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The longtime head of the chip-making colossus admitted to an affair with a woman identified as a spy for China. He was also said to have had a relationship with an executive who reported to him.
Jensen Huang, the co-founder and chief executive of the Silicon Valley chip giant Nvidia, resigned on Thursday, according to the company’s board of directors, capping a swift, stunning fall for one of the most powerful figures in the A.I. boom.
The company’s board of directors met for several hours on Wednesday to weigh Mr. Huang’s fate after revelations that he had extramarital affairs with an executive who reports to him and with a woman whom U.S. intelligence agencies concluded was spying for China.
The company’s 10-member board said in a statement that Colette Kress, Nvidia’s chief financial officer, would serve as interim chief executive until a permanent successor to Mr. Huang is named. The board said on Thursday that it would begin a search for a permanent replacement and would consider internal and external candidates.
Mr. Huang’s exit opens an uncertain chapter for Nvidia, the premier maker of artificial intelligence chips, and will have widespread ripple effects. Over three decades, Mr. Huang, 63, built Nvidia into one of the world’s most valuable public companies, controlling an estimated 90 percent of the market for the advanced chips that are an essential component of the A.I. projects driving the U.S. economy — and are at the center of the U.S.-China tussle for dominance in A.I.
A series of reports by The New York Times showed that Mr. Huang had an affair with a Chinese businesswoman who goes by Alice Huang, who had been recruited by China’s main spy agency to gather information on Mr. Huang, and that President Trump had been warned about the relationship but took no action. Ms. Huang has not responded to requests for comment.
Though Nvidia had said that it had “no reason to believe” that Mr. Huang had compromised national security or company secrets, its board, with a track record of deference to its celebrity C.E.O., opened an investigation. The company’s share price plunged in after-hours trading on Wednesday as the board met to consider Mr. Huang’s future, and continued to slide on Thursday.
China has rejected the espionage claims. U.S. officials suspect that Megaspeed, the Singaporean company where Ms. Huang was a top executive, has helped smuggle restricted chips into China. China’s embassy has called the allegations “smears.”
C.E.O.’s influence: Among global tech executives, few have had as much sway as Mr. Huang over Mr. Trump’s approach to A.I. and China. He persuaded the president to roll back a ban on chip sales to China, and Nvidia has donated at least $20 million to a fund for Mr. Trump’s White House ballroom project.
Trump’s response: Mr. Trump has defended Mr. Huang over the past week, calling him an “honorable man” and saying that Mr. Huang had told him he was not aware that Ms. Huang was an intelligence operative for Beijing. The president is scheduled to travel to China next week, and he said on Monday that he did not plan to bring the Nvidia matter up in talks with China’s leader, Xi Jinping.
The board of directors appointed Harvey C. Jones as Nvidia’s first-ever chairman. Jones has years of experience in the chip industry, having served as chief executive and executive chairman of Synopsys.
One of the immediate concerns in the wake of Jensen Huang’s resignation is whether it will lead to an exodus of talent from Nvidia. The company is made up of longtime loyalists to Huang. He was not only revered as a visionary; he made many of them wealthier than they ever imagined. In 2022, the company was worth $305 billion. By 2026, it was flirting with a valuation of $6 trillion.
Colette Kress, a longtime Nvidia executive, was appointed by the board of directors as the new/interim/CK leader.
Nvidia veteran: Ms. Kress, the company’s chief financial officer, joined Nvidia in 2013. She has worked closely with Mr. Huang as the company transitioned from a niche maker of graphics processors used for video games to a company at the center of the artificial intelligence boom. She previously worked for Cisco and Microsoft. She has an undergraduate degree in finance from the University of Arizona and a M.B.A. from Southern Methodist University.
Closeness to Jensen Huang: Mr. Huang interviewed 22 candidates before hiring Ms. Kress as chief financial officer. At the time, Mr. Kress’s young sons, who were avid gamers, encouraged her to join Nvidia. During her first week on the job, Ms. Kress asked Mr. Huang how long he thought he would want her in the role. “I said, ‘For as long as we shall live and death do us part,’” Mr. Jensen said in a podcast appearance this year.
China: During her time as chief financial officer, Ms. Kress expressed concerns about the financial impact of American policies that restrict Nvidia sales to China. In 2023, she said on a call with financial analysts that China accounted for 20 to 25 percent of the company’s data center revenue. In addition to lost sales, she has said the policies risk strengthening Nvidia’s competitors in China.
Liaison to Wall Street: As chief financial officer, one of Ms. Kress’s main responsibilities was communicating with Wall Street and Nvidia’s investors. On quarterly earnings calls, Ms. Kress delivered a rosy message as Nvidia’s revenue and stock price soared. In 2013, Nvidia’s sales were $4.28 billion. In the most recent fiscal year, its annual sales reached $215.9 billion.
Personal Wealth: Ms. Kress has benefited from Nvidia’s skyrocketing stock price. She owned roughly 4.44 million shares, according to Nvidia’s most recent annual report, worth about $772 million.
Nvidia’s stock has plunged following the news of Huang’s departure. Shares have fallen more than 11 percent in premarket trading, wiping out over $1 trillion from the company’s market value this month.
Jensen Huang led Nvidia with an executive team of more than 60 direct reports, placing him at the center of day-to-day operations at the company. That flat structure will be difficult to unwind and could complicate a transition to new leadership.
On a podcast in 2023, Huang dismissed traditional organizational charts, saying that “none of that stuff makes any sense to me.” He led Nvidia largely through meetings that focused on particular projects and included people from all levels of the company, from recent college graduates to top executives. Huang said last year that he reads several thousand emails a day from people across the company.
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.
Notes: Through the close of trading on Nov. 11.
Nvidia’s shares plummeted Thursday, sending tremors through global markets, as the company’s chief executive, Jensen Huang, stepped down from his role.
Shares in Nvidia dropped more than 11 percent in premarket trading, extending a drop that is set to wipe roughly $1 trillion from the company’s market value this month alone.
The company’s board named Colette Kress, the company’s chief financial officer, as its interim chief executive.
With the change in Nvidia’s leadership, investors face uncertainty about the sustainability of the artificial intelligence trade and how the problems inside one of the technology industry’s most important companies could affect the broader economy.
The fallout could be seen in markets around the world, although the effects appeared limited. Major market indexes in Asia, where many of Nvidia’s partners and rivals in the artificial intelligence industry are based, mostly declined. Taiwan’s TSMC, which produces chips designed by Nvidia, fell more than 2 percent. But South Korea’s Samsung, which competes with Nvidia on some business lines, gained 1 percent.
European stock indexes, which are less heavily exposed to A.I., mostly rose on Thursday. But shares in the region’s largest tech company, ASML of the Netherlands, fell more than 2 percent.
In the United States, futures for the tech-heavy Nasdaq slipped less than 1 percent in premarket trading. The stocks of Nvidia’s fellow tech giants, members of an exclusive club known as the “Magnificent Seven,” were little changed.
Shares in some of Nvidia’s U.S. rivals were set to climb: AMD rose more than 2 percent and Broadcom gained nearly 2 percent in premarket trading on Thursday. The broader S&P 500 index was set to open slightly lower.
Trading outside of official market hours is often choppy, which can exaggerate moves in stock prices.
Mr. Huang, who co-founded Nvidia in 1993, has become one of the most influential forces in the A.I. boom, which has helped to drive U.S. stock markets to new highs in recent years.
Nvidia’s board deliberations came after revelations that Mr. Huang had an affair with an executive who reports to him as well as with a woman whom U.S. intelligence has identified as a Chinese spy.
Some market analysts covering Nvidia have begun to downgrade their forecasts for the company’s stock. Though the chipmaker is expected to remain a critical part of the A.I. build-out, some noted rising concerns about the company’s governance and lack of a clear succession plan. They argued that these revelations have fundamentally changed Mr. Huang’s position in the tech world and it was unclear what the implications of a change in his role at Nvidia could be.
Analysts at Bernstein downgraded Nvidia and sharply lowered their target for its share price. “Our gut tells us that we probably haven’t yet fully probed the depths of what might be found here,” they wrote. “We’ve had enough, and prefer to watch from the sidelines.”
Analysts at RBC Capital Markets also slashed their forecast for the stock, citing the lack of formal succession plan for the chief executive position. “Whether any individual can replicate Huang’s singular combination of technical vision, ecosystem-building acumen and ability to serve as the global face of the A.I. revolution remains an open question,” they noted.
Other analysts, including those at Wells Fargo and Mizuho, maintained their bullish views on Nvidia, but said it was increasingly likely that Mr. Huang might not be chief executive for much longer.
Nvidia’s stock is down about a third from its peak at the start of October, putting the company deep in a bear market, defined as a drop of 20 percent or more from a recent high.
Nvidia became the world’s largest public company, by market value, for the first time in 2024, exerting an outsize influence over major indexes like the Nasdaq Composite and the S&P 500. Analysts still expect Nvidia to make a profit of well over $200 billion this year, with its chips in high demand as tech companies rush to build giant A.I. data centers.
During last week’s market turmoil, Nvidia fell below Apple as the world’s biggest public company.
Jensen Huang, the leader of Nvidia who is under investigation for an affair with a woman who U.S. intelligence determined is a Chinese spy, also had an extramarital relationship with an executive who reports to him, according to five people who worked at the company.
The relationship, which has not been previously reported, was with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care, said the people, who spoke under the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive information. Under Nvidia’s code of conduct, employees are told to “avoid situations where our actions create conflict” including “personal relationships,” and the company states that it “promptly investigates reports of misconduct.” Many corporations have policies against managers having relationships with subordinates.
Mr. Huang, 63, and Ms. Powell, 48, were captured on video being affectionate at a San Jose, Calif., hotel during a Nvidia conference in March, according to two of the people who worked at the company. The New York Times has not seen the video.
Both Mr. Huang and Ms. Powell are married to other people.
Mr. Huang, who co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and has turned it into the premier supplier of artificial intelligence chips, has been under intensifying scrutiny. Last month, The Times reported that a Chinese executive he had become close to had been identified by U.S. officials as a Chinese intelligence asset.
This month, after Mr. Huang acknowledged the affair, Nvidia’s board opened an investigation into the matter that is being led by the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. The Republican leaders of three influential House committees have also asked Mr. Huang to appear for a closed-door briefing on his interactions with the woman, who goes by the name Alice Huang.
China has denied the espionage claims. Ms. Huang, the Chinese executive accused of spying for Beijing, has not responded to requests for comment.
When reached by phone Wednesday and asked about his relationship with Ms. Powell, Mr. Huang said, “I don’t think you should be talking to me directly.” He then hung up.
Nvidia declined to provide a statement. Ms. Powell did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company’s shares fell about 8 percent in after-hours trading.
Mr. Huang’s relationship with Ms. Powell has been discussed inside the company, the five people said.
Ms. Powell joined Nvidia in 2008. She oversees programs that could apply Nvidia’s chip technology to higher education and health care, particularly medical imaging devices, according to the company’s website.
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Ms. Powell has risen through Nvidia’s ranks. She was promoted to senior director of artificial intelligence business development in 2016, according to her LinkedIn. By late 2017, she was appointed vice president of health care. She attends technology conferences around the world, and delivers speeches on behalf of the company.
In March, Ms. Powell appeared at GTC, Nvidia’s annual developer conference in San Jose, where she spoke about using A.I. to aid in breakthroughs in health care and biology. Her presentation used cartoon depictions of Mr. Huang.
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 workers witnessed the bystander with the phone and sequestered the person, the people said. The workers then asked the person to sign a nondisclosure agreement.
Mr. Huang is among a long list of chief executives of American companies who have had relationships with subordinates. Brian Krzanich resigned in 2018 from Intel, the chip maker, after acknowledging a “past consensual relationship” with an employee.
The following year, McDonald’s removed Steve Easterbrook as its chief executive and later sued him after learning he had violated corporate policies by maintaining sexual relationships with multiple employees.
In November 2021, Jensen Huang attended the annual dinner held by the Semiconductor Industry Association in San Jose, Calif. That night, the trade group gave Mr. Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, its highest honor, named for the Intel co-founder Robert Noyce.
Mr. Huang arrived early with his wife, Lori Huang, and quickly headed to the bar at the pre-dinner reception, saying the event was the first time he had been out of his house since the Covid lockdown began in March 2020. He introduced Ms. Huang to reporters who clustered nearby, but they mainly talked to him.
By the time Mr. Huang received the award, two hours had passed. The Nvidia leader walked onstage with a bottle of red wine and two glasses, sharing them with a moderator and taking the conversation into unexpected topics. Throughout, Ms. Huang remained in the background.
For more than 40 years, Ms. Huang has been by Mr. Huang’s side as he built his fledgling chip start-up into one of the most valuable companies in the world. Nvidia’s success turned Mr. Huang into an international business star. His face is on sweaters, his signature leather jackets have become collectors items, and his net worth has soared to nearly $150 billion.
By contrast, Ms. Huang stayed far from the spotlight.
That changed this week, when Mr. Huang, 63, revealed he had an affair with an executive identified by the U.S. government as a Chinese spy. In his admission, which he shared in a message to Nvidia employees, Mr. Huang apologized to his wife, as well as his two children, who both work at Nvidia, thrusting them into the limelight.
The bombshell news had implications for U.S. national security and the economy. Nvidia’s role as the A.I. industry’s main supplier of chips makes Mr. Huang a crucial linchpin for an industry that has come to dominate the stock market.
It also has ramifications for his personal life. Mr. Huang’s admission has fueled speculation about the fate of his 41-year marriage with Ms. Huang, 64. She is president of the Jen-Hsun Lori Huang Foundation, which had $9 billion in assets as of 2024, including $6 billion in fresh funding that year. Of Mr. Huang’s 922 million Nvidia shares, more than half belong to a trust where Mr. Huang and Ms. Huang are the co-trustees, according to financial filings. She is also the sole controller of a trust that owns around $5 billion worth of Nvidia shares.
Ms. Huang joins a small group of tech titan spouses who have had to grapple with public infidelity. The list includes MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Melinda French Gates, ex-wife of the Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. The billionaire ex-wife of a tech mogul has become such a fixture in American pop culture that it has inspired characters in “The Devil Wears Prada 2” and the Maya Rudolph comedy “Loot.”
Ms. Huang’s public profile stands out among the current and former spouses of powerful business leaders because of how private she has been. She has not promoted her philanthropic work in interviews or on the conference circuit.
“Lori is unusually modest by the standards of billionaire couples,” said George Rush, who formerly coauthored Rush & Molloy, a long-running gossip column at The Daily News.
That adds further intrigue to the political and economic consequences of the affair, Mr. Rush noted. “Bezos and Gates didn’t have this dynamic, where the relationship could move markets and have this global fallout,” he said. “It is one of a kind.”
Nvidia declined to comment and Ms. Huang did not respond to a request for comment. (China has rejected the espionage claims. Alice Huang, the Chinese executive accused of spying for Beijing, has not responded to requests for comment.)
Similar to other tech billionaire spouses like Ms. Scott, Ms. Huang was crucial to the start of her husband’s company.
She met Mr. Huang as one of a handful of women studying engineering at Oregon State University in the early 1980s. Mr. Huang was her lab partner in an electrical engineering fundamentals class, and he convinced her to join him for a weekly study date. He later called meeting her “the most important, single event of OSU, and of my life.”
After the pair graduated and married, they moved to Silicon Valley to work as microchip designers. Both were known as gifted engineers. Ms. Huang worked at Silicon Graphics, a hardware and software maker, where her salary was higher than Mr. Huang’s at LSI Logic, a semiconductor company, he said in a 2023 profile in The New Yorker.
But the couple struggled to find the right child care, according to “The Thinking Machine,” a biography of Mr. Huang. Just before he co-founded Nvidia in 1993, Ms. Huang gave up her career to raise their children, Spencer and Madison. While Mr. Huang missed their karate tournaments to build his company, Ms. Huang never complained, he recalled in May on the podcast How I Built This With Guy Raz. “That’s the gift that she gave me.”
Mr. Huang has frequently shared a warm reverence for Ms. Huang in interviews. “It’s good to have someone in your life who unconditionally believes in you, who believes you’re doing your best,” he said in an interview with a publication run by Oregon State University in 2014. “You need people like that, and Lori’s always been that person for me — ever since I was 18, she was there believing in me and knowing I could do it. Even when I had self-doubts, she didn’t.”
When Mr. Huang’s Nvidia shares made him wealthy, the family set up an endowment that ballooned alongside their net worth. The foundation has donated to the San Francisco Opera and acquired computing power to donate to universities and nonprofits. The Huangs have sidestepped political donations.
Through it all, Ms. Huang was a frequent presence at Mr. Huang’s public events, including state dinners, conference appearances and celebrations of the couple’s donations to Stanford University and Oregon State University. She generally stayed in the background while he gave speeches and hobnobbed with industry executives and reporters.
“She’s been to every conference, every speech, you know, and every moment of Nvidia, she was there,” he said in an interview this year with CNA, an Asian news network. “Lori’s been with me for a long time, our whole life.”
She even helped shape his public image. Along with her daughter Madison, she dressed Mr. Huang in a designer leather jacket that has become his trademark look. Madison joined Nvidia in 2020 and Spencer joined the company in 2022. Madison’s husband, Nico Caprez, also works there.
Mr. Huang ended his message to Nvidia employees about the affair with a request: “My family bears no responsibility for my choices. I do. Please give them privacy.”