Nvidia’s board is preparing to remove Jensen Huang as CEO, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. The board could meet as soon as Wednesday to decide his future. Nothing is confirmed yet: Nvidia has not announced a decision, and it did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
If it happens, it ends a run with no equal in PC gaming. Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and has led it ever since, through the first GeForce cards, ray tracing and DLSS, all the way to the company’s AI boom.
The report says two affairs are behind the move, one with a suspected Chinese spy
According to the Journal, the board’s push follows two extramarital affairs. One was with a businesswoman whom U.S. intelligence agencies reportedly believe passed information to Beijing, as first reported by The New York Times and the Financial Times. She is affiliated with Megaspeed, a cloud company and Nvidia customer that has been accused of helping restricted Chinese firms get Nvidia AI chips. Nvidia has said Megaspeed was previously investigated for evading export controls.
The second affair came out earlier on Wednesday, when The New York Times reported that Huang had a relationship with an Nvidia executive who reported to him.
Huang admitted the first affair in an email to staff on Sunday
On November 8, Huang told Nvidia employees in an email: “I was unfaithful to my wife.” He wrote that his actions hurt his wife and children, that there is “no excuse” for them, and closed with “I am deeply sorry.”
The same day, the board said an independent committee would investigate whether Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort. It said it had no reason to believe national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised. The board also said it had “confidence in Jensen and his leadership team.” At the time, an Nvidia spokesperson said Huang was committed to continuing as CEO without interruption.
A former top federal prosecutor is leading the board’s investigation
On Tuesday, the board hired the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, with Joon H. Kim, a former acting U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, running the probe. Investors were already bracing for Huang’s exit: Nvidia stock fell more than 4% on Monday and 6% on Tuesday, and dropped about 8% in after-hours trading after the Journal’s report.
Nvidia has not named a successor, with earnings due November 17
No successor or interim CEO has been reported. A firing isn’t the only outcome on the table either: Fortune reports the board may keep Huang in the job with less power rather than remove him. The timing is tight: Nvidia reports quarterly earnings on November 17, and three House Republican committee chairs have asked Huang for a closed-door briefing on November 18.
For players, Huang has been the face of every GeForce launch for decades, and nobody else at Nvidia has run the company. We’ll update this story when the board makes its decision.
