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By Lars Hanson
Associate News Editor
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Jensen Huang’s hold on Nvidia, the company he built into the engine of the artificial intelligence boom, is in doubt Wednesday, as reports of a second extramarital affair compounded an alleged spy scandal that has drawn scrutiny from Washington to Wall Street.
The reversal was swift.
On Sunday, as it opened an independent inquiry into reports that Jensen Huang had been "the target of a foreign intelligence effort," the board said in a statement that it had "no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised." It added: "The Board has confidence in Jensen and his leadership team." That confidence lasted three days.
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On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that the board was preparing to push Jensen Huang out after two extramarital affairs, one of them with a suspected Chinese spy, and that directors could meet as soon as Wednesday.
Newsweek reached out to Nvidia via email on Wednesday for comment.
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What To Know
Reports of a second relationship surfaced only hours earlier, in The New York Times, citing five people who had worked at Nvidia. The outlet reported that Jensen Huang had a relationship with Kimberly Powell, the company's vice president of health care, who reports to him. Two of those people told the Times the pair were filmed being affectionate at a San Jose hotel during Nvidia's developer conference in March; the paper said it had not seen the footage.
According to three people briefed on the episode, the Times reported that Jensen Huang's security detail isolated the bystander who recorded it and offered that person a nondisclosure agreement.
When the Times reached Jensen Huang by phone, he said, "I don't think you should be talking to me directly," and hung up, the paper reported. Powell did not immediately respond to the Times. Both are married to other people, the outlet highlighted.
In October, the Times reported that U.S. intelligence officials had concluded that Alice Huang, a Chinese citizen and former executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed, a major buyer of Nvidia chips, was gathering information for Beijing, and had grown close to the Nvidia chief. The two are not related.
The Associated Press reported that a Commerce Department inquiry into whether Megaspeed routed advanced Nvidia chips to Chinese users was handed to the Justice Department's National Security Division, which is also scrutinizing Alice Huang, according to a person familiar with the matter. Megaspeed has denied the allegations. Beijing has dismissed them outright: "The so-called Chinese spy allegation is unsubstantiated. It is nothing but smears against China," foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said Monday.
Jensen Huang admitted the affair Sunday in a message to employees and did not name the woman.
"My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did," he wrote in part about his wife. The same day, a Nvidia spokesperson said Jensen Huang was "committed to continuing to lead NVIDIA as CEO without interruption."
At a briefing Monday, President Donald Trump said he had called Jensen Huang “just to see if he’s feeling all right,” and that Jensen Huang said he “had absolutely no idea that the person in question was a spy.” Trump said the FBI was looking into the matter “in terms of something else,” adding, “I think that he’ll be in good shape."
“I just think he’s a very honorable man,” Trump said.
Amid reports that the board is planning to oust the Nvidia founder and CEO on Wednesday, CBS News reports the Trump administration is aware of the matter.
Meanwhile, lawmakers from both parties have called for investigations. Democratic U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren has asked Jensen Huang to testify before the Senate Banking Committee, which he has refused to do as of publication time. In a joint statement, Warren and Republican U.S. Senator Jim Banks said in part that Nvidia had reportedly won approval to export “hundreds of thousands of advanced AI chips to China, including to companies tied to China’s military,” and said the affair “raises important questions NVIDIA must answer about the extent to which these activities were related.”
A class-action lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California accuses Nvidia and Jensen Huang of artificially inflating the company’s share price by failing to disclose the affair.
Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here. Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Gabe Whisnant and Edward T. Cummins
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