Nvidia’s billionaire CEO Jensen Huang has resigned after his extramarital affairs—one with a senior employee and another, which he admitted was with a suspected Chinese spy—were exposed.
The company did not address the scandal in a statement issued on Thursday morning, instead thanking Huang for his “profound” and “immeasurable contributions to the company and the industry.”
Huang, 63, who co-founded the company, is also its largest shareholder, at about 3.6 percent.
On Sunday, Huang acknowledged having an affair with Alice Huang, a Chinese national who works at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based company. The two are unrelated.
Photos showing Jensen Huang and the Chinese spy he’s alleged to have had an affair with were posted on her WeChat account.
“I was unfaithful to my wife,” Huang said in a company-wide message obtained by the Daily Beast. “My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry.”
Jensen Huang has two children, Spencer, 35, and Madison, 34, with wife Lori Mills. Both work at Nvidia.
On Wednesday, the New York Times reported another bombshell: that Huang also had an affair with 48-year-old Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of healthcare since late 2017. Powell, who joined Nvidia in 2008 and reports to Huang, is married to 54-year-old Graham Gerade.
The Times reports that Huang and Powell were seen acting affectionately at a company conference in March at a hotel in San Jose, California. A bystander who captured them on their phone was asked by Huang’s security team to sign a nondisclosure agreement, three people briefed on the incident told the paper.
Huang, when asked about Powell by the Times, said, “I don’t think you should be talking to me directly,” then hung up.
Kimberly Powell, Vice President / General Manager, Healthcare at NVIDIA
Nvidia’s status as a top A.I. chip manufacturer has naturally spurred questions about what information, if any, China was able to obtain. The Republican leaders of three House committees have called for Huang to give a closed-door briefing on his relationship with the suspected Chinese spy. Nvidia’s board is also investigating the matter.
The Justice Department has launched several investigations involving Alice Huang, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
Trump stands with Huang after presenting him with the National Medal of Science during the “A New Golden Age” summit at the US Institute of Peace in October.
Huang, in an October interview with Bloomberg, discussed his potential successor.
“Just as I can be fired, the next CEO has to be hired. I like it that way,” he said. “I like that we can’t be overly complacent about our position inside the company and we can’t take it for granted, and you’re always vulnerable, you’re always earning it, you’re always striving to be better.”
Huang has been one of Donald Trump’s closest tech allies. This week, the president called him an “honorable man,” adding that Huang said he wasn’t aware Alice Huang was believed to be a spy. Trump took him along on his trip to China in May, despite reportedly having been warned that Alice Huang was conducting foreign surveillance on the Nvidia chief.
In September, Jensen Huang was among the many wealthy guests at the White House. There, he and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI president Greg Brockman, and xAI founder Elon Musk signed the “White House Accord on Super Intelligence.”
Last month, Trump, 80, presented Huang with the National Medal of Science during the “A New Golden Age” summit at the US Institute of Peace,
Trump, despite questions about security, has sent Nvidia chips to China, something which Huang long advocated for.
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