Jensen Huang had been entangled with a woman identified by U.S. intelligence as a Chinese spy and with an executive who reported to him. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill called for investigations into whether national security had been compromised.
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The abrupt resignation of Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang, on Thursday morning after revelations that he had extramarital affairs with two women sent shock waves through the A.I. industry and spurred calls on Capitol Hill for investigations into whether U.S. security had been compromised.
Mr. Huang, the co-founder and chief executive of the Silicon Valley chip giant, stepped down after Nvidia’s board started an inquiry into allegations that he had extramarital affairs with a woman who U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded was spying for China, as well as with an executive who reported to him.
It was the stunning fall of one of the most powerful figures in the A.I. boom. Nvidia controls an estimated 90 percent of the market for the advanced chips that are an essential component of artificial intelligence projects.
Mr. Huang’s exit is expected to have widespread ripple effects. One question is what will happen to Nvidia’s supply chain in Asia, where Mr. Huang created an intricate web of overlapping suppliers, all held together with his personal relationships.
It also touched the White House, where Mr. Huang long had a firm ally in President Trump. The president defended Mr. Huang all week and praised him again on Thursday for doing a “fantastic job”; Mr. Trump then recommended that Tim Cook, the former Apple chief executive, take the helm at Nvidia.
A series of reports by The New York Times showed that Mr. Huang, 63, had a relationship with Alice Huang, a Chinese businesswoman who had been recruited by China’s main spy agency to gather information on Mr. Huang. The Times also reported that Mr. Trump had been warned about the relationship but took no action.
U.S. officials suspect that Megaspeed, the Singaporean company where Ms. Huang was a top executive, has helped to smuggle restricted chips into China. Ms. Huang has not responded to requests for comment; China has rejected the espionage claims and called the smuggling allegations “smears.”
On Capitol Hill, Democrats called for an investigation into whether Mr. Huang had compromised U.S. national security. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, said the Trump administration also “must answer for what it did once it learned about Mr. Huang’s relationship with a suspected Chinese intelligence asset.”
Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, said on Thursday that he anticipated Mr. Huang’s resignation would not keep Congress from conducting hearings on his relationship with a suspected Chinese spy. “It would make sense because of the nature of the association,” he said.
Nvidia’s board: The board did not mention Mr. Huang’s conduct in its statement announcing his resignation. Instead, it thanked him for his “immeasurable contributions to the company and the industry.” Colette Kress, Nvidia’s chief financial officer, will serve as interim chief executive while the search for a permanent replacement is carried out, it said.
Another affair: Mr. Huang had a second extramarital relationship with an executive who reported to him, according to five people who worked at the company, The Times reported on Wednesday. He is the latest member to join a growing club of chief executives brought down by affairs.
A long-term strategy: China’s intelligence services have for decades used romantic entanglements to compromise or extract information from prominent people. Although the use of seduction in espionage is not unique to China, the country’s use of it differs in the amount of time it is willing to invest. Read more ›
Economic fallout: Mr. Huang’s departure could affect the economy more broadly than a typical C.E.O. departure. He ran Nvidia almost single-handedly and was unusually central to its success. Nvidia, in turn, has been unusually central to the artificial intelligence boom, a crucial driver of U.S. economic growth while some other sectors have been struggling. Read more ›
Huang and Trump: Few tech executives have had as much sway with Mr. Trump, who has called Mr. Huang an “honorable man” and said he believed that Mr. Huang was not aware that he had been involved with a Chinese spy. The president is scheduled to travel to China next week, and he said on Monday that he did not plan to bring up the Nvidia matter in talks with China’s leader, Xi Jinping.
Jensen Huang, who resigned as Nvidia’s chief executive, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have been summoned to testify next month before a Senate committee as Mr. Huang’s affair with a woman suspected of being a Chinese spy raises national security concerns.
Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, on Thursday evening sent letters to Mr. Huang and Mr. Lutnick requesting their testimony in front of the Senate Banking Committee.
“Recent reports raise serious concerns about our national security and the protection of sensitive U.S. technology,” Mr. Scott said in a social media post, adding, “The American people deserve answers.”
Congressional leaders of both political parties have said they support efforts to hear from Mr. Huang directly about his entanglement with Alice Huang, a Chinese businesswoman who U.S. officials concluded had been recruited by China’s main spy agency.
Mr. Scott asked Mr. Huang to appear on Dec. 3 by his own volition but also threatened that the committee could issue a subpoena. House Republicans also said on Thursday they were in discussions with Mr. Huang to testify before other committees. Mr. Huang has hired lawyers who previously represented executives in government investigations, according to people familiar with the matter.
Mr. Huang resigned as Nvidia’s chief executive on Thursday. But that has not appeared to slow a bipartisan push for more information on whether he had compromised national security.
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said in a social media post that Congress must “demand answers” from Mr. Huang. Mr. Schumer also called on the Trump administration to “answer for what it did once it learned about Mr. Huang’s relationship with a suspected Chinese intelligence asset.”
Mr. Lutnick’s department was required to review companies for national security risks before the Trump administration allowed Nvidia to sell advanced chips to China last year. The top Democrats on two congressional committees also wrote to Mr. Lutnick on Thursday, saying they were investigating the matter.
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the banking committee, said that Mr. Huang’s resignation “does not absolve him, other executives or the company as a whole of responsibility for putting our national security at risk or for any potential violations of our laws.”
She added in a statement that the company still would “owe Congress answers.” She also demanded that Trump officials “ensure our advanced technology is not fueling China’s military.”
Michael Gold, Ana Swanson and Tony Romm contributed reporting.
The anatomy of the Nvidia scandal
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTMy colleagues and I went on Hard Fork, the New York Times podcast about the future of technology, to discuss Jensen Huang’s resignation and its impact on the global tech industry. Listen to or watch it here.
House Republicans said they were in discussions with Jensen Huang to get him to testify before Congress sometime this month. Representatives Brian Mast of Florida, who leads the Foreign Affairs Committee, and John Mooelnar of Michigan, who leads a different House committee focused on China, separately told reporters that they had been working to confirm a date and format for Huang to discuss allegations that he had an affair with a woman who U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded was spying for China.
Huang’s testimony is not yet scheduled, and it is not clear whether his testimony would be public.
Nvidia shares recovered most of their losses in the market by the close of trading, finishing more than 4 percent lower. The stock had fallen by as much as 14 percent Thursday morning after the resignation of Jensen Huang was announced. But as investors’ fears about the company’s future without Huang eased, the shares rebounded.
Jensen Huang’s resignation may take down another victim: the movement to build open source A.I. systems, according to a report from SemiAnalysis, a prominent A.I. research group. Huang has been a champion for developing A.I. systems with public underlying code that are cheaper to run.
The most advanced open source systems have been developed in China, using Nvidia chips, SemiAnalysis said. The U.S. open source ecosystem, as well as many American start-ups, rely on those Chinese models. “This is significantly impaired with Jensen gone,” the analysts wrote.
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTSenator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, told reporters at the Capitol on Thursday that he anticipated Congress would conduct oversight into Jensen Huang’s apparent involvement with an alleged Chinese spy, even though Huang has resigned as chief executive of Nvidia. “It would make sense because of the nature of the association,” he said.
The Democratic leader, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, said in a social media post that Congress must “demand answers” from Huang and Nvidia officials about “how they may have put U.S. national security at risk.” He added the Trump administration “must answer for what it did once it learned about Mr. Huang’s relationship with a suspected Chinese intelligence asset.”
Jensen Huang has hired the law firm Paul Weiss and its litigators Melinda Haag and Walter Brown, according to two people familiar with the matter. Though it was not immediately clear what the firm had been hired to do, Haag and Brown have previously represented executives in government and internal investigations, according to their biographies. A spokesman for Paul Weiss declined to comment.
China has a long history using romantic entanglements to compromise or extract information from prominent people. While many intelligence agencies use the tactic, China has invested extraordinary, long-term resources into such relationships, analysts and former officials say. American officials say that China’s security services recruited a Chinese businesswoman to collect intelligence on Jensen Huang, which would fit with that history.
Over the past week, some of Silicon Valley’s most influential investors had argued that America could not win the A.I. race without Jensen Huang, casting his relationship with a woman believed to be a Chinese spy as a personal lapse that should be forgiven because of his importance to the industry. Some kept making that argument even after The New York Times reported Wednesday that Huang also had a relationship with an Nvidia executive who reports to him, hours before his resignation. “Sadly, greatness doesn’t guarantee goodness,” Sarah Guo, a venture capitalist, wrote on X late Wednesday. On Thursday, she called his resignation “a big loss.”
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTJensen Huang was just becoming one of America’s biggest philanthropists before his departure as the chief executive of Nvidia. With an estimated net worth of about $145 billion, he and his wife, Lori, had built one of the country’s largest foundations, with about $9 billion in assets.
But Mr. Huang said this week that he had been unfaithful to his wife, acknowledging an affair with a woman U.S. intelligence has determined was a Chinese spy. The Times then reported that he had another affair with an Nvidia executive who reports to him. Nvidia said on Thursday morning that Mr. Huang was resigning from the company he had led for 33 years.
The fate of the foundation, which the couple started in 2007 and oversee together, is not clear.
Ms. Huang is the foundation’s president, and Mr. Huang is its secretary and chief financial officer, according to the most recent tax return for the charitable organization, which is called the Jen-hsun & Lori Huang Foundation. In 2024, its most recent tax year on file, the foundation’s assets nearly tripled, thanks to more than $5 billion in investment gains.
Marital issues have led to major shifts in the world of philanthropy in recent years, such as the departure by Melinda French Gates from her joint charitable entity with her ex-husband, Bill, and the elevation of MacKenzie Scott as one of America’s biggest givers following her divorce from Jeff Bezos.
The Huangs’ foundation is rather low-profile: Despite being one of America’s biggest charitable entities, it has no website or lists any public staff.
And the couple had only just begun giving. The biggest public gifts by the Huangs have gone to higher-education institutions, a relatively safe and conventional place to disburse large amounts of money. They have announced a combined $180 million or so to four schools, including a $75 million donation in July to establish an art and design college at Vanderbilt University’s planned outpost in San Francisco.
Mr. Huang has described his philanthropic giving as an investment, not charity. “I don’t give anything away,” he said in 2010, dismissing the premise of the question. “The way I think about it is I’m investing in the next generation, to help us and to inspire us to create even better and more useful technologies.”
Their giving has also intersected with what is good for Nvidia. The Huangs’ foundation bought computing time from Coreweave, a key Nvidia partner and customer, and donated $108.3 million of it to universities and other nonprofits, according to an Nvidia corporate filing in May.
Tim Cook stepped down as chief executive of Apple just over two months ago. It is difficult to imagine him moving to Nvidia, in part because he remains so central at Apple. Cook became Apple’s executive chairman in September and has continued representing the company in Washington and around the world. While Cook might not be as technical as the Nvidia’s ousted founder Jensen Huang, he shares other qualities with Huang that could make him attractive to Nvidia’s board of directors, including experience building a global supply chain and a close relationship with President Trump.
When suggesting Cook for the job, Mr. Trump wrote on social media: “A Legend replaces a Legend!”
Many Taiwanese companies that are a part of Nvidia’s supply chain were bracing for a tough day in the stock market on Friday, but one company is resistant to Nvidia’s weakness: TSMC. The semiconductor maker is perhaps the only company in greater demand than Nvidia, and production that Nvidia might end up giving up will be snapped up by others who make their own chips, like Google and Amazon.
Still, it is the end of an era for a relationship between Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and the founder of TSMC, Morris Chang. The two were close, and many in Taiwan wonder what it will mean for companies here to lose Huang. Some have also wondered whether Nvidia will go through with a planned big new office on the island.
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTAs analysts contemplated in recent days what would happen if Jensen Huang departed Nvidia, several noted that prolonged instability at the company could provide an opening for Google and Amazon. Those companies have invested heavily in developing their own A.I. chips, particularly as cheaper alternatives to Nvidia’s powerful but expensive flagship products.
The “close personal relationship” has been the downfall of a number of chief executives over the years.
Now it has felled Jensen Huang, the founder and chief executive of Nvidia. Mr. Huang resigned on Thursday following revelations that he had an affair with an executive at the company as well as with a woman who U.S. intelligence agencies concluded was an intelligence asset for China.
Posing a risk to national security is not the usual reason for ousting a chief executive. More often, it is that a relationship was in violation of company policy.
Large companies generally have had policies that prohibit managers and direct reports from having romantic relationships. Nvidia’s code of conduct tells employees to “avoid situations where our actions create conflict” including “personal relationships.”
“When it comes to direct reports, companies have had hard policies and have had for ages,” said Charles G. Tharp, executive vice president of the CHRO Association, a group for human resources officers.
Mark Hurd, who had helped build HP into a powerhouse tech company, was fired in 2010 after its board found that he’d failed to disclose use of company funds, and that he’d had a “close personal relationship” with a contractor. In 2018, Brian Krzanich resigned from Intel after the chip company learned of a “past consensual relationship” the chief executive had with an employee.
Tech is not the only industry to be hit by scandal. Last year, Ashley Buchanan was fired as chief executive of Kohl’s, the department store chain, after the company learned that he was trying to direct business to a vendor who turned out to be his romantic partner. Mr. Buchanan was in the role for just a few months. Rodney McMullen, the chief executive of the grocery chain Kroger, resigned last year after an investigation by its board found that his personal conduct was inconsistent with the company’s policies.
McDonald’s went through an unusually public yearslong battle starting in 2019. That year, the company fired Steve Easterbrook, its chief executive, after its board learned he had engaged in a consensual relationship with a subordinate that violated company policy. Eight months later, another McDonald’s employee reported a previous sexual relationship with Mr. Easterbrook. McDonald’s then sued Mr. Easterbrook, accusing him of lying and concealing multiple relationships with McDonald’s employees. The case was settled, and Mr. Easterbrook apologized and gave back more than $105 million in cash and stock to the company.
Companies likely tightened enforcement on policies on bosses being in relationships with subordinates during the #MeToo era, which saw accusations of sexual harassment and coercion, said Mr. Tharp. In 2018, Leslie Moonves, the longtime chief executive of the CBS Corporation, was one of the most high-profile entertainment figures to be ousted from his position during the #MeToo era. He stepped down after several women accused him of sexual harassment. Mr. Moonves received no severance package.
In the wake of Mr. Moonves’s ouster, the board of CBS also named six new members.
Boards of directors are responsible for monitoring the conduct of their chief executives and ultimately decide if a chief executive needs to step down.
Founders of very successful companies — like Mr. Huang — are often treated with deference by their boards. “They are in awe of their founder for very good reasons,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor of leadership studies at the Yale School of Management and the author of “The Hero’s Farewell.”
In Nvidia’s case, he said, “the board has done the right thing, but it has taken too long.”
“There were lots of indicators for any board paying attention,” he added.
Other founders have been fired because of their temperament or management style and later ended up returning to the companies they built. In 1985, Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple after an internal power struggle and a disastrous rollout of new technology. In 1997, he returned and had a legendary run as Apple’s chief executive. Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, had a shorter time away from his artificial-intelligence empire. He was pushed out by the board of directors on a Friday afternoon in 2023. Five days later, he was reinstated as the company’s leader after allies, including fellow Silicon Valley executives, employees and investors, urged his return.
Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the year Steve Jobs returned to Apple. It was in 1997, not 2000.
We acknowledge mistakes in our reporting with corrections. If you spot an error, please let us know at [email protected] more.
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTAnalysts that cover Nvidia have been adjusting their expectations rapidly this week, based on forecasts compiled by Bloomberg. Harlan Sur at J.P. Morgan lowered his price target for the company to $215 per share from $320 over the summer. Atif Malik at Citi lowered his target to $225 from $315 earlier this month. Karl Ackerman at BNP Paribas appears to have kept his target so far at $345.
Nvidia’s stock is currently trading at around $160 per share.
Another big question for Nvidia is what will happen with its Asia supply chain. During decades of travel to Taiwan, Korea, Japan and China, Huang created an intricate system of overlapping suppliers that relied on his personal relationship with a huge number of executives who are tech titans in their own right. It’s an open question who will take over that role, and whether they will be able to command the same level of authority as Huang did.
A focus of Jensen Huang’s lobbying in Washington was loosening restrictions on A.I. chips sales to China. In December, President Trump gave Nvidia permission to sell an older but still powerful chip, the H200, to China. Before those chips could be sold, the Commerce Department was required to review the companies involved for national security risks.
But some of the Chinese firms cleared to buy or handle Nvidia’s chips have empty offices in China, and analysts believe they may be front companies. Others have ties to companies that have been placed on a U.S. trade blacklist over national security concerns, or work as military contractors in China.
The Philadelphia Semiconductor index, a benchmark for the industry, is lower at the start of trading but only by around 2 percent, far less of a drop than some of its big swings in recent weeks. And some of the companies in the index are up in early trading, including the Nvidia competitors Broadcom, Qualcomm and Advanced Micro Devices.
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTJensen Huang is by far the largest shareholder in Nvidia, holding a 3.56 percent stake, making him one of the wealthiest people in the world. But he does not have voting power like some of Silicon Valley’s other chief executives, such as Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg. That power — which usually comes from “super voting” shares — can shield chief executives from activist investors, market pressures and the board itself.
“If the C.E.O. doesn’t do his job according to 12 or 15 board members, the C.E.O. is let go,” Huang said on a podcast in January. But he added, “there will never be one like me, and the reason for that is because I was raised by the company.”
The Nvidia news presents a test for the broader market, which had found some stability this week after the midterm election volatility. The S&P 500 had bounced back by more than 3 percent from its low this month. Much of the market has started the day higher again today but the broader contagion in technology shares continues to weigh on shares.
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the chamber’s banking panel, said that Jensen Huang’s resignation “does not absolve him, other executives or the company as a whole of responsibility for putting our national security at risk or for any potential violations of our laws.”
In a statement, she said the company still would “owe Congress answers,” while demanding the same of the Trump administration. “Secretary Howard Lutnick and Under Secretary Jeffrey Kessler must explain why they have not closed export control loopholes and act today to ensure our advanced technology is not fueling China’s military,” she said.
As investors have pumped trillions of dollars into artificial intelligence companies, chipmakers and data center developers, the economy has come to rely on the industry as its primary — some would argue only — reliable driver of growth.
No company has been more central to that growth than Nvidia, whose chips fill the data centers that power A.I. and whose money helps to finance them. And, at least until this week, it was impossible to imagine Nvidia without Jensen Huang, its high-flying, leather-clad co-founder and chief executive.
All of which means that Mr. Huang’s resignation on Thursday, following a made-for-Hollywood series of scandals, matters not just for the company and its investors, but for virtually every American.
Or, as Aaron Klein, an expert in financial regulation at the Brookings Institution, put it: “Can one C.E.O.’s sex life take down the economy?”
The answer, in a literal sense, is almost certainly no. No one believes that Mr. Huang’s resignation will, by itself, bring the A.I. boom to an end, let alone plunge the economy into a recession. Nvidia’s stock price tumbled on Thursday, but the broader market barely budged.
But Mr. Klein’s quip spoke to the unique role that Mr. Huang played at Nvidia, and that his company has played in the A.I. build out.
Nvidia controls about 90 percent of the market for the most advanced chips used to train and run A.I. models. The turmoil at the company could create an opening for competitors such as AMD and Intel to encroach on that market share. But there is little reason to think that Mr. Huang’s resignation will threaten Nvidia’s ability to develop and produce the chips it has promised its customers.
But Nvidia isn’t just the dominant chipmaker. It is also the “central bank of A.I.,” helping to finance the industry’s growth through a series of complex deals with its customers and suppliers.
When OpenAI signed a lease for a 10-gigawatt data center in Ohio in August, it was Nvidia that provided $105 billion in loan guarantees. Days later, the company teamed up with several Wall Street firms to create a $500 billion fund to help finance A.I.-related infrastructure. Nvidia owns a more than 10 percent stake in CoreWeave, a big data center operator, and has guaranteed billions of dollars in its loans.
Its loan commitments and financing arrangements would make Nvidia the 10th largest bank in the country, according to an estimate from Ryan Cummings, the chief of staff for the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
“Nvidia is at the center of this circular financing, and obviously at the center of Nvidia is Jensen Huang,” Mr. Cummings said. “He has been the driving force, pretty inarguably, behind a lot of the A.I. build-out.”
Without Mr. Huang in charge, Nvidia’s role could change, Mr. Cummings said. And while it is possible that other companies will step in to fill the gap, that isn’t guaranteed.
Mr. Huang’s departure comes at a delicate time for the A.I. industry. There have been signs in recent months that investors are growing more skeptical that companies will deliver returns that justify the huge investments they are making in A.I., or at least that those returns could take longer than expected to materialize.
And Democrats’ sweeping victories in last week’s midterm elections could lead to new restrictions on data center construction, which could jeopardize the industry’s boom.
“At a point when people are already on edge about this trade, it’s another piece of uncertainty,” Mr. Cummings said.
In the past, when confidence in the A.I. story has wavered, Mr. Huang and Nvidia have been the ones to calm doubts, reporting huge sales figures or stepping in to provide financing to data center projects whose future seemed in jeopardy. This time, it isn’t clear who will fill the void.
“Could the single largest A.I. company C.E.O.’s impropriety be the start of the pop of the bubble?” Mr. Klein asked. “Yes, as crazy as that sounds. Particularly when one company is so central.”
Bubbles are inherently unpredictable: It isn’t clear, ahead of time, what will flip the psychological switch that causes them to burst. The muted market reaction of financial markets to the news on Thursday suggests that investors aren’t losing faith in the A.I. trade.
But Mr. Klein said the Nvidia mess should be a warning that the complex web of A.I. financing arrangements is threatening financial stability.
“It looks like the financial regulators are sleeping through the alarm clock,” he said.
If Nvidia’s new leadership takes a more cautious approach to financing, that could have implications for the broader economy. The data center boom has helped to prop up the construction and manufacturing industries, at a time when tariffs, high interest rates and uncertainty have limited demand from other sectors.
Still, the breakneck pace of the A.I. build-out has also pushed up inflation and raised borrowing costs. Many economists argue that a modest slowdown would be healthy.
The more immediate risk, economists say, is that a loss of confidence in the A.I. story leads to a steep drop in the stock market. The strength of the market has helped prop up consumer spending even as wage growth has cooled.
If the A.I. trade unravels because of an abrupt curtailment in investment, “that is more recessionary,” said Pooja Sriram, an economist at Barclays. “That’s when there is a more material shakeout in the stock market that transcends to how consumers feel. Balance sheets are hit and that could escalate very quickly into a downturn.”
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTJensen Huang’s resignation at Nvidia also leaves a vacuum in A.I. policy in Washington. He has been a leading and influential voice in favor of opening sales of chips to China and against regulations on safety.
Already, members of Congress from both parties are calling for legislation to tighten export controls over A.I. chips to China after revelations of Huang’s affair with a Chinese spy. He was one of the strongest voices, lobbying personally at the Trump White House, to reverse export controls on chips. With Democrats soon to hold majorities in both chambers of Congress, there is likely to be greater pressure on the Commerce Department to enforce rules and to tighten sales bans to China.
The appointment of Colette Kress, who has been Nvidia’s chief financial officer, to lead the company on an interim basis will likely raise questions in Washington about how much she was aware of the company’s dealings with Megaspeed, the Singaporean data center firm that was led by the alleged Chinese spy with whom Jensen Huang had an affair.
Late last year, as U.S. government concerns were rising about Megaspeed, Nvidia suddenly changed how it recorded its global revenue, making it harder to see how much of its sales were being booked through Southeast Asia and Singapore. It also remains to be seen what Kress’s attitude will be toward issues like alleged chip smuggling and export controls.
News that Jensen Huang, the co-founder of Nvidia, was having an affair with a woman believed to be Chinese spy has sent shock waves through the tech world, the U.S. government and the wider economy.
Mr. Huang served as Nvidia’s chief executive from 1993, when he co-founded the company, until his resignation on Thursday. He rocketed to prominence during the A.I. boom as Nvidia’s advanced chips became a crucial technology, making it one of the world’s most valuable companies. Mr. Huang, 63, has close ties to President Trump and has frequently appeared alongside him.
2023: A Chinese executive named Alice Huang sets up a data firm in Singapore called Megaspeed. The company, which originally had Chinese owners, would soon buy billions of dollars’ worth of Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips. In May 2023, Nvidia reaches $1 trillion in value.
December 2023: While it’s not clear when Mr. Huang, who is married, met Ms. Huang, they were acquainted by December 2023, when they had dinner with colleagues at a restaurant in Singapore. In June 2024, they were seen socializing at an event in Taipei, Taiwan.
June 2024 to June 2025: A Megaspeed subsidiary receives more than 200 shipments of Nvidia A.I. equipment.
Early 2025: Weeks after Mr. Trump begins his second term, Mr. Huang visits the White House to meet with him for the first time.
March 2025: Ms. Huang visits Nvidia’s headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif.
April 2025: During a dinner for donors at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Huang makes a case to Mr. Trump for allowing chip companies like Nvidia to do business with China. The same month, the White House shuts down Nvidia’s sales to China, strengthening Biden-era regulations that put limits on the sale of A.I. technology.
May 2025: Ms. Huang and Mr. Huang dine with others in Taipei. They pose for a photo together, and she kisses him on the cheek.
July 2025: Nvidia becomes the first public company ever to be worth $4 trillion. The Trump administration reverses course and assures Nvidia that it will be granted a license to sell certain chips to China.
September 2025: The U.S. government, through the Commerce Department, begins an investigation into Megaspeed, examining whether some of the Nvidia chips it bought were sent to China, a possible violation of U.S. export controls.
October 2025: U.S. intelligence officials tell Mr. Trump that Mr. Huang has a relationship with Ms. Huang, whom they describe as a Chinese intelligence asset. Mr. Trump chooses not to take any action.
December 2025: Mr. Trump approves the sale of more powerful Nvidia chips to China.
May 2026: Secretary of State Marco Rubio warns U.S. officials that Mr. Huang is in a close relationship with a Chinese spy. The same month, Mr. Trump invites Mr. Huang to join him on a state visit to Beijing.
October 2026: Mr. Huang’s affair with Ms. Huang is reported in The New York Times.
November 2026: After Mr. Huang admits the affair, Nvidia’s board says it will conduct an investigation. The New York Times later reports that Mr. Huang also had a relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care, who reports to him. On Nov. 12, Nvidia’s board of directors announces that Mr. Huang has resigned.
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTPresident Trump has been curiously silent about this since we and others reported that the Nvidia board was assessing Jensen Huang’s fate. Trump and Huang had developed a close relationship. Among global tech executives, few have had as much sway as Huang over Trump’s approach to A.I. and China.
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTSKIP ADVERTISEMENTNvidia said on Thursday that Colette Kress, the company’s chief financial officer, would be the company’s interim chief executive officer, following the resignation of its longtime leader, Jensen Huang, who admitted to an extramarital affair with a businesswoman U.S. intelligence agencies believe to be a spy for China.
“The board has full confidence in Colette and the leadership team,” said Harvey C. Jones, the newly named chair of Nvidia’s board of directors in a statement. “We expect the company’s operations, customer commitments and product roadmap to continue without interruption.”
In a note to Nvidia’s employees, Ms. Kress said she believed “deeply in this company” and called its employees “our greatest strength.” She said Nvidia would have a companywide meeting on Nov. 18 to discuss its future.
She will remain Nvidia’s chief financial officer while serving as its interim chief executive officer until the board names a permanent successor. The board said on Thursday that it had started a search for that replacement and would consider internal and external candidates. Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ms. Kress, who joined Nvidia in 2013, is leading the company as it enters an uncertain next chapter. Under the leadership of Mr. Huang, Nvidia grew from a niche maker of computer chips used for video games to one of the most valuable public companies in the world and the linchpin of the artificial intelligence boom. Nvidia controls an estimated 90 percent of the market for the chips used in the big A.I. projects that are driving the U.S. economy.
Ms. Kress, 59, faces a challenging road. She is temporarily taking over a company that has been tightly controlled by her predecessor. Mr. Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and had managed all aspects of its business with a flat structure that placed him at the center of its day-to-day operations.
His family members had steadily risen through its ranks in recent years. And while Ms. Kress is already familiar to Wall Street, she does not have Mr. Huang’s relationships with Nvidia’s sprawling supply chain or Washington.
Ms. Kress has a bachelor’s degree in finance from the University of Arizona and a master’s degree in business administration from Southern Methodist University. She previously worked in finance at Texas Instruments, Microsoft and Cisco, before joining Nvidia in 2013.
Mr. Huang interviewed 22 candidates before hiring Ms. Kress as chief financial officer. At the time, Ms. 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. Huang said on a podcast this year.
As chief financial officer, Ms. Kress was responsible for communicating with Nvidia’s investors and Wall Street. Over the past four years, Ms. Kress delivered a rosy message on quarterly earnings calls as Nvidia’s revenue and profits soared, though she also expressed concerns about the financial impact of American policies that restrict the sale of advanced chips to China.
In 2013, Nvidia’s revenue was $4.28 billion. Its revenue in its most recent fiscal year was more than 50 times that, at nearly $215.94 billion. In August, Ms. Kress told analysts and investors that Nvidia expects to grow 70 percent next year.
Ms. Kress has benefited from Nvidia’s skyrocketing stock price in recent years. As of March, she owned more than 4.4 million shares in the company, according to its most recent annual report, a stake that was worth about $780.4 million at the time. That makes Ms. Kress one of the largest individual shareholders of Nvidia. Its largest individual shareholder, with a 3.56 percent stake, is Mr. Huang.
Ms. Kress’s transition — as well as that of the permanent successor to Mr. Huang — could be complicated by how Mr. Huang managed Nvidia. He led the company with an executive team of more than 60 people who directly reported to him, many of whom are longtime loyalists. That flat structure will be difficult to unwind. On a podcast in January, Mr. Huang described his executive team as a group of “60 people who could be world-class C.E.O.s for many other companies.”
For the time being, Ms. Kress will be C.E.O. for Nvidia.
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