Jensen Huang NVIDIA

Nvidia is reportedly preparing to fire Jensen Huang after a second affair surfaces, this time with someone who reports to him

Nvidia CEO and co-founder Jensen Huang has certainly had himself a week.

Days after admitting to an affair with a woman U.S. intelligence officials believe is a Chinese spy, the Nvidia CEO and co-founder is now reportedly facing a second affair allegation. This time it’s a senior Nvidia executive who reports directly to him.

Now Nvidia’s board is reportedly getting ready to show the man who built the company the door. Directors met late Wednesday to decide his future. As of Thursday morning, no decision had been announced and Huang is still CEO but the fact that the meeting is even happening is wild.

The Chinese Honeypot…

Here’s how we got here. Late last month, the New York Times reported that U.S. officials believe Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed, is a Chinese intelligence asset who got close to Jensen.

(Same last name, no relation. Thankfully.)

On Sunday, Huang sent an email to Nvidia employees admitting he’d been unfaithful to his wife and linking it to the national security concerns in the news.

I’m going to be honest with you. If a mysterious, glamorous businesswoman with a vague job title started showing a lot of interest in me at a tech conference, I would fall for it instantly. Hook, line and sinker. I’d be handing over my passwords before the appetizers came out.

Here’s the difference. I’m a single guy who runs a sports blog. The most sensitive information I have is is my blood oath to The Process. That’s a bit different than Jensen Huang, who is a married father and the co-founder of a $4 trillion company that makes the chips powering the entire AI industry.

If a spy agency is sending someone after you, it’s not because of your personality. It’s because you have the keys to the kingdom. Honestly, the issue here is that Jensen Huang is walking around in that leather jacket and had a false sense of “being cool” when in reality, he’s just another tech dork that folded immediately.

Side Note: The leather jacket is cool, Jensen, but it’s not that cool.

Anyways, that’s what makes this so bad. Megaspeed isn’t some random startup. It’s an Nvidia customer that rents out computing power from Nvidia GPUs to companies across Asia, and it has been accused of helping restricted Chinese companies get their hands on Nvidia’s AI chips.

The U.S. government has been looking into the company for more than a year and now, in the middle of an AI arms race with China, where Nvidia’s chips are basically the engine for the whole thing, the CEO of the most important AI company on the planet was allegedly getting close to a woman U.S. intelligence thinks was working for Beijing.

Honeypots, am I right?

Of course, China denies Alice Huang was a spy, Megaspeed denies wrongdoing, and Nvidia’s board said it has no reason to believe national security or company secrets were compromised but what else are they supposed to say in this situation?

It’s not like they are going to come out and admit that their CEO and co-founder fell for a Chinese honeypot and now the whole company is compromised, right?

Even with the board opening an independent investigation “with confidence in Jensen,” I wouldn’t expect any type of answers on what really happened.

That was Sunday. Then came affair No. 2 for Jensen Huang.

On Wednesday, the Times reported, citing five sources, that Huang also had a relationship with a senior Nvidia executive who reports directly to him. Two of those sources said the pair were caught on video being affectionate at a San Jose hotel during an Nvidia conference in March.

At his own company’s conference. With cameras everywhere. Incredible, really.

That’s the part that changed everything. An affair with an alleged spy was a national security mess, but plenty of people in tech thought he could ride it out.

A relationship with a direct report is a straight-up HR violation, the kind of thing that gets regular CEOs fired every year. Turns out the rules apply even when you’re worth a couple hundred billion dollars.

Within hours, the Wall Street Journal reported the board was preparing to oust him.

Photos with one woman at a tech expo. Video with another at his own conference. Say what you want about Jensen, but the man did not give a single damn about getting caught.

Nvidia’s board is preparing to oust CEO Jensen Huang

The stock is getting hammered

Wall Street hates uncertainty, and nothing is more uncertain than losing the guy who has run your company for 33 years.

Nvidia closed Wednesday at $173.73. That’s down more than $22, about 11%, over the last five days. Then the Journal story hit, and the stock slid to $161.45 after hours, another 7%. Its 52-week high is $243.37.

NVIDIA Stock

Jensen Huang NVIDIA

Nvidia has no Plan B

That’s what makes this an even bigger problem for Nvidia. Jensen Huang has spent years telling everyone that he is the company.

He has never believed in succession planning, telling Lex Fridman this year that he hopes to die at his desk (lol). Huang loves to joke that when other CEOs’ kids are running their companies, he’ll still be running Nvidia and for years.

The company’s unofficial motto, plastered on slide decks, was that Nvidia was 30 days from going out of business, with Jensen Huang as the guy who kept saving it.

Well, it turns out the biggest threat to Nvidia wasn’t a competitor. Funny how that works out, right?

The board is reportedly working with an outside firm to find possible replacements and weighing an interim CEO. There’s no obvious heir. Nvidia’s chips power Amazon, Google, Meta and pretty much everyone else in AI. If the company really can’t function without Jensen Huang, like he’s been saying for years, that’s terrible news for just about everybody… except maybe China.

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