Nvidia is one of the most critical strategic assets in the USA today, underpinning economic dominance and national defence. Leadership at this level usually operates under an implicit shield. Normal procedure would be to cover-up. A sudden loss of Nvidia's founder and CEO at this juncture is a blow to American strategic posture and a windfall to China.
I think the real story is not the affair, which was already reported in asian media in 2024, but what specific catalyst broke that protective shield and made continued containment untenable.
If this had happened at a more recent founder-led tech company, the board would have far less practical independence
Dual-class share structures have become the defacto standard for founder led companies, giving founders disproportionate (even majority) voting power.
Someone like Zuckerberg effectively controls the board and would be extraordinarily difficult to oust against his wishes (absent some exceptional legal intervention or a decision to step aside)
I think even if NVIDIA were founded recently, it still wouldn't have such a share structure. The companies that do have dual class shares are software companies that can grow significantly without raising a ton of capital. NVIDIA being a hardware company, that is a lot harder to do even today.
The theory is that if an investor is under no compulsion to purchase shares that entitle them to no say in governance, so if they do so, they only have themselves to blame.
This is kinda huge; my layperson view is that Jensen has been responsible for their long term technology strategy, which requires deep understanding of so much outside of the business domain. I'm not exactly thrilled that they are "eating the world" (hf purchase had me bent out of shape, for example), but they've undeniably executed on some long term complex shit. Who could take his place?
He may not have predicted the specifics, but they didn't just happen to be there. Nvidia started work on CUDA in 2004, and aggressively iterated machine learning hardware and software for twenty years to get into the position they had for the boom.
Large companies always have a backup plan in case the CEO needs to be replaced. What usually happens in these cases is that a new CEO will be named. That new CEO will focus on maximizing the company's earnings while neglecting the tech. And the company will be an earnings winner for the next few years.
He's out as CEO but he'll continue to be a force at Nvidia. If the new CEO is smart, he'll keep him in the company, but it will be hard since Huang will be seen as the company's leader and it will be very hard for Huang to act any other way.
They need to fire him outright. The company needs to set the example that misconduct won’t be tolerated at any level. Keeping him on in anything but a transition capacity would be a mistake.
The no-going-back issue is the corruption. Jensen corruptly quashed an investigation into Megaspeed. He then quite clearly expected Republicans in Congress to back him, which is why he only came clean when forced to.
I agree the corruption and conflict of interest stuff is the real issue here and is serious. I’m just criticising the hand-wringing over him banging some random woman (or women, as it apparently turns out), as if that is some unprecedented or shocking behaviour or worthy of a reprimand on its own. Most of the world left that prudish shit behind in the ‘90s.
I think marital infidelity is shitty behaviour but I also think the main issue here is that this man in this job with this global significance thought this woman was safe to be involved with.
His board must think he's a lunatic. They have every right to know if he's having an affair with anyone (because marital infidelity is a personal corruption issue that is rarely not a problem when it's a CEO, since carrying off an affair usually involves suborning staff in some way). But this? Madness.
> the hand-wringing over him banging some random woman
I don't care about it. But I do understand folks who are dismayed to see someone who many of us–myself included–saw as a bit of a paragon until a few weeks ago turning out to be a total shithead.
I’ll give you a shortcut for the future, and I will be downvoted for doing so.
Don’t look to billionaires if you’re looking for paragons. They all fail basic ethical checks. It’s very easy and convenient to not look for these failures. But, inevitably, when somebody starts looking hard, they find them.
I don’t think it’s necessarily prudish, but in order to accurately judge it you need to know if someone’s ENM or not, and that’s more than most people make known about their personal lives.
Stepping outside of your marriage behind your spouse’s back is still scummy behavior.
AFAICT, (b.) isn't correct? The alleged spy works for a Singaporean company called "Megaspeed"[1], and while there is a conflict of interest argument, perhaps, "direct report" seems incorrect.
Considering the current administration and the amount of corruption by trump and co, I feel like not following the rules is too simplistic an explanation for being targeted like this.
Not familiar with the details, I asked the ai overlords to gather up public evidence and give me a summary and... this feels like a very premature accusation. Unless you know something that isn't public, seems like we need to wait and see.
As people said about the Huggingface incident: if you see one ant in your kitchen, the best estimate for the total number of ants actually present is well above one.
One affair was a mistake. Two, with a spy and an employee, are a real failure of responsibility -- and those are just the ones we know about.
I don’t understand you Americans; you live in a disproportionately violent society, tolerate all sort of abuse and manipulation, then will scream hysterically at anyone having an unconventional sex life.
They were shipped to a sketchy Singaporean company that his Chinese spy-mistress worked at, and IIRC he tried to prevent investigations into whether those chips were being redirected to China.
This doesn’t bode well for Anthropic’s IPO indirectly, due to whole AI industry being propped up largely by Nvidia’s circular investment.
Also there’s likely a big overlap of institutional investors who are both NVDA and ANT investors and will now likely seek to dump ANT at the opening bell.
If anything this should impact the IPO only to the extent it affects the production of new compute capacity, because it is clear that is the #1 thing they need to scale revenues.
This might rather save the IPO. Banned open source models will allow the closed source players to maintain power and recoup a larger part of their investment by driving up the prices.
Short term, days or weeks, there will be panic. But the impact of the change won't really be felt for years to come. For the next few years, the company will be fine.
The coup of Jensen Huang was precisely organized by the same large institutional investors.
They want NVIDIA to lock-up firmware and prevent any open-weight models from being run. Everyone (at least in US/NATO/US-aligned world) will be forced to use Anthriopic/OpenAI or some other US based closed source model.
Open models will be banned at the GPU level.
This is done to cement the multi-trillion dollar valuation of the AI labs and prevent AI bubble from popping due to customers using free open-weight, instead of pay-per-token closed models
fall of nvidia is acceptable collateral damage, they are just hardware vendor. all their chips are made by TSMC anyways. And they can be replaced by OpenAI's inhouse chips or googles TPUs, made in the same TSMC factories.
no biggie if their valuation will deflate a bit just like Cisco did in 2000.
pure-software business like openai/ant, will be protected and their global market will be protected
If anyone can make chips like Nvidia, why isn't another company doing it already? Anything can sound easy if you reduce it enough, but I really don't see how it is that easy in practice.
They can't even stop one company from selling physical chips to China, yet somehow they're going to prevent anybody from running open models? I don't know, it doesn't seem likely to me.
there will be divergence: US-aligned world (NATO+Korea+Japan and other vassal states) will bend over and agree to whatever regulation Department of Commerce/State is cooking to ban open weight (Chinese) models.
the rest of the world will be starved of GPUs and chipmaking equipment and chemical supplies for chip making
I don't see how this can happen, though. There are a lot of GPUs out there and open models have already been downloaded millions of times. (IIRC Deepseek v4.1 Flash has been downloaded nearly 2M times just on HuggingFace, just over the past month.) The NATO world already relies quite heavily on open models, in many cases served by Mistral and other local providers. China is also developing its own hardware -- Huawei isn't slacking -- and it's not that far behind. And I'd bet there's no such thing as a "GPU Level" block that can't be hacked away.
Such a move would also be transparently dystopian... though, in fairness, I suppose that makes it more plausible than it would otherwise be...
they will use National Security as a pretense to force everyone on "verified-aligned AI".
if Uncle Sam has not approved your model, it will be illegal to run it as a AI risk.
Americans have swallowed even worse limitations on their freedoms, so nobody will even notice that, because all notices will be sent to hyperscalers, neoclouds, and other large operators of GPU farms
Can someone make the strong case for why he should be ousted?
I’m not deep into this story, but my initial reaction is that marital infidelity doesn’t seem like a strong reason to oust him, aside from him possibly being compromised by an international spy. Haven’t other successful leaders continued to lead after having their affairs exposed?
(And no, I don’t believe what he did is morally excusable for the record.)
It's come out that he was having another affair with a Nvidia employee as well, their vice president of healthcare. Having an affair with a client is one thing but having one with a client and a subordinate is maybe enough for the board to remove him.
Is there any reason why this will actually change the fundamentals of Nvidia's business so long as 5080s go for as much as a used car and the entire world wants H200s? Even if they lose an extremely hands-on CEO, they're selling a very expensive product with extremely high global demand.
Yeah I genuinely don't know either! I'm just very curious about the effect an ouster will have not on the stock price, but the business of designing and selling chips.
I wonder what happens to NVDA afterwards. People say Jensen is NVDA or at least he has a lot of controls over the company. I guess they finally found the right time (very bad midterm) and the right opportunity (mistress as Chinese spy).
I even wonder whether some elements within the Chinese government has a hand in it -- not (only) the mistress part but the ousting part.
I think it's worth even considering that if the allegations are true that the objective was to get Huang fired. Sure, he sold China chips, but they have their own homegrown chips now and the Chinese government have played a direct part in that.
I'm thinking the people behind trying to oust him are people who don't appreciate him likely knowingly violating export sanctions and putting the rest of the company and himself at risk of massive fines and criminal prosecution
What is the endgame of this completely cumbersome and obvious CIA journalist and intelligence community rollout of this narrative surrounding Jensen and Nvidia? Why would they nuke the credibility of America's only AI chip company and hand the future of AI to China? Do they actually think this will gain them control over AI?
I think their concern is that NVidia is acquiescent and in support of policies which give China better AI chips, which is the core of the matter regarding the honeypot scandal. The goal, if it is an op, is to get a CEO who will comply more readily with export controls.
Let’s steelman instead of strawman. The CIA likely cares little about Ant and OpenAI.
What they care about is the US leading China on every militarily and economically relevant technology.
The hawks have long chafed at Huang’s position that we need to sell our best chips to China to keep them on the US tech stack. It’s very obviously giving them the ability to catch up.
And it’s also very obvious that restricting exports will only help in the short term, and in the long term, gives China reason to develop their own tech.
I thought I was supposed to believe that OpenAI & Anthropic's methods are so much more advanced than any potential capabilities of Chinese competitors that OpenAI & Anthropic must each be trillion dollar companies.
If I ignore the words, and instead observe behaviour, all of the actions I observe indicate the opposite;potential competitors are treated as very credible threats, even existential ones; and actions indicate that 'maintaining special access to hardware' and 'vying for regulatory capture to shut out competition' are major strategic goals.
Americans voted for rooting out corruption. The Congressional committees that review stuff like corruptly quashing an investigation into your lover company [1] are changing hands. Jensen coming clean right after the election was, within the range of options he had, smart.
(Folks run to blow whistles when they realize they're involved in something they may pay the price for isn't new.
Also, have you seen our IC? The days of the CIA running a competent conspiracy, if they ever existed, are behind us.)
If the anti-corruption revolution is going to focus on some dude's sex life rather than the extensive and obvious whoring of political office, I want none of it.
She could have been his chess partner, and if he'd acted the same way on her behalf it would have been fireable. The sex is immaterial and anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't read up on this or is selling something.
The sex is just the icing on top of the poor judgement.
When some dude's sex life quashes an investigation into Megaspeed, yeah, it becomes germane. (There are serious questions around Lutnick, for example [1].)
This looks like a major indictment of Lutnick, not Huang.
I don't get it. Huang doesn't get to decide who chips can't be sold to. Presumably Huang wants to sell chips to everyone whether or not he's fucking them. Nvidia will always say yes to another billion dollars. It's up to the state department to say no.
If Lutnick was sleeping with a Chinese spy and approved the sale, sure throw him in jail. If Huang secretly bribed Lutnick to approve the sale, sure throw them both in jail. But that's not what we're seeing?
You’re absolutely correct that we have no smoking gun in the public record. What we have, instead, is smoke. Lots of it.
> What am I missing?
"Investigators at the Commerce Department were deep into a monthslong investigation of a Singaporean company that they suspected of smuggling Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips into China when their work came to a sudden halt late last year.
The investigation centered on Megaspeed, a data center company led by an executive who U.S. officials now believe to be a Chinese spy who had a relationship with Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang.
But the case was abruptly transferred to the Justice Department last year. The shift came after Commerce Department investigators working on the case received an email from Nvidia’s general counsel seeking information about the inquiry into Megaspeed.
It is not necessarily unusual for Commerce Department agents working on a case to speak with a company’s representatives about issues involving their firm. But what was unusual was the content of the message. Tim Teter, Nvidia’s general counsel, said that Jeff Kessler, a top official at the department, had given Nvidia permission to reach out about the case.
The agents were alarmed that Nvidia had invoked the name of Mr. Kessler, their superior, who was nominated to his role by President Trump. Some viewed Mr. Kessler’s interaction with Nvidia as violating government procedure and potentially tainting the case, according to current and former government officials and others familiar with the incident” [1].
When the "some dude" is Jensen Huang and involves sleeping with Chinese spies while advocating for relaxed export controls, then obviously it's gonna pay him some attention.
Those of us foolish enough to vote Trump in 2016 weren't convinced he was going to leave the swamp drained, rather that it was so bad he couldn't do worse. A lesser of two evils kind of choice.
Within weeks I saw the naked racism and left the whole party behind. Having learned more about Trump and Republicans since has been ... humiliating after decades of voting 'R'.
Trying to engage in good faith here. What did you see in the first few weeks after your 2016 vote that were materially different from how he ran his 2016 campaign (and I mean the hits - "they're sending rapists, ...", "grab her by the pussy", ...)?
I can imagine people souring over lack of follow through on economic promises, or the naked corruption with your $coins, but from a racism/xenophobia/morals perspective, I'd feel like most of the signal was there in the 2016 campaign was it not?
For me personally it was trying to ban travel from whole countries based on race. Morally I didn't expect him to personally be a paragon of virtue. My hope was that the vile parts of his retoric were mostly campaign bluster and "locker room talk", and that he'd defer to experts once in office.
The mask-off racism was just beyond the pale, and lead me to look deeper into his past and how he was starting to govern. It became obvious that he'd mostly cheated or lucked his way into fortune and fame.
A larger fraction of Americans voted for a supported Trump because he seemed to credibly criticize the Iraq War and promised no new fuckups in that category.
What is up with people who seem to love corruption?
Huang had an affair with a Chinese spy, as well as an affair with someone he manages. Either one of these would be grounds for dismissal at any company I've worked at. Committing both of these offenses shows appalling judgment by Huang.
Firing him seems like a very logical conclusion, not some CIA Illuminati bullshit conspiracy theory.
More like: whats up with people being utterly fucking stupid and devoid of even the bare minimum of critical thinking skills. Being pro (or at least unbothered by) corruption is just one of the ways that manifests.
Money talks. Shareholders didn't seem to mind when Tim Cook gave Trump a golden trophy. They certainly didn't mind Jensen Huang's dialog with Trump when sanctions were ill-defined. It seems like cronyism is in, and all the cool kids are doing it.
This scandal has felt like a litmus test for free market idealists vs realpolitik thinkers. Nvidia's board and Trump both knew about the spying allegations for over a year, allegedly. This is not a situation you can navigate with strong principles or a moral compass, you just have to follow the money.
Reminds me of the meme that WorldCom went down because their CEO bravely stood up to NSA pressure. Instead of, you know, running an elaborate shell game of financial fraud to enrich executives and dupe shareholders after the Dot Com bubble burst.
> What is up with people who seem to love corruption?
Paraphrasing the apocryphal quote:
Anti-corruption never took root in America because the commoners see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed future CEOs.
And worse yet, he seemed to be influence by her to violate export restrictions and was probably responsible to a substantial "donation" to the presidential "ballroom fund" to change squash an investigation into the matter.
This is up there with the most fireable things that have ever happened.
They’re just reporting on things that are true and have been kept secret inappropriately. That’s not a “narrative”.
You’re looking for a conspiracy when this is a pretty straightforward story. Jensen’s credibility is shot. Of course they’re preparing contingency plans.
You don’t have to be a conspiracy theory to realized someone leaked these stories in fairly rapid succession and it’s not a leap to suggest that person has an agenda. Not everything is a conspiracy but when it only has to involve a few people the odds go up.
When one story comes out, other related stories that have been around are a lot easier to get limelight. And it's much easier to surface new dirt in those situations too. So I wouldn't use rapid succession of multiple stories as indicative of anything.
> When one story comes out, other related stories that have been around are a lot easier to get limelight
I've already heard stories in social circles in Silicon Valley from senior folks in the industry that they didn't share before. Not because they were hiding anything. But because it wasn't topical. There are a lot of scumbags, and there is a lot of corruption to go around right now.
You’ve already made an assumption there that both stories were leaked by the same person. What’s the evidence to back that up?
The first story came from sources close to the White House, or something along those lines. Makes sense since it was a national security issue. The second story is internal to the company.
Very plausible non conspiracy explanation: after the first story came out the exec he was having an affair with was pissed to discover she was in fact the other other woman and went to a reporter.
I am pretty sure under normal circumstances, a person with 160 billion dollars that leads a 4 trillion dollar company is able to cause these stories to never materialize.
If someone thinks there is not a lot of sex going on in the c-suite maybe you need to get out more.
If Nvidia is going to fire Jensen Huang, my question is whether Jensen will be allowed to start another "Nvidia".
I hope he's allowed to do so. He now knows how not to get trapped into a tactically targeted honeypot, he knows the ins and outs of a GPU fab business plus he has all the connections.
This minus all the cruft and legacy overhead of a company as old as Nvidia. I'm now hoping he gets fired.
Because he can start a new company knowing everything that he got wrong the first time around, be able to hire absolute badass engineers who got fired from Nvidia because some Manager or HR thought they smelled wrong and was a hygiene risk, or quit Nvidia because they didn't like the work they were being assigned, be able to raise capital from investors who currently won't invest in Nvidia because of reasons, be able to strike new deals that hasn't happened because someone at Nvidia isn't letting them happen.
Nvidia is a very old company, not as old as Intel but close. Old companies build their own internal overhead you just cannot get rid of that would just kill a new company
That's not how the world works. Most of what NVIDIA does is protected by patents and trade secrets, not to mention CUDA.
And what do you mean by "the things he did wrong the first time"? NVIDIA was the most valuable company in the world at one point either this year or last year, and it's still in the top three. He did everything right from business perspective.
idk reading everything what is coming out it looks like he had much unlimited power to do whatever he wanted. so i dont buy that someone (even legal) was a hurdle for him.
> he knows the ins and outs of a GPU fab business plus he has all the connections.
Building an Nvidia competitor would be a long, hard slog that almost certainly ends in failure for anyone including Jensen Huang.
They (NVIDIA) have tens of thousands of patents on their technology that would be hard to build around and commitments that lock up 60-70% of TSMC's CoWoS capacity.
How is that relevant? You could claim he was a victim of a honeypot, but an affair with a report is an abuse of power. Any regular employee would be terminated within a day. A CEO in his position will take a little more than a day.
It's an abuse of power, but it's also an excuse to get him out. Fortune 100 boards don't make decisions of this financial magnitude because of ethical considerations. Some political wind must have shifted against Jensen.
I used to be a frequent visitor to /r/nvidia ~15 years ago until ~5 years ago. Around 2020 it turned increasingly into a sort of stock price cult. The discussions were corrupted with people who felt like they had a duty to try to help increase the stock price. I'm seeing inklings of that in these sorts of threads. How are these people so unaware of standard corporate policy? This is like the stereotypical case that's presented by HR to new hires.
> whether Jensen will be allowed to start another Nvidia
Sure. After he's done responding to the Congress and various investigators and his family, something I suspect will occupy a good part of his next decade.
He's still a shareholder. It is considered extremely bad form to start a company that competes with a company that you are still a shareholder of unless you have not been fired with cause. The only other example I can think of is Jobs. So it is possible but I would assume that post Jobs contracts were put together in such a way that it would be very hard to compete with the company you got booted out of and that you are still a shareholder of. I've signed a couple of contracts over the years just as shareholders and those already mentioned that if I had competing interests the deal would be null and void and I'd be liable, and for good reasons too.
He could pretty trivially divest or move his shares into a blind trust or something. This isn't rocket science, and furthermore it's not as bad form as you might think. It happens all the time with little repurcissions.
Fired with cause or stepping down (most likely stepping down)>Interim CEO named> Jensen flew too close to sun and got burned. Board investigations will put everything on Jensen and they will turn that chapter over. Much more information will come out. His wife I will divorce him as well. This whole thing is more political than anything else. Who leaked all of this is my biggest question. Nvidia should be fine in the mid term, but unstable in the short term.
This is overblown; nvda is a mature company jensen has set the right bets forward so it's just a matter in who the successor is. In terms of revenue impact, assuming megaspeed accounted for ~20% of sales (rumored estimate) then game optimal move is to have OAI/ANT pick those sales up. We will hear about a transition plan probably around earnings.
yea that can be argued^ if there is proof that Jensen knew and acknowledged that these are shell companies that will funnel the chips to china then yea that's defrauding investors.
You can also argue that he wasn't aware n as far as he knew this was just a company in Singapore. It will be interesting how it plays out based on the facts.
I still recall, as a young engineer (1999) working in a high-flying startup outside of Boston -- bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and full of naive optimism -- I flew to Houston in late '99 to demo a fabulous optical networking switch to ENRON, all the while thinking why in the world would ENRON want to be in the business of networking. Ended up selling them a TON of very expensive equipment.
It all unwound a few months later, much to my chagrin (and my lost stock options, obviously).
Recall that most bubbles do not pop due to one, key material cause. Instead, they pop due to adjacent troubles that, in turn, lead to cascading effects.
That was true of:
- LTCM failure (1998; Thailand and other SE Asian countries defaulted);
- 2000 market crash (dot-coms crash, then telecom crash of 2001);
- 2008-2010 financial crisis (mortgage backed securities);
... and so many others before these.
It's entirely possible that NVDA, despite earning $$$$, could unwind the circular funding within the ecosystem (the very crux of telecom market crash of 2001)
He would absolutely be fired if he were in any role, but as CEO cofounder, it's hard not to attribute Nvidia's success to his leadership.
The thing is, this is just what's been reported. There's almost certainly more going on if 2 affairs are public disclosure. If there is a sexual harassment angle here as well, he's toast.
Did he break up with her after finding out she's a spy?
Was she trained as a spy and sent to entrap him specifically? Or did she form a relationship with him, then get told by the Chinese Communist Party "Xi wants you to steal him some secrets from your boyfriend. This is an offer you can't refuse; spy for us or your family in China will be beaten, jailed or worse"?
Is he a victim or an asset? Is she a willing patriotic spy for China, or a victim of blackmail from the Chinese Communist Party? Has she been arrested as a spy, or did she make it to the Chinese embassy before the story broke?
My feeling is he shouldn't be ousted if he took the honey but didn't fall for the trap. OTOH if he passed her company secrets, that's presumably a fireable offense for anyone lower on the totem pole; it's only fair for a CEO to get fired for the same.
The possible security implications of this entire affair (affairs now) can't be overstated. That hardware's in the most secret of facilities, computing very classified workloads for very very serious customers. Not the goofy AI heads, I'm talking about the military and intelligence communities in many nations.
Hopefully this teaches the market to migrate away from proprietary CUDA and NVIDIA and their proprietary drivers.
It's interesting how some of the smartest people can still make some of the dumbest mistakes. So my optimistic feeling: we're all similarly enough capable of smart and dumb things. But my pessimistic feeling: our intelligence isn't fundamentally better than LLMs in avoiding dumbest mistakes
Wow, that’s an incredibly obtuse way of describing his situation. He’s still breathing, and he’s one of the richest people in the world. Doesn’t sound too dead to me. Also this has nothing to do with anyone wanting him gone, it started with a national security investigation because he was fucking a Chinese spy and evading export controls. And that kinda makes everyone not working for the PRC want him gone
From the public sphere, as a "noble" in our society being a business-leader, his public career persona has been shot twice in a week by affair allegations and a foreign spy campaign and it doesn't seem like he'll be able to maintain his title.
Honestly, I hope this doesn’t play out in a rushed way. Evaluating this is the board’s top duty. It’s critical, and healthy, for them to weigh what’s best for all NVDA stakeholders.
Obviously, the affairs are a very serious issue, but the investigation needs to determine whether there were any security conflict of interest breaches
Let’s be clear: any abuse of power involving related-party relationships is wrong. Jensen should not get a “free pass” just because he’s Jensen. This is very serious.
Jensen’s leadership of the broader company is unparalleled, and replacing him would be nearly impossible. That step should only be taken when it’s extremely clear there is no other option. Even if the board does replace him, that brings significant risk, not just to NVIDIA but to all the other businesses connected to it. I hope a warning shot across the bow is enough for him to clean things up so everyone can get back to focusing on the work.
As for which way the board rules, the details are all that matter. When boards react emotionally, before a thorough investigation and before they have the full picture, they make bad decisions. They shouldn’t rush. They should investigate and dig into every detail.
Then make a decision. These decisions will carry enormous weight.
None of us really know the details. NVIDIA board: do your job and take it very seriously. Deliberately measure three times, cut once. Don’t spectate. The public likes/wants Hollywood drama, but what we really need is good corporate governance.
They had dirt on him for many years. Someone wants him ousted. That’s what’s happening behind the scene. Jensen probably pissed off someone very well-connected.
This is what I'm feeling as well. Similar to the "intervention" that put Altman back as CEO as well as a brand new board which included an ex-CIA director.
Add in that the democratic party wants to look tough on tech and here you have a clear case of the CEO selling known banned exports to a Chinese spy while personally fueling the data center hysteria.
This is going to be easy political win. Jensen's only saving grace is that he is in bed with Trump so he won't be sitting behind in prison cell.
"Investigators at the Commerce Department were deep into a monthslong investigation of a Singaporean company that they suspected of smuggling Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips into China when their work came to a sudden halt late last year.
The investigation centered on Megaspeed, a data center company led by an executive who U.S. officials now believe to be a Chinese spy who had a relationship with Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang.
But the case was abruptly transferred to the Justice Department last year. The shift came after Commerce Department investigators working on the case received an email from Nvidia’s general counsel seeking information about the inquiry into Megaspeed" [1].
Affairs could be a whole lot more than that. For example, assuming he didn’t want his wife finding out he’s an ideal blackmail target for anyone that does know.
Any ousting will probably be for having an affair with a direct report. At many companies, having an 'inappropriate relationship with a customer' isn't a policy violation unless there's also evidence of undue influence, so it's more conditional and complicated. Whereas just the existence of an inappropriate relationship with a direct report is a serious violation.
From an HR and legal perspective, if Alice was a spy, Jensen was arguably the targeted 'victim' of a foreign intelligence operation. While it was certainly very dumb and negligent, it may not have been a policy violation or may only have been a violation of company policies like mishandling confidential information or not following IT security policies. Those aren't usually "Fire the CEO Now" things, while slamming the sheets with a direct report absolutely requires some kind of immediate action.
The real question is who wants Jensen gone? Because the first leak was clearly intentional and reportedly placed by 'senior White House sources', citing a confidential NSC report. Now the second leak of the inappropriate affair happens immediately after. This was a designed sequence. Both of the underlying events are several months old. Given the facts, I think the most likely source is 'China Trade/AI Hawks' in the White House (possibly the NSC). The reasoning being that Jensen has generally been trying to minimize restrictions on selling AI to China (which is, arguably, part of his job).
> During the conference, Nvidia executives were at a nearby hotel for meetings. Mr. Huang and Ms. Powell were seen being affectionate at the hotel. One bystander captured the interaction on their phone, three people briefed on the incident said.
> Mr. Huang’s security witnessed the bystander with their phone and sequestered them, the people said. They made the person an offer to sign a nondisclosure agreement.
Well, at least there will be one way to make money after AI takes my job...
Jokes aside, I would expect we will soon learn there is more. Given that Nvidia was vouching for Megaspeed while exporting those chips, I still think there's a reasonable chance Jensen ends up in jail over this. Not large, but possible.
Ok but if you are having an affair with your direct report why would you "be affectionate" in public ?
When I encountered this ( in much smaller, non strategic companies!) both parties took great care to hide their affair and appear completely professional in public. The fun and games were kept behind closed bedroom doors. I don't get it.
My armchair analysis is that going forward with this will most likely make the AI bubble pop.
Depending on how Jensen takes it, this could be the catalyst to steer AI in a new direction. Companies will line up to scoop him up, if not fight each other to get him. He is the head of the most valuable company, he has the tightest connection to the US government, it won't take a minute before Mudita* becomes a new company being fast-tracked to the top.
Good riddance. All these csuite people think they are so uniquely capable but if he gets kicked out nothing will change except we'll, hopefully, hear less about jackets at tech presentations.
Also to all the people saying how terrible this will be, would you really want someone running your company who can't keep his word to his wife? Maybe it is a quaint idea in 2026 but I think people who break their word shouldn't be trusted, particularly to be in positions of power.
It's easy to blame a person like dumb Jensen who slept with the Chinese spy.
I don't see anyone accusing China of setting up such a trap. China always denies ofc, though all these scummy things eventaully comes out to be true, and by then everyone forgets.
I'm wondering how people like Musk, Zuckerberg, Altman, etc. just continually get away with it. Are they just more sociopathic and cover their tracks better?
I'm not really making a judgement on Huang, but it seems others have done worse. It's making me wonder if there's something larger at play where people (i.e., other billionaires and CEOs and perhaps politicians) are unhappy with Huang.
I suppose that's one reason. But Musk has formed basically pyramid schemes to keep his debtors from calling and to move his debt out from under him. Without that, he likely would have to sell shares to cover the debt of his Twitter purchase.
They could lose control through a substantial shareholder lawsuit. A minority shareholder suit against Musk could prove tremendous damages repaid in stock and the judge might not let the special classes of shares with extra voting power protect his control.
It would have to be a very good cause though, disliking him or ordinary bad business decisions won't cut it.
Musk, Zuckerberg, and Altman and their companies have zero history of sketchy stuff that would, in a normal world, lead to CEOs being ousted? Affairs are enough to do it to Huang? The whole Chinese spy thing is not confirmed is it? And the three people I've listed have had documented cases of endangering national security through either their actions or their company's actions.
"Okay, when I introduce you, I'm gonna say, 'This is a friend of mine.' That means you're a connected guy. Now if I were to say, this is a friend of ours—that would mean you're a made guy. Capiche?"
It's insulting, even as a non-American; the idea that we're all stupid enough to believe that oh, well, yes of course we should fire this brilliant tech leader because he slept with some attractive person (who may or may not have been planted for exactly this kind of bullshit "leverage"); that just logically follows, doesn't it?
People don't seem to understand what the actual issue is. Nvidia seem to have circumvented export controls to at least one of his mistresses companies, who had more stock purchased than could physically fit in their dataceblnter. Nvidia didn't ask or ignored what was happening to make sure their profit earnings were still growing, defrauding investors. The salacious part is minor.
I get that for the (possible?) Chinese spy lady, but this new one?
If the Chinese spy lady really were a spy, all the govt agencies would have known about it long ago, but chosen not to reveal it. The whole business stinks of manipulation and "don't interrupt your enemy while they're making a mistake", and the salacious headlines are what's selling this Manufactured Consent.
It won’t be the sex it will be the illicit sales of GPUs to China. That domino topples the next and all of the “sales” of goods to AI companies financed by the sellers. There’s a whole lot of paper sales boosting revenues while losing money with each sale going on.
My tinfoil hat theory is that this is all orchestrated. They knew about the affair for months, but withheld it. My theory is that with the midterms results, rather than risk facing accountability as things unravel "naturally", they have this big bombshell as a "get out of blame free" card. That way everyone can collectively say "It wasn't _my_ fault things fell apart. I was doing my best, honest!"
It looks like the midterm elections are working, politicians really don't want Chinese models they can't control to be trained.
I don't agree with everything David Sachs says on the All in Podcast, but it looks like it's about political control over all frontier AI models from democrats.
If we ban open weights models (read: Chinese models), we are truly fucked as a country. That is a dead end for our tech sector.
We cannot glue ourselves to the backs of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. We need to be anti-fragile and support a robust spectrum of AI inference being developed from all angles.
This would permanently wed us to a handful of vendors that will soak American businesses and innovators dry while their own products fail to reach the peak of what an open weights inclusive environment could lead to.
US labs have been releasing increasingly capable open weights models lately. If open weights models are a viable business, US companies will provide them.
You don't think it's because of his extramarital affair with Alice Huang—a Chinese businesswoman identified by U.S. intelligence officials as a Chinese intelligence asset—as well as a newly reported relationship with Nvidia executive Kimberly Powell? It's all democrats-doing? This sounds a bit red-tin-foil-hat-ish.
That would be the first affair we learned about... there's another and that may change the calculus. Regardless, the proverbial tragedy, IMO, would be depending on the judgement or heartbeat of one guy (CEO or not) at such a scale.
The reports that he had a second affair with a subordinate, if true, are disgusting and would lead to termination at any other company. He should not get a pass. How someone who has had so much success could have such poor judgement is a mystery to me. It’s sad, he accomplished so much.
Why are all the tech overlords scum people? Do they become that way with power, money and fame, or is it a certain kind of person from the start that achieves these things?
like sleeping Jensen Huang with an incredibly attractive Chinese agent that specifically showed traits he found desirable and exploit what ever weaknesses the Chinese spy agency could find about him to get him involved with her and divulge secrets in a SEXINT operation. Therefore Jensen is one of the worst people who are public figures.
I don't like CEO worship or tech culture (I know I am on hackernews but I am a developer and did like software development and related topics), but this take is crazy most people you know would probably take the bait on an operation like this even 'good' people.
And just take a look at the scum running things outside of Tech a lot worse then a moment of infedality, look at all western leaders you will probably find few better (or even equal) to Jensen. Jensen did not shape the shitshow you are seeing now (not saying he is not part of it), it was corrupt from the start, Just a worthless veneer of morality.
Don't morn your societies decay it was a cadaver from the beginning only by putrefaction will it become the soil to plant strong trees on.
Why did you have to "quote" something no one said to make your point? That's a huge tell you're arguing against a straw man. This post was after a second affair, to me that's a moral flaw, not just someone exploiting him.
And that "scum also exist outside tech" is just a whataboutism. It'd be a better discussion if you actually interacted with my arguments.
> Why did you have to "quote" something no one said to make your point?
> Why did you have to "quote" something no one said to make your point?
Was not trying to be dishonest but was meant to be what I felt you comment boiled down to, I will revise my comment to change the '>'.
> And that "scum also exist outside tech" is just a whataboutism.
What I was saying is not just that scum exists outside tech but that the society that created this tech culture and space is the curruption it's self and it's not worth thinking about as something to save but to replace entirely.
> This post was after a second affair, to me that's a moral flaw, not just someone exploiting him.
I am not saying it's not a moral flaw but compared what Trump has done Epstein, wars, etc. He looks like a Saint. It's pointless even talking about morality in the way you do when Trump and his weak cronies are in power. (and yes I know Nvidia under Jesen no doubt has benefit from this corruption). Infidelity is so common in are time but if only that was the worst of it.
What I was saying is not just that scum exists outside tech
That's an excellent question and I've been wondering about this a lot. I've known a few billionaires, exactly one was an amazing person, the rest were absolutely terrible people in every sense of the word. The whole word is full of NPCs to them. But your question goes to the heart of it: were they terrible people because that's a requirement for becoming a billionaire or did becoming a billionaire somewhere along the line turn them into terrible people?
I haven't found the answer. But I do know one thing from my (smallish) sample: the nice guy never let the money get to his head. He drove his own car (a VW Rabbit, ok, a nice one) and lived in the same house that he lived in when he started his company. And until the day he died he just kept doing what he loved without ever feeling the need to lord it over others. More like a Wozniak (who is the other 'nice billionaire' that I'm aware of but I've never met him).
The question is are the 'good' people you know actually good.
A human being is so unlikely to be good on their own, pretty much all cultures practiced infanticide and child sacrifice and pederasty and only changed because a few hated these practices and forced them to stop.
You're mixing individuals and groups in a way that I can't really say much about it. I was talking exclusively about individuals that I've known personally beyond sitting at the same table or working for them with three layers of indirection.
Fair enough, for me I suppose for me the vast majority of people are
deep down terrible and only made good because they have been made to
be. I can imagine what you say is very true and no doubt the vast
majority of billionaires are horrible and their untouchableness no
doubt makes that so.
But a lot of people the only moment they get to act in an
unaccountable manor will act very badly. This is not all people but
probably above 90%.
Unless there’s an evidence of him being compromised, this is crazy. I’m total outsider and don’t know Nvidia copropare rule machinery, but from perceived perspective that feels like significant blow to the company.
I expect shit show funnier than when OpenAI tried to put Altman with same result.
Even shift leaders at McDonalds need to sign various workplace policies, including policies about relations with their direct reports. So yeah, this is not exactly a surprise or something unheard of.
> Even shift leaders at McDonalds need to sign various workplace policies, including policies about relations with their direct reports.
Does Nvidia have such a policy? Unless laws have changed, this isn't an issue as far as the law is concerned.
(Googling - seems they may actually have this policy...)
From what I've heard: Nvidia's operations is heavily reliant on Jensen. He's embedded in everything. Early in the pandemic, I interviewed with them. The recruiter said that pretty much every engineer at the company will, at some point, be in a meeting that includes Jensen. I spoke to a friend who worked there and he confirmed it.
(Probably no longer true as they've grown a lot since then).
NVidia doesn't need Jensen in the short / medium term - they are printing money. Unless we discover that all this circular financing was some kind of scheme.
We have 2 other companies though, Tesla and SpaceX, which CEO represents 90% of the valuation. That will be the real one.
The NYT reports that Huang was caught on video with this second affair when they were together in San Jose.
Seems like this video and the first affair with the spy was a classic blackmail operation used against him as I said before [0] and Huang likely said no to the wrong person.
Hmm, though Nvidia would like to sell their chips to China, surely this would be bad for the US overall to remove a man who has only said positive things about selling to china not broken trade embargo as far as I know. This makes American business look bad and compromised.
Getting rid of Jesen might be useful for the US AI labs, but what exactly would be the plan their. I can not see a benefit to them with this move, though I can not see any thing particularly negative for them.
Well Jensen has been the one guy who's saying we shouldn't ban Chinese open source models atleast he's made rational statements on the matter. I'd say Chinese open source models are the single biggest threat to Anthropic and OpenAI.
That does make sense but I would have though Anthropic and OpenAI would just keep lobbying the government to do so and something like a demonstration of how 'bad' people having access to open models can be and how 'dangerous' it is would be the best thing for them to further their cause.
I think the real story is not the affair, which was already reported in asian media in 2024, but what specific catalyst broke that protective shield and made continued containment untenable.
Dual-class share structures have become the defacto standard for founder led companies, giving founders disproportionate (even majority) voting power.
Someone like Zuckerberg effectively controls the board and would be extraordinarily difficult to oust against his wishes (absent some exceptional legal intervention or a decision to step aside)
Remember all men are created equal.. except in reality they werent, just ask the Blacks, natives, Chinese and all the others.
Even today how many average Americans can call the President and have a chat even once ?
So much for theory!
Humans need someone to be accountable to, even if it’s just some guy walking behind you saying “memento mori” twice a day.
One of the greatest failures of Nvidia's Board was in failing to push for a successor. (Musks' companies face a similar risk.)
SpaceX has Shotwell to cushion the blow. Tesla will obviously crash into the cellar the moment he OD's or gets thrown in jail for pedo shit.
It’s not like Jensen predicted it
Ok AMD had some financial woes, but it also has made a lot of less optimal technical and business decisions that were entirely unforced errors.
Tim Nvidia.
He's great on logistics, has experience replacing a cult of personality CEO and knows how to placate Trump with glass trophies.
He's out as CEO but he'll continue to be a force at Nvidia. If the new CEO is smart, he'll keep him in the company, but it will be hard since Huang will be seen as the company's leader and it will be very hard for Huang to act any other way.
Recent trend is quite the opposite. What's Tesla without Musk selling pipe dreams ? Pretty sure there is 0 plan for replacement.
The bigger issue is the conflict of interest stuff, but until that’s proven this is a horrible look for NVIDIA if they actually go through with it.
The no-going-back issue is the corruption. Jensen corruptly quashed an investigation into Megaspeed. He then quite clearly expected Republicans in Congress to back him, which is why he only came clean when forced to.
His board must think he's a lunatic. They have every right to know if he's having an affair with anyone (because marital infidelity is a personal corruption issue that is rarely not a problem when it's a CEO, since carrying off an affair usually involves suborning staff in some way). But this? Madness.
I don't care about it. But I do understand folks who are dismayed to see someone who many of us–myself included–saw as a bit of a paragon until a few weeks ago turning out to be a total shithead.
Don’t look to billionaires if you’re looking for paragons. They all fail basic ethical checks. It’s very easy and convenient to not look for these failures. But, inevitably, when somebody starts looking hard, they find them.
He was never a paragon.
https://mustsharenews.com/jensen-huang-signs-woman-chest/
Stepping outside of your marriage behind your spouse’s back is still scummy behavior.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jensen_Huang_spying_scandal
one was a direct report, one was a spy
Considering the current administration and the amount of corruption by trump and co, I feel like not following the rules is too simplistic an explanation for being targeted like this.
The second one will get you fired just about anywhere.
Affair of a CEO with a direct report and member of senior leadership? Kind of a big deal
Affair with a Chinese intelligence agent? Quite a big deal
One affair was a mistake. Two, with a spy and an employee, are a real failure of responsibility -- and those are just the ones we know about.
I don’t understand you Americans; you live in a disproportionately violent society, tolerate all sort of abuse and manipulation, then will scream hysterically at anyone having an unconventional sex life.
This premise is most likely incorrect: https://www.exponentialview.co/p/the-state-of-the-ai-economy
If anything this should impact the IPO only to the extent it affects the production of new compute capacity, because it is clear that is the #1 thing they need to scale revenues.
The coup of Jensen Huang was precisely organized by the same large institutional investors.
They want NVIDIA to lock-up firmware and prevent any open-weight models from being run. Everyone (at least in US/NATO/US-aligned world) will be forced to use Anthriopic/OpenAI or some other US based closed source model.
Open models will be banned at the GPU level.
This is done to cement the multi-trillion dollar valuation of the AI labs and prevent AI bubble from popping due to customers using free open-weight, instead of pay-per-token closed models
no biggie if their valuation will deflate a bit just like Cisco did in 2000.
pure-software business like openai/ant, will be protected and their global market will be protected
the rest of the world will be starved of GPUs and chipmaking equipment and chemical supplies for chip making
Is this actually technically possible?
Such a move would also be transparently dystopian... though, in fairness, I suppose that makes it more plausible than it would otherwise be...
if Uncle Sam has not approved your model, it will be illegal to run it as a AI risk.
Americans have swallowed even worse limitations on their freedoms, so nobody will even notice that, because all notices will be sent to hyperscalers, neoclouds, and other large operators of GPU farms
I’m not deep into this story, but my initial reaction is that marital infidelity doesn’t seem like a strong reason to oust him, aside from him possibly being compromised by an international spy. Haven’t other successful leaders continued to lead after having their affairs exposed?
(And no, I don’t believe what he did is morally excusable for the record.)
I even wonder whether some elements within the Chinese government has a hand in it -- not (only) the mistress part but the ousting part.
1/ China is still interested in chips
2/ Chip exports to China will now (presumably) be under even more scrutiny
What would their motivation be to leak this info?
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NVDA/
Ousting him is pretty much the worst case scenario for the company.
https://x.com/ChinaSelect/status/2120253050845593723
What they care about is the US leading China on every militarily and economically relevant technology.
The hawks have long chafed at Huang’s position that we need to sell our best chips to China to keep them on the US tech stack. It’s very obviously giving them the ability to catch up.
Energy is the hard part, and US is deeply behind on that.
If I ignore the words, and instead observe behaviour, all of the actions I observe indicate the opposite;potential competitors are treated as very credible threats, even existential ones; and actions indicate that 'maintaining special access to hardware' and 'vying for regulatory capture to shut out competition' are major strategic goals.
(Folks run to blow whistles when they realize they're involved in something they may pay the price for isn't new.
Also, have you seen our IC? The days of the CIA running a competent conspiracy, if they ever existed, are behind us.)
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/09/business/economy/nvidia-m...
She could have been his chess partner, and if he'd acted the same way on her behalf it would have been fireable. The sex is immaterial and anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't read up on this or is selling something.
The sex is just the icing on top of the poor judgement.
When some dude's sex life quashes an investigation into Megaspeed, yeah, it becomes germane. (There are serious questions around Lutnick, for example [1].)
[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2026/11/11/answer-in-front-of-...
I don't get it. Huang doesn't get to decide who chips can't be sold to. Presumably Huang wants to sell chips to everyone whether or not he's fucking them. Nvidia will always say yes to another billion dollars. It's up to the state department to say no.
If Lutnick was sleeping with a Chinese spy and approved the sale, sure throw him in jail. If Huang secretly bribed Lutnick to approve the sale, sure throw them both in jail. But that's not what we're seeing?
What am I missing? Seriously, ELI5.
You’re absolutely correct that we have no smoking gun in the public record. What we have, instead, is smoke. Lots of it.
> What am I missing?
"Investigators at the Commerce Department were deep into a monthslong investigation of a Singaporean company that they suspected of smuggling Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips into China when their work came to a sudden halt late last year.
The investigation centered on Megaspeed, a data center company led by an executive who U.S. officials now believe to be a Chinese spy who had a relationship with Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang.
But the case was abruptly transferred to the Justice Department last year. The shift came after Commerce Department investigators working on the case received an email from Nvidia’s general counsel seeking information about the inquiry into Megaspeed.
It is not necessarily unusual for Commerce Department agents working on a case to speak with a company’s representatives about issues involving their firm. But what was unusual was the content of the message. Tim Teter, Nvidia’s general counsel, said that Jeff Kessler, a top official at the department, had given Nvidia permission to reach out about the case.
The agents were alarmed that Nvidia had invoked the name of Mr. Kessler, their superior, who was nominated to his role by President Trump. Some viewed Mr. Kessler’s interaction with Nvidia as violating government procedure and potentially tainting the case, according to current and former government officials and others familiar with the incident” [1].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/09/business/economy/nvidia-m...
That's why Huang doesn't get to decide whether chips should be sold to China. He can advocate all he wants, speech is cheap.
Wasn’t the swap drained in 2016 too?
Within weeks I saw the naked racism and left the whole party behind. Having learned more about Trump and Republicans since has been ... humiliating after decades of voting 'R'.
Wherever you land on your views in the future, being willing to question everything is a superpower.
Onward!
I can imagine people souring over lack of follow through on economic promises, or the naked corruption with your $coins, but from a racism/xenophobia/morals perspective, I'd feel like most of the signal was there in the 2016 campaign was it not?
The mask-off racism was just beyond the pale, and lead me to look deeper into his past and how he was starting to govern. It became obvious that he'd mostly cheated or lucked his way into fortune and fame.
A larger fraction of Americans voted for a supported Trump because he seemed to credibly criticize the Iraq War and promised no new fuckups in that category.
Now that's something I'd like everyone to believe, if I was the CIA.
Huang had an affair with a Chinese spy, as well as an affair with someone he manages. Either one of these would be grounds for dismissal at any company I've worked at. Committing both of these offenses shows appalling judgment by Huang.
Firing him seems like a very logical conclusion, not some CIA Illuminati bullshit conspiracy theory.
This scandal has felt like a litmus test for free market idealists vs realpolitik thinkers. Nvidia's board and Trump both knew about the spying allegations for over a year, allegedly. This is not a situation you can navigate with strong principles or a moral compass, you just have to follow the money.
Paraphrasing the apocryphal quote:
Anti-corruption never took root in America because the commoners see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed future CEOs.
This is up there with the most fireable things that have ever happened.
You’re looking for a conspiracy when this is a pretty straightforward story. Jensen’s credibility is shot. Of course they’re preparing contingency plans.
I've already heard stories in social circles in Silicon Valley from senior folks in the industry that they didn't share before. Not because they were hiding anything. But because it wasn't topical. There are a lot of scumbags, and there is a lot of corruption to go around right now.
The first story came from sources close to the White House, or something along those lines. Makes sense since it was a national security issue. The second story is internal to the company.
Very plausible non conspiracy explanation: after the first story came out the exec he was having an affair with was pissed to discover she was in fact the other other woman and went to a reporter.
If someone thinks there is not a lot of sex going on in the c-suite maybe you need to get out more.
Nvidia has a large market share, but AMD, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, OpenAI, Qualcomm all produce AI chips... these are all American companies.
Did he circumvent export restrictions?
If not, replacing him would be a mistake for Nvidia. I also fear that it would endanger open weight models in America.
I hope he's allowed to do so. He now knows how not to get trapped into a tactically targeted honeypot, he knows the ins and outs of a GPU fab business plus he has all the connections.
This minus all the cruft and legacy overhead of a company as old as Nvidia. I'm now hoping he gets fired.
Because he can start a new company knowing everything that he got wrong the first time around, be able to hire absolute badass engineers who got fired from Nvidia because some Manager or HR thought they smelled wrong and was a hygiene risk, or quit Nvidia because they didn't like the work they were being assigned, be able to raise capital from investors who currently won't invest in Nvidia because of reasons, be able to strike new deals that hasn't happened because someone at Nvidia isn't letting them happen.
Nvidia is a very old company, not as old as Intel but close. Old companies build their own internal overhead you just cannot get rid of that would just kill a new company
And what do you mean by "the things he did wrong the first time"? NVIDIA was the most valuable company in the world at one point either this year or last year, and it's still in the top three. He did everything right from business perspective.
Building an Nvidia competitor would be a long, hard slog that almost certainly ends in failure for anyone including Jensen Huang.
They (NVIDIA) have tens of thousands of patents on their technology that would be hard to build around and commitments that lock up 60-70% of TSMC's CoWoS capacity.
> Jensen Huang... also had an extramarital relationship with an executive who reports to him, according to five people who worked at the company.
Sure. After he's done responding to the Congress and various investigators and his family, something I suspect will occupy a good part of his next decade.
Does he? Plenty of serial cheaters out there getting caught repeatedly.
Those lawyers were hired by Jensen.
You can also argue that he wasn't aware n as far as he knew this was just a company in Singapore. It will be interesting how it plays out based on the facts.
It all unwound a few months later, much to my chagrin (and my lost stock options, obviously).
Recall that most bubbles do not pop due to one, key material cause. Instead, they pop due to adjacent troubles that, in turn, lead to cascading effects.
That was true of:
- LTCM failure (1998; Thailand and other SE Asian countries defaulted);
- 2000 market crash (dot-coms crash, then telecom crash of 2001);
- 2008-2010 financial crisis (mortgage backed securities); ... and so many others before these.
It's entirely possible that NVDA, despite earning $$$$, could unwind the circular funding within the ecosystem (the very crux of telecom market crash of 2001)
The thing is, this is just what's been reported. There's almost certainly more going on if 2 affairs are public disclosure. If there is a sexual harassment angle here as well, he's toast.
That's a tautology, of course. And the board should have been doing its job handling the key man in question
It's most obvious in hindsight, obviously. Across the history of such governance debacles.
Did he know she was a spy?
Did he give her any secrets?
Did he break up with her after finding out she's a spy?
Was she trained as a spy and sent to entrap him specifically? Or did she form a relationship with him, then get told by the Chinese Communist Party "Xi wants you to steal him some secrets from your boyfriend. This is an offer you can't refuse; spy for us or your family in China will be beaten, jailed or worse"?
Is he a victim or an asset? Is she a willing patriotic spy for China, or a victim of blackmail from the Chinese Communist Party? Has she been arrested as a spy, or did she make it to the Chinese embassy before the story broke?
My feeling is he shouldn't be ousted if he took the honey but didn't fall for the trap. OTOH if he passed her company secrets, that's presumably a fireable offense for anyone lower on the totem pole; it's only fair for a CEO to get fired for the same.
TPUs and AWS's Trainium seem to be at least in the ballpark of being competitive but does that matter at all?
Honeytrap.
Reveal the information to a trusted journalist.
Destroy Huang's credibility.
Force his resignation.
Damage Nvidia.
China moves further in the AI game.
Game set and match. Sounds like this might have been China's real goal.
Hopefully this teaches the market to migrate away from proprietary CUDA and NVIDIA and their proprietary drivers.
There's a different angle here worth listening to: https://youtu.be/IC3Kh40dEQY
Going only on the one day point, I wouldn't recommend it for Nvidia.
2. Ian Buck as CEO (Inventor of CUDA, PhD, vice president of hyperscale and high-performance computing).
Right replacement could jump the stock 20%, mediocre replacement can drop it 20% from the current lows.
Training must not be allowed by normal people. The resulting models may work stuff out that they're not supposed to and that would be bad and wrong.
Obviously, the affairs are a very serious issue, but the investigation needs to determine whether there were any security conflict of interest breaches
Let’s be clear: any abuse of power involving related-party relationships is wrong. Jensen should not get a “free pass” just because he’s Jensen. This is very serious.
Jensen’s leadership of the broader company is unparalleled, and replacing him would be nearly impossible. That step should only be taken when it’s extremely clear there is no other option. Even if the board does replace him, that brings significant risk, not just to NVIDIA but to all the other businesses connected to it. I hope a warning shot across the bow is enough for him to clean things up so everyone can get back to focusing on the work.
As for which way the board rules, the details are all that matter. When boards react emotionally, before a thorough investigation and before they have the full picture, they make bad decisions. They shouldn’t rush. They should investigate and dig into every detail.
Then make a decision. These decisions will carry enormous weight.
None of us really know the details. NVIDIA board: do your job and take it very seriously. Deliberately measure three times, cut once. Don’t spectate. The public likes/wants Hollywood drama, but what we really need is good corporate governance.
The Board–correctly–fears for themselves personally in a case involving Jensen's public and multinational corruption scheme.
This is going to be easy political win. Jensen's only saving grace is that he is in bed with Trump so he won't be sitting behind in prison cell.
There is a real corruption angle here that a lot of folks out west are missing [1].
[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2026/11/11/answer-in-front-of-...
It’s just sex mate, it’s really not a big deal unless he giving favourable deals to his mistress’s company.
The investigation centered on Megaspeed, a data center company led by an executive who U.S. officials now believe to be a Chinese spy who had a relationship with Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang.
But the case was abruptly transferred to the Justice Department last year. The shift came after Commerce Department investigators working on the case received an email from Nvidia’s general counsel seeking information about the inquiry into Megaspeed" [1].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/09/business/economy/nvidia-m...
But there's no real competitors still? Even for the medium term?
So AMD, Google are not "real" competitors?
Conspiracy theory, the affair news came out to bury this story lol
From an HR and legal perspective, if Alice was a spy, Jensen was arguably the targeted 'victim' of a foreign intelligence operation. While it was certainly very dumb and negligent, it may not have been a policy violation or may only have been a violation of company policies like mishandling confidential information or not following IT security policies. Those aren't usually "Fire the CEO Now" things, while slamming the sheets with a direct report absolutely requires some kind of immediate action.
The real question is who wants Jensen gone? Because the first leak was clearly intentional and reportedly placed by 'senior White House sources', citing a confidential NSC report. Now the second leak of the inappropriate affair happens immediately after. This was a designed sequence. Both of the underlying events are several months old. Given the facts, I think the most likely source is 'China Trade/AI Hawks' in the White House (possibly the NSC). The reasoning being that Jensen has generally been trying to minimize restrictions on selling AI to China (which is, arguably, part of his job).
> During the conference, Nvidia executives were at a nearby hotel for meetings. Mr. Huang and Ms. Powell were seen being affectionate at the hotel. One bystander captured the interaction on their phone, three people briefed on the incident said.
> Mr. Huang’s security witnessed the bystander with their phone and sequestered them, the people said. They made the person an offer to sign a nondisclosure agreement.
Well, at least there will be one way to make money after AI takes my job...
Jokes aside, I would expect we will soon learn there is more. Given that Nvidia was vouching for Megaspeed while exporting those chips, I still think there's a reasonable chance Jensen ends up in jail over this. Not large, but possible.
When I encountered this ( in much smaller, non strategic companies!) both parties took great care to hide their affair and appear completely professional in public. The fun and games were kept behind closed bedroom doors. I don't get it.
Some folks get a thrill from getting caught, too.
Do they offer $20k? $200k? $2M? He stands to potentially lose tens of billions over this.
Depending on how Jensen takes it, this could be the catalyst to steer AI in a new direction. Companies will line up to scoop him up, if not fight each other to get him. He is the head of the most valuable company, he has the tightest connection to the US government, it won't take a minute before Mudita* becomes a new company being fast-tracked to the top.
* Opposite of Envy (nvidia)
Looks like both Nvidia GPUs and Nvidia CEO have Single Instruction Multiple Threads (SIMT) architecture.
Also to all the people saying how terrible this will be, would you really want someone running your company who can't keep his word to his wife? Maybe it is a quaint idea in 2026 but I think people who break their word shouldn't be trusted, particularly to be in positions of power.
I don't see anyone accusing China of setting up such a trap. China always denies ofc, though all these scummy things eventaully comes out to be true, and by then everyone forgets.
Sen. Chris Coons says investigating Nvidia's CEO is top priority for Democratic Congress
https://www.npr.org/2026/11/09/nx-s1-6032682/senator-chris-c...
I'm not really making a judgement on Huang, but it seems others have done worse. It's making me wonder if there's something larger at play where people (i.e., other billionaires and CEOs and perhaps politicians) are unhappy with Huang.
It would have to be a very good cause though, disliking him or ordinary bad business decisions won't cut it.
The board decides who is CEO. Zuck controls the board. Zuck cannot be fired unless he wants to be.
Why does he support Putin?
(sadly this is not my joke)
It's NVIDIA being sued because they defrauded investors by including illicit chip sales in their Q3 figures
If the Chinese spy lady really were a spy, all the govt agencies would have known about it long ago, but chosen not to reveal it. The whole business stinks of manipulation and "don't interrupt your enemy while they're making a mistake", and the salacious headlines are what's selling this Manufactured Consent.
It’s the Dot Bomb days all over again.
I mean, that's acceptable these days isn't it?
SMH
Irattional things continue to be irrational i guess
The US taxpayer wins.
/s
I don't agree with everything David Sachs says on the All in Podcast, but it looks like it's about political control over all frontier AI models from democrats.
We cannot glue ourselves to the backs of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. We need to be anti-fragile and support a robust spectrum of AI inference being developed from all angles.
This would permanently wed us to a handful of vendors that will soak American businesses and innovators dry while their own products fail to reach the peak of what an open weights inclusive environment could lead to.
Source?
"Our kingdom for a shadow", or something. https://shakespeare.mit.edu/richardiii/richardiii.5.4.html
I'm scared about how this in turn shapes society.
You would do well to look at the history beyond the modern era.
like sleeping Jensen Huang with an incredibly attractive Chinese agent that specifically showed traits he found desirable and exploit what ever weaknesses the Chinese spy agency could find about him to get him involved with her and divulge secrets in a SEXINT operation. Therefore Jensen is one of the worst people who are public figures.
I don't like CEO worship or tech culture (I know I am on hackernews but I am a developer and did like software development and related topics), but this take is crazy most people you know would probably take the bait on an operation like this even 'good' people.
And just take a look at the scum running things outside of Tech a lot worse then a moment of infedality, look at all western leaders you will probably find few better (or even equal) to Jensen. Jensen did not shape the shitshow you are seeing now (not saying he is not part of it), it was corrupt from the start, Just a worthless veneer of morality.
Don't morn your societies decay it was a cadaver from the beginning only by putrefaction will it become the soil to plant strong trees on.
And that "scum also exist outside tech" is just a whataboutism. It'd be a better discussion if you actually interacted with my arguments.
> Why did you have to "quote" something no one said to make your point?
Was not trying to be dishonest but was meant to be what I felt you comment boiled down to, I will revise my comment to change the '>'. > And that "scum also exist outside tech" is just a whataboutism.
What I was saying is not just that scum exists outside tech but that the society that created this tech culture and space is the curruption it's self and it's not worth thinking about as something to save but to replace entirely.
> This post was after a second affair, to me that's a moral flaw, not just someone exploiting him.
I am not saying it's not a moral flaw but compared what Trump has done Epstein, wars, etc. He looks like a Saint. It's pointless even talking about morality in the way you do when Trump and his weak cronies are in power. (and yes I know Nvidia under Jesen no doubt has benefit from this corruption). Infidelity is so common in are time but if only that was the worst of it.
What I was saying is not just that scum exists outside tech
I haven't found the answer. But I do know one thing from my (smallish) sample: the nice guy never let the money get to his head. He drove his own car (a VW Rabbit, ok, a nice one) and lived in the same house that he lived in when he started his company. And until the day he died he just kept doing what he loved without ever feeling the need to lord it over others. More like a Wozniak (who is the other 'nice billionaire' that I'm aware of but I've never met him).
Edit: I wrote about him:
https://jacquesmattheij.com/in-memoriam-rene-sommer/
A human being is so unlikely to be good on their own, pretty much all cultures practiced infanticide and child sacrifice and pederasty and only changed because a few hated these practices and forced them to stop.
But a lot of people the only moment they get to act in an unaccountable manor will act very badly. This is not all people but probably above 90%.
I expect shit show funnier than when OpenAI tried to put Altman with same result.
"Having sex with a direct report" is not on that list of prohibited reasons.
Does Nvidia have such a policy? Unless laws have changed, this isn't an issue as far as the law is concerned.
(Googling - seems they may actually have this policy...)
From what I've heard: Nvidia's operations is heavily reliant on Jensen. He's embedded in everything. Early in the pandemic, I interviewed with them. The recruiter said that pretty much every engineer at the company will, at some point, be in a meeting that includes Jensen. I spoke to a friend who worked there and he confirmed it.
(Probably no longer true as they've grown a lot since then).
EDIT: I assume the bubble will collapse into correction eventually, sooner is better than later.
NVidia doesn't need Jensen in the short / medium term - they are printing money. Unless we discover that all this circular financing was some kind of scheme.
We have 2 other companies though, Tesla and SpaceX, which CEO represents 90% of the valuation. That will be the real one.
I think this is one of those " the question is the answer" moments.
Seems like this video and the first affair with the spy was a classic blackmail operation used against him as I said before [0] and Huang likely said no to the wrong person.
It is over.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50417105
jfc
Getting rid of Jesen might be useful for the US AI labs, but what exactly would be the plan their. I can not see a benefit to them with this move, though I can not see any thing particularly negative for them.