly let Trump know of the affair/spy suspicion earlier this year (April? I don't recall), and he clearly ignored it because he likes Jensen and/or he wanted to get in on the action as Nvidia was making bank selling GPUs to China.
This breaking just before a meeting with Trump/Xi and just after the midterms show a changing wind in Washington is a hell of a coincidence—or not.
Securities lawyers, among others. All this scandal is going to lead to shareholder suits, which puts a LOT of pressure on the board to act. They have fiduciary duties!
Do you have any good materials on reading about Rubio? I wouldn't have clocked this at all.
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/11/09/rubio-huang-tru...
The smuggling and romance details that have been exposed so far are either well known or immaterial to the business. So why the crazy urgency now?
Perhaps some influential folks want to support Anthropic's IPO by showing that the open source models will soon be blunted/outlawed, but IPO-ing into a crash seems like a high price for that moat.
Or do similarly influential folks want to tank AI as a whole but couldn't politically afford a crash before mid-terms?
How illegal is it for a CEO to sell goods (potentially a core component used in military weapons) to a foreign government after your government said not to?
Up to 20 years in prison if you knew about it.
More likely would be large fines and possibly restrictions and audits of all future exports.
> Up to 20 years in prison if you knew about it.
Death/execution is also a possibility in the US for the offense
Don't think people realize that whichever politician executes a tech CEO will likely become President for life. The public absolutely hate these people and blood is in the water. Democratic politicians know this, republican politicians know this.
Sure, if we were at war with China. Hard to make the argument that he’s providing aid to the enemy when they’re not officially an enemy
Treason requires a combatant/enemy, Espionage is anything that undermines the government.
In this specific case, though, it probably depends more on the fallout between Huang and Trump.
I could easily see Trump pardoning him, but I could also see him getting thrown under the bus.
Presumably there is at least some faction in the Whitehouse out to get him. How else did intelligence wiretaps end up with the NY Times?
Considering the Trump admin flipflopped between
- we can't allow China access to buy or lease any GPUs
and
- turns out China is half the customer base, so cutting them off will crash the market, and the Chinese will just build their own anyways
Considering Trump & Jensen traveled to China just to sell more GPUs and despite that the CCP banned Chinese companies from importing Western Hardware in favor of domestic alternatives, I have my doubts this story makes sense
Which domestic alternatives?
Huawei Ascend and Atlas
https://tech-insider.org/huawei-ascend-950pr-ai-chip-nvidia-...
Interesting! If they have this, why are the Chinese labs still so compute-limited (hence relying on distillation instead of training from scratch), and why do they seem to want Nvidia chips so badly?
Everyone, including the Chinese labs, seem to understand that Huawei's chips are not as capable as their press releases make them out to be.
Also, for what it's worth, tech-insider.org is an embarrassingly lazy AI-generated content farm: https://tech-insider.org/about/
I would hazard a guess that Huawei is paying to get positive stories about their chips on the English-language internet, because they certainly aren't getting any organically!
They are not as capable certainly but considering they didn't have anything like 3-4 years ago, I'd say the potential to catch up is there.
Also like OpenAI's Jalapeno, with LLMs it might be feasible to deploy relatively simpler silicon that's hard to program for, and farm out implementation to AI so the CUDA moat might be shallower than before.
>I would hazard a guess that Huawei is paying to get positive stories about their chips on the English-language internet, because they certainly aren't getting any organically
Jensen has said that 7nm Huawei chips are comparable to A100-level chips, and even fairly recent models as of 1>year ago were trained on those and process improvements are not what they used to be
Very? Unless you're doing it as part of some CIA operation and even then you better hope you can prove it.
Depends on the size of the bribe to your government
So you're telling me Mr President knew about this and was fine as long as he got his cut?
He didn't resign because of two affairs. He resigned because there were a LOT more than two affairs. I'm sure they wouldn't stop coming after enemies and the press smelled blood in the water.
Eh, I think they wouldn't care except that both affairs are potential conflict of interest issues. If it were like a random person with no connection to the business that he had an affair with it'd be treated as less of an issue I think.
..and because American culture is really prudish about that.
The French and Italians wouldn't blink an eye. Us Brits, we'd talk about it, he's get a slap on the wrist but wouldn't be sacked.
It seems to be a uniquely American thing that the CEO can basically do anything (lie, cheat, fraud etc) just as long as he doesn't get caught with his pants down.
Prudish about affairs with spies? Or about affairs with people who, if they break off the relationship could lose their jobs (or if they continue it they could get promoted)?
These aren't just affairs.
Also, fraud remains to be seen, and shopping chips to China sure seems like questionable judgement.
I think you are too narrowly focused.
When you engage in an affair with a superior you have more leverage than you think. Yes you could lose your job, but if you lose your job you have nothing left to lose and can fuck up their life if you have the right evidence.
Assuming this is correct, it's even more reason that a board shouldn't tolerate this from a CEO.
Have you seen how women are treated when they are part of an affair? The mocking, excoriating, debilitating media coverage? Heck, in this forum of probably more decent than average people you have posters describing the women involved as "holes" and "sides".
Do you remember how Monica Lewinsky was treated? Decades of jokes at her expense, mockery of her and her features, jokes about dresses and semen and blowjobs. Can you imagine how hard it still must be to deal with all that shit day to day?
Bill Clinton still has enormous power. He's had to face nowhere near the burden she has, and yet he's the one who cheated and he's the one who did so with a report.
If you lose your job you lose your source of income. Your way of paying for your children, your house, food. You're left broke financially and mentally while the other party remains at the top with all the power to control the story and to further threaten you.
I don't think that the US *care* about spies? Look who has been put in charge of the NSA, FBI. There's even someone who is strongly suspected to be a Russian spy working in the Pentagon.
These shipments to China - I remember there being a deal made with the President which allowed these sales to happen contingent on some kind of "risk fee" being paid.. to the President.
The current administration is in bed with Russia so no, they aren’t particularly concerned with those spies
Yah, the UK has an odd practice of ignoring sexual abuse, especially with regards to men in power and young women or children
Americans are prudish, but not such that he would lose his job over an affair. A few Americans would boycott his company - but not enough to matter. There will be general disapproval, but that is as far as it will go.
However he will lose is job over an affair with someone that he has any form of business relationship with. He can have an affair with a nurse in the local hospital of the waitress of a local cafe and we will ignore it. However the girls he had an affair with are off-limits, and should be for any culture for reasons that we think should be obvious.
Isn't there a thing that when it's consensual, tell HR and done? Or you have to be on the level at the org? It is not a law, but in my previous not big, but ~ 1K international org, many marriages and many babies.
Did he do anything besides infidelity, as it seems that the "board" knew about that anyway.
In any case, he fell on his sword, and I wish him well in the afterlife, nothing is black and white.
Not tell HR and done. Tell HR so they can ensure you are never in a place where you can influence her business success. It happens all the time and the rules about what companies do are very complex. As CEO I doubt he can every avoid the conflict of interests that HR is concerned about in these cases and in turn he can't be both CEO and have these affairs. (but the nurse or waitress down the street would be okay, even the CEO down the street so long as they are not competitors and careful to avoid any interaction with each others as customer/supplier - this is often possible since the CEO doesn't decide which widget to buy)
Hi. I was musing, not pro / con. I mentioned the power imbalance, and I am shrugging at his "wisdom" given his status, but hear me out, it's that everyone seems to have know and kept the fact as an ace in their sleeves. I am sure he didn't fly himself and his mistresses commercially, there is a crew, and gossip spreads. The truth is elsewhere, regardless of each's view on infidelity. I give you Gates, Bezos. Cheers.
This isn't about affairs. It's about knowingly violating export controls and misleading investors
absolutely not true.
he resigned because there's some proof that he knew that nvidia was selling cards/chips to china -- the affair only made that extremely public.
Hasn't that been known for at least 6 months?
Seems like a narrow-minded take.
He wasn't getting sacked yesterday. It only changed when the second affair leaked.
Narrow-minded? I don't know, given the levels of insanity and in-your-face corruption we've seen pretty much every day coming from the US and particularly from the entire tech ecosystem it's really hard to understand the "norms".
I've read about how the US President raped a young girl (13) and multiple other victim accounts. I've watched how we've shown consequences to Prince Andrew, Mandelson and many others. I also see on Twitter the owners of this very site standing behind the disgusting people on the US.
I can't square that with the Jensen situation.
I should add that I'm personally in the camp of leaders who cheat on their wives or who make or accept bribes should be removed from their position. I don't agree with the British (or French/Italian) takes at all.
Just because tabloid news are full of usgov garbage doesn't mean every single human in the world accepted such behavior as new norm. There are still decent folks out there, dare I say a majority.
But yeah how can US folks stomach child rapists at the top of their power is beyond me, I've met plenty of folks with flexible spines while working in banking but this is on completely another level and that level is whole nation.
I agree - and I still believe that the vast majority are decent people. The issue is being ill informed.
The problem is that a whole layer of society have been completely and utterly corrupted to an extent which makes say a country like India seem to be a paradise.
Can we maybe not make sweeping overgeneralizations?
> doesn't mean every single human in the world accepted such behavior as new norm
And then you immediately overgeneralize and lump the "whole nation" into accepting a child rapist as president.
...?
> Us Brits, we'd talk about it, he's get a slap on the wrist but wouldn't be sacked.
Several BP executives resigned in a sex scandal just this year
https://news.sky.com/story/bp-chairman-removed-from-role-aft...
You're wrong. Having sex with your employees is not just an American faux pas. Hopefully you're not a leader of a company.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/06/lululemon-ceo-laurent-potdev...
https://fortune.com/europe/2024/06/11/bp-managers-given-ulti...
By the same token, why are you disenfranchising the choices made by a married woman to sleep with her boss?
Probably because of the power dynamic makes it really hard to see how free that "choice" really is.
And also puts doubt on any decisions by the boss that affect the employee - companies don't want people "sleeping their way to the top" as that's not putting the business' needs first.
This is a very successful woman, career wise. She’s clearly not incapable of navigating high stakes power dynamics and you shouldn’t just absolve her of responsibility in this.
(Your second statement carries far more weight)
We don't really have the ability to judge the power dynamic without intimate knowledge of the people and their personal lives, we don't even know when things started and what place their lives were in then.
It's why we generally frown upon relationships if there's any direct business link.
"All men command women, we command all men, and our women command us." - Cato
Because a boss has the power to reward the otherwise lesser competent women he is sleeping with over someone else who is otherwise better at the job but not sleeping with the job. If I'm a shareholder of the company I care about that, and the person wronged also cares.
As an aside, the above applies to any one of any gender sleeping with their boss (again of any gender)
Why should anyone care about that?
Because it’s actually misogynistic to cast women as passive and subservient victims of power abusing men, when for millennia women have been doing all they can to get as close as they can to men with the most power, money and status. This is the most recent example.
> it’s actually misogynistic to cast women as passive and subservient victims
What the hell are you talking about? Nobody is saying anything like that. Why are you even bringing culture war garbage into this conversation?
Obviously over your head. Please don’t flame and cast peoples takes as “culture war garbage”. I was responding to the OP’s framing as the women as passive participants in this saga. Hard to believe that’s the case.
> Please don’t flame and cast peoples takes as “culture war garbage”
You're the one that's flaming by introducing culture war garbage where none is necessary.
> I was responding to the OP’s framing as the women as passive participants in this saga.
I don't know who you think you're talking about, but you responded to my comment, and I didn't say or suggest anything like that.
Didn't we have a whole movement a couple years ago, "me too", where everybody was up in arms about men abusing power to sleep with women?
You think the women that have caused Jensen to come undone this week are passive and powerless victims of him abusing his power? Except for his wife, it seems like it’s the opposite.
I am not talking about the spy, but the women who reported to him. Being powerless or weak is irrelevant. He had power over her and that was what "me too" was calling out.
I think the power imbalance is actually quite slight. Has she lost her job and her husband today? Hard to say.
If she didn't sleep with him would she have had the same position, received the same bonuses, etc? We don't know. Even if he wouldn't have gone after her if she refused she may have thought it could have happened.
in italy you'd get a promotion if you are married and manage to show you have been with multiple lovers without getting caught
Americans really don't care that much either. It's drama, but no one was shocked and appalled to the point of calling for his resignation.
Now cheating on your wife with a FOREIGN SPY, yea that's a big deal no matter what the country.
> Americans really don't care that much either.
Speak for yourself. The sanctity of marriage is pretty important to a lot of Americans. Not everyone lives in a Berkeley polycule.
Oh, like about 50% of them not batting an eye when their president sleeps with a porn star while being married, and probably worse.
So that leaves what, another 50% that didn’t approve? Nations are not a monolith
Union of Clinton voters and Trump voters covers a vast majority of voters (at least old enough to live through both).
What does Clinton have to do with it? The Monica Lewinsky scandal was during his second term, nobody voted on that
The French would not blink with an eye about a spy spying on the top tech company of the country? The French intelligence would probably got her killed.
My appraisal as well. There's a reason French Foreign Legion soldiers get a fake name and DOB.
Downvoters are too young to remember Greenpeace vs. the French security apparatus.
Considering the antics that Elon gets up to, there seems to be a double standard.
> American thing that the CEO can basically do anything
American CEO would get meetoed. Any sort of sex (even consensual) is illegal, if you have no way to prove it! Lets way a few weeks...
The second one was a direct report to him, and I wouldnt be surprised if he granted her favors in exchange for the sex (whether it was "promised" or not) typically no executive 'survives' having an affair with a direct report and stays in the company.
Who you have an affair with matters more, in this case a Chinese spy wasn't enough, which almost makes you think, he was not the only one at Nvidia who knew.
Yeah, it's the treason-y bit that the affairs revealed.
The "nVidia are selling chips to China" thing wasn't exactly a secret though. It was all over Twitter and the tech/investment communities I was in. And in the gamer communities (as we're pissed at how nVidia and the rest of tech have screwed us).
What you know and what you can prove are not the same.
What we can prove in the near future likely changed a bit when Congress went to the Dems a few days ago. Republicans weren't gonna make a scene about their $25M donation to the ballroom project.
It was reported on at the time:
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/14/us-clears-h200-chip-sales-to...
I need to find the links but the reporting in Europe was that this was part of a deal where Trump got given a 20% fee for it (I believe those were his own words!).
It was reported together with the victim statements of the children Trump allegedly raped. I understand that the US media aren't allowed to publish any of these stories though so I can understand why few people would know about them.
Lots of things exist as open secrets, but once they become official news reports with lots of coverage the need to address the issue increases.
It's not just that they were selling through China, but that they bribed their way through the Trump admin's efforts to investigate it. But even that was partly known, it's just everything is now coming up all at once, making it so obvious he had to take a fall.
The emporer was naked the whole time. Someone finally pointed it out. This is the fallout.
Not particularly new situation in the recent US times. Far from the last time this will happen.
What an incredibly embarrassing downfall.
It’s only embarrassing because of the GPUs that ended up in China.
No it’s pretty embarrassing and gross that he used his position of power to get laid with subordinates
That’s how I’d expect a mid man to get women above his league. That’s impressive. Any other view on this issue is phenotypist.
That’s incredibly disgusting. Take your red pill rape culture elsewhere
Take your bigoted runaway feminism somewhere else. You refuse to acknowledge the pain of a lot of men but somehow all women matter.
I didn't care who he's tupping, yes he's a piece of shit and his wife should take him to the cleaners. What we should all be looking at is how far the company was prepared to go in pursuit of greater profits and start evaluating the circular financing of the AI industry with that in mind.
Bummer. He stood in the way of regulatory capture and AI monopolists had him removed. I foresee the open model / open weights ecosystem eventually getting locked down, especially the most competitive Chinese models.
Information wants to be free. I don't see how anyone could lock down a file of weights.
They'll lock down hardware and control who gets to use AI GPUs.
Nvidia is just about the only company that's both a monopoly and captured most of the value.
They will make the penalty so severe that anyone who doesn't cover their trail will get the book thrown at them
I'm pretty sure that information cannot be considered contraband in the United States due to its First Amendment protections
Assuming the administration abides by the constitution
It's not about the weights, it's about inference. Banning American inference providers from serving "non-vetted" models would surely bring a lot of customers back to OpenAI and Anthropic. Just when they go public.
Nvidia is not the proximate provider of open weight inference. That’s Nvidia’s customers, cloud compute services like AWS. If there was a move to ban open weights models, I am pretty sure these companies would howl much louder to the government than Nvidia, and they’re arguably more influential as a group.
And specialised providers like Baseten, Fireworks, Together… If regulation for the sake of safety was to pass, they wouldn’t be able to serve GLM, Kimi, or Deepseek anymore I wouldn’t underestimate Anthropic’s and OpenAI’s power of nuisance on that regard.
This is a weird take. If any company in AI is a monopoly it’s Nvidia.
That's not by design though, it's pure happenstance and a lack of competent competitors. Handicapping the entire industry to favor the the manufacturers who chose the wrong R&D path is interfering for no business reason. The only valid reasons are political pressure.
> AI monopolists had him removed.
PETA had him removed for his love of leather jackets...
We're playing the "Jensen did nothing wrong" game, right?
Right. It wasn’t that Jensen had an affair with a foreign spy and that the Nvidia board found damning evidence despite them being very incentivized not to. This is actually the doing of the secret cabal of AI monopolists (all three?). And now because we didn’t look the other way while a CEO was double-timing (talking of course about selling to China while saying he was being faithful to the US) we’re turning the car around and there will be no more open weights for anyone.
It doesn't seem fair that you're being ousted from your own empire by a bunch of randos, an empire you built from scratch and nurtured.
One should never give up control it seems. Zuck is right.
Don't go public if you don't want to answer to the public.
He didn't build it from scratch un-nurtured. He built it with help from people smarter than him, and with external capital that has severely diluted his stake in the org.
He's a <3.5% shareholder.
He then carried out actions which put the jobs of people smarter than him at risk, and also put the capital that gave him a platform at risk.
He got what he deserved imo.
I know "resigned" in headlines means he was forced to. But, why didn't he publicly fight it?
So the board of directors is a bunch of randos now?
They were with OpenAI and they cleared shop correctly.
I don't know, I just have a feeling he'll be back. Steve Jobs style.
That would be so awesome.
Sure, that Steve Jobs, the guy who had an affair with a Chinese spy and slept with an employee. What an egregious comparison.
Frankly, you're being naive. When it comes to a massive $4 trillion market-cap US corporation and one of the most important companies on planet Earth, money is everything.
If the company struggles without him and it's obvious they need his leadership, he'll be back. Morals be damned.
Thanks for clarifying where you stand on "morals" v. "money", despite the nature of both of the allegations here.
Now, back to the main point: your egregious comparison of a potential Huang-return to Jobs-return unfortunately still remains just as terrible.
> Now, back to the main point: your egregious comparison of a potential Huang-return to Jobs-return unfortunately still remains just as terrible.
Here is some reading material to clear up your ignorance:
When Chrisann Brennan became pregnant with their daughter, Lisa, in 1977, Jobs was a young man in his early twenties just as Apple was beginning to take off.
According to Brennan, Jobs reacted with dismay and anger to the news, and they never married. Furthermore, for several years, Jobs denied that he was the father, even going as far as claiming in court documents that he was sterile.
A court-ordered DNA paternity test eventually proved conclusively that he was Lisa's father, after which he was required to provide financial support.
Reading comprehension fail (there is a lot of that going on in this thread. Hmm…)
OP wasn't talking about his morals, unless you think OP is on Nvidia's board.
No, the Steve Jobs who screwed over his technical cofounder and abandoned his daughter. You’re right, the comparison is egregious… ;-)
If this is some kind of competition about who made the worse moral choices, Steve definitely wins there.
He's going to have a 6 year vacation. putting my bet here on the internet history books.
One thing which isn't adding up to me. Everyone is breathlessly reporting that in the past three years (or whatever) megaspeed obtained $7.5B in nvidia chips. Nvidia's revenue is about $6B per week. If the fear is that China's AI research is catching up due to those chips, which seems like a percent of nvidia's production, does that mean China's researchers are so efficient they only need that 1%, or does it mean they are getting a lot more AI compute through other channels?
Megaspeed is one customer. Plenty of other SE Asia customers willing to move the chips, or host them on behalf of China.
From all the readings so far, it does not look like he knew he was under the spell of a honeypot, nor nvidia knowingly sold the chips in question, directly to china. The truth will come out one day, and it is might be an uphill battle to prove a criminal intent from Jensen.
On a more mundane level, since he can neither go to office, nor to the house, any guesses what his routine will be over next couple weeks? Not a perfect example, but for some reason, this reminds me of the last scene in Fargo where WH Macy gets holed up in a motel buying time.
> The truth will come out one day
Not if people with agendas keep squashing it. They don't even have to be sophisticated agendas - just look at the comments in this thread.
Cheaters are the worst, lying and betraying a woman who trusts you. Western people should treat cheating more seriously and not turn a bling eye to it. I wish they found a way to take back some of his pay too.
Huang is the classic example of an entrepreneur who grew up and came of age at the end of the Cold War, at the height of globalization and the Pax Americana: focused mainly on business, with no obligation to take sides for any national interest. Unfortunately, those days are over, and, reluctant to fully adapt, he has paid the price.
This is going to be very unpopular here, but this domino triggered by the China hawks in the current admin (and the handful of dem lobbyists in the pocket of openai/ant) is going to go down in history as a massive geopolitical and technological blunder.
Huawei just announced a fully domestic computer, Deepseek is rumored to be training v5 right now on entirely domestic Ascend chips.
I know eventually there will come out all the justifications for how this was to protect AGI, etc. But this move has also now tipped the scale beyond just the hardware bifurcation, but also the open vs. closed and commons vs. sovereign models. This isn't just chopping off your nose, this is America purposely gouging out it's eyes and removing it's ability to see down the road. Jensen Huang was the world's best shot and trying to keep a global AI world together, but one side has made their voice on that extremely loud and clear.
I wish there was more commentary on your point of view. HN has really disappointed me today. I come here for the deeper insight and instead I got Reddit lite. I read the NVIDIA way when it came out and was gobsmacked that all these years the company was operating the way that it did. It really made me admire the perseverance the employees went through and made me realize Jensen was a hidden gem. Seeing China announce their own GPUs made me think NVIDIA was in for some sweat but now? Its as if they are torpedoing NVIDIA for a short term gain only to not realize they have just tossed the long term win to China. The conspiracy theorist in me think they are hoping to pin the blame on the left or they think they can remain in the shadows and break companies that dont play ball no matter how important they are and walk away unscathed. This is a serious fundamental problem in modern American governance that might scare talented people away from the country.
100%, it's annoying to see so much noise and very little signal on this topic here.
There is a lot of poor comprehension going on in this thread. People seem to be acting on emotion rather than reason.
Unfortunately a side effect of many HN readers having outsized influence on the AI and tech industry. Influence campaigns are much more valuable when run here.
Astroturfed talking points is prevalent since like maybe 10 years I believe. There was this huge shift when 'influencers' became a thing and people realized there was power in that for real.
It’s more disappointing that some HN users have zero awareness that sexual impropriety in the workplace is actually a really bad thing, and that being a great business leader does not excuse you from the consequences of being a bad person.
No it isn’t. What’s so bad about it?
It's unfortunate that scheming eunuchs have taken down one of the greatest.
Naturally the Little People rejoice.
I feel this could be a chess move by OAI/Anthropic/AWS etc to get Chinese companies stop open source models and get hands on all Nvidia Chips. This real estate race is getting dirty.
Jensen's the most pro-open weight guy and calmest on China public figure at that level.
Musk has done, and continues to do, the most horrific stuff, including things far more questionable from a US security perspective. Altman's reputation is not one of honesty and fair dealing. We've had very clear evidence of Microsoft's leadership being caught in honey-traps by foreign governments. No heads rolled.
Tin foil hat take: I think Jensen's been sniped.
> Tin foil hat take: I think Jensen's been sniped.
I think this statement has a real risk of turning into a motte and bailey argument.
If you are only alleging that people are gunning for him, that’s true for every CEO and powerful person on the planet. People have things to gain from exploiting their positions.
> We've had very clear evidence of Microsoft's leadership being caught in honey-traps by foreign governments.
Huh, hadn’t heard of any actually, examples?
Ah, there was this small thing years back with this dude called Epstein. Sorry, niche shit, can't expect people to have heard of it.
Yeah must have been out of the loop, could you link credible evidence about it?
Of course, sorry you'd not heard.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleged_connections_between_Je...
And it wasn't just Gates.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/24/technology/jeffrey-epstei...
>Tin foil hat take: I think Jensen's been sniped.
By whom?
There are a few angles:
1. China, to take down one of the keys to Nvidia's success and potentially sabotage US dominance in AI and hardware, right as they've started their own.
2. The US gov, who may have been worried about Jensen's "loyalty".
3. The US gov, who were previously skimming money off of illegal sales but now need to do performative justice to prevent themselves from being held accountable after the change in governance last week.
4. A coordination between the US gov and AI firms, who may not have appreciated Jensen's open-ness toward open models and likely refusal to install firmware-level blocks for "unapproved" models.
The term "performative justice" seems to be a theme, and reminds me of "Hegseth awards medal to soldier who reprimanded him and aides at Arlington Cemetery."
Big CEO has affair, even with the intelligence angle, is pretty routine kompromat fodder.
The normal pathway would be that this would be disclosed to said horny capitalist via state security, with the understanding that they'll behave in certain circumstances and that it will be ensured that things go no further. This is a win for Uncle Sam.
That this didn't happen is telling. Obviously, cui bono gives quite a long list, but the state would have needed to be on side.
You know, _them_
The illuminati?
The man
Each model when pushed said they subscribe to the same religious ideology. Guess which!
Jensen is being outed by his board.
The others do not have a board capable of outing them. It has, in fact, been tried and discussed at length.
It's not a conspiracy, this is what happens when you don't give one person total control through manipulating the board and stock. You fuck up and get the axe.
The fun part being Sam _was_ ousted by his board at one point in time, but then invited back and he cleaned house so it wouldn't happen again.
Yeup. Didn't want to go into all of it, but that's basically what I was referring to.
This is, in theory, feature not a bug territory. Your CEO did something they shouldn't of (allegedly). The board now fires them rather than having the stock and the company ride or die based on it.
Will the short term stock suffer, sure. Will the company do better for it, maybe/maybe not? I don't totally agree with one great man but I get the idea and once you start working at a certain level you do see products often as a reflection of the values of the top of the chain.
Either way, there's no doubt this is a complicated and "unique" circumstance given the behavior of the US government, and I wouldn't be totally shocked if he DID knowingly break the law and did so with the help of the POTUS, and that's an entire quagmire.
The board/company distancing itself from that makes sense, and bluntly, it's not like jensen staying on was going to save the stock or AI. This is a symptom of what's going on not the cause, and him somehow not being voted out likely changes nothing, even for the board or NVIDIA who are all going to have uncomfortable questions about behavior and decisions even with Jensen out the door. Hell it might be the best place for him.
Jensen AND Elon AND Sam should all go. They have all proven to do enormous damage to the US and its allies
That's why they should all stay. And ideally export the corruption and stupid business culture to China so they get hit too. I want a world that's not dominated by one or two powerful countries.
What about Dario lol
I can't think of any big scandals with him sex wise at least. Never say never though - if you've got gossip there you should find a way to leak it.
His wife is connected to Jeffrey Epstein, that's something.
Yep. More accurately, Amodei’s wife wanted to be connected to Epstein (after he had pled guilty) - but he turned her down!
> An earlier venture, adult-film company Eddice, drew Clark into contact with Jeffrey Epstein. In 2011, she emailed Epstein a film script seeking investment, according to documents released by the Department of Justice in 2026. "We thought you and the ladies might enjoy," she wrote. Epstein did not invest.
https://dealroom.co/news/145067-anthropic-s-quiet-power-play...
> Musk has done, and continues to do, the most horrific stuff, including things far more questionable from a US security perspective.
Like what
Hmmm I don't know like limiting Starlink on Urkainian drones? Like repeatedly meeting with Putin and failing to disclose it? Failure to report foreign contracts? The fact that he was denied Special Access Program clearance (we don't know why)? The fact that he has over $1B in loans from state controlled Chinese banks? Campaigning on behalf of the far right AFD party in Germany?
The drone thing is uninteresting. But the others I haven't heard about. Do you have reliable sources for these? The problem with anti-Musk stuff is that 99% of the time it is overblown sniping from media hungry blowhards or oil industry lobbyists, and has been since 2012 when he launched the Model S at Tesla. But, I'm open to considering real problems. His time at DOGE was definitely dodgy (but the falling out between Trump and Musk was epic cinema.)
>limiting Starlink on Urkainian drones
So as not to violate ITAR? That thing where Ukraine used a gift in the way they were explicitly asked not to?
The difference between Musk and Huang is that Musk has engineered such control of his companies through dual class listings that there really is no one who can fire him. Having said that, people are very openly talking about the fact that Musk is going to spend the next couple of years spending quality time with the US congress explaining in minute detail why he's not a traitor.
The other big difference between the two is that after the last election, Musk (with Trumps help) essentially put himself in a position where he basically controlled the federal government for 6 months and did whatever he wanted with no consequences. It's a lot easier to commit crimes when you fire all the people who are trying to stop you..
Tin foil? It's shiny paper.
This is too co-ordinated, too quick, these have been sitting in someone's inbox for a while until it was useful.
It's not interesting that Nvidia's CEO wanted to be allowed to sell GPUs in more markets. Would be surprised if his replacement changes the stance.
> Jensen's the most pro-open weight guy and calmest on China public figure at that level.
Yeah, I can't think of any activities he's been up to recently that would result in him being calm and pro-China.
My tin foil hat says it was a state dept leak to NYT timed with trades in the market. Follow the money.
You don't think maybe he was calm on China because he was knowingly working with a Chinese spy?
Jensen should not have resigned. This entire thing has been played like someone in Washginton wanted him out. It's a sad day to see him go.
He didn't. He was fired by the board. This is how that typically goes. That's why the CFO is acting as interim CEO.
I think he should have fought to stay, not sure why he left on his own. I wrote a little blog post about it here: https://blog.jtoy.net/jensen-huang-should-have-fought-for-ag...
This smells like a hit job on Jensen Huang. Years from now, it'll probably come out that Alice Huang wasn't a spy for China and the whole Kimberly affair was a setup. Of course, by then, no one will care about the truth.
Who cares now? It is entertaining, but caring about something and being entertained by something are not equivalent.
On Nov 8th, the board stated that "no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised".
OK, looks like this spy story was not power enough (as we do not have evidence), let's use another one: an internal affair. Maybe two lies will do the job.
Copied from WSJ (https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/a-mystery-businessman-introduced...):
U.S. officials believe that China’s intelligence services recruited Alice Huang as an asset because of her access to the chip-designer chief
-----
Read between the lines: "believe", we do not have any real evidences, but we believe.
Alice might have to interact with someone from Chinese government ---> that's evidence of being recruited as spy.
Let's forget about the fact that anyone who do business in China (or any country) needs to interact with government employees at some time point.
Wdym “who cares about the truth” when you are speculating without any source? Is that not ironic?
Who needs evidence when we have wild baseless speculation from HN commenters?
I'm probably failing to see enough nuance here, but isn't Nvidia taking a hit a good thing when they are basically a monopoly? It seems to me like unintentional self-inflicted anti-trust regulation. Nvidia's failure is another chip maker's opportunity. And it's not like Nvidia is going to instantly implode and take the stock market down with it. It would take the form of slowly losing market share as their products become less appealing for whatever reason, assuming the decline would happen under new leadership at all. Then we get real competition in the GPU market.
I only wish he got ousted for being a liar about where the money was coming from during the crypto boom, or the super anti consumer policies like prohibiting OEMs from having a top of the line series with anything other than nvidia, refusing for years to support standard vrr and pushing for g-sync, artificially nerfing silicon capabilities in consumer grade dies and helping this bubble get bigger and bigger with bad accounting practices.
The dude is out at the absolute top of the company because he fucked too many women he shouldn't have and in a year people will be missing him when the AI reckoning for hardware manufacturers comes.
Edit: and hairworks! That fucking shit that tanked performance but was "a game changer" due to PR. Just like the fake frames and slop filter they're pushing now.
This could turn out to be the best thing for AI. I hope Jensen starts a new startup and challenges NVDIA. This will enable more options of GPU for end users and break NVIDIA monopoly.
He will never do this. His family is so embedded in Nvidia that he may as well be handing over a kingdom at this point. He might go on to do other kinds of related things, or maybe he will buy an island and vanish, who knows. But, he will never compete with Nvidia.
Why fire and not admin leave?
The investigation is just starting. He's been indicted but not proven guilty yet. What if the facts come to light and the issue is overblown or wrong?
He also hasn't had the chance to properly defend himself.
This is a permanent fix for a potentially temporary problem, and that is short sighted
I think it will come to light the board was aware well before it became public. There are likely more damning details that are yet to be public.
Exactly. People are acting like this is some conspiracy or a woke move or something. When it seems pretty likely he just broke the law while acting as CEO and they're trying to get ahead of it.
The big question for NVIDIA investors is how much of their sales came from skirting export sanctions because you can bet there is an investigation coming.
So does this pretty much confirms the spy thing? I think it was only an assumption
You're getting mixed signals because it's both a yes and a no. Very likely not a "spy" per se - she's a proper business woman with a long career. Very likely in touch with China's information services - because she's a business woman with a long career.
But yeah, the "model" memes are completely offtopic. She's nearly 50.
What about the other two, or is it three now?
China wins in both cases. They just slowed down the biggest AI company in the US. Had he not resigned, they would've gotten more chips either way.
There is a lot of discussions on Export Ban. Does selling to a Singapore Company with Chinese Stakeholders considered illegal under those ban? Does Nvidia have to track every single GPU sold or even resold?
I was under the impression he sold it to a Singapore company, or even any other companies. What those companies do with those GPU is not his fault.
This whole thing is just a sad story.
'Singaporean' company whose former managing director (Chinese national Alice Huang / Huang Le) and owner (through a self-titled company) is the same person he's had an extramarital affair with.
The same company they've audited the datacentres of, and saw dummy non-running servers within which had been stripped of their GPUs, and were 'fooled' that they were simply yet to be commissioned.
Plenty of companies are started by Chinese Nationals. Including inside US.
On 2nd point, even Hyperscalers have large stack of GPU sitting idle yet to be commissioned.
The point is that there is clearly knowledge of the company having heavy ties to China - his affair partner owned it. Therefore, heavy caution should be taken with regard to export controls. Instead it acted like a gold stamp.
Yes US hyperscalers have plenty of hardware but are running out of 'warm shells' to put them into. It's not much of a problem in Southeast Asia.
The investigation was also halted
Jensen created value. He's also probably the most incompetent manager of recent times. Both can be true.
Anthropic and OpenAI are pouring money into this
Any guesses if that correlates with earnings? Are they bad, so they can they, look we already have new CEO, now everything is going to be better. Or are they that good, that they can say, look we will manage without Jensen.
I seriously didn’t think they would let Jensen go over 2 affairs. Is it something more than the affairs that I do not know about?
Makes me think, life’s so fragile. Jensen put 30+ years into the company and this is how it ends, hopefully not, but still sad.
I feel this is a hasty and suicidal move for the company, and for the American AI chip industry as a whole, esp. when they haven't figured out a transition plan.
If he had affairs with normal staffers and NOT involved with a chinese spy, he'd probably would have survived. The fact that he's out means he definitely supplied the chinese with chips.
Hard disagree. Public knowledge of an affair with an employee is a surefire way for the board to fire you.
I don’t approve of his actions, but the man was in charge of the whole AI revolution… like Wall Street hotshots a small scandal is navigable but this? THIS? They had no choice.
To my knowledge, Sergey Brin remained on as president (although he was not CEO) after admitting to an affair with a Google employee, and every other publicly-confirmed affair with a subordinate led to the CEO stepping down. Boards HAVE been known to put in a lot of effort to keep affairs from being publicly confirmed, though.
Completely unrelated, but he was the last CEO I really enjoyed watching speak at conferences.
Felt like he knew what he was talking about, and spoke with real passion and vision.
Watching tech keynotes these days feels like the same boring marketing script on repeat.
I’ll miss that.
> Felt like he knew what he was talking about
I lost faith when he was on Ezra Klein's show and said he doesn't think kids should learn math any more.
idk how people can symphatize a cheater. he could divorce his wife and continue to do his private affairs but he chose to lie
Not everyone is controlling of their partners sex life.
eh, there is a rumour that it was one of those 'open' marriages, given that his daughter was seen with him and Alice Huang in a video, implying they were ok with it. (dunno about the second one though, but given the first, the second seems excused as well)
Nah, this is about the indirect Chinese access to chips, and this whole cheating thing is a cover. He's confessing to a 'lesser' crime to save himself for the real threat of jail.
Weird move. There is something more to it. My guess is that he spilled some stuff.
Really disappointing to read the comments on HN
None of them are able to put two and two together that this was a deliberate coup
And it seems like nobody is paying attention to what Jensen Huang was fighting for. He was against regulation of open source local models. He was against regulation shifting liability of local model developers as well as frontier models.
All in all without Jensen, it isn't just about NVIDIA, there's no one to champion for open source models and running them locally is going to get a lot harder and expensive. It's actually going to accelerate the monopolization of closed models and they will have to pass on the costs to consumers.
It's an L across the board and I'm noting the degraded quality of discourse on HN and that nobody is seeing through the veil here.
Jensen Huang was against regulation of open models because he was *for* selling GPUs. He was so for it, he might have helped an Alibaba corporate cutout launder a bunch of them against US trade regulations.
You may think that's a ridiculous bigger picture, but that's the bigger picture I'm looking at. I think your bigger picture of, "this is an inside-the-industry coup to remove the one champion of open weights models," is even more ridiculous.
Both of these notwithstanding, what makes you believe nvidia's new permanent CEO won't also be a champion for open weights? An open weights ecosystem is better for their business long term.
For what its worth, Hugging Face is still going to push hard on our mission of open, local models
Agreed. People are too eager to signal moral outrage to actually see the bigger picture.
Or they’re simply clear eyed enough to not reach for conspiracy theories as an answer when one man’s ego and inability to keep it in his pants is the obvious explanation
Or we just don't buy your conspiracy theories without evidence?
The board is considering both internal and external candidates. Who has experience in hardware, has led a trillion-dollar company, has deep connections in Asia, and might be available?
It's possible Tim Cook's phone is ringing right now.
It would be interesting if the story unfolded with Jensen going to TSMC [1] and Tim Cook taking over NVIDIA.
[1] https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/tsmc-founder-morris-chang-...
It's hard for me to imagine Cook taking over Nvidia unless it was strictly temporary. I get the impression Cook retired because he wanted to relax and enjoy his golden years. But I agree he'd be a good choice to manage the chaos at Nvidia.
I got the same impression about Cook's retirement. But experience leading a trillion-dollar company is not a credential every executive has.
I'm not saying this will happen, just mentioning that it would be interesting to see it happen.
I don’t think Tim Cook would even give the time of the day to the Nvidia board or recruiters. He can bear and hold a grudge for a long time, similar to Steve Jobs. His firing of Scott Forstall and Apple’s dissociation with Nvidia after its GPUs failed in Macs are just two examples.
There’s a rumor that Apple’s Johny Srouji may be tapped to be Nvidia’s CEO. But I’m guessing Apple will do whatever it takes to retain him.
Trump agrees with you
The problem i see is that I dont see anyone who is suitable to be a ceo of Nvidia. It’s a special blend of hardware and software chops that no other CEO has imo.
Very very few HW CEOs have even the slightest ability to appreciate the key strength of Nvidia which is ability to build hardware and then drive it with outstanding software.
Look at AMD. Great hardware but hamstrung by their software for 20 years.
Hardware is not enough.
Funny how that perspective completely changed because CUDA ended up being a better idea than initially anticipated, while the need for well-designed and -maintained linux graphics drivers.. somehow subsided? (my nvidia drivers still deadlock way too often)
Is it weird that there were no Jensen stories on HN's front page Mon-late Weds? The scandal was deepening and yet it wasn't showing up here. Flagging?
Stories drop from the front page (ie. penalized) if they attract a high comment to upvote ratio, indicating an overheated comment thread.
the front page is heavily censored, best to use /active or hckrnws
There were two on Wednesday, from WSJ and NYT. You probably just missed them.
WSJ at least was late Weds. What time was the NYT one?
Late? Both were posted midday PT.
The obvious succession choice is Lisa Su, but AMD is now almost a trillion dollar company. I can't imagine her actually jumping ship at this point.
She'd be an absolutely terrible successor. If she'd make a good successor then AMD would already be competitive with Nvidia for GPUs.
“Hey Lisa! How’s it going? So ya we just fired your cousin who created our company. We were wondering if we could get on a call with you about replacing him and leaving your rival company? If you could call us back on 1-800-NVDA that would be great.”
If corporations just had feudal succession laws we could just have AMD and Nvidia form a dynastic union, no need for someone to leave one company to head another.
i mean if she puts on a leather jacket she looks just like him lol. evidently they are actually related
What if he goes and joins a Chinese company?
Tweet by Jared Friedman [1] "The people on the Nvidia Board:
1. Jensen Huang - Co-founder, President & CEO
2. Tench Coxe - Former Managing Director, Sutter Hill Ventures
3. John O. Dabiri - Professor of Aeronautics & Mechanical Engineering, Caltech
4. Dawn Hudson - Former CMO of the NFL, former CEO Pepsi-Cola North America
5. Harvey C. Jones - Managing Partner, Square Wave Ventures
6. Melissa B. Lora - Former President, Taco Bell International
7. Stephen C. Neal - Lead Independent Director; Chairman Emeritus, Cooley LLP
8. Suzanne Nora Johnson - former Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs
9. A. Brooke Seawell - Venture Partner, New Enterprise Associates
10. Aarti Shah - Former SVP & Chief Information/Digital Officer, Eli Lilly
11. Mark A. Stevens - former Managing Partner at Sequoia Capital"
1 - https://x.com/snowmaker/status/2120902014389694684
The board is making a major mistake, they could have stood their ground. The company will be much worse off.
Despite his personal affairs, he brought significant growth and stability to NVIDIA thanks to which we all have access to excellent products so his dismissal does not seem like a wise decision. I wonder if his successor will be able to measure up to him. And what would be the cost for nvidia? It all seems political and every politician has an affair to hide...
>Jensen Huang has resigned as President, Chief Executive Officer, and a member of the Board
Suggestion:
Replace Jensen the President with Tim Cook.
Replace Jensen the CEO with Ian Buck (Inventor of CUDA, PhD, vice president of hyperscale and high-performance computing).
Or better yet, train an LLM around Steve Jobs quotes and make it the CEO.
I don't care who he's tupping, yes he's a piece of shit and his wife should take him to the cleaners. What we should all be looking at is how far the company was prepared to go in pursuit of greater profits and start evaluating the circular financing of the AI industry with that in mind.
Who of you guys is applying?
https://jobs.nvidia.com/careers
This will be a disaster for NVDA losing their leader. The company will eventually descend into chaos when the roadmap dries up.
This might be due to violations or breach of his duties as the CEO, especially given the nature of who the other party has loyalties too, but nonetheless, its a lesson for us all. Because even if he didn't directly provide any IP, would that party have reasonable access to any IP during the events. Guess only time will tell
From Game of Thrones: - Men without cocks. You wouldn't find me fighting in an army if I had no cock. What's left to fight for? - Gold? - I spent my life around soldiers. What do you think they spend that gold on? - Family. - Not without a cock, you don't. - Maybe it really is all cocks in the end.
Illuminating, truly.
https://claude.ai/artifact/KiUrnV8j5oxG9qoR4R5snQ
Sentiment cloud of this discussion.
There’s no public evidence his lover was a Spy.
Export controls have been skirted since the Bronze Age.
Sure on the merits, there’s enough for the board to ask him to resign.
But it’s his company. He built it from nothing. You have to start with that.
The specific truths about anything hardly matter when a story becomes this big. The hubbub is too much of a distraction and Jensen was going to get hauled in front of Congress by reps trying to score points with anti-AI constituents.
Someone with a large short position helped this happen.
Seriously who cares?
Its not like Nvidia is going away.
I predicted yesterday that he'll resign and that he'll eventually join Tesla to lead the TeraFab business unit.
For intents and purposes, consider NVIDIA compromised for some foreseeable future. For operations and future purchases/CAPEX, more than a passing due dilligence is warranted if considering NVIDIA.
Huang has shown catastrophically bad judgement and lied publicly [0]. Many commenters here harbor lots of sympathy for him, I assume out of respect for the technology and company he's built, but that doesn't exonerate him.
He was sleeping with one of his customers—a huge conflict of interest. That alone is good grounds to get a CEO fired, but it only gets worse! Alice Huang, a Chinese national, was previously working for a CCP propaganda channel network with an impeccable acronym: CCTV. Her company was accused publicly and investigated by the government for suspected smuggling of sanctioned NVIDIA hardware into China. Now we learned he also had an affair with one of his direct reports — another diabolical conflict of interest, which alone could be good reason to oust the CEO and possibly the VP as well.
It's yet to be determined whether he disclosed secrets to the Chinese spy, or whether he at least privately admitted to the second affair (if not, that's even worse!)
It's not a single, horrendous mistake anymore but a pattern of disastrously poor judgement. Building an extraordinary company and technology shouldn't mean lack of accountability, and thankfully we found out today that even at the highest level it doesn't.
[0] https://fortune.com/2026/11/09/nvidia-board-probe-jensen-hua...
I don’t get why no one seems to talk about the first point
All the china stuff aside you cannot have a relationship with someone you made a business deal with
That’s like conflict of interest 101
Yes, exactly.
I've seen some people speculate whether or not he'll be a prosecuted/arrested. It's difficult to believe, but surely would be the biggest imprisonment that I can remember from recent memory.
This is insane. This is the best case scenario for China, much better than just getting the chips. They just crippled their biggest competitor. The stock might not crater immediately because of ongoing AI demand, but it will at some point.
Affairs and jokes aside
He's the hero we needed but didn't deserve. If this thing didn't happen my guess is open models wouldn't exist and we would be deeper and darker into the whole AI boom
o7
I hope there was more to these claims that we weren’t privy too.
IMO, should be illegal for company policy to retaliate against someone for a personal romantic relationship.
Which of the following views do you find problematic, inexplicable, or unjustifiable
- Conflicts of interest compromise trust and judgement
- Relationships with direct reports create a conflict of interest
- Relationships with direct customers create a conflict of interest
- Policies should be set such relationships are either disallowed or require strict oversight / disclosure
- Companies should enforce their stated policies equally as required by employment law
- Affairs demonstrate a lack of judgement, a lack of candor, and are problematic for positions of trust
- An executive that lies about an affair creates a risk of blackmail and a liability for the company
Don't forget:
- Relationships with subordinates is a violation of policy, demonstrating a lack of judgement and a willingness to break the rules
- Relationships with subordinates create legal liability for the company by enabling claims of sexual harassment, hostile workplace, coercion/abuse of authority
If people want a system where individuals are not going to break the rules it should ensure:
- every trivial action, or lack of it, is not garanteed to break some of the mountains of existing including set of rules one is supposed to obey when it's physically impossible to even assimilate them all
- people that do respect the rules can have decent level of certitude they will have a fine life without major troubles that could be avoided by breaking some rules
- the culture promote to respect rules as a viable flexible path, as opposed to actively promote one that states "it's easier to get pardon than to be granted authorization".
Everyone is welcome to assess their own society from what they experienced in life.
Creating conflicts of interest are not trivial actions, nor are betraying trusts.
Sure, the comment here was more general than specific to the topic, however once you favor some behavior in society, one should not be surprised to which extend it will flourish.
> willingness to break the rules
but I’m the CEO!
Your comment focuses solely on company profits. I don’t care about company profits. I do care about HR or company policy policing things they should not be allowed to police.
Its rather startling that you read my comment and saw a priority on "profits" rather than judgement, trust, and liability.
A leader who can be blackmailed or is untrustworthy is compromised in their role. Profit, nonprofit, government: it does not matter.
That is perhaps why affairs and lack of candor are both (usually) bars to obtaining a clearance.
HR doesn’t have the power to oust the CEO, the board does. This isn’t about HR at all.
HR, the board, company policy, for the purpose of my comment please group it all together. Basically, anyone with firing power.
Correct. Incredible how many people believe HR is the law. And seem to boot lick HR like they are the great enlightened justice in the world.
HR doesn't even enter into this.
I would agree for a "regular" employee - as the CEO you are literally the face of the company, so you are held to a higher standard. When you look bad publicly, the company looks bad - that's the job you agree to when you become CEO.
You don’t see an issue sleeping with the CEO of a company you made a business deal with?
Are you serious?
Americans are so prude.
You're confusing the idea that a demonstrated lack of integrity is viewed as a liability with prudishness.
Reconcile that error in thinking and things will start making more sense to you.
It's not about sex, it's about integrity and decision making, which directly impacts NVIDIA and through them, US national security. His board asked him questions and he lied to them, and they found out in the press.
A bunch of you on here think this is about sex, it's not, it's about signals that point to extremely poor leadership decisions and threats to the US economy and national security.
Tell us that next time your boss promotes your peer who's sleeping with them instead of you who actually deserves it.
Luckily i have not had a boss or promotions in over a decade
Maybe you have customers or clients? Same idea.
But hey even if you're an ubermensch who depends on absolutely nobody to make a living, can you agree it is unfair to those who do if they have to compete based on sexual favors?
Honestly, no, I don't. Spell it out for me.
Here's a definition from google:
A corporate conflict of interest occurs when an individual's or entity's personal, financial, or outside relationships interfere or appear to interfere with their ability to act in the best interests of the company or its stakeholders
No, I don’t. The bigger issue is HR (or anyone with firing power) trying to police who has sex with who.
That's your opinion but not the opinion of the federal government. They make the rules and you have to follow them, whether you like it or not.
I’m arguing a moral point, not a legal one.
Regardless, there is no federal law that bans relationships between bosses and subordinates, and no law that requires companies to police them.
And a law banning companies from retaliating against people for romantic relationships would not go against any current written law.
Insane you think HR is the federal gov.
That's not at all what they said, nor can their comment be interpreted that way in honesty.
HR didn't fire Huang.
HR / company policy / anyone with firing power. My bad I thought it was implied.
That's not an issue at all. It's literally part of their job.
Even so, HR didn't do this.
Don't complain if you get passed over for a promotion in favor of someone who's sleeping with a higher-up.
It's not a personal romantic relationship if the other side is either a direct subordinate or the head of a chip smuggling operation in violation of federal export control laws
People get fired all the time for things that they do in their personal life now all of a sudden we care?
Supposedly he started working with a crisis communications firm over a year ago. Where there is smoke there is fire.
I'm wondering - Jensen's damn good at his job, love him or hate him.
I genuinely am struggling to understand why the board would remove him unless there's more they know that we don't.
Regardless of the implications, even just as a change for NVIDIA this will be one of the moments we look back on. Keep hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times!
this is more concerning for hf than it is for nvidia
You resign when there's more revelations to come out.
Jobs was forced out of Apple, then had a second (and third!) coming. I wonder how Jensen will fare.
Extremely well.
What would the severance package be in a situation like this?
He resigns so he would forfeit much of contractual severance in most cases. A negotiated settlement is likely as part of the resignation and if he’s rehired elsewhere (eg at terafab or tsmc) it will generally terminate ongoing payments, healthcare, access to private aircraft and security.
He co-owns ~800mn shares in the company with his wife, so losing severance isn't going to be much of an issue to him.
Which one though?
oh 6 months or whatever at Terafab then succeeding Musk after he's kicked out would be funny to watch
3 leather jackets
And a gift card for Spatula City!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BUDwj_mXKE
Oooh Red Snapper, very tasty
Now I'm in danger of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, but I think there are several layers to this current drama. Most of the reporting is very "surface level". I also don't pretend to have the full picture myself, but there are many players and many agendas at play, and those agendas can change over time. [edited for typo]
There’s a lot of questions without good answers but what’s clear is this is almost certainly about a lot more than just the CEO cheating on his wife.
100% There is a larger play here. A lot of folks are commenting about power dynamics of sleeping with a subordinate as the reason, but that's not it.
Not to be insensitive, but stock is at 164.53 right now (down from almost 240). Good time to buy or is there worse to come?
It seems to me that he had two choices, the company or the family, he chooses the latter,i hope that's why he resigned.
His family works at the company.
I'm afraid this will only hurt open source.
Damn what does one do on a personal level after this? Retire somewhere?
Move on... Like regular people?
Create a charity, move to a rural town and become a farmer?
Huh, between the Anthropic IPO, the big shift in political environment, and the change in outlook for tech stocks, this comes at a pretty pivotal moment to see if AI train keeps accelerating at the same pace or if we start to see the end of the bubble.
I don't want to sound like a Jensen apologist, obviously huge missteps on his part, but he was quite a figure in shaping the last few years broad economic narrative. Good or bad, he was a force in shaping one of the largest investments ever. Does that shift without him? Does it shift really quick?
I would have preferred a slow fade into the sunset as a opposed to a dramatic exit. Yes, there would have always been a correction, but the bubble bursting explosively vs a more measured, slower correction will have different broader impacts and I just hope this doesn't push more towards the outcome that hurts a lot more.
The board, made of 10 members, only has 3.94% of Nvidia share in total, out of which 3.58% is owned by Huang.
Meaning that the 9 people pushing him out add up to own 0.36% of Nvidia share, only 0.36%
This is betray of shareholder interest. The board doesn't own Nvidia, this is not their business, yet only they can vote. they just want to finish as soon as possible, and you get a mad result.
The board of Nvidia is elected by the shareholders.
Shareholders voted on them in June:
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1045810/000104581026...
They have the legality, but this particular decision is still a betrayal.
Just look at the stock price plunge after he resigns, and I think this is structural in loss of company value instead of temporary sentiment.
He IS the company's value.
If the board cannot fire the CEO they are not really a board
It's interesting to see SMCI down 11%. Losing their protection?
He'll be back one way or another, Jensen is NVIDIA, and a finance person for sure cannot fill the shoes of an innovator
I can think of one company that rose from $347 billion to $4.6 trillion market cap after their finance person successfully filled the shoes of an innovator
Anyone here familiar with the story of Qian Xuesen?
When it comes to power, true preferences are fully exposed
Hopefully this is all for show and he'll come back soon.
And now nothing is stopping him from defecting over to China and Deepseek. Lost his family, lost his job, and China has plenty of money mountains and a very dedicated workforce. The idea must have crossed his mind.
Anyone has internal views of what Jensen bringing, and how the company would be missing without him?
My conspiracy theory is that its American spies who let this go public to pressure him out because Jensen was fighting their agenda of stopping China getting advanced chips. The flow will probably slow for a while, domestic Chinese companies will be forced to adapt, and as a bonus the USA wont even be competitive because they took their best horse out behind the woodshed and shot it to stop someone else from getting a ride. 12 months from now Jensen is gonna be VP of AI hardware at Huaweii or similar, calling it now. Another A+ geopolitical move from an administration that has been in a class of its own right from the beginning. Im a nobody who knows nothing but if I had to bet it would be on this.
I cant help but see a difference in the moral standard to which Jensen is being held compared to the moral standard that someone like Elon is being held. Why can one get away with shocking moral behaviour, but the other has to step down for a mild affair. If Jensen didnt have the affair, or it never came to light, would all of this still have taken place?
When Cambridge Analytica happened, no one kicked Mark out of Facebook/Meta.
Not making excuses for Jensen, at his status and power level, this stuff goes with the territory. But I cant help but see a double standard here.
Elon and Zuck set themselves in a position where they are 51% and cannot be ousted by the board by construction.
Jensen messed up by splitting the power between all board members equally, and not getting a bunch of his family on a board.
The lesson is that if you do the right, non-authoritarian thing, you get punished
The lesson is that if you allow yourself to be held accountable by other for poor decision making then they might do that. Huang created a corporate structure that could hold him accountable for bad behavior and it did just that when he behaved badly. He did the "right" thing in setting up his company and it acted as designed.
This isn’t a case of being punished for doing the right thing. The right thing is retaining control of your own company and doing so is not “authoritarian”.
why do you believe this is true?
The idea of a board of directors is one that actually has to be defended on first principles.
What is the actual value add of a “board of directors” except to basically be weak willed PMC/non founder-type people with a lot to lose reputationally and financially who can be cowed and/or blackmailed very easily.
The typical person on the board of a public company would fold to pressure as soon as they saw a NY Times reporter called their phone.
I'm not sure if you're being facetious. The board of directors role is to look after the shareholders' interests. A good board is exactly that - the representatives of the shareholders.
And in this case they fired a CEO who created more shareholder value than almost any person in human history and they didn’t fire him for declining performance.
So this just proves my point.
Sorry but IMO this sort of company structure should not be allowed. Private companies should not be able to issue stocks the way Zuck & Elon have. Pull Meta’s charter and redistribute their assets. Let that serve as a notice to Elon that he’s next.
Under that standard why not just strip you of all your wealth and property and redistribute it? You’re not deserving of anything at all.
The argument is that the shareholders who own the majority of a company's stock (by value, not voting rights) should be able to control the company, not a minority owner. It is the corporate structure that allows guaranteed minority control (e.g. Zuckerberg owns something like 13% of Meta, but controls 60% of the voting power). In a free market, why should publicly traded companies be allowed to sell "shares" that are not ownership in the traditional sense?
In an actual free market the distinction between “public” and “private” company would be really just some transparency/accounting standard or set of standards set by the particular exchange(s) that the shares were traded on.
And just to be clear in practice, stocks are not priced based on their voting rights but rather expectations of their future cash flows (dividends) or simply how much the stock is expected to go up or down by. A lot of modern financial activity is nonsense.
If you really want to actually understand what a company is you should go look up when corporations became a thing and why. It had to do with various legal protections to stimulate economic activity and tax revenues.
All of these modern notions and principles that you’re invoking or basing your arguments on about ownership are most likely just contrived nonsense. These aren’t necessarily eternal principles of anything.
Same reason people should be permitted to buy those same non-voting shares. Because nobody is forcing anyone to.
Ask almost anyone here and they'll tell you that the C-suite are mostly a bunch of morons who don't know anything about technology, and now you want to ensure that businesses can only ever be run by such technologically illiterate morons, not founders? Insanity!
So if you don't want to to happen just don't issue shares on the stock market ?
Sorry but making laws retroactive is authoritarian. We should make it illegal to propose such things and put you in prison.
It's entirely fair to think that, given what I said, that I would mean to do this without some form of legal basis. Not so!
Is it my view that Meta has engaged in a sustained course of unlawful conduct that persists despite the judgements the law has already applied, and will persist into the future. As a corporation who is consistently in court, and based in Delaware, it surely seems to me the bar has been passed -- the AG of the state would be well within their rights to revoke their charter. Meta's entire basis of being at this point is to control public discourse. That's direct harm to the state and the public at large.
What happens to their assets afterwards is a job for the courts. Applying existing law is "retroactive authoritarian". Pfft, please. Ignorance of the law is not a defense against it.
No, it's a case of consequences for making incredibly poor personal decisions while being in a very visible position in a very visible company.
The man is smart enough to know he was playing with fire, and he got burned. The literal definition of FAFO.
Having a libido is fairly normal for most non-castrated men, at least historically speaking. In modern times, men are in seemingly depressed and in general need of various pills to help with erectile dysfunction, which perhaps in part explains the low birth rates.
What is it that you’re actually trying to say here.
What did he do that was “playing with fire” specifically? Having long term sexual relationships with women?
The thing he did that was actually wrong was that the NVIDIA executive he was in a sexual relationship with was herself married. That is actually wrong, that’s not “playing with fire”, that’s simply wrong.
To be honest, I don't know how to succinctly tell you that this is a bad take. For starters, that company has hoovered enough tax money that we should all be on the board. Secondly, encouraging family feudalism is crazy if you even claim to be a supporter of capitalism and the free market. Thirdly, you're not a tech baron and never will be, especially if you can't trust that your investments are concerned with your interests and goals due to CEO exceptionalism. Just saying. If he was a judge, he would be disbarred. This company wants to be a stupid percentage of our GDP, so they're gonna have to suck it up and hold themselves to the standards of a public office.
He’s not a judge, he’s a private citizen, he holds no office. Your thinking is very confused.
I think you’re confused on the essence of what he was trying to say.
The comparison was drawn because when you are such a position of power, your actions have such a monumental sway. Thousands, millions of people’s of lives are impacted, for better or for worse. In Jensen’s case, that’s up to the court of public opinion.
However the thinking is that when you are in that position, a just and fair society would probably want to keep just and fair and morally tact people in those positions.
IMHO I don’t care what way you want to spin it, when you have that level of influence over one of the major drivers of the AI boom, you have INCREDIBLE power compared to what most people think of when you say “private citizen”.
The court of public opinion is steered by the media, which is entirely orchestrated. You can't pander to the mindless masses, that's a suckers game.
Not the primary point of what I was trying to say.
These tech CEOs hold a lot of influence and power. Thus they hold a lot of responsibility and must be held accountable. Point blank.
Agreed. The fact that he gets this perception while Musk has repeatedly betrayed the US's best interests shows that things like rationality and merit have gone out the window. However, don't mistake this for me excusing either of their behavior. Neither are not suited for that level of responsibility.
I don’t entirely follow this comparison. Maybe we spend time in different circles, but Musk in the current day is nearly universally s*t on by everybody I know. Even the people I know that still praise his work remain with a bad taste in their mouth.
My buddies and I were just talking about how Jensen is probably one of the MOST liked amongst all the leading big tech CEO/Owners. I feel like the amount of grace this thread is giving him is proof of that.
I don’t understand how that’s comparable to the perception of Musk.
Are you sure you are not over reacting?
> For starters, that company has hoovered enough tax money that we should all be on the board.
How did they get that tax money? Why do you think that should give anyone an ownership stake?
Do you think buying a McDonald’s hamburger should grant you partial control of McDonald’s?
Yep. I learnt that lesson early on in my company. Never lose control of the board.
>non-authoritarian
you have to be jesting to use this term in the board of directors of one of the most expensive corporations out there
A lesson for future entrepreneurs. Follow the rules and lose.
Right. Maybe there's also some lesson about not cheating on your wife and skirting around export bans.
He followed the rules?
Are the rules "you must not control your own company"?
Putting his wife on the board would definitely not have helped lol
> The lesson is that if you do the right, non-authoritarian thing, you get punished
Cheating on your wife and betraying your country is the right, non authoritarian thing? We arent having this discussion for any other reason than those two events happening. Its an insane lens of entitlement to view the situation as if he should indefinitely retain ownership due to ... what? Existing? But never have any of his actions have consequences. That's the promise you make by positioning the board shares in that manner: you promise to have accountability. Finding it a weakness to answer to others for your actions is definitely a popular style of thinking amongst the current group of wanna-be authoritarians in the presidential cabinet, "strange" how your first two examples of CEOs unwaveringly align with that political faction huh?
In neoliberalism, there is no such thing as society (Thatcher). When there is no society, you can't be held accountable for previously non-acceptable moral transgressions.
If you are competing in a neoliberal environment where other companies play by these rules, you are at a disadvantage if you are following some superset of them.
I am not saying that he has done 100% right things, I am just saying that if he set himself up in the same way as his competitors, he would have been fine. Maybe he would have to pay some fine/bribe, similar to what the prior 2 have done for their infractions against the people.
History has actually tested this question quite extensively, and the overwhelming result is that, on aggregate, an entity where power is distributed is more successful than an entity where power is concentrated. Setting up Nvidia like Meta or Tesla might have been the best thing for Jensen, but clearly wouldn’t have been the best thing for Nvidia. And, quite frankly, over the past few years those other two are pretty good examples of why.
You're missing the point of the commenter which is that neoliberal social order confounds the empirical evidence. The framing of "x approach is better for a company's success" is a non-question, it is beside the point. Distribution of power "under neoliberalism" is a self contradictory model.
You don't have to agree with leftists but ignoring the premise just lets you talk past the point.
> if he set himself up in the same way as his competitors, he would have been fine.
Jensen chose to set up his company in such a way that he had to follow a superset of the rules that his competitors did. My point is that was a competitive advantage; even though it unmade him, that superset was a necessary tradeoff to be the head of a $4T company. We can see this because those other companies have started to be held financially accountable; the same lack of accountability that lets those leaders get away with affairs also lets them “get away with” withholding evidence (and the resulting $243M punitive damages). Unaccountable power (which is what parent is arguing for) is brittle and fragile.
Jensen isn't stepping down for the affair. He's stepping down because the affair was with a Chinese spy, and his words and actions appear to have facilitated circumvention of exports bans to China, and he concealed it.
Shareholders don't care that he's having sex outside his marriage.
You think shareholders care that he exported to China? That only increased shareholder profits. It is the US govt that should care about this.
> You think shareholders care that he exported to China?
As a shareholder, I care.
> That only increased shareholder profits.
False, because:
> It is the US govt that should care about this.
The US government does care about NVIDIA breaking some very serious laws, and for that reason it is not good for shareholder profits.
Am shareholder. I care.
First, I think it’s important we all remember that NVIDIA issued this resignation. NVIDIA’s board != Meta’s or any other company’s board. So there is no double standard because it’s not the same people.
Second, there is no proof that any moral standard is being applied at all. This could (and in my opinion likely) have nothing to do with a moral standard and more to do with extenuating information uncovered in the investigation or a strategic shift to protect against the current admin. There is likely so much happening behind the scenes and so many people have so much money to lose, I think it’s prudent for us to first exhaust all non-moral possibilities (unfortunately).
I do think a lot of people are projecting their societal and marriage expectations onto Jensen. They're expecting that he should follow the same set of standards they follow with their partner. Yes, monogamy is the societal norm - but it is not a requirement of a relationship. And, it is certainly not a requirement of a relationship that you're not a participant in.
In my eyes, this all comes down to the perception that someone is able to be compromised by non-monogamy. Jensen came out, apologized to his wife, and (at least publicly) communicated that he broke the expectations and boundaries of their relationship. This clearly communicated that a secret relationship compromises his position. And, should there be more secret relationships they'd continue to be used as leverage.
Musk isn't subject to this leverage because it's pretty clear that his relationships are not built on traditional definitions. Non-monogamy is either a clearly defined boundary in his relationship or simply not something that concerns him as leverage.
Who was Jensen having an affair with?
No one really cares, in the grand scheme, that he had affairs. He's being ousted because he potentially compromised national objectives. The NVDA board knows that senate hearings are coming, and want to make sure they have distanced the company from him before that happens (and all the text messages, emails, and details come to light).
The biggest questions are:
1. Did Jensen knowingly compromise national security (criminal implications) 2. What is the fallout / impact in the AI arms race
> the moral standard that someone like Elon is being held
Elon’s comparable fuck-up was betraying Ukraine with his Starlink intervention. It’s a huge deal. Unlike Nvidia, he has no Board to hold him accountable, it will have to be done by the Congress and states. (Europe will be useless as usual.)
As a result, that hammer will fall much more directly on his companies. It will just take more time to do so.
Zuckerberg, to my knowledge, hasn’t compromised American security in a comparable way to these two.
You may think its a huge deal, but I guarantee nothing will come off this at all.
> I guarantee nothing will come off this at all
I had this exact conversation about Jensen with a Silicon Valley executive checks notes on Monday night.
There is a bubble that doesn’t seem to see the wave of contempt across the American political spectrum for these executives.
> There is a bubble that doesn’t seem to see the wave of contempt across the American political spectrum for these executives.
Or if they do see it they don't care. This bubble is convinced they are untouchable
> if they do see it they don't care. This bubble is convinced they are untouchable
If this were just the elites being out of touch, that would be one thing. It's more. There are rafts of folks–you can see them on here–who are convinced the only reason Jensen could be facing any wrath right now is because of a hare-brained conspiracy. This is honestly-felt fandom bordering on zeal.
You don't think impregnating an employee is an issue? Shivon Zilis was a direct report at Neuralink.
> You don't think impregnating an employee is an issue?
Never said anything close to that.
I think it's horrible. And it's an issue that's gotten multiple Fortune 100 CEOs fired [1]. It's categorically distinct from corruption and compromise of national-security laws.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/12/business/nvidia-jensen-hu...
Musk gave Ukraine Starlink with the condition it not be used for warfare. Ukraine used Starlink for warfare, thus, Musk took it back.
> Musk gave Ukraine Starlink with the condition it not be used for warfare
You're saying Musk didn't know Ukraine was using these terminals for war, including air defenses, for the last few years? Despite constantly tweeting about it? And doesn't know that's what they're being used for now? What?
The best evidence for this being more ketamine nonsense is that Musk initially lied about the cut-off having been Trump's decision. Unfortunately, this time his actions may have crossed into treason–when he did this, he gave aid and comfort to an ally of a country America was at war with (Iran).
Why do you believe Trump?
And considering Trump is aiding Putin who aids Iran, I don’t think Elon will face any consequences regardless of the truth.
> Why do you believe Trump?
I don't. Musk himself conceded and gave the B.S. about ToS violations.
In any case, sure, he can say it actually wasn't him under oath. Burn that pardon.
> considering Trump is aiding Putin who aids Iran
Trump is the President. Musk is a private citizen.
> don’t think Elon will face any consequences regardless of the truth
I had this exact conversation with a Silicon Valley executive about Jensen Huang on Monday. There is a blind spot in Silicon Valley about the fury aimed at tech executives from across the political spectrum.
The fact that a bunch of people are publicly tweeting that this was a mistake shows just how clueless our cadre of SV elites are.
I guess you’re unfamiliar then with the ways in which Facebook failed to prevent (and therefore enabled) Russian interference in US elections over the past decade?
Certainly feels to me like compromising American security
Let's put aside that American "free market" scam for now.
Actually, problems where the ownership structure causes CEOs to be removed have been happening over the past 10 years or so.
For example: OpenAI's Altman, Musk, and so on.
Therefore, the ownership structure of Musk's new company SpaceX, which allows him to keep the company firmly under his control, is a very smart approach.
I think a large portion of new companies in the future will become like this.
I think the main issue is Jensen crossed the bright red line of national security. Whatever Zuck or Elon did they were nowhere near as political damaging.
I think they're both turds, and so are Gates and Bezos for cheating on their wives.
This is about national security, not morals.
I feel like it might be a cover up for something deeper? I honestly have no clue, it just seems off
You’re glossing over (or rather, not even mentioning) the fact that one of the women is a Chinese spy and the other is an exec.
Why do you think Elon has involved himself so directly and closely in politics? He spent almost half a billion to ingratiate himself with Trump and co.
Zuck has a supermajority voting structure. He cannot be fired regardless of what he does.
Corporate governance was apparently not a strength of Mr Huang.
Having an affair with a Chinese Spy and potentially skirting an export ban to sell chips to China AND having an affair with your direct report are not remotely morally or legally comparable to anything Elon or Mark have done. Shocking you would even consider that.
Musk's companies are overvalued BECAUSE of his unethical behavior. Facebook makes much of its revenue BECAUSE of Zuck's unethical business practices.
Skin color. Can you imagine if Jensen were even remotely associated with Epstein file?
Slippery slope ?
this isn't about a moral standard; no one cares about the affairs
the board must know that the risk of Jensen staying on (likely due to whatever hasn't yet been brought to light) is greater than the risk of instability by firing him; whatever is unknown to us must be pretty serious (again, not in terms of more affairs, but other stuff, like selling chips to China or whatever)
Meta's board probably would have fired Zuck over the CA scandal but they were unable to because of the company structure
> no one cares about the affairs
That's not certain. I tend to agree with you, but it is possible that the concern is for the effect on the employees. Especially the 2nd known affair is a violation of HR rules that are supposed to apply to everyone, and it's hard to argue that when you don't apply them to your CEO. By itself, I'm highly doubtful it would be enough (you can slap him on the wrist or something), but the effect on morale and company culture is a much larger concern. If people lose confidence in the company, they're more likely to jump ship, so you pay them more. And if investors lose confidence over any of this, then that's a much bigger and more expensive problem. There's a moral standard behind these types of things, even if it doesn't directly matter.
What we don't know and what really happened at the emergency board meeting are probably the key here. I'm sure there's plenty more going on that we can't see. More affairs are obviously possible, which is kind of meh until you find out who they were with and what deals they were part of.
It's even possible that Huang made the call -- it's not like he's going to escape public shaming at this point, and depending on his calculations of the repercussions, he could easily have tens of billions of dollars riding on this. He is clearly good at taking actions that maximize the market value of his company -- might this be another such action? Our armchairs aren't the best perspective from which to evaluate that.
Elon Musk has no accountability. He has effective control over the boards of his companies. Shareholders know that the value of their shares is predicated largely on this one man, so removing him would destroy their value.
Government could hold him accountable, and some of those gears have been turning over the last decade. In response he has spent a lot of money trying to steer elections and gain the influence of the ones in power to try to avoid accountability from that direction as well.
The double standard is that if you play capitalism well enough you are shielded from the consequences that others would face.
Elon made Tesla using Chinese automation, and China was its second biggest market (and largest for some models). Even though there are the same export controls for Chinese EVs, Elon managed to get around it politically. And lastly, Detroit isn't as shameless and ruthless as Ant/OpenAI are.
This is wrong and made up. Tesla was made in America, if anything they acquired a german automation company. No export controls existed to be subverted.
What kind of a shill are you exactly? U post a lot about China
I mean the guy tried to break a national security law.
Yes Elon and Zuck are abhorrent, but when they have tried to break the law, they have been held accountable in some sense. Not to the extent that they deserve it, but still.
If they become as big a libility to their businesses, even their controling shares won't save them
Musk and Zuckerberg are simply more politically shrewd.
There’s no actual evidence that Huang broke a national security law. Even if there is, we need the federal prosecutors to say so rather than random commentators on the internet. Even when prosecutors say so in this country we presume people to be innocent until proven by court to be guilty. I have personally looked into the rumors and I don’t believe Huang broke any law.
Musk and Zuck should both be in jail.
It speaks to Huang's actual work performance. His seemingly sole value proposition was talking; his customers originally identified a gpu's utility in AI.
yeah, I think he is way more than that, CUDA exista because he refused to concede to shareholders pressure, the whole GPU release cadence compressed to 6 months with Jepsen and the whole stack of datacenter technology to connect those GPUs didn't happen by mistake either
Jepsen survived in an industry of failures, he is an incredibly talented CEO
Jensen being ousted as President & CEO is one thing, but he is also off the board.
What I think is hard to argue: Jensen did a remarkable job leading his company, especially during the development of CUDA, which required an enormous investment in the 2000s but eventually created an ecosystem that outside developers and companies now help sustain and expand. CUDA is a major reason Nvidia has such a dominant market position and should continue to achieve far into the future, regardless of who is CEO. Nvidia's massive risk and its extraordinary payoff will likely be studied for a long time.
AI pushed Jensen into the spotlight very quickly and he didn't respond well, but he should go down in history as an extraordinary leader.
Hard not to think this wasn't orchestrated by Anthropic.
I would honestly love to hear why you think there is anybody at all working for or invested in Anthropic who is capable of orchestrating a coup against one of the most well capitalized companies on the planet AND a supplier partner that poses an existential risk to Anthropic itself (per their S-1) in the way of spending commitments and ability to procure compute capacity.
I don't need to hear why you think they did it. I'm already familiar with the "why" behind this crazy theory. I would like to know how you think it's possible they did this.
I mean... It is so obvious that I truly have to think that everyone in the comments who pretends it isn't are just Claude bots.
Looks like there's no evidence she's a spy [1].
"Some officials at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, including those close to director Jay Clayton, have framed the characterization of Alice Huang as a Chinese spy as not entirely accurate and over-torqued, sources said. And officials at the CIA also are not yet convinced that the intelligence collection on Huang to date, including intercepted communications, proves she was knowingly funneling information back to Beijing, a source told CNN.
Still, some Trump officials told CNN that it strains credulity to believe that she was not acting as an agent of the Chinese government — simply by virtue of the fact that she is a successful Chinese businesswoman working with one of America’s most powerful companies."
[1]https://www.cnn.com/2026/11/12/politics/alice-huang-us-intel...
Personally I am not a fan of companies being moral arbiters, or company's reputation and such be the organizing axis around which we decide whether a person has the right to a livelihood, companies after all are not people. Though Jensen is insulated from economic security concerns, for any other "normal" person, the coercive power of a corporate with it's army of lawyers can effectively ruin a person's life.
Whether one deserves such ruination is a moral matter, and everyone is entitled to their own judgement, but it seems wrong to concentrate such power in a private for-profit entity. The entire basis of anti-fascist doctrine is infringement of individual liberties and modern societies, while mostly conditioned to be against government coercion are remarkably comfortable with corporate coercion, dressed up in the pretty language of compliance and organizational reputation. A company is an economic entity, not a moral entity. It is fine with being a moral entity when it comes to matters of its own reputation and operations, but conveniently becomes an economic entity when it is time for layoffs. Ultimately, it comes down to who has a bigger stick
The thing is an organization is not just a place where you work; it is a provider of economic security, livelihood, and dignity. This concentrates extraordinary power in your place of employment; you are to clock in 5 days a week for at least 8 hours a week; and then work in a highly locked down corporate machine, which you are not allowed to customize even though this is where you will spend the majority of your week in, and one has to ask the question to what extent a company owns your life.
I think that we must also identify the cultural contradiction here; where Hollywood and the like in a sense glorify promiscuity and depict wealth as flaunted with assets and women, as a cultural ideal, and then turn around and hound creatures who are products of such a culture.
Of course, in this case it is far more likely that Jensen was involved with some national security incident.
This news significantly raises P doom.
Jensen, even after decades, remained deeply involved in many operational decisions with 40+ direct reports. He had a long-term mindset, investing heavily in Tegra and CUDA in 2009-2010, even as he was plagued by write-offs from faulty chips.
This is a terrible decision for NVIDIA and the broader economy.
Someone with an actual long term mindset wouldn't have slept with a suspected PRC spy, while simultaneously flouting the intent of export control laws, and setting his company up for federal smuggling probes, and congressional investigations.
Someone with an actual long term mindset and who had the interests of the company would have groomed one or more successors, and, if, for some reason, they felt they were indispensable, would have probably avoided jeopardizing the company by allegedly having an affair with a subordinate.
There are plenty of people in the world to sleep with besides subordinates and spies. Failing the most basic of marshmallow tests is not a indication of a consistent long-term mindset.
Jensen is a colorful, important figure in the history of technology. He did make many solid long term bets. But if the company falls apart because of his reckless actions, that that's on him too.
And if it doesn't fall apart, then the credit goes to him for resigning.
Where do you think that someone who is surrounded by bodyguards, always traveling, and working 7 days a week is going to meet someone normal?
I’m not even a billionaire, but the only people I interact with are people who I work with or who insert themselves into my life because they want something.
To go full devils avocado: Surely a CEO selling more chips isn't a bad thing for his company?
All I've seen is his personal relationships drama and advocating for softening of useless export laws that didn't stop a single CPU or GPU get into China in the first place, selling to Megaspeed is hardly anything unlike what AMD or other suppliers does right now.
It's a hitjob and he probably could have fought it but chose not to.
Much like the broken unenforced rules that lets OpenAI/ycombinator sell trillions upon trillions of tokens into China each week despite all the export restriction laws against them doing it.
You really think the Chinese can't pay and access ChatGPT/Anthropic/Google premium models today?
lmao spoken like a true shareholder
does that imply OP is right that Huang is the best person to lead the company and efforts to pressure him to step down are just people trying to cancel him over his sexual escapades? Otherwise what is "spoken like a true shareholder" supposed to mean?
So, I understand this is getting priced in to some degree, but I just don't see how any of this will change the fundamental core business value of NVIDIA. Even if they have to pay a fine or increased regulatory scrutiny. At this point NVIDIA is more like SHELL(10 years ago maybe/during oil spill scandal) than a tech company. Its going to keep printing money with its chips.
So, I guess I'll timestamp my prediction that now is a good time to buy NVIDIA stock.
Amazing CEO, should stand alongside Steve Jobs and Tim Cook.
What a sham, the loss of aura is incalculable. A Coordinated effort by those who disagree with him.
He had two back to back scandals that would normally oust any other CEO. Don't fall for the story this is some targeted thing, he screwed up at least twice publicly and they came out very close together ensuring his ouster but both of these individually are likely tenure enders.
It might be a coordinated effort (given the back-to-back timing of the reveals), but he still made his bed.
If others want him out, it was still Huang who loaded the gun and handed it to them.
He cheated on his wife and family, got done by a spy, and you're a simp
my take someone powerful wanted Jensen out.
whether that's good for nvidia or the u.s at large - I doubt - but time will tell.
is today the best day in over a year to buy NVDA? From a long-term perspective, how much was he the one driving innovation, and can they be something like an Apple who overcame founder's reliance?
never catch a falling knife with your hands.
the market is reflecting the risk. youre not smarter than the market
it's not a risk, it's definite nosedive. How the f*cking board selected the replacement? Unbelievable stupidity!
imo no. not yet. The world moves fast but it can get worse.
to me this proves money < politics, I belive the investors know who can make the most money, but this time there're more crucial factors to consider
I mean practically speaking if he gets hauled in front of congress we don’t know that money would keep flowing. Investor lawsuits, etc, like - it could have become financially unteneble as well.
I think he was forced out
Be interesting to see if he ends up hollowing out Nvidia if the talent moves with him to his next venture.
I suspect the real reason the board fired him is he's been lying to the board. It's not the indiscretion it's the lie that gets you.
If he was lying about his affairs with staff then maybe he's been lying to the board about following export controls and other things.
What would happen if a Chinese company CEO did similar?
The CEO would vanish and not be seen anymore.
Am I the only one who feels this is a smear piece to oust Jenson to retain optics?
Outside of the continued selling to China/skirting the export ban I’m of the belief that he was offered a better deal in China, took it, then signaled he was departing, the timing on this seems…suspect.
Recalling the May POTUS and CEO field trip to china, the lot returned together with Jenson extending his stay nearly two weeks afterwards.
IMO this ongoing theatre provides cover to oust Jenson and vilify him before he appears somewhere in China —- imagine how the share price would fair if it came to light that he was leaving as CEO to take a position in Huawei…
Something is suspicious. This is beyond his affair.
He must have come in cross hair with the state somehow,
The “foreign asset” got him is what I want to say. It’s tough letting this slide from the American technostate. One of our biggest gaps between competitors was architectural.
Extramarital affairs are pretty common in our ruling class, so unless the media is conveniently withholding information, think he got in bed with the wrong folks.
Step one: don’t even give the appearance of infidelity as a c-level unless you’re Elon.
It’s really not hard.
Was hard
I am in shock, Jensen is one of the pioneers in our industry and we will always remember his accomplishments. But I do fear Nvidia will now only make safe bets and not be able to innovate in an ongoing industrial revolution because they lack their biggest, boldest visionary to set the direction. This man has created an insane wealth for over 50% of his employees. An extraordinary leader, engineer, salesman and team builder. I still believe in the excellent talent at Nvidia, but I do not believe in a board that fires their best person and we have seen several examples of a board/leadership ruining a company because they lack the founders vision, fighting spirit and ownership. Jensen deserved another punishment, not getting fired.
> Jensen deserved another punishment, not getting fired.
If he knowingly sent GPUs to Megaspeed knowing they would get in Chinese hands, he is guilty of Conspiracy, Espionage, SEC violations, and Export Control violations.
Just the Espionage charge alone is 20yr to life, with the possibility of execution/death penalty.
He is superfucked.
And if he didn’t know?
Still out after 33 years at NVIDIA, and probably lost the trust of his children, his wife, and half his loot.
Guessing Trump was talking about Jenson on 60 minutes this past weekend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2aC8lAOQbg&t=1458s
"We had a situation where somebody was reported to us to be doing something bad with AI. We called them very strongly and said get ready to go to jail."
Wish the interviewer would have let him talk more instead of changing the subject.
And kitty remains undefeated.
this is extraordinarily funny
The irony isn't lost on me that Jensen Huang suffered consequences for his involvement with mature, consenting adults and a whole bunch of other tech billionaires didn't for their island antics.
I think the affair with the subordinate was the big problem. That opens up NVidia to a lot of legal exposure.
The Chinese spy is bizarre because these guys have corporate security and cooperation of the US government. How was this allowed to happen?
Skirting export bans is an unknown. I honestly don't believe this administration would let anything bad happen there. Jensen Huang is simply too rich and NVidia too big.
> consenting adults
The affair with his subordinate brings this into question. The power dynamic makes consent extremely iffy. There is a reason it is not allowed.
> The Chinese spy is bizarre because these guys have corporate security and cooperation of the US government. How was this allowed to happen?
Yeah, this is the most interesting part to me.
It points to the US government knowing about this, and holding onto it as compromat until the time was right to kick him out. But I don't even have a guess as to why this was viewed as the right time...
still not worth it
Treason.
RIP Jensen. Man had his flaws but great work on build the stuff he did.
Though I think it's best for everyone atm for him to have checked out, it's not fun to have your life be out through this nonsense.
I would have to assume that that the amazing almost rockstar esque popularity was the cause of the mistakes he made.
ZOG needs to be destroyed
I'm guessing this is the most expensive affair in history?
Probably in dollars, but Anthony and Cleopatra cost themselves the two greatest empires in the known world.
At the time, Egypt was no longer a great empire, but a vassal state of Rome.
lol
Divide it by 2 and each of them come out cheaper
At least they didn't catch him at the Coldplay concert.
Meh, not really. NVidia stock is presumably rebounding as we speak -- unless they pick someone political or unhinged to take over, this will just be a blip.
And I doubt it'll cost him much. What could you pay the founder of the second most valuable company on the planet who already holds $150B in equity? It'd be as absurd as paying Donald Trump.
-12% in premarket. Definitely not rebounding. It has lost 35% in the last month at the moment. That’s not trivial.
So if he held 150B stock say before, now he has 100B.
The rest of the market isn’t looking very solid either.
> NVidia stock is presumably rebounding as we speak
Not in premarket so far, 12% down sing yesterday.
Also why would it do better? Overall Huang seems to be a highly competent CEO. Replacing him with someone seems risky (especially if the board is influenced by Trump & co.). Especially given that Nvidia never had any other CEO.
> NVidia stock is presumably rebounding as we speak
I am not sure if you and I are looking at the same chart. Down 12% Pre Market.
So, I understand this is getting priced in to some degree, but I just don't see how any of this will change the fundamental core business value of NVIDIA.
Even if they have to pay a fine or increased regulatory scrutiny. At this point NVIDIA is more like SHELL(10 years ago maybe/during oil spill scandal) than a tech company. Its going to keep printing money with its chips.
So, I guess I'll timestamp my prediction that now is a good time to buy NVIDIA stock.
“some fines” could be a very big deal. Sanctions laws have teeth.
How much of Nvidia’s revenue came from infringing sales to china? If so, that revenue is probably going to disappear as now they will have to really be serious about export controls or face much greater pain. Some estimates I’ve seen is 30% of their revenue perhaps disappearing overnight!
Which is nothing to them. They could literally orient their business to only serve violations of sanctions and pay the fine and still be profitable.
That works as long as no one actually cares. At some point the government states seizing assets.
Sure, but then that would mean they can now take those chips and sell them to Musk, Zuck, or Dario at inflated prices instead.
And I'm pretty sure any CEO with at least a bachelors degree knows about the De beers diamonds story, so, I really find it hard to believe they will struggle with the concept of maintaining their artifical scarcity/demand.
If 30% of their chips were going to China and now they have to stop that, it means they will have an excess supply of chips and the prices would go down instead of up.
That would be the case if competitors were in the same state.
I think the biggest problem is the way Huang was creating demand by orchestrating the financing of the entire tech industry. The CFO in charge can handle the contract details, but do they have the strategic chops and relationships to keep doing that?
And it was all high risk. It may be only a once in a generation founder who wants to orchestrate that risk.
And again, no one was expecting NVIDIA to stay flat, massive growth was priced in.
Massive growth is no longer priced in. The P/E is 20, despite anticipation that this quarter’s results are 100% year over year.
I would say it’s under-priced, but I get really nervous when my thinking diverges this strongly from the market. Previous confidence in my thinking has not gone well.
>, but I just don't see how any of this will change the fundamental core business value of NVIDIA. [...] Its going to keep printing money with its chips.
The key is that NVIDIA is in a fast-changing technology sector and that means the core business requires NVIDIA to keep innovating new and better products that beat the competition. Having a company continuously adapt and iterate future products requires a visionary leader that pushes the company to stay on the cutting edge. Competitors and alternative products like Google TPU, Amazon Trainium, AMD, Cerebrus, etc are not standing still; they're innovating too.
Many shareholders (including employees with RSU stock) are worried that NVIDIA without Jensen puts them in a weaker position for the future unless they can find someone with equivalent influence and vision.
Intel was once on top of the world with CEO Andy Grove running things. But then the followup CEOs didn't keep Intel at the cutting edge and they lost market leadership to TSMC, AMD, and Apple Silicon in various areas. The world kept changing and Intel didn't adapt fast enough.
So IMO, it really doesn't seem to be that much of a fast changing sector. Moores law is long dead, my 6 year old 3080 laptop gpu is still damn powerful, rather we are seeing power efficiency/optimization now between GPU generations.
Its more of a 'race to the bottom' for price efficiency/hardware deg efficiency against price of electricity and price of the chips over lifetime, than it is a fast changing tech sector where breakthroughs are being made everyday that change the entire game like say with OpenAI and Anthropic.
So basically like a blue chip.
It very much clashes with the idea held by some that CEOs are fungible and that the value is all created by ICs. But yes, semiconductors are at the forefront of human technology and you need the whole company (including c suite) firing on all cylinders.
A variant of that idea is the push Jensen could have he's already done by now. The company is basically set and it will continue to do it's thing into the future. Apple as corollary example. He just can't as one person have been in day to day of everything that made Nvidia tick.
Everyone is somewhat replaceable but the work they historically have done might have been critical to reach current stage. And Nvidia may miss on what he could have done but it will take a while for the downturn to happen and others are just as capable. They may find another internal or external candidate that may be able to push further. Market will price the uncertainty until then.
Sort of agree but he did go around and spoke how export controls to China have no effect, and then he's in bed with a foreign asset, so lots of geopolitical stuff in there.
Plus whole lot of people waiting for that signal that the "AI bubble " is about to burst. No bubble will be bursting as a cause of this.
Well, AI bubble is not going to burst, probably ever.
We have a new equivalent to something like Web 2.0 boom, Its not like the dot com bubble, because its not actually made up of a lot of empty unimplemented websites with too few users.
Rather its already able and in my opinion has met Dario's claim about 'replacing all developer jobs' if a bit later than he claimed, alongside every other single job, nearly bar none, able to be replaced if it can be done via a computer.
For example, Fable 5.2. I wish it was cheaper. It's able to perform a build out of and then run an entire complex software stack, including dependencies/servers for internal opensource git servers with ci/cd and the full git and jira featureset combined, with spin up/server management across every major cloud provider and then use said stack to run a swarm as a collaborating dev team from every major llm provider.
I know that because I've done most of it (or rather Fable has). I started this project 24 hours ago. I now have:
Complete containerized customized claude code + codex deployment package with tacked on feature set 'plugin' mostly for claude + a custom-agent mcp that drives mostly codex for now, allowing claude to call codex subagents (so I can farm that subscription too), that allows multi level sub-orchs which make sub agents via said mcp with future work items being bringing in a modified hermes or pi harness to use across the board (Claude code stays until I can afford 20k usd monthly api usage).
This also includes a custom ci/cd deployment set of pipelines/management to aws servers easily integrated with necessary accounts, which was done adhoc as a replacement for gh actions, because of course I've used all 18 usd of my free usage on my private account, and then all 18 usd of my free usage on the git enterprise trial about 14 hours ago.
This is alongside getting ready to finally ship to prod several high complexity SaaS including international supplier integration, and a 'contact suppliers' module/role for high tier llm models only and an entire suite of CAD design and 3d model design with an array of custom tools for both.... which is now good enough that its actually production ready for my niche market. And I'm not even bullshitting. Its a good thing somebody on my team speaks mandarin and it isn't me. So far its been fine surprisingly.
Anyways apologies for the ramble, I need some sleep.
Its just so bewildering to me though. All that gobbledygook I just typed out is actually true, and I've tested the hell out of it, myself, I've had my wife test it, etc. It actually works. I can't think of anything I would need a technical employee even for now at this point. Because every bug I find I tell a fable session to make a git issue for and fix and then it does that and the bug is actually gone...
Now its more just the gatekeeping/relationship building hand shaking part that seems to need people still. I was thinking about a marketing lead but then I dipped Fables toes into that too...
I guess the AI vibe code everything bros that were infuriating 12 months ago, had the right mentality.
They'll be fine for a few years with a talking donkey running the place because they have a roadmap. And then when the situation on the ground has changed and the future is ambiguous, they will nosedive like SGI did. My money is on Huawei now. Way to go America! You've actually outdumbed the CEO's poor choices of mistresses.
Sanctions have not yet been applied. And I am doubtful that they will.
CUDA could be forced to go OSS. That would hurt.
How though? Is there any legal cases where this has been sucessfully done before? And even they couldn't NVIDIA drag their feet on it for years in court?
Personally I think a bigger risk than that is AI models getting good enough to legitimately just reverse engineer and open source CUDA directly.
How likely is that, though?
Good. May this lead to the fall of AI hype sooner.
Looks like there are a lot of duplicate threads that will have to get folded together...
all over getting some pu*y on the side.
>Huang, Nvidia's fourth-largest shareholder with a stake of about 3.61%
This was the founder? Damn!
I get that hardware requires much more capital and investment than a pure software company, but he had crossed the board-being-able-to-fire-you rubicon looong ago
I must say I really wasn't expecting this.
There's huge risk in firing a very successful CEO without anyone ready to replace him.
No one really cares about the affairs, so I think the only thing that could push the board do this would be the threat of more damaging stuff coming out, like nVidia skirting the China ban, or a legal threat to Jensen that envelops the company. Or back-channel pressure from the US Gov.
Hopefully this will not cause a shift in the way nvidia operates, for example in relation to research and open source.
I mean, imagine nvidia becoming like Apple, with an AI App Store ... trying to maximize their profits above everything else.
This seems like a wild over reaction to the stock. Does anyone actually think Jensen being CEO of Nvidia is with $1 trillion in market cap?! The reason Nvidia is dominant is because of their ecosystem and them having the best chips, not because of some guy that leads the company.
Shocking to say the least! I think this is bad for AI industry as a whole.
I actually think this may be worse for the gaming industry, which more lay people will care about. Jensen was a gamer and clearly excited about pushing innovation there.
I hear they're (temporarily) replacing him with a non-engineer finance suit.
It would be shocking, but with gaming making up just 1/20 of their revenue, maybe someone who doesn't actually care just says "we're pulling back from the consumer market to focus on our real business."
Huang does owe permanent allegiance to the United States. Treason comes with a price.
Why did the senior exec rat out on him?
There are lots of reasons to do this. Many of the work in the favor of the the person ratting. There are strong whistleblower protections for some of the reasons that work against that person.
It is unfortunate it can't just be a strong romantic connection.
Anthropic is behind this.
Jack Clark Co-founder and head of policy at Anthropic / head of the Anthropic Institute is the nyt and @AnaSwanson "source" he is the one coordinating a coup against Jensen.
But they are going to be hit by this as well - this is a strike against the whole AI ecosystem and honestly, the US economy as a whole considering how propped up it is by the hype.
interesting. the timing would favor their IPO in terms of flexing their ability to move policy through extra-judicial means. but it would also benefit them to coattail the narrative even if they weren't players so I wouldn't assume it without evidence.
It just sucks because Jensen was basically the last big tech CEO that seemed like a human being, and knew what the hell he was talking about. I guess a little too human in the end. But this has pretty much destroyed my last bit of faith in any of them.
AMD's CEO seems relatively comparable on not being openly evil and knowing what she talks about.
Lmao he stopped seeming like a human once he put the leather jacket on
I wonder who thought they would make more money with him gone.
Could have just powered through it. I'm surprised he decided to resign.
I'm not sure he decided to resign. "X has decided to step down" is often PR speak for "X was forced to step down".
Both of these scandals individually are usually pretty rough to weather, together they were essentially guaranteed to have him forced out by the board. He's choosing to resign the same way a cop under investigation resigns to avoid more public consequences and to hope to sneak away to a new job.
Can't help but wonder if he is also getting out while the getting is good.
He's getting out while he can without being forced out. A second in the company affair came out already.
He is at retirement age and a zillionaire. So he is going to start cashing as he is no longer required to report the sale of the stock. He is going to liquidate.
Also, there are signs that the bubble is weakening. Probably a good time to leave that specific game.
Pushing the sale of the chips into circular ecosystem was a sign that it was topping too.
I know. But the legacy story looks pretty bad at this point. He's been running it for decades.
Gates did it too and they still think he is a guru which he never was by the way; all of them are into this stuff when the hit their 50s feeling left out of the game while accumulating zillions.
Whether he can do that might be determined by any divorce proceedings, I guess.
He's not going to be left with zero from the divorce proceedings.
The criminal ones might, though.
> NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) Board of Directors announced today that Jensen Huang has resigned as President, Chief Executive Officer, and a member of the Board, effective immediately.
Jensen Huang gone as President, CEO, and a member of the Board of Nvidia, effective immediately.
The Nvidia coup operation has been completed. It is over.
Who are the insiders that arrange the coup?
Those who were against supporting open weight models and specifically selling Nvidia GPUs into China.
The AI labs do not want any of that and there is one that certainly has never released an open weight model.
You can take a good guess on the sort of people that are also associated with that AI lab.
It's kinda crazy to me to point at open weights here when we got proof of foreign interference of this kind. The case for considering China a fair or respectable actor in this regard is now absolutely dynamited.
This proves that not selling to China was a good idea, and throws into question every narrative pointing otherwise. It also should make it evident that yes, China is most certainly spreading propaganda regarding these points, there's just no way it's not happening.
>He bonked a spy
Who cares. You cant poke it in anyone in Silicon Valley who isnt informing to someone. Mostly Stratfor but still.
Yeah, that could be the case.
You say this like it’s a bad thing.
Who is incentivized to mount such a coup, I wonder....? Could it be the nation accused of inserting a spy into his life?
Sam and Dario, along with the NatSec hawks
i hate this moral outrage. what's wrong if he was sleeping around? let him just print gpu. his ability to print gpus has nothing to do what he does in his bedroom. i can sympathaize with the wife and infidelity is a sin. but he was supplying everybody with gpu. so that makes him a great guy too.
Because there is potentially more to the story that would impact the actual business than just affairs. The board is to protect the business and if they make a move like this, they do so in the best interest of shareholders. We will see if anything comes out but I suspect it’s not just sleeping around. There is also fears of a federal investigation and the ability to scapegoat Jensen may be the best move, business wise
good for her!
I was hoping we wouldn't return to woke witch hunts
If this was about national security or evading the law, it would have happened when it was discovered.
The board didn't have the determination either to fire him or to protect him, and he realized they wouldn't be able to make a decision, so he did it for them.
Now we'll see yet another jewel taken over by bean counters because the board was so dependent.
Let's hope other founders have boards who can actially handle their responsibilities.
because of a spy?
The spy affair was probably going to sink him eventually because she was also tied to a company that was redirecting chips to China where NVidia is banned from selling chips above a certain capability. Another affair came out this time with a subordinate inside the company which is also something that CEOs normally don't survive, the combo of them helped hammer in the nearly inevitable conclusion of each of them.
I have seen several references to Huang's stance on Open Models, and there is apparently nothing below board with exports. Is there a chance (within reason, I don't mean conspiracy theory) his ouster was orchestrated? Let's call the affair a "convenient excuse" because from what I've seen in my time on earth, a CEO's private indiscretions aren't always enough to result in a termination.
tl;dr - how much of this might be motivated about internal politics and board views vs. CEO views ?
so a week ago a picture leaks and now he’s out. I’d like to know the story behind the story.
Every influential person, even middle managers, have a laundry list of “scandals” . The real question is why now and why him.
This is the beginning of the bubble burst. for AI… In history, big things always start with little things.
Bad luck for Microsoft. That Surface computer, team up probably goes up in smoke.
Hopefully this will not cause a shift in the way nvidia operates, for example in relation to research and open source.
I mean, imagine nvidia becoming like Apple, with an AI App Store ... trying to maximize their profits above everything else.
Arguably all of Nvidia's open source work is a net benefit to their profits.
But what if they can increase their profits faster, short term, by ignoring open source?
Apple and Nvidia could hardly be more different here. Apple is a consumer brand, with basically zero presence in data centers. Nvidia is the opposite. They do make GPUs for "consumers" but it's for a small niche of hardcore gamers and basically irrelevant compared to what they make for data centers. An "app store" model would never work there.
New leadership could still lock down nvidia hardware more.
And nvidia could segment markets more strictly, e.g. starting an AI app store for the consumer segment.
To be clear: I don't want this, I just wonder what would happen if an Apple-minded CEO would take the helm at nvidia.
Lots of HNers chiming in that consent is all that matters, so the affair with a subordinate is totally fine.
Perhaps this may help explain why it's unethical to date a direct report to those HNers:
- It's unfair to the coworkers of the subordinate, because the affair can give the impression of influencing promotion, personnel and monetary decisions you make in favour of the subordinate.
- It places your direct report in a compromising position. Such a relationship is potentially coercive, because the direct report may fear reprisal, rendering any consent invalid. Many have commented that imputing coercion to any power imbalance leads to the absurd conclusion a rich person shouldn't date at all - however, this use of "slippery slope" doesn't offset your ethical duty as a leader. As the boss, you have to protect your employees, and placing them in this situation in the first place violates that commitment.
tl;dr you violate your duty of care, plain and simple, to everyone underneath you by doing this.
A pragmatic, ethical workplace policy is to instead date people not in your reporting chain. If that means you shouldn't date your employees as CEO, then that's responsible behaviour, not a chafing limitation.
---
Others have commented that Jensen's affair is plausibly fine because "we don't know his private affairs". Jensen has made an unambiguous statement about hurting his wife and family - if they were non-monogamous, Jensen has had the opportunity to disclose it. Absent that, you have to assume this was an illicit affair. Moreover, none of this changes the fact that having an affair with a direct report was entirely unethical.
Still others have attempted a whataboutism by asking why "other CEOs" haven't had this level of blowback for having an affair with a subordinate. Unfortunately, not every tragedy gets the same level of public reaction, for no other reason than timing, luck, or lack if engagement. We should be equally upset about all the other cases as a general rule, rather than relying on normalized apathy to lull us into complacence.
You know the industry has concentrated too much power into too few people when one person's midlife crisis can wipe ~$600 billion in market cap
Yeah, just buy a corvette and another leather jacket... sheesh.
wow! things moved fast. It was only yesterday we were debating what could/should happen.
If he did what he did as an employee, he would be fired too. As a CEO it was much worse.
Also, this did not happen in a day, it was cooking for some time and the mid-term shift of power may have something to do with it as well.
All the folks arguing "oh China does not need the chips, this ban is bad". That is a separate issue. Fact is there is a ban and this reeks of at least turning a blind eye in pursuit of profit, if not downright complicity. Second major character flaw for a leader after he demonstrated tendency to cheat.
A CEO is the public face of the company. If he was in China, he would already be in a remote prison for "re-education".
Folks may have their own opinion, but I do think China desperately wants access to the latest nVidia chips. Their own efforts are lagging behind (maybe at 80% and the last 20% is the hardest). So in the meantime, they don't want their software part to fall behind. So they need the latest/greatest for their AI models.
Eventually they may get to hardware parity and likely even get ahead (they have enough smart people and consistent leadership focus). But not today.
For them this was a win-win. If it worked, they would have the chips they need and if it blew up, they would have slowed down the leading US company (and it will affect nVidia).
Mr. Huang who already was quite successful eventually could not manage the stratospheric growth that he lucked into on the back of AI. Maybe on a product level he did, but on a policy level, he seems to have come up short.
Now that leaves another big hardware company, also helmed by a Taiwanese - I hope they can keep their heads (women are generally better at that since they only have to manage one head).
Not a bad time for an exit anyway. Saves being in the spotlight later if anything should happen.
Maybe it's all just staged so he can play GTA VI in peace?
Come on, that's conspiracy thinking.
Ocarina of time, on the other hand...
My guess is that he's grinding Metroid Dread so he can get those mechanics down before Metroid Ravenous drops.
Have to stay positive, AMD stock price is up!
I remember Jensen saying he doesn’t have a contract with TSMC. The whole supply is based on a trusted relationship and handshake deals between the two CEOs. I wonder if that relationship is transferable to his successor.
Well, at least he has about 300 bill in his pocket. He can go and create his own X competitor or just chill on a beach somewhere.
Ofcourse he might have to pay a few bill to men and women sitting in oversized leather club chairs to avoid prosecution.
Yay for powerful people being held accountable for their actions. Do Musk next.
And is it going to get cheaper to build data centers?
Nvidia was/is such a fundamental cog in the american ai economy/ machine, what spies, what cheating are people obsessed about? Nvidia created the capital for its own success; read about it, think about it, be against it, be for it. The capital did not exist, they created it by neoclouds buying hardware which they wouldnt need for two years ahead by lender and vendor-backed financing; hardware, which would be replaced in another 2-4 years.
Will nVidia continue to provide the same backing to neo-clouds? Without nVidia backing are lenders willing to give more or less?
Forget about chinese openweight models, antropic or oai, I see this development as a huge spanner in the us ai economy, maybe the biggest blunder of the year, the biggest own goal if it came from within the us administration under or without guidance.
And finally: Jensen selling to the chinese iron. Okay, was he the only one, god amongst mortals, in the fricking room. Who the heck comes up with these shallow plots...
He resigned to spend more time with his families.
> Jensen Huang was fighting hard to hang onto his role with the company he founded, according to several people briefed on the discussions. But an interim plan for the chief financial officer, Colette Kress, to take over Nvidia was well underway yesterday.
From the NYT live updates.
Ah well, I'm somewhat seeing parallels to the 2023 OpenAI drama, not sure if this is gonna be how things end quite yet.
I don’t think Jensen has much say in this matter
> But an interim plan for the chief financial officer, Colette Kress, to take over Nvidia was well underway yesterday.
Oh good, a business suit with no engineering experience. Nvidia is doomed.
“interim”
I think at this point, what is more interesting to me is not the events themselves, but observing the dichotomy of moral stances in this thread.
Gives some light to understanding why the world is the way it is. No further comment :P
RIP Nvidia.
Who ordered the hit? This was coordinated. None of the info was new, it was dwelling for years.
himself
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if this was trumps way of helping china take over taiwan
At the point, the lesson is to have affairs big and early, so you are invincible to media-coordinated attacks. What a tragedy.
No, the alternative is not to “not having affairs”. Remember, we don’t need evidence to spin a narrative.
> Remember, we don’t need evidence to spin a narrative.
Except that we have evidence in this case: he literally admitted to the affair. I don't see any "spin."
Would anyone bat an eye for “one admitted affair”? It is the “spy, Chinese, export ban, a blonde” caught on. No evidence whatsoever on these. It is the imagination of if you have “two ANT in the kitchen…”
Haha puritans strike again. Should have learned the trump lesson. Just say no and do whatever you want, the news cycle will move on.
Ooh a real world test of whether CEOs are dispensable.
How do you have $150B and squander your 30 year position at the head of this company for either of those two affair partners. Wild work.
The affairs are horrible behavior. Going around export restrictions.
But talk about ruining a legacy before it really took off. I don't really have sympathy. But this guy should have carried around a piece of paper with some short aphorisms to look at everyday to anchor him back to reality.
So the guy standing on stage, giving AI slop all the hype, is a career level bull$hitter. Didn't see this coming....
I was telling yall I knew something was off with nvidia when they had those remote controlled “lets pretend they are ai” Disney robots on stage - I was like that’s not cricket.
This is the reason no other ceo projects an image of being good guy. One affair and everything you build just collapses. And on the other side rich people can be doing anything and nothing moves markets for their deeds lol
As a CEO, you can sleep around. Just don't f** with the business.
Sleeping with a spy or sleeping with a subordinate are both f**ing with the business.
that leather jacket was a givaway.
Just putting my comment here for the history books.
"The state of the world economy and the future of open models would be in turmoil due to the affairs of a person who's not even a politician" was not on my 2026 bingo card.
I’m sure Nvidia will have great leadership to substitute Jensen, but man is this a generational fumble from Jensen.
The king’s crown tumbles. Stock is already down 10% this morning.
I wonder if this will be the catalyst for Nvidia losing the lead
NoKings is about more than Trump
Food for thought- The guy was clearly doing whatever he was doing for the past year if not longer. Why now?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jensen-huang-nvidia-rejects-ai-...
Could this be it? Are these fuckers worried about their incentives being misaligned where Anthropic would love to stop open weight models in the US and NVIDIA has incentives to beat Apple at the local AI game.
Just asking questions oh and Dey took'er jerbs!!!
Meanwhile, twitter is all up on Elon hiring Jensen as CEO of Terafab!
I mean its not like Jensen needs to work anymore, but that would be an interesting alliance
Financially, this is probably the best thing that could’ve happened to him…even with the almost assured impending divorce. Wonder if he’s gonna start a new chip company.
Don't really care, just wanna know the value of the golden parachute.
I predict that Jensen Huang will be co-leading the new SpaceX TerraFab.
With valuation down a two figure percentage it will be interesting to see what other problems they will now publish and kitchen-sink.
I guess everyone looks at infidelity and goes oh the horror. Thing is these are puritanical views and has no bearing on the companys wider performance. Not to mention the fact we dont really know what was going on with these people's personal lives. Now going around sanctions otoh is a whole different problem. Although tbf, given the clown that is the US president right now, I am not sure the US has the moral high ground to suggest selling to China is a problem or anything. I dont see the point of these sanctions, so I understand if Nvidia found a way of going around the sanctioned pathways.
Who appointed this clown of an interim CEO??? Mark my words... It's gonna be long way down for NVDA from here. SAD. REAL SAD
Netflix - HONYPOT : The Jensen Huang story. Coming soon.
Singapore: 0.07% of global population, 22% of NVIDIA's revenue
The American empire cutting off its nose to spite China.
Its his personal thing again, making so much noice for nothing.
damn. is there any evidence he actually screwed shareholder AND/OR the US gov?
setting aside the morality theater
I guess no one wants an Emperor, and someone needs to teach the tech lords a lesson after mid-term, let's see how NVIDIA holds up.
Firing one the world's smartest men that built one of the most valuable companies just because he had consensual sex with a woman he wasn't married with.
Welcome to corporate America.
It's amazing to see the people cheering on Jensen's resignation as if it's not the death knell for open models..especially on a forum that prides itself on open source, what a slap in the face and a compromise of the forums values.
He wanted to take time off to play gta 6, but ran out of pto days so he resigned, what a chad!
Huang out to dry.
The leather jacket was a giant red flag. He needed to be validated as a sexy man just like many other billionaire nerds.
Those are some world-changing, high impact, most consequential genitals right there. Impressive.
maybe denny's will offer him a role
(bad) jokes aside, it seems that the us gov probably dont believe enough on the affair case for gpus to appear in china and they got rid of the guy
i think this might be the end of an evolution era for nvidia.
we'll see whether it was about the affairs if Nvidia keeps promoting open weight models or just becomes a supplier for openai and anthropic's closed ecosystems for 'national security' reasons.
Well well somebody did not play by the books.
Jensen will probably run SpaceX's chip fab and grow it to the size of Nvidea.
Leaving Nvidia to go back to making affordable GPU's for home users...right?...right?
Would make 0 sense for several reasons. Very gullible thing to take anything seriously Musk spouts out. So strange that there is basically a fantasy world out there for Musk fanboys.
And Starship will land a crew on Mars before 2030 /s
The memeing on r/wallstreetbets is off the chart today. At least we have that...
Law and adultery are so obviously irrelevant here, besides being used as kompromat. That's a pretty transparent and well timed punishment for disloyalty and a corporate+state coup of one group against another, there's zero doubt about that. I wonder if anyone who commented "oh it's just China doing Chinese things" on Jack Ma back in the day will ever notice (ironic) parallels with Huang. Detestable.
Tesla Board of Directors currently looking at each other ... in silence.
Jensen caught playing with his Huang.
I felt I needed to offer a comment since everyone else is.
I honestly have no feelings one way or another about this.
Liquor, ladies or leverage - choose your poison.
Leaves out boats. Or yachts.
3 "L"s of downfall.
Artificial Intelligence is no match for Natural Stupidity.
I hear Michael Carrick is available
Now, I'm going to give you a piece of advice, boy. You keep your dick in your pants and your eyes on the prize.
— Senator Judson Ross in Species II (1998)
(Played by James Cromwell)
Words to live by.
The biggest layoff because of AI :xD.
Your career wrecked for a pussy, since 10,000 BC
We will never change, thank god AI doesn't have sexual instincts... yet
Is this how nationalization of strategic assets are done?
At least the Chinese spy story is more charitable than if they had found his name in Epstein files.
coup brought to you by anthropic?
Chinese Politburo has more engineers than NVIDIA board of directors.
Not surprising at all is it?
He got tired of winning.
Banging Chinese Spies presents a conflict of interest the Board cannot overlook.
Banging 1000 women while married is Chinese "Boss" behavior.
The cause and effect is that any and all future CEOs caught in a honeypot will be easier to compromise. Xi loves the news. Nerds with one billion dollars hoping to attain unlimited groupies will need proper Hollywood Handlers. HR for whore intake if you will. Until the sex robots arrive.
Since this company has abandoned gamers for AI. Plus allegedly giving away a few million plus chips (gamers get fucked) to China. I am fully on his wife's side. She was there at the beginning.
Luckily we know that American courts are one sided. Making the upcoming divorce more costly then the Bill Gate's Foundation implosion. What's the over/under divorce cost trending on Polymarket right now? Seems undervalued.
Jensen Huang getting caught with his pants down was not on my bingo card for how AI ponzi schemes will crash. This is the same guy and the same board that has been loaning peter to rent compute from paul who buys from them. ie circular financing juicing forward revenue.
Elon knocking on his door rn ;p
Eh, i think he's acting as a heatshield for Nvidia, his affairs are irrelevant, but the Chinese sales could put both Nvidia as a company and him as CEO in jail... this allows them both to pretends it's a 'personal issue' and get away with it.
That bit with Dwarkesh was very prophetic in hindsight.
Moving fast, I see.
and outlook goes down
Were he gay this could have probably been avoided. Oh well...
Because gay men are known for not having sex.
Or owned a big yacht and kept the personal business out on the water like all of the other billionaires
Lets see if suddenly loosing a CEO has an impact.
Maybe as a little test of the necessity of CEO's.
Maybe plug in an AI CEO to see what happens.
a night with venus, a lifetime with mercury
Huang/Nvidia = House Atreides Lisa Su/AMD = House Harkonnen GPUs = Sandworms US Govt = The Emperor/House Corrino Smugging GPUs to China = Smuggling Sandworms off planet to try and break the spice monopoly
This event = some stuff that happens in book 2/ movie part 3 Stuff
always helps to keep it in your pants
Elon can do the most hilarious thing by hiring him for a chip company.
I believe Jensen is still the largest individual shareholder for Nvidia.
Waiting to see how market reacts, I am selling my shares.
Dear Jensen, time to start another company.
And if you believe in conspiracy theory, I guess anthropic is very happy.
Oh no. They're giving the reins to the Chief Financial Officer.
May God have mercy on us all.
Someone right now must be smoking a cigar and going "I love it when a plan comes together". Clean snipe.
Chinese spy? or a plant from one of the AI companies to install a CEO?
So … Johnny Siruji the new CEO when?
[macrumors](https://www.macrumors.com/2026/11/12/johny-srouji-eyed-as-po...)
Supposedly this was known a while ago.
Handy thing for Trump to keep in his back pocket to distract Democrats attention if they won the midterms.
> NVIDIA’s strength has always come from its people...
Think they take this stance when it's time to hand out yearly bonuses?
god the bean counters are running the company now. queue amd
Jensen's other biz, but with a different outfit, possibly alternate days of the week
I thought they were cousins, but now that you mention it, I don’t remember seeing them in the same room…
I love the stock dive for nvidia. I hope it never stops.
Just trust him. It’s not like he’s ever lied to anyone he cares about…
Let this be a learning experience for everyone here: if you ever get the CEO if a US tech giant, then never f** a Chinese spy! (and never circumvent export bans while you are at it)
Someone of incredible wealth and influence suffering negative outcomes for something wrong that they did?
I'm not familiar with the thing I'm seeing.
Might call my financial advisor and ask him to buy some shares. They'll be lower, and the board has shown it can actually protect the interests of shareholders.
These kinds of fines and CEO drama pass.
The real question we must ask is if a current $30k consumer GPU that initially sold for $2.7k is just as inflated as the 'AI' holdings revenue predictions.
The smart money will wait till the legal mess starts, as the dead cat bounce in the panic sell off is probable as people try to buy the dip. ymmv =3
He was at the top of the world just last week and now his career is over. Slept with a direct subordinate - who btw rose quickly through the ranks - also slept with a Chinese spy and allegedly sold one of the most precious commodities in modern times illegally to an economic adversary. Hit job or not, he really fucked up.
Did Trump or his cronies short nvidia stock before this affair started ?
One tech oligarch down, many to go.
Twitter is saying Anthropic founder Jack Clark forced him out.
Lame bigots.
Elon(and others) got it right by making perfidity a feature of there character right up front by bieng VERY public about whatever they get up to. Jensen just so happens to be a convienient scapegoat to buy a news cycle away from the very difficult political and economic situation that would otherwise be the lead story, and I bet that having him fold his hand quite so easily is actualy not what they were hoping for, and good on him for doing it.
Who are "they?"
they?, welllll, not me, or you, unless you are one of THEM!!, so who are you ?anyway?
Jensen is basically Nvidia, he has ruled it for over 30 years single handedly, he took the risks and had the vision to take it to where it is today under his leadership. Without him, they are just some chip company, and will be revalued as such. The innovation will stop.
>> The innovation will stop.
You probably think Musk spend his days soldering Raptor engines...instead of posting racist memes all day while stoned on ketamine...
How many of his dozens of direct reports will leave the company as his successor, guided by some management consultancy, convert the company to a more normal hierarchy?
The volume of glee in this thread is alarming.
There's very little glee? There's lots of "no big deal, why is he fired" and lots of "these are firable offenses", but no glee.
I have to say, this seems like a ridiculous over-reaction on the part of the board.
I think if you could know the truth, 75% of CEOs in the US probably cheat on their wives. They are not hired to be faithful to their wives, they are hired to increase the stock prices of their companies.
Like sure, if you're a good Christian, it's not good behavior, but ultimately, it's just having sex with someone. I want the guy to make me money and build a great company, I don't care who he has sex with.
They don’t care about some paltry affairs
It’s quid pro quo sexual harassment.
It's not about the sex. It's about the judgement shown in cheating with a Chinese spy and a direct report, specifically. It's the lack of trustworthiness shown by someone who is willing to cheat in their marriage (presumably they are then fine lying to their company). And finally it's about exporting gpus to China illegally.
This isn't just a case of some extramarital sex.
was it confirmed she was a spy? or is that just rumors?
I think the whole "selling chips to a country we have an export ban with" thing might be more of their concern.
Sure, but what about the relevant accusations?
Could 75% of CEOs in the US help foreign intelligence assets to evade export controls and not face consequences?
Cheating in private is up to you.
Cheating with your direct report leaves you open to blackmail.
Cheating with your fucking customer leaves you open to a whole bunch more trouble.
Good. Now do Elon.
Guy sleeps with spy
Conspiracy reaction: Something is going on here... obviously not due to sleeping with a spy...
Not sure about the people thinking he didn't do much wrong.
The point is that as CEO of a company you have a fiduciary duty to have the best interest of a company in your actions and behavior.
Having sex with your workers and chinese spies is obviously not the kind of behavior that reflects that.
And if companies did not fire their CEOs over such blatant missteps the wrong message would be sent to the whole corporate America.
It sucks because obviously Nvidia would be nowhere without Jensen, and it's not like he killed someone or committed fraud, but the mistakes have been huge none the less.
And don't forget that those are the two cases we know about, but when you see 2 ants in your kitchen there's always more.
And the internal investigation of Nvidia quickly assessed that the issue was bigger and Jensen was more of a liability than an asset.
I think he clearly did something wrong. It just doesn't seem that bad in comparison to the current shit our leaders do weekly. We're in an age of morally corrupt leadership across the board in the United States.
And the way to fix that is to start holding leaders accountable. So the insistence that it's wrong to somehow hold Jensen accountable here is a pretty absurd angle for the exact "But but but we don't hold leaders accountable here" people to take.
You want leaders to be held accountable? Look, a leader who clearly made bad and dumb and wrong choices, and a simple opportunity to celebrate them facing accountability. Can you support that?
We don't know anything about his cheating and it shouldn't matter.
We don't know his relationship with his wife, what their stands on cheating even stands.
You can argue its an image issue, but thats a problem of the press and marketing and not that he might have cheated.
His wife is an adult and is for sure not poor, so its not a situation were she has to stay with him.
I do believe it either has to do with the whole spy story or he did something he really shouldn't have.
I never mentioned cheating? Not sure why are you bringing it up.
I said that the missteps was having sex with subordinates and chinese spies.
Now start connecting the dots with Nvidia being one of the major advocates for relaxing exports to China and selling billions of GPUs to shady Singaporean companies that the chinese spy represented and you understand why the board finds him a liability.
You mentioned, as the first big point:
"Having sex with your workers and chinese spies is obviously not the kind of behavior that reflects that."
Fair though you didn't say cheating, but it undermined (at least by reading it) the main argument you brought up later regarding chinese spies
Mate, it's the same, having sex with subordinates is serious.
At this level? At this age from these people?
Even the "chinese spies" is just unsubstantiated 'she's chinese so she should be a spy". She's not even chinese iirc, isn't she singaporean? so it's like suspect by ethnicity.
> so it's like suspect by ethnicity.
Suspect by payment from ... TenCent? AFAIK. Her company got money from Tencent and after every longer meeting with Jensen, someone from Tencent flew in and had a meeting with her. At least that is what I remember hearing.
In Wikipedia no mention of TenCent at all. In another writeup it's mentioned, but nothing clear.
Was Alice's company supposed to be the only company getting Nvidia chips (which they deny doing anyway). Or one of many and Chinese companies did it with many different others?
If many, why is her relationship specifically important or special from that aspect?
Again, I can understand snooping for confidential early information from him. But "she got with him so that this single company gets chips"?
If, as a CEO, the location and interaction of your penis ever becomes well known, then you are failing as a CEO, outside of a few very specific cases.
>or committed fraud
We're just gonna keep shoving the illegal GPU trade with China under the rug I guess.
Innocent unless proven guilty.
But yes, the fact that Nvidia advocated for relaxing exports to China and that he sold billions of GPUs to shady Singaporean companies is now obviously under major scrutiny.
If it was some middle manager who got fired for screwing a subordinate you'd see the typical "don't shit where you eat" comments. My guess is people are upset because their stock is down 20% over the last month because of this drama.
I think both nvidia AND jensen will be doing quite fine 5 years from now.
I agree. And to the conspiracy theorists: what is more likely? That an impossibly rich guy who thinks he is the center of the universe does something as entitled as this? Or that there is some shadowy coup going on that just checkmated him? Human nature doesn’t need that much encouragement.
> committed fraud
The jury is still out on this, re the circular financing mess with AI
As a society we seriously have an issue with building people up to extreme highs and then wanting to burn them.
Fucking Trump just blatted out on his propaganda outlet that he's "chosen" Tim Cook to be the next CEO at Nvidia.
I really hope the NVIDIA GeForce Now service sticks around and doesn't get enshittified.
It's actually an excellent high quality service and with all the shortages should hopefully continue to get more and more successful. Cloud gaming will continue to become a more important part of gaming.
Now that Microsoft recently enshittified Xbox Cloud Gaming, we have a situation where GeForce Now is pretty much the only good option left.
You better hope they keep producing consumer gpus at all
shit happens
A second employee affair has hit the CEO
https://www.reuters.com/technology/former-nvidia-ceo-huang-h...
It seems whenever something like this happens to high profile, or deep pockets theres a bunch of additional folks who appear, some (maybe all) whom are just opportunists.
People also just tell more open to talking once the news is public.
When you are the first person to call the ceo a sexual opportunist, you take all the risks. When you’re second third, it’s easier, you’re just one more person.
Yeah there's no conspiracy theory here. Once it's out, of course people are going to come forward when they previously might have been too afraid to.
Yet another affair with an employee. https://youtu.be/i4v6kxNRPtc?is=wvBQQ2nVP-hLXN8Z
>NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition (nvidia.com)
One Blue Tsunami, and now all the oligarchs are suddenly turning progressive and transitioning! Trump was right all along. This is exactly what he was trying to warn us about.
Think of all the mistresses who will now have to accept and adapt to their oligarch lover's new gender -- Jensen has at least two that we know of, but when you see two ants in the kitchen, you know there are a lot more. I can't wait to see the wig Bezos picks out.
He can not resist the pretty girls.
What is, however had, more interesting is that many of his statements did not age well. Now, mind you - I still think it is his private life at the end of the day; one can reason about foreign spies, but then the same question can be asked about Trump and his strange addiction to Putin. As well as how Jen-Hsun was so obedient to a mainland-China female, when the other Taiwanese are scared of being possibly invaded and subsequently killed by dictator Xi, just as dictator Putin commits to his own personal genocide against Ukrainians right now.
But, with regards to statements, I distinctly remember Jen-Hsun berating the british as incompetent economists. I watched that on a shorts on youtube; can not find it right now (google search AND youtube search sucks to no ends now). Well - he may be right that the UK suffers huge economic problems, but boy, this has not aged well. People will poke fun at his love of women potentially being spies while berating the british as being too incompetent in economics. Perhaps he was too incompetent in his own love life?
The reason this is all going so quickly now is because they realised how deep the shit is Jensen put the company in.
There will be an endless walk of shame for Jensen that would constantly drag the price of the company down, because this is the perfect opportunity for the Democrats to fly out of the gate in January and put the fear of god into the other billionaire oligarchs again. Punish one with extreme measures the others will fall in line, because at the end of the day they are all pussys.
Remember Elon wanted to do cagefighting with Zuckerberg. Those two losers had every excuse ready not to fight in the end. They didn’t even touch gloves for a single sparring. Manly men. All they can do is tough talk.
Plus the voters will see at least one party is doing something against blatant billionaire corruption, with corruption being the third most important topic in the elections.
There needs to be made an example of what happens to you if you start selling weapons-grade technology to the enemies of the United States for personal profit, and then think you are above the law.
This is not over for Jensen. And also not over for Nvidia, so the only sane thing to do is get as much distance between the "rogue" CEO and the company. Same for the White House, let’s see how often we see Jensen and Trump still together.
They are going to throw him under the bus and say he had the opportunity and the access and the power to do this without anyone else noticing, especially as he was sexually manipulating managers that directly report to him on important corporate issues.
They will make it look as though it’s all Jensen’s fault because otherwise they stop being a trillion-dollar company.
It’s a fitting end for Jensen Huang.
He gets taken down by the holy trifecta of power, money and politics he valued above his own marriage or what this whole mess would do to his kids.
He even lied in his public apology because he still was confident the other affair with his married manager would never surface because he truly believes he is smarter than anyone else.
What a loser. 140B deep pockets and still a loser.
Money is only paper. All that counts is family.
Threw away his life’s work, his marriage and every last drop of respect for him as a man, father and husband his kids could ever have for pocket change and some ass.
I still got no idea why an affair is such a big deal, why everybody immediately assumed his wife was not ok with it, or why this had any effect on his ability to continue running a business he's been very successful at running for three decades.
The amount of crass intrusion in someone's irrelevant private life is amazing, especially when it mostly comes from a country with some of the highest infidelity rates. Most of the people eager to insult him and make assumptions about his wife's feelings probably are cheaters.
There was absolutely no reason for him to resign or even publicly apologize until the pending investigation about his girlfriend being a spy or not completed.
Stuff like this is why AI automation is going to come faster than people think.
Invariably it will be recognized that the weakest link in any part of any organizations are the humans. Humans once had a monopoly on long-term strategic thinking so capital had to confer them authority and compensation, but once AI supersedes humans in these respects, then the human element will be aggressively excised from any company where human flaws put the strength and compettive advantage of that company at risk.
A robot employee never has affairs, never sleeps, never needs worker's compensation for injury, never sues the company. When trillions of dollars are on the line, eliminating risks like this is a trivial decision.
If you're controlled by your greed, yes. But human beings are relational. Half the reason I go to work is to talk and relate to my coworkers.
I know some people have AI girlfriends, but most people are not willing to (nor do I think they should) make that jump to trying to relate to their robot coworker.
I hope it's the same for people making a company. If not, we are heading towards a very lonely world.
You're assuming that the economy isn't driven by profit.
Of course there will be the minority of artisanal companies that accept the lovable flaws of fellow humans, but they will not be profitable, will not drive growth, and will not inherit the capital future. A market economy will sell to the highest bidder, and the buyer which has more money because it aggressively pursued the most efficient option at every opportunity will invariably be the highest bidder.
The desire for such idealistic AI automation, assuming it even existed, is neither necessary nor sufficient for it to be created.
Xi Jinping says Taiwan’s ‘complete reunification’ with China will happen
https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2026/11/12/xi-jinping-say...
What's stopping Jensen Huang now going to China and open a new Nvidia-like company and then the American advantages on AI chip is immediately gone.
Probably the 160 billion in nvidia stock he has
I am sure Xi can give him a lot more than that if he decides to move there.
This is insane. Firing someone for their personal life choices instead of their professional life choices is absurd. The reporter that went after the second affair story was a proper misandrist too (as per reels) who had a history misandry in the past.
Maybe the most competent tech CEO in recent decades, or at least one of. A Steve Jobs and Wozniak, all in one person but with no charisma.
NVIDIA's long-term future will suffer because of it, no matter how correct the decision is
People need to operate across multiple competencies. He failed hard at a few of them.
He also wasn’t a friend of the consumer. I don’t know what Nvidia becomes but he wasn’t good for me personally, or the machines I run.
a CEO doesn't have to be a friend of the consumer- it's not their job. What Jensen made of NVIDIA, now a market leader not just in its original gaming segment, but in compute in general, deserves recognition.
Again, the decision to oust him was correct, but finding someone with a comparable long-term vision and skill is going to be nigh impossible for the company. And sure, bring even more downvotes for that
I don't really care about that. I don't use NVIDIA, I don't own any stock, and there will be other GPU stacks for AI. It's tech industry drama and is kinda trashy and compelling in that respect, but NVIDIA did a lot of nasty things for consumers like me and I have to look elsewhere for the performance I want. The current iteration of NVIDIA being led well is not something I care that much about. If they change their stripes, maybe I'll care more someday.
--typed from a linux desktop seated next to a Mac
Feels like that’s an awful lot of words to say you don’t care.
Voznyak, Steve Wozniak's lesser-known Eastern European cousin.
Made me laugh. Well done.
Looks like Woźniak is already Polish. Does that count?
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wo%C5%BAniak
(Curiosity got me)
> Maybe the most competent tech CEO in recent decades, or at least one of.
I mean, if you set aside banging a Chinese spy and banging a subordinate, whilst married, I guess.
Wait for the FBI findings....is he a flight risk?
>> Maybe the most competent tech CEO in recent decades
The resignation is evidence that no.
I am almost sure now that there is a lot worse thing being hidden here, beyond an extra marital affair.
There is worse stuff than an extra-marital affair that's out in the open.
What if someone like Elon Musk takes over the helm at nvidia?
What are the implications if up to 15% of revenue was "fake"? The investors have been pricing Nvidia based on demand and revenue from (most places except for China). Since it turns out that it was actually (most places including China), doesn't that imply the market is actually smaller than they thought? Can buyers sue because they paid increased prices for their products due to sanction breaking by Nvidia?
Why would he resign on this note? He could have powered through it for a couple more years, and asserted leadership.
Because the CEO serves at the pleasure of the Board. The board decided it was time for him to go.
Then it was a negotiation about how.
Sometimes people can see the writing on the wall and choose to not burn down their life’s work on the way out.
> Because the CEO serves at the pleasure of the Board. The board decided it was time for him to go.
That’s also why more recent tech companies got rid of that pesky independent board by having total voting control.
Not sure people have grasped how serious this all is; the second affair alone would fell most CEOs because it was with an employee.
But my guess is, he'd rather resign on this note than what will come out in a few weeks.
> the second affair alone would fell most CEOs because it was with an employee
I mean realistically, no it would not. They do not resign for that in general. It is tall order for them to resign or leave when there is credible or proven accusation of actual abuse or harassment, there is not even that in play.
No, they really do, even at big firms.
McDonald's, Intel, CNN, NBC, CBS, Astronomer, Best Buy, Nestlé, Kohl's, Comtech, BP, CBOE, Barclay's.
Not hard to find examples from the last ten years.
I checked CNN thing (picked randomly) and:
> At CNN, Mr Zucker faced criticism from those who believed the network gave too much coverage to the former president, especially during the Republican presidential primary. Mr Trump has also criticised what he saw as unfair coverage.
I will happily argue that affair was just an excuse for other reasons. His coverage was not pro-Trump enough.
> I will happily argue that affair was just an excuse for other reasons. His coverage was not pro-Trump enough.
Well you could, but considering:
1) Zucker's "too much coverage" that was internally complained about was him trying to be pro-Trump, not anti- (regardless of what the then-still-disgraced former President whined about)
2) his resignation came in 2022 while CNN was still largely free of the right-wing pressure campaign it has been under in the last 18 months pre-merger
3) … in the middle of an internal sex scandal investigation involving someone else, in the #MeToo era, when the company was trying to make it very clear that it would not tolerate such things
I think it would be quite a stretch to make your case.
Jeff Zucker was not even fired for the relationship, but for failing to tell the board about it as company rules said he must.
Again: top CEOs do indeed resign over this stuff. Because it is serious: it opens them up to blackmail and opens the company up to lawsuits.
I said "not pro-Trump enough". I did not said "anti Trump". Yes, it is long standing conservative tradition to call yourself victim when having pro-you bias.
2.) It was not free of that pressure, it was just not that super high yet.
My case is that sex alone wont make it. It is easy to make my case, you are kind making it for me by adding more reasons why it was not just afair on itself.
I'm supporting your argument by offering a straightforward, easily proved counter-argument to it? You're wrong, it's that easy.
> I said "not pro-Trump enough". I did not said "anti Trump".
He was not ousted from CNN for not being pro-Trump enough. If anyone at CNN ousted him for politics-related reasons, it would have been because he was too pro-Trump. Because he was, for example, helping Trump before the election debates, offering to have a weekly show with him etc. This pissed off a lot of his colleagues.
None of that is why he was fired (not least because it would have happened a lot sooner than 2022).
He was fired because he broke corporate rules in a way that embarrassed them when they were trying to boot out Chris Cuomo for being a genuine abusive boss.
That is the reason, end of story.
I know we're all very sensitive these days. But he was running a multi trillion dollar company.
And the board of that company decided that the risks he presented to the company outweighed the benefits.
I'm quite interested to know what you mean here, between the lines. OK, he was running a multi-trillion dollar company, are you saying currently it's a over-reaction because of that, and the reaction would have been justified if it was smaller/bigger company? I'm really not sure what the underlying point you're trying to make here.
The guy changed the world, heaven forbid he sleeps with a few extra women. They were age appropriate for him. The guy's getting more punishment than the Epstein class did.
It is not about the sex! It is about the corruption/lying to the board/misuse of company resources/risk of abuse of power/impact on other people's career progression.
He clearly is a high agency person, and has to be to have founded Nvidia. The board might have messed up here.
He has had undeclared relationships with two of his subordinates (one a direct report).
I think you don't understand that this creates _enormous_ legal liability for Nvidia. It's straightforwardly bad news and people get fired for it.
What constitutes “enormous legal liability” for a company of nVidia’s size?
The sky is the limit. The problem with high-level CEOs having affairs with subordinates is that they create extra scope for insider trading, for blackmail (and thus for espionage, corporate and otherwise), as well as the ordinary stuff like people defrauding the company in various ways, staff being compelled to keep the secret, staff finding that their own promotion is impossible because the person boffing the boss gets their job, the subordinate themselves effectively finding they can't break off the relationship, all sorts of stuff. Lawsuits all over the place and usually some other secrets come out.
Whether or not you're arguing that Nvidia should just say, well, the worst his shagging around is going to cost us is X billion, price it in and let it slide, as so many seem to be, I can't give you a number.
But ethics, the law, it actually does matter.
He's facing one of the largest divorces in history, you don't think that would be a little distracting?
And if you don't know why leaders can't have relationships with their employees, that ignorance is on you. You're trying to insult other people but it just makes you look bad.
Can't legally, or are you just talking about social pressure/policing? Because everyone involved are adults, and knew what they were doing.
Besides that, it comes down to how well he's able to separate personal life and work, and whether he continues to add value for shareholders (which Nvidia has clearly been an absolute outlier at doing, during his tenure).
But it looks like they won't give him a chance anyway.
I guess I mean corporate rules with actual teeth.
A lot of marriages survive even after stuff like this. Especially in Asian cultures. The fact that his wife is White is the only thing that hurts him on his chances here.
She'd be stupid as hell to divorce him.
Or she'd be more than adequately rich, worth around $75bn, able to do whatever the hell she wants with the rest of her life, able to have impacts independent of him, and free of a sleazy worm who humiliatingly cheated on her twice.
“Twice” is public information. The things that happened twice have high probability to occur more often.
Indeed! There’s a whole “another shoe to drop” vibe around this.
Edit: and there it is. Two employees, not just one.
A multi-trillion dollar company... so the standards are lower?
I think the implication, rather, is that the bar for dismissal should be higher.
Those are effectively the same thing.
That does seem to be the way of the world lately. Sure this person is awful but look at the shareholder value they have created!
Presumably he was not given a choice by the board.
Time will tell if this is the best for the company... I hope he was a very hands-off CEO and mostly did marketing gigs.
My understanding is that he was a very consolidated-power CEO. No real second in command / replacement-in-training.
But that doesn't preclude there being a lot of competent talent on the second rung. (I think 60 people reported directly to him.)
He's famously incredibly hand-ons. I think he has something like 60 executive direct reports.
> I hope he was a very hands-off CEO and mostly did marketing gigs.
Hard to imagine that could have been the case given that he was Nvidia's CEO from the very beginning.
My understanding is that he has been very hands on, but it's also not that unusual for people who have built successful businesses to "check out" once the role chances from building an early-stage company to growing a large one. Whether or not that works obviously greatly depend on whether the people around them can take up the slack.
There is evidence of a second affair that is also problematic coming out, the BBC had some reports.
Resignation means that he can start liquidating his shares without input from shareholders or directors.. Divorce will also be likely. Affairs with the staff would matter if he had promoted people; who knows what else is in that stack. He had planted his own kids with no experience in tech as executives there too . He is a zillionaire though and he has enough cash for many generations.
Don't worry about him.
I'm concerned about how this affects the industry, not his personal life
Hopefully the industry is resilient enough to not depend greatly on one person. Otherwise it isn't really much of an industry.
He didn’t resign he “resigned”
Because it would be damaging to the company which he founded and has a massive stake in, both financial and personal.
I guess even if Jensen Huang leaves scorched earth, he will have sufficient money for the rest of his life. On the other hand, any other person who invested into Nvidia stocks will have a much more serious problem. :-)
So, it would not be a dumb idea for Jensen Huang to leave scorched earth and "let the world burn" (and in particular cause utter panic in the AI sector). :-)
The only reason Jensen is out is because he doesn't pretend AI is an existential threat like Anthropic and OpenAI do to boost their own valuation/moats and to boost the anti-China sentiment for the administration.
Because he cheated on his wife?? Or what am I missing? If that's the official reason, I don't buy it. I don't think those who can influence this decision give two shits about this type of morality. It's silly on its face. Obviously it's cover for some other agenda. I'm just surprised people buy this silly excuse instead of getting to the bottom of what is really happening.
That he conspired to smuggle NVIDIA GPUs into China to bypass a US embargo working with the Chinese government via a spy (either willingly or via blackmail). Impropriety adds insult to injury - the board have rightly seen that the market will view it more negatively if he stays than if he leaves.
> Because he cheated on his wife??
And a lot of other shady things around nvidia, half of it we probably will never know about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H3xQaf7BFI
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-administration-jail-le...
Cheated on his wife with a spy who was using her connection to Jensen to move GPUs into China through Singapore in breach of the export controls.
The cheating is just a bit of humiliation, the damning part is the knowingly circumvention of export controls.
Oh if he knew all of that, then that's what I'm missing, thanks.
Nvidia bulls are still processing
the impending investigation regarding the sanctions might have more to do with it, to be honest.
It's only been like a year since the last CEO resigned for viral infidelity.
And that was only with a subordinate, not a subordinate AND with a foreign spy (alleged). Reports say China got billions in chips imported thanks to this operation.
Politicians also drop like flies. The only person impervious to consequences has been Trump. None of his supporters care that he's the devil.
No, it's because he repeatedly lied. 20% of the company's profits were/are coming from selling sanctioned chips to China and he said 0% 0% 0% (in official filings)
The news made it sound like she was a sophisticated person using him as a simpleton, but if anything he was using her to move his products against sanctions.
...with an actual spy.
And a subordinate executive. And god knows who else.
But I imagine the billions of dollars in illicit sales is considered a bigger issue.
The board should've: "Fire you? We’ve just spent billions of our market cap educating you to be careful with spies. Why would we fire you?"
allegedly?
If shareholders want to save the company fu-g board of directors should be replaced completely and Jensen back.
Colette Kress has brain of Marisa Mayer who destroyed Yahoo. A woke clown to lead technology company? No vision, no skills, no understanding of technology.
Apologies, but I don't really get why these issues are being exposed all over so awfully about the person life of the poor person who is getting ashamed, reputation getting damaged, and what's more important, his wonderful personal, private life is getting exposed and preserved in the history...
These lovely cases must still be approached with pure respect for private life of everyone, and understanding, because we all are human who have feelings, and this is absolutely normal to make mistakes in love sometimes trying...
Relationships, affairs, love... this is personal and must be respected. These are some of the most complex subjects, if not the most... and infinitely magnificent feelings... where sometimes the heart and hope wins over rational actions...
Yet, this is true for every single human, isn't it? This is true about me, I believe, too. This is true about people I know in overly serious and responsible positions at critical decisions for business and lives of other people... and they know that, and stay careful.
And these cases, vulnerabilities, or operational risks... are also covered on military classes, as leadership and security awareness courses, to stay responsible for actions and consider the future - to remind that you must always evaluate the long term consequences, to the point to decide quickly in full action.
This is matter of the heart... human emotions... infinitely powerful aspects of human nature... the dear love... There's nothing to be ashamed of.
Yes, you must stay truthful to your half... the ring bound promise, which is a miracle if from love... But it is fundamentally... absolutely normal, awesome to try searching for your soulmate if you don't have peace at heart, making mistakes, trying hard...
// ---
Such public cases are either designed for public (e.g., to derail attention from something more important), or those that get out of control, which is relatively rare, I believe.
It is rare to get exposed on public since these relationships are known to limited number of people, aren't they? So samizdat is rarely responsible for it, and mass publishers are normally supervised by governments, which is expected for them to stay responsible for control of events.
Even if circumstances and consequences may be monumentally tragic or overly serious, this is love which is no less serious, and miraculously lovely awesome...
// ---
// ---And I just heartfelt sorry for the person to receive so much shame, hatred, mockering, hostility, ridiculing from public... for just his attempts to find love, his peace at heart...
There is no shame in that, I believe, absolutely. This is his business to be not exposed so disgracefully on public.
This is a miracle to proud of, to understand, and respect always.
Sincere heartwarming hug, dear Jensen... I am... sorry... for the people to ridicule on it you nor anyone deserves...
How do you know he did it "for love and peace at heart?"
People coming at this are coming from the opposite assumption: that he's a billionaire and uses that power to fuel an appetite for lust.
I mean, if you look at the evidence, that's what the narrative supports. Both those affairs - one with Alice and one with Kimberley - overlapped in time. It's not that he fell head over heels for someone and pined for them - it's that he didn't resist the temptation to prioritize getting laid over getting love.
Further, matters of the heart are less important than doing the right thing. You don't date a direct report, period. It's unethical for everyone involved, and affects everyone of that woman's coworkers.
I am not saying there's no complexities in matters of the heart. I'm just saying this case is simple, and black and white, and not an excuse for us to turn off our eyes and ears.
Everyone wants to think they’re morally superior, that they wouldn’t do the same. Newsflash people, having sexual desires is a very natural human thing, it’s wired into us all. You don’t know what his marriage was like. Could’ve been the most draining thing imaginable but maybe he wanted to keep it together for his kids.
He made a very human mistake and now his personal life is on display for the world to read about. I feel sorry for him.
Wow, this is enormous. End of the AI bubble?
LLMs will be completely unaffected, but the pricing remains to be seen.
Bad timing for ANT?
Excellent timing, if this reduces the amount of GPUs sold to China. Open weights are threat to ANT. Coincidence that happened just before IPO?
Who knew the Black Swan would be wearing a black leather jacket?
another poor chinese guy. they will never be trusted in the america system.
he's taiwanese
Jensen Huang called Israel a "second home" while it was committing genocide against Palestinians. This is just a continuation of a pattern of corruption. I think he resented his own success because these are not honest mistakes. Jensen Huang is the AI Great Gatsby.
fwiw, this was seen at the time as a gesture to the large number of NVIDIA (Mellanox) employees in Israel. Both due to it being a major center for the company and because he had personally been spending a lot of time there meeting with the networking org.