The Resignation of Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA: Not Just a Matter of Sexual Infidelity
Jensen Huang, CEO, President, member of the Board of Directors, and the single largest individual shareholder of NVIDIA Corporation, which describes itself as “the world leader in AI and accelerated computing”, announced his resignation on 12 November 2026. Colette Kress, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at NVIDIA since September 2013, was appointed interim CEO in his place, and Harvey C. Jones, a former CEO and executive chairman of Synopsys, became the first Chair of the Board. With a market capitalisation of around $4.2 trillion at the beginning of November 2026, NVIDIA is the second-highest valued firm in the world after Apple. Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, NVIDIA (Nasdaq ticker NVDA) is one of the “Magnificent Seven” tech stocks, along with Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and Tesla. NVIDIA makes up about 6% of the S & P 500 and about 9% of Nasdaq. Huang’s departure inevitably rattled the stock market. NVIDIA shares were down 5.3% as of 10:30 AM EST on 12 November. The stock reached its lowest level since June 2025 before rallying. The company is due to release its third-quarter fiscal report at 4:20 PM EST on 17 November.
Huang’s departure followed the disclosure of his sexual indiscretions in The New York Times on 29 October 2026. The Trump administration was apparently aware in advance of what was being reported. Huang’s email apology to NVIDIA employees on 8 November read: “I owe my family and all of you an apology. I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry.” Huang was apologising for his dalliance with Alice Huang (no relation), aka Huang Le, who became a director and controlling shareholder at Megaspeed International, a Singapore-based cloud company that runs data centres across South East Asia, in 2023, only to hand over within eight months to James Tan (Tam Yong Pong), a Singapore-based businessman. According to various media reports, Alice Huang had previously worked at HSBC’s private banking arm in Hong Kong; CITIC Securities, a Chinese investment bank; and at Hexi Investment Co, a Shanghai-based firm. It has been alleged that Megaspeed helped China acquire NVIDIA chips currently restricted under strict US export controls, and that Alice Huang may have been a “Chinese intelligence asset”, working for China’s Ministry of State Security in what has been described as a “honeytrap” operation. Chinese authorities have strongly denied the allegations, refuting claims that Alice Huang was a Chinese spy and stating that they do not need to resort to subterfuge to acquire advanced computer chips. Just as news of the relationship between the two Huangs was making the news, The New York Times made a second damming revelation on 11 November, claiming that Jensen had been recorded on a smartphone as “being affectionate” with Kimberly Powell, the 48-year-old Vice President of Healthcare at NVIDIA, during a NVIDIA GTC (GPU Technology Conference) at a hotel in San Jose in March 2026. The affair between the two married individuals is reported to have lasted years, in violation of NVIDIA’s rulebook.
NVIDIA’s Board of Directors met late on 11 November to decide Huang’s fate. Ten members of the 11-member board got together in the absence of their 11th counterpart (Jensen Huang), and decided that it was in their best interests to part company. The Board has hired a New York-based law firm- Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Krantz- to conduct an independent investigation of alleged spying.
NVIDIA was founded by Jensen Huang and two other engineers, Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem, on 5 April 1993. The trio had met at a Denny’s diner in San Jose, California, to discuss a joint venture to make a computer chip that would provide faster and more realistic animation for video games. The company’s name combines “Next Version” (NV) and “Invidia” (Latin for envy). NVIDIA engineers invented the GPU (graphic processing unit)-the GeForce 256- in 1999, which “sparked the growth of the PC gaming market, redefined computer graphics, pioneered accelerated computing, and ignited the era of modern AI.” Multicore and parallel processing capabilities enabled GPUs to become faster and more powerful than the CPUs (central processing units) of conventional microprocessors. GPUs enhanced graphics-intensive applications to begin with, before moving into the rapidly growing field of AI applications. NVIDIA’S CUDA software platform was launched in 2006.
NVIDIA has become a key player in the AI revolution as a provider of both hardware and software. The company provides advanced computer chips to “AI Factories”, better known as data centres, which “convert energy and data into training, refinement, and inference.” NVIDIA’s chips are made in Taiwan (TSMC) and South Korea (Samsung; SK Hynix). The company’s main competitors are AMD (Advanced Micro Devices Inc.) and Intel Corporation.
Jensen Huang was born Jen-Hsun Huang in Taiwan, spent his early years in Thailand, and was sent to the US aged nine, along with his older brother. He boarded at the Oneida Baptist Institute, a private Christian school in Oneida, Kentucky and went to high school in Oregon, where his parents had relocated. He learnt the value of hard work while working as dishwasher, busboy, and waiter at a branch of Denny’s, a 24-hour diner, from 1978 to 1983. Jensen studied electrical engineering at Oregon State University, where he met his future wife Lori-one of just three female students in a class of 250.
As CEO of NVIDIA, Huang cultivated a rock star image, wearing his signature black leather jacket to public events where he freely dispensed his signature and posed for selfies, and came to be known as the “Taylor Swift of Tech” and “Daddy Huang.” He built up a special relationship with President Trump, visiting the White House on many occasions, accompanying the President to China on Air Force One in May 2026, and attending the State Dinner for President Xi Jinping on 25 September 2026. Huang gave $25 million for the renovation of Trump’s White House Ballroom. He received the National Medal of Science, the US government’s highest scientific honour, from Trump on 8 October 2026, at the Golden Age of American Innovation Summit in Washington DC. The National Medal Science followed earlier awards of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering in 2025 and the IEEE Medal of Honour in 2026. President Trump’s response on Truth Social to news of Huang’s resignation was: “NOW THAT Nvidia CEO JENSEN HUANG, who has done a fantastic job, has resigned, there is only one man to take his place-TIM COOK of Apple. A Legend replaces a Legend!”
Jensen Huang devoted 33 years of his life to NVIDIA, only to become a toxic liability. Years of dedication have been lost to a weakness of the flesh. At a time of a growing backlash against data centres, as reflected in the results of the US midterm elections, Huang’s departure could not have come at a worse time for the AI sector, just as tighter regulation seems inevitable. Huang was a staunch advocate of deregulation. There is also the fact that high levels of investment in AI data centres have yet to deliver on investor returns, and the bursting of the AI bubble remains a distinct possibility. What happens next is a matter of how a Democratic-led Congress proceeds and how best the Trump-led White House continues to defend the Tech sector. Jensen Huang has nonetheless left a lasting legacy, which must not be ignored or downplayed under any circumstances.
Ashis Banerjee