As apologies go it’s skillfully done. But it’s almost entirely about his personal failings (the affair), and it leaves plenty of room for a slow-walked board investigation that will end with a report designed to look thorough while concluding nothing.
Even if he didn’t know she was an intelligence asset, it’s hard to believe he didn’t at least suspect Megaspeed was a conduit to China. If you read the press reports, there were a ton of red flags.
Nvidia has also said he’ll stay on as CEO while the investigation runs. I can’t think of many CEOs who would survive this, let alone without taking any time off.
Its all calculated down to the pretend patriot lines near the end even though he's constantly looking for ways to bypass export restrictions to sell to china.
Strongly disagree with changing it to that URL. This the kinda news you don't want to get from an involved primary source... that page is missing a crucial detail (the national security concern mentioned is espionage) and could just disappear whenever it becomes convenient to get the news cycle on the next thing. It will almost certainly be a 404 Not Found by the time 3 years have passed.
I disagree. Giving NVIDIA / Huang the stage and a microphone is begging for disinformation. Legitimate reporters can provide context, important information omitted by NVIDIA/Huang, and fact-checking.
To be specific the lack of op sec is very humiliating and of public concern. The affair aspect is between him and his wife, people are people and we have to assume those things will happen or else you'll inevitably will be caught lacking.
If you're the CIA, wouldn't you want to plant employees, or 'hire' employees at major firms like this? I guess I assume they do already. Probably each major corporation has 10-50+ employees getting kick backs from the government.
The US intelligence agencies would have a hard time planting employees in US firms while remaining within the bounds of FISA. They certainly have assets inside major Chinese firms though, of course.
Why do you doubt that? And who do you suppose wants to work for the CIA in this aspect, when the job description is pushing pencils as an intern at a tech company trying to get sad old men to have sex with them?
Most US companies if they want to have the government as a client, have special rooms with employees with security clearances that work mostly on projects that the CEO and even their line managers do not know what they are. People underestimate how close business and 3 letter agencies actually are.
It's part of normal business operations not some secret shady kick backs with some kind of spy movie.
It doesn't quite work like that. You don't go off and find some super smart person who can easily get a job at Nvidia and tell them "Hey you, go work for this company". You find someone who already works at Nvidia, and you bump into them at their kids' little league game, and you get chatting and build a rapport and over time you build trust and before you know, you've got a trusted source inside Nvidia. They don't even need to know they're a plant. And then, if you really do need something more than information you can go further. But you start with someone already at the company and you target them, rather than the other way around.
And that's not even talking about the less clandestine methods of just ringing their General Counsel and saying "Hey buddy we're the US government we need X Y Z".
How integral is Huang to the success of Nvidia? As much as he seems to have done a good job, he appears less integral than with some companies like Bezos/Amazon or Zuckerberg/Meta (whether these are/were or not is besides the point, they are seen as such).
I'd expect a board to fire a CEO over this, so he will have to be critical to the business, more than a normal CEO is critical, to survive. The market reaction to him going would also be interesting. Seems like the markets are starting to figure out what the value is here.
What percent of nvidias success was due to vision, vs luck?
I made a boat load of money off of the Tesla IPO(and then holding for 12 years) but I only invested because I thought they wouldn't be a successful car company but would produce a bunch of patents that would be valuable when licensed to the big auto makers.
Obviously I got that wronged, but my investment still worked out - but I still have friends and family coming to me for investing advice because I made the right move but for the wrong reasons
I'm skeptical that he gets fired for this. The "Spy I loved" James bond style twist combined with his iconic leather jacket might actually come off as badass.
A spy like this isn't looking for chip schematics, they're looking for strategy. Strategy that comes from the CEO. Ultimately the main thing a CEO brings is judgement, and this was extremely poor judgement.
I don't care that he had an affair (none of my business; who knows the terms of his relationship with his wife; Americans / humans are far too moralizing in controlling sex) and, even if it was wrong in the context of his marriage, I don't think someone should be fired for that.
If he knew / suspected she was a spy, yes, absolutely. If she was given access to confidential information, yes, absolutely.
If he thought it was a romantic relationship, fine, that doesn't affect me / NVDA / America.
Obviously he should stop now that he knows! But if he didn't at the time, you know, I think I can still trust him to make computer chips.
I agree. Judgement on love affairs and judgement on chip strategy are completely unrelated categories of judgement.
"Bad judgement" is a tool used in political rhetoric used to blame someone when there's nothing of any substance to blame them for.
However, all of this changes if it turns out that he gave his lover's company any kind of preferential treatment or that she was involved in China related lobbying.
This is what the investigation will focus on in my opinion. If they find anything at all then he will have to resign.
> There's very little he could ever accidentally tell someone that would matter that much.
I think the practical implications matter a lot less than the PR and legal ones.
If the stock price plummets tomorrow and doesn’t recover, the board may have to act.
Similarly, if the right governments start asking hard questions, the board may have to act.
This is likely going to be a slow-rolling shit show for a while. At the very least, it’s legitimate grounds for one or more congressional investigations, which may start here but could go anywhere.
If the stock price plummets tomorrow and doesn’t recover, it is likely ppl are afraid he'll be replaced. If the board "act" by replacing him, the price is likely to dive more, not recover
He denied, implausibly, all knowledge about Supermicro. I don't think that is going to work this time.
The crime here isn't giving secrets to the Chinese, it is helping them evade export controls. Again, this is something that Nvidia and Jensen has been investigated on repeatedly. If he knew that Megaspeed was a front for China, quite hard to deny given that Alice Huang seems to have brought Chinese execs to every meeting with Jensen then it is very bad. And yes, the stuff that Jensen would have said would have been very useful because, I assume, the inference is that he would have been helping them evade sanctions.
The very best case from here is that the board fires him.
Direct interaction, not in-person. And many more interaction with high level Russian and Chinese state actors. Huge investment from Chinese state banks and critical contracts for data collection.
> The crime here isn't giving secrets to the Chinese, it is helping them evade export controls.
This would have generated extra profit for Nvidia. So I doubt they'd care unless the US government chose to take legal action against Nvidia. And that's unlikely to happen under the current US administration.
As an Nvidian, I strongly disagree. I'm sure somehow the company would be fine in the long run without him, but until today I believed that his vastly superior judgement to his peers is to credit for Nvidia's success. Not to minca words, I think he is a far more qualified and intelligent CEO than pretty much anyone in big tech. There's a reason Nvidia doesn't have to lay people off ever.
I don't think the second half what you're saying is true. He has had a good hand, yes, but I think what we're seeing is "simply" the effect of a successful company being run by one of its founders. There is always a kind of reversion to mean once a successful company moves away from founder control, and that hasn't happened for Nvidia.
> ...but until today I believed that his vastly superior judgement to his peers is to credit for Nvidia's success.
Have you considered how many billions of dollars of Nvidia sales were through entities diverting chips to China?
While there's no doubt that this is not the majority of the company's revenue, it's also not an insignificant amount.
If you had to pin Nvidia's success on one thing, the honest answer would be "right technology, right time." Without AI...And the questions about how sustainable that market is are now being asked by the market.
They've been investing in CUDA and machine learning for a long time before the current wave of LLMs. It's absurd to say "right technology, right time" when they were the ones who helped develop it.
The technology was built for 3D graphics and video game processing. The company was very smart to recognize the opportunity that AI presented when AI researchers realized that gaming GPUs could vastly outperform CPUs for their workloads, but this was a "happy accident", not something Nvidia actually predicted, planned for or initially pushed.
The first papers on using GPUs to accelerate scientific tasks came out at the turn of the century. Initially it was molecular dynamics, which led Nvidia to release their first scientific-focused line, the Tesla.
Then in 2010 or so, someone realized you could train a neural network very fast on these things.
The reason they are the leader here goes all the way back to the 2000s when they released CUDA. Because of that, the neural network (and therefore AI) ecosystem went with them.
If you bothered to learn a little bit about Nvidia history you'd know this is false. They invested in supporting transformers before most people in this thread heard of that name. That's just one example. Look at InfiniBand and you can tell they made correct decisions years before it's obvious to everyone.
Sorry. Nvidia started supporting transformers in 2017. AI researchers discovered that its GPUs were way better than CPUs for their workloads almost a decade earlier. Specifically, Rajat Raina, Anand Madhavan and Andrew Ng at Stanford published a paper showing that GPUs could train large deep networks up to 70x faster than CPUs back in 2009.
Nvidia released CUDA in 2006-2007, which made that discovery possible, but Nvidia wasn't targeting AI with CUDA. It was targeting general high-performance computing (physics simulations, molecular dynamics, medical imaging, etc.).
There's no doubt the company seized on the AI opportunity superbly but the suitability of its product for AI, and the AI boom, was absolutely a "happy accident".
Except it has been. There are people in multiple countries, including the US, Singapore and Taiwan, facing lengthy prison sentences for this. In the US in particular, violating export controls is a game you only play if you're looking for years of free federal accommodation.
Even ignoring the alleged spitting, shagging someone who works in a position of authority at a customer company if obviously a massive conflict of interest.
I have seen and read this a lot over the years and I am starting to wonder may be it isn't Pat Gelsinger that called Nvidia lucky but people actually felt it that way naturally.
For over a decade CUDA was nothing but a money and silicon wasting function that brought in very little extra revenue for the amount of company resources it uses. And arguably it started even before CUDA with Cg. And I will say another unpopular thing, they are in hardware business, apart from the past 1 - 2 years which they are enjoying massive success, for most of the past 30 years hardware business are 10x tougher than Software side.
Most CEO would have given up. Paul Graham invented the term to describe it, Founder Mode.
I seriously doubt Nvidia would have been anywhere close to what they are today without Jensen's Leadership.
What's this puritanical streak? Men in power have been having affairs from time immemorial. It's not great but it's also not original. The guy works for a corporation, not a church. Yawn.
At the current state, maybe not much. He was integral to the journey, of course.
The bigger threat is Jensen selling all his stocks at peak (if he was fired). Then, this dude with $100B in the bank could've easily started an NVIIA competitor. He has every component needed for a success. This is why NVIDIA's board would never let this guy go.
Not really. The key difference IMHO is not the CEO, it is that ATI/AMD always was the smaller underdog, while the established players Intel/NVIDIA get thrown money at them due to the "no one got fired for buying IBM" effect.
I've interned at NVIDIA and my impression was, he is extremely vital to its past and ongoing success. I don't know about him personally and his character, but he knew how to foster a motivating work culture with a sense of excitement and purpose. Maybe Nvidia is now at a place where he could be replaced, but I don't think Nvidia would be where it is now without him.
My amateur opinion is not very? They made the best graphics cards had a share price of $10 and then graphics cards started selling extremely well because of the crypto currency craze and now AI.
I think these trends happened to them despite Huang.
Now we have to re-evaluate all his statements in favor of selling to China. For example, we want China to build on "our stack". On the face of it, that seems correct. If China has multiple stacks to pick from why wouldn't we want them to pick our stack? But do they have such a choice?
I was curious, so I researched it (aka prompted ChatGPT). SFO-PVG was established in 2000, long before Apple offshored all of their manufacturing to China. An article from the time describes it being something that was in demand among Silicon Valley in general[1] rather than Apple particularly. In 2019, United revealed that Apple does spend $35 million/yr on that single route, averaging 50 seats/day[2], so I suppose that's the source of the legend.
Another is the pretense of overcoming Chinese resistance. China sent a cute spy to bang the CEO of Nvidia, but they simultaneously set a "strict limit" on import of Nvidia chips. How does that make sense? It makes sense if the purpose of the "strict limit" is so that any sale of H200 to China can be seen as overcoming Chinese restrictions. Anything that is against the Chinese government's resistance must be good for the US, right?
Apart from his direct family, who cares? Why is this an issue? It's 2026, we literally had a human child trafficking ring with multiple presidents involved and it didnt lead to anything or move the needle on stuff.
I'm a shareholder, and the fact that both the US government and Nvidia itself is going to investigate him is very, very bad. So yes, I care about it a lot because I'm probably going to lose a lot of money tomorrow!
I'm not sure what actual letters like this are supposed to achieve (besides protecting his ass I mean). Are employees supposed to stand beside their fallen leader, are they supposed to go about their business differently? Anybody having affairs with subordinates can't be trusted to make good judgement calls with respect to internal leadership / delegation, at least it wouldn't seem so to me.
It sounds like your problem lies more in his mistake, not in coming clean about it. Him being the one to do that takes any influence the woman had over him away.
I feel like every thing requires a tin foil hat now. Is this some last ditch ploy to stimulate noncompetitive regulation from the US government? I find it more difficult to trust anything these people say everyday.
I heard a guy I respect say “there’s a short list of things people will ruin their lives for.”
I’m not sure if this will ruin Jensen’s life or not, but it’s a good opportunity for us all to remember that the short-term high is usually not worth it.
The question is how long took and if he was happy with his family.
It's easy for a professional with china backend to play with your feelings, much easier if you have normal family life or worse.
Is the woman likable it's just a matter of times. (Independent of the gender)
If this happens within a week, I would agree, if this happens within months the gender you like can makes your heart jump if you are I a very long term relationship.
> But I'm not sure how hard it would be to resist a honey trap.
The guy has enough money to have sex parties with the prettiest girls on Earth every single night until the end of his life, I'm pretty sure resisting a state-sponsored honeypot is not the hardest thing ever.
Honestly a terrible way to deflect responsibility. If you're finding your judgement impaired take a breather, the opportunity is usually not going to disappear right away.
I was just trying to be funny. One thing I was thinking about is what if Jensen had real feelings for this woman? Like imagine you are falling for someone then it just all turns out to be a scheme to get info about your job. What a terrible betrayal, how do you trust anyone after that?
It's not going to ruin his life. At worst he will lose $100 bil and maybe if it's really bad, he will get kicked out of Nvidia. He will still have $100 bil and can do whatever he wants at that point.
That is not an automatic fact. Humans are very emotionally complex creatures. And Jensen didn't call his secretary and say "can you pencil in 'humiliating my wife and kids around 4PM'? You can? Great, thanks".
He has full agency over his actions, so yes, it's an automatic fact. He knew what he was doing and he knew what the effects would be on his wife. He knew what would happen when this came out. If you're saying he DIDN'T know what would happen, then you're saying he's extremely stupid. I haven't seen any evidence that he is even a little bit stupid.
Are you saying this was an accident and he didn't have control over himself?
If he doesn't have control over himself and he isn't accountable for his actions, then how does that factor into him being the CEO of the most important globally strategic company in the world? Are you saying that he is capable of making actions that he isn't in full control over? Does Nvidia need to have a CEO that doesn't accidentally make mistakes like potentially giving secret information to Chinese spies?
This seems like an emotionally compromised perspective (which is very, very normal, and I am not insulting you).
It is, of course, not an automatic fact. The context here is emotions, so it makes no sense to point only to agency as proof of an emotional "fact". Such a thing doesn't even exist.
Humans are complex creatures. Plenty of men and women who have loving families and genuinely love their spouses cheat on them and destroy their lives/families. It just takes a moment of weakness. Stay vigilant.
Love and sexual attraction is totally different thing. As long as you get married Male usually lose interest and sexual attraction on female and want to try new things.
That happens to me too and its like both biological and mental.
It's not really a moment when the moment is stretched over months and years, but yes we are all human and all make mistakes. That does not absolve us of the consequences.
Way to minimize cheating. Describing it as a “moment of weakness” makes it sounds like it’s a minute of lapse of judgement, meanwhile we’re talking about pre-mediated, long-term cheating.
I have zero sympathy for this guy, generally speaking. But this is one of those very few things where what you have said is the socially "correct" thing, and actually is probably healthy to believe, but is factually wrong.
Lamentably, people don't have cartoon emotions. Life would be so much easier if they did.
Sometimes, it's the humiliation that comes from the public finding out and putting a spotlight on it that is the kicker; not the random side piece(s) (ex: Bill & Melinda Gates).
If he loses his family over it, it will ruin his life. There’s more to life than money. I hope for your sake that you don’t really believe this morally bankrupt concept.
> I’m not sure if this will ruin Jensen’s life or not, but it’s a good opportunity for us all to remember that the short-term high is usually not worth it.
I think what you've just described is "post nut clarity". I'm sure he knew what he did immediately, but the gravity of the consequences might've taken a bit to catch up to him.
One can't help but think of Sergey Brin who famously had an affair with an underling on Google Glass, Amanda Rosenberg [1]. This of course blew up his life and he divorced Anne Wojcicki in ~2014. Of course he got married again and divorced again with another expensive divorce (although neither was in the realm of the cost of Jeff Bezos's divorce).
I think it says a lot about what wealth does to you. A lot of people dream of wealth but I suspect many would be less than thrilled by the reality. It must be incredibly isolating. You constantly have to fend off people who are trying to use you. It must make it harder to trust anyone. A lot of ordinary life experiences are now barred to you.
For example, a lot of executives in these trillion dollar companies are forbidden from flying commercial for security reasons. Nobody would think about missing the airport and everything that entails. In most places it's an objectively awful experience but it's still a shared experience. Going to a private FBO by helicopter to take a Global 7500 direct to your destination is something only a tiny portion of the population can relate to.
So I think this kind of isolation makes such wealthy and/or powerful people more susceptible to this kind of thing because, in a way, they're starved from a lot of human interaction and experiences in a way most of us can't understand (and wouldn't want).
What really is the point of somebody hoarding this much wealth? You kind of have to have sociopathic tendencies (IMHO) because such wealth simply cannot exist without the impoverishment of millions of people. And for you it's kind of a golden prison.
If there are any billionaires out there who are too alienated by their inability to wait in line at the airport: don’t worry, you can give me the money. It’ll be a burden, but one I think I can handle.
The airport was just an example. You simply can't do normal people things.
I might not like airport lines but I'd hate to be forbidden from going through that process. I also couldn't just walk down the street to get a pizza. Or go out dancing at night. Or to play board games. Or take a random walk or bike ride around the city. If I was rich and everyone knew it, I'd have to live in a bubble.
That's different from "comfortable rich" where you own your own home and a retirement fund and live mostly normally.
> I also couldn't just walk down the street to get a pizza.
Well, not necessarily. Jensen Huang was famous for going to random food stalls in Taiwan and eating street food.
It might be harder and riskier, and I get what you mean, but it's not like you actually can't do those things.
Also maybe it's not necessarily a billionaire thing, but more like a fame thing. Billionaires tend to get famous just due to being rich, but I'd imagine a random person wouldn't recognize 80+% of the people on the billionaire list if they saw the billionaire chomping down a pizza in the local pizza place.
With regards the "What really is the point of somebody hoarding this much wealth?" question, I've been thinking a lot about this recently, as the billionaires accrue more influence than ever before. And I think that's the keyword - 'influence'. After a point, wealth doesn't buy you more things, it buys you power, which is seductive. It goes far beyond making your family comfortable and doing right by your company, employees and shareholders; it becomes a means to lever the world. Yes, some of this drive is about being apart from the real world and possibly an element of personal sociopathy (corporations are famously sociopathic entities, too, which probably rubs off on the C-suite execs), but hedonistic adaptation (we're very good at getting used to things, even vast wealth) and wanting to change the world are (I imagine) very addictive. I imagine it even goes some way to assuaging the embarrassment of The Leader of the Free World calling you his AI Expert...sorry, 'SI' Expert.
And it really doesn't help that all these tech bro billionaires think Ayn Rand was a good writer with some fine ideas.
The last paragraph of my comment basically calls these billionaires sociopaths because you have to be to enrich yourself off the backs of making millions of people poor. How is that a defense of billionaires?
My point is that the "prize" isn't even worth it. It doesn't make you happy. Actually there's one way it seems to make them happy: by enjoying the suffering of others and having the power to influence people and even governments. But to what end?
Reading comprehension is fine. It’s your writing comprehension.
>So I think this kind of isolation makes such wealthy and/or powerful people more susceptible to this kind of thing because, in a way, they're starved from a lot of human interaction and experiences in a way most of us can't understand (and wouldn't want).
You’re saying here that they’re “starved” of the human contact most of us take for granted (for example in standing around an airport and being squeezed into economy). This is thus a cause for heart-bleeding.
Ingvar Kamprad flew economy and drove an old Volvo. Being extremely wealthy doesn’t have to come with this kind of isolation. If Sergei Brin was flying economy, most of the plane wouldn’t realise who he was and the few who did would be like “oh look it’s Sergei Brin, weird.”
>the point of somebody hoarding this much wealth? You kind of have to have sociopathic tendencies (IMHO) because such wealth simply cannot exist without the impoverishment of millions of people.
I don’t think there is anyway to justify that position.
It's obviously not irrelevant for two reasons, one practical one moral. The practical one is that you don't need to 'spill' secrets to a spy. Having one around you in private means you can be bugged, blackmailed, have your means of communication compromised and so on. It makes you vulnerable by definition.
Secondly if he's willing to lie to his wife and family he's obviously willing to lie to anyone for much less. It tells you something about the character of a person, how can anyone trust a cheater?
Arguably, cheating is a normal every day part of society. Approximate 2/3rds of people have been cheated on in USA. Much higher in Asia. It’s usually don’t ask don’t tell, not explicit lying.
its not really about his private life its about whteher he was manipulated into it wihtout his knowledge. Psychological manipulation is a thing and if they got him to do this what else happened?
> A balanced, patient, and motivated Machiavellian can wait while they cultivate what they need. They may take 10 years to act; they may well wait 20 years. When the strike comes, it will come out of the blue – and their tracks will already be covered.
Given what we have seen happen at Supermicro, for example, CEO smuggling NVIDIA chips to China, it seems unlikely that no one at NVIDIA suspected a thing. Why wouldn't they want to bolster their China business?
An "exposure" of affair[1] could very well be the best coverup: "couldn't control my dick" is the ultimate plausible deniability. Timing also makes sense. Better open an investigation and get it closed while this Congress is still in power, as the next one is going to be more in bed in LLM companies than hardware.
[1]: The other party is overtly a customer, not some random individual.
The most interesting might be that this is coming out so publicly.
Someone leaked intelligence assessments to the New York Times.
Maybe this was just a regular leak ... but ... . Jensen has not been playing ball with other parts of the AI industry and the administration ... pushing heavily against export bans and promoting open source models , which is clearly against the interests of SpaceX/OpenAI/Anthropic.
This is of course conspiracy theory territory, but I wouldn't be too surprised if this was an intentional leak.
I suspect that the "intention" behind the leak isn't really about Jensen or Nvidia, but is just more administration infighting - Jensen is just collateral damage.
Consider the timing of the reporting - the first report from NYT comes out on Nov 6th - just enough time after mid-terms. Consider that follow up reporting clearly identifying Rubio as the author of the in-administration warning memo.
JD and Rubio (and who knows who else) are clearly trying to find ways to distance themselves from Trump without being completely cut to pieces, now that it's completely clear that the Trump brand is toxic.
remember, the only evidence of any criminal activity here is the leak of this story, which is a felony unless directly authorized by a classified executive order.
> The close relationship between the president and Mr. Huang has impeded efforts to clamp down on Nvidia’s chip sales abroad, current and former U.S. officials said.
> This account is based on interviews with people briefed on the surveillance
the most likely scenario here is that the faction that supports export bans leaked the initial story to try to blackmail Huang into dropping his support for free trade, he refused, so they released the package to damage him as much as possible. likely route, based on the named sources, is senate or house intel agency staffers, using elected officials and classified briefings as cover.
NY Times, Jonathan Swan, and Maggie Haberman would identify this as being firmly located in the anti-Trump faction, so unless it is some super devious reverse play, which seems unlikely for Trump, it is a criminal leak.
I feel uncomfortable asking in a thread like this but why would a CEO talk about his private life publically?
I know others have said this is a carefully written statement, but in my culture I would feel it would be rude not to keep it private? Sorry if this sounds autistic.
it's a public company, he's ceo, large implications for stock movements, corporate strategy, volatility if it goes to us govt intervention, divorce court, etc
Mainly because the person he was having the affair with was a customer of the company and because they are reported to have possibly been a spy for the Chinese government. All of these things have a direct impact on the confidence of employees.
I’d imagine as with most big companies having a relationship with a customer is a big HR violation. So at least that aspect would have to be addressed.
I don't think it's too big to fail. There are multiple factors:
1. Jensen is a billionaire who doesn't really need to work. This gives him a lot of leverage. He isn't desperate to make a living.
2. Imagine he is fired, unloads all stocks, and starts a new competing company. This would cause NVIDIA a much bigger issue.
3. Also, this means Jensen would get to unload the stock at the peak. Democrats won and is about to be way more responsible than Trump. Cue Luo Pei from Enron.
4. Dating a customer isn't really a big deal. Did her company get a preferential price? Treatment? I'd guess that her company doesn't make a dent in NVIDIA's revenue.
5. Her being a Chinese spy isn't Jensen's fault. If anything, he is a victim.
Read the original comment I replied to. You suggested that Huang has leverage in this situation. I suggested otherwise because I'm certain he will be both financially and emotionally keen to stay at the helm of the company he has helped build over the previous three decades. So no, I don't think he has leverage because the board knows that he's financially and emotionally keen.
Now you and the other commenter are suggesting that he could just go off and start a new competitor? For one, literally no one has done that, and the only competitors are already massive semiconductor companies. Secondly, his "assets", as you put them, are almost entirely tied up in NVIDIA. So you can fund a competitor using stock of the company you hope to beat? That makes no sense. Thirdly, I highly doubt a separation agreement, if it came to that, would allow him to start a competitor.
Unlike some other Americans Huang seems to at least have a preference for people who are no longer minors, also, using 'girl' robs the woman of agency.
... only if she hates the word 'girl', I guess. Which we don't know. Personally, I know many grown women (30's, 40's+) who are perfectly alright with the word "girl". It is contextual, and often times cultural (i.e. your background).
No offense, but this is why it can often be pernicious to do drive-by virtue-signaling online.
> Unlike some other Americans Huang seems to at least have a preference for people who are no longer minors
What does this even mean?... do you think what you're implying is exclusive to Americans? Honestly that's what it sounds like.
Generally speaking, it's normal to keep it private.
Unless the CEO happens to be the CEO of what is considered one of the most important company for national security and future, and his private life involves somebody who appears to be a spy for the biggest competitor for world hegemony. Then it's kind of big deal for everybody.
Because the purpose was to get leverage, and Intel. Once she couldn't gather passive Intel, they would use the affair as blackmail, ole school is the best school.
It seems to be a combination of things
First off, hhe person he was having an affair with has ties to Chinese Spy agencies (not sure the ties, but either way, not a great look for someone trying to be deeply involved with America's government)
It also sounds like it was known something was going on with foreign agencies and Jensen, do this puts it out in the open and clears the air.
Lastly, if anyone was trying to use the affair as leverage over him, the best way to break the leverage is to just come out and spill the tea yourself (so to speak)
There are some things shareholders have to legitimately reckon with, that warrant a statement:
- Is this person susceptible to blackmail from the secrets they're keeping?
- Has this person performed a notable breach of trust?
- Has this person displayed a notable lack of judgement?
Even when the alleged misconduct is private, #1 is of particular concern. Airing it out is an obvious way to lessen that specific concern. The allegations here raise the other concerns too, however.
I wrote in another thread here, this is extremely serious:
Bedding an adversarial entity's agent in a regulated field is a serious matter (for the company) with potentially serious consequences. It can lead to executive decapitation, it can even lead to / criminal investigations if the operative bypassed export controls using executive proximity.. the fallout can be great and widespread.
It can also be a nothingburger and an amusing page six divorce story in the end where we all read how rich cry as well. Time will tell. What's telling of where this might lead and how serious it is, is that it was US federal government that warned about this.
I guess no one noticed because they all looked the same. I imagine Bezos in the wife store like "Oh yeah, I like exactly that look. Gimme another one of these!"
So that no one can extort him in private. Same happened with Bezos when his phone was hacked. He was the one who came forward to speak about what was shared by his phone.
there are indications that he continued the affair even after being tipped off by the US intelligence agencies -- which would constitute treason. An apology would just be a first step to ward off serious charges, if there are serious charges levied. Not that anything would happen in the large scheme of things, given JH has bought off the orange turd.
Because its already public information. In your culture would you pretend like it ever happened even tough everybody else knows about it and are making their own narratives.
As an Nvidian - Jensen is the single most important part of Nvidia.
Speaking personally I couldn't care less about this particular lapse in judgement because every example if have seen in professional circumstances his judgement has been stellar.
It sucks for his family life but that shouldn't become our business and should remain private.
If she really is a spy that might suck a bit for our relationship with the US government for a short period but it's not something that can't be managed and overcome.
It's not a nothing burger but if it results in Jensen leaving Nvidia that would be a travesty IMO. We shouldn't push people out for making a mistake, especially one that should in any other circumstance not become public.
If you call letting a spy blackmail and control you, just a mistake being at such an influential level, I don't know what to say. A mistake, a bug in code, or slip of the tongue here and there. This is a catastrophic level of security gap where your CEO can be making decisions for another controlling and governing entity.
If you cause a data leak at NVDIA, or say making decisions at your level based on an external entity blackmailing you and got caught, would your boss still say, "We shouldn't push people out for making a mistake"?
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[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 192 ms ] threadThere was, no deflection "this is not who I am", No blaming the spy.
He owned up to his mistakes
Even if he didn’t know she was an intelligence asset, it’s hard to believe he didn’t at least suspect Megaspeed was a conduit to China. If you read the press reports, there were a ton of red flags.
Nvidia has also said he’ll stay on as CEO while the investigation runs. I can’t think of many CEOs who would survive this, let alone without taking any time off.
> admitted to having a romantic relationship with a suspected Chinese spy
The US National Security blob certainly cares, but not because of the infidelity.
It's part of normal business operations not some secret shady kick backs with some kind of spy movie.
And that's not even talking about the less clandestine methods of just ringing their General Counsel and saying "Hey buddy we're the US government we need X Y Z".
I'd expect a board to fire a CEO over this, so he will have to be critical to the business, more than a normal CEO is critical, to survive. The market reaction to him going would also be interesting. Seems like the markets are starting to figure out what the value is here.
He's the visionary behind what they do and the person who influences industries around him to make it real.
I made a boat load of money off of the Tesla IPO(and then holding for 12 years) but I only invested because I thought they wouldn't be a successful car company but would produce a bunch of patents that would be valuable when licensed to the big auto makers.
Obviously I got that wronged, but my investment still worked out - but I still have friends and family coming to me for investing advice because I made the right move but for the wrong reasons
But CUDA, Ray tracing acceleration, DLSS? It's not luck anymore.
So, he is responsible for the crypto and AI bubbles? If tomorrow AI crashes and Nvidia share value with it would that make Nvidia CEO an idiot?
CEO worshiping is going too far.
Jensen is extremely hands on. If he is replaced NVidia is cooked.
Intel is apparently fine (it's not fine) with a rotating cast of CEOs.
You are right though. At least whoever is trying to oust Jensen is nice enough not to bring out the usual tools.
God god, no.
There's very little he could ever accidentally tell someone that would matter that much.
Other than handing over very detailed schemas etc, there's almost nothing important he could tell them.
Maybe some future ideas and plans, maybe some government things about the Administration, it's small peanuts.
Nvidia is an operational success, their IP is embedded within deep layers of know how and expertise.
He's the 'father' of that org, he set the tone, they like him there.
Nvidia would risk being an Intel without him.
If he knew / suspected she was a spy, yes, absolutely. If she was given access to confidential information, yes, absolutely.
If he thought it was a romantic relationship, fine, that doesn't affect me / NVDA / America.
Obviously he should stop now that he knows! But if he didn't at the time, you know, I think I can still trust him to make computer chips.
"Bad judgement" is a tool used in political rhetoric used to blame someone when there's nothing of any substance to blame them for.
However, all of this changes if it turns out that he gave his lover's company any kind of preferential treatment or that she was involved in China related lobbying.
This is what the investigation will focus on in my opinion. If they find anything at all then he will have to resign.
> There's very little he could ever accidentally tell someone that would matter that much.
I think the practical implications matter a lot less than the PR and legal ones.
If the stock price plummets tomorrow and doesn’t recover, the board may have to act.
Similarly, if the right governments start asking hard questions, the board may have to act.
This is likely going to be a slow-rolling shit show for a while. At the very least, it’s legitimate grounds for one or more congressional investigations, which may start here but could go anywhere.
Most investors don't care.
Unless there was some 'materially detrimental disclosure' this is just tabloid.
The fact that Elon has a literal harem, Tesla has $500M loan from Chinese banks with all sorts of conditions etc.
Elon literally does Zoom calls with Vladimir freaking Putin.
I think this is a nothing burger.
The crime here isn't giving secrets to the Chinese, it is helping them evade export controls. Again, this is something that Nvidia and Jensen has been investigated on repeatedly. If he knew that Megaspeed was a front for China, quite hard to deny given that Alice Huang seems to have brought Chinese execs to every meeting with Jensen then it is very bad. And yes, the stuff that Jensen would have said would have been very useful because, I assume, the inference is that he would have been helping them evade sanctions.
The very best case from here is that the board fires him.
If that were true, then it's fair game, but I don't think that's what is going on.
US gov has not stated they are targeting him.
Also, there is a gigantic difference between 'avoidance' and 'evasion', like with taxes.
We'll see.
Do we know that yet for sure? There's a closed-door US congressional hearing scheduled for nov/18
I think it's very unfair to suggest they are targeting him, when there isn't even mention if it.
He's obviously entangled in this so he'll at least be the subject but beyond that it's not fair to say.
It would have to be 'very, very serious' for the US Gov under a super pro-AI/pro-business agenda to take down their #1 CEO over something indirect.
Musk has direct meetings with Putin for gosh sakes.
You mean over the phone?
He admitted having talks with Putin during 2023/2024.
His Tesla China can help him circumvent any investigation or questioning from US authorities
This would have generated extra profit for Nvidia. So I doubt they'd care unless the US government chose to take legal action against Nvidia. And that's unlikely to happen under the current US administration.
Have you considered how many billions of dollars of Nvidia sales were through entities diverting chips to China?
While there's no doubt that this is not the majority of the company's revenue, it's also not an insignificant amount.
If you had to pin Nvidia's success on one thing, the honest answer would be "right technology, right time." Without AI...And the questions about how sustainable that market is are now being asked by the market.
The first papers on using GPUs to accelerate scientific tasks came out at the turn of the century. Initially it was molecular dynamics, which led Nvidia to release their first scientific-focused line, the Tesla.
Then in 2010 or so, someone realized you could train a neural network very fast on these things.
The reason they are the leader here goes all the way back to the 2000s when they released CUDA. Because of that, the neural network (and therefore AI) ecosystem went with them.
Nvidia released CUDA in 2006-2007, which made that discovery possible, but Nvidia wasn't targeting AI with CUDA. It was targeting general high-performance computing (physics simulations, molecular dynamics, medical imaging, etc.).
There's no doubt the company seized on the AI opportunity superbly but the suitability of its product for AI, and the AI boom, was absolutely a "happy accident".
its always been well known. its that line item of suspiciously high sales to singpapore. its never been a real concern.
Except it has been. There are people in multiple countries, including the US, Singapore and Taiwan, facing lengthy prison sentences for this. In the US in particular, violating export controls is a game you only play if you're looking for years of free federal accommodation.
Examples:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-authorities-shut-down-majo...
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndga/pr/chinese-national-and-tw...
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/california-man-arrested-smugg...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2d9y18g73o
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/25/taiwan-ch...
https://asiatimes.com/2026/11/taiwan-to-criminalize-nvidia-a...
For over a decade CUDA was nothing but a money and silicon wasting function that brought in very little extra revenue for the amount of company resources it uses. And arguably it started even before CUDA with Cg. And I will say another unpopular thing, they are in hardware business, apart from the past 1 - 2 years which they are enjoying massive success, for most of the past 30 years hardware business are 10x tougher than Software side.
Most CEO would have given up. Paul Graham invented the term to describe it, Founder Mode.
I seriously doubt Nvidia would have been anywhere close to what they are today without Jensen's Leadership.
The bigger threat is Jensen selling all his stocks at peak (if he was fired). Then, this dude with $100B in the bank could've easily started an NVIIA competitor. He has every component needed for a success. This is why NVIDIA's board would never let this guy go.
I think these trends happened to them despite Huang.
No, you do not.
[1]https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/shanghai-to-s-f-flig...
[2]https://www.macrumors.com/2019/01/11/apple-united-airline-pu...
From the book: Apple in China
I’m not sure if this will ruin Jensen’s life or not, but it’s a good opportunity for us all to remember that the short-term high is usually not worth it.
But I'm not sure how hard it would be to resist a honey trap.
I mean a state sponsored enterprise to get you to have sex with someone (or one of a group of people).
Getting him to have sex with her was literally this woman's day job and she was probably told it was a matter of national security.
It is quite absurd once you think about it.
This is just deeply embarrassing. His adult children both work for his company so they’d also receive this exact memo.
It's easy for a professional with china backend to play with your feelings, much easier if you have normal family life or worse.
Is the woman likable it's just a matter of times. (Independent of the gender)
If this happens within a week, I would agree, if this happens within months the gender you like can makes your heart jump if you are I a very long term relationship.
The guy has enough money to have sex parties with the prettiest girls on Earth every single night until the end of his life, I'm pretty sure resisting a state-sponsored honeypot is not the hardest thing ever.
People continue to under-value the spank bank. SMH.
It might if he loves his wife.
Are you saying this was an accident and he didn't have control over himself?
If he doesn't have control over himself and he isn't accountable for his actions, then how does that factor into him being the CEO of the most important globally strategic company in the world? Are you saying that he is capable of making actions that he isn't in full control over? Does Nvidia need to have a CEO that doesn't accidentally make mistakes like potentially giving secret information to Chinese spies?
meaning that women are more likely to be robots? wasn't aware of this, gotta try doing turing tests on women around me.
It is, of course, not an automatic fact. The context here is emotions, so it makes no sense to point only to agency as proof of an emotional "fact". Such a thing doesn't even exist.
Lamentably, people don't have cartoon emotions. Life would be so much easier if they did.
I agree, though.
I think what you've just described is "post nut clarity". I'm sure he knew what he did immediately, but the gravity of the consequences might've taken a bit to catch up to him.
I think it says a lot about what wealth does to you. A lot of people dream of wealth but I suspect many would be less than thrilled by the reality. It must be incredibly isolating. You constantly have to fend off people who are trying to use you. It must make it harder to trust anyone. A lot of ordinary life experiences are now barred to you.
For example, a lot of executives in these trillion dollar companies are forbidden from flying commercial for security reasons. Nobody would think about missing the airport and everything that entails. In most places it's an objectively awful experience but it's still a shared experience. Going to a private FBO by helicopter to take a Global 7500 direct to your destination is something only a tiny portion of the population can relate to.
So I think this kind of isolation makes such wealthy and/or powerful people more susceptible to this kind of thing because, in a way, they're starved from a lot of human interaction and experiences in a way most of us can't understand (and wouldn't want).
What really is the point of somebody hoarding this much wealth? You kind of have to have sociopathic tendencies (IMHO) because such wealth simply cannot exist without the impoverishment of millions of people. And for you it's kind of a golden prison.
[1]: https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2014/04/sergey-brin-amanda-...
I might not like airport lines but I'd hate to be forbidden from going through that process. I also couldn't just walk down the street to get a pizza. Or go out dancing at night. Or to play board games. Or take a random walk or bike ride around the city. If I was rich and everyone knew it, I'd have to live in a bubble.
That's different from "comfortable rich" where you own your own home and a retirement fund and live mostly normally.
Well, not necessarily. Jensen Huang was famous for going to random food stalls in Taiwan and eating street food.
It might be harder and riskier, and I get what you mean, but it's not like you actually can't do those things.
Also maybe it's not necessarily a billionaire thing, but more like a fame thing. Billionaires tend to get famous just due to being rich, but I'd imagine a random person wouldn't recognize 80+% of the people on the billionaire list if they saw the billionaire chomping down a pizza in the local pizza place.
If asked he could say he works for a company that makes some computer part.
“Are they well known?”
“Kinda, but mostly datacenters buy them, you probably don’t own one.”
And it really doesn't help that all these tech bro billionaires think Ayn Rand was a good writer with some fine ideas.
The last paragraph of my comment basically calls these billionaires sociopaths because you have to be to enrich yourself off the backs of making millions of people poor. How is that a defense of billionaires?
My point is that the "prize" isn't even worth it. It doesn't make you happy. Actually there's one way it seems to make them happy: by enjoying the suffering of others and having the power to influence people and even governments. But to what end?
>So I think this kind of isolation makes such wealthy and/or powerful people more susceptible to this kind of thing because, in a way, they're starved from a lot of human interaction and experiences in a way most of us can't understand (and wouldn't want).
You’re saying here that they’re “starved” of the human contact most of us take for granted (for example in standing around an airport and being squeezed into economy). This is thus a cause for heart-bleeding.
Ingvar Kamprad flew economy and drove an old Volvo. Being extremely wealthy doesn’t have to come with this kind of isolation. If Sergei Brin was flying economy, most of the plane wouldn’t realise who he was and the few who did would be like “oh look it’s Sergei Brin, weird.”
I don’t think there is anyway to justify that position.
Secondly if he's willing to lie to his wife and family he's obviously willing to lie to anyone for much less. It tells you something about the character of a person, how can anyone trust a cheater?
If it was so extraordinary and such a poor reflection of character, it wouldn’t be so blatant.
https://foxandlion.pub/analysis/traitors-among-us-who-is-vul...
> A balanced, patient, and motivated Machiavellian can wait while they cultivate what they need. They may take 10 years to act; they may well wait 20 years. When the strike comes, it will come out of the blue – and their tracks will already be covered.
An "exposure" of affair[1] could very well be the best coverup: "couldn't control my dick" is the ultimate plausible deniability. Timing also makes sense. Better open an investigation and get it closed while this Congress is still in power, as the next one is going to be more in bed in LLM companies than hardware.
[1]: The other party is overtly a customer, not some random individual.
Someone leaked intelligence assessments to the New York Times.
Maybe this was just a regular leak ... but ... . Jensen has not been playing ball with other parts of the AI industry and the administration ... pushing heavily against export bans and promoting open source models , which is clearly against the interests of SpaceX/OpenAI/Anthropic.
This is of course conspiracy theory territory, but I wouldn't be too surprised if this was an intentional leak.
Consider the timing of the reporting - the first report from NYT comes out on Nov 6th - just enough time after mid-terms. Consider that follow up reporting clearly identifying Rubio as the author of the in-administration warning memo.
JD and Rubio (and who knows who else) are clearly trying to find ways to distance themselves from Trump without being completely cut to pieces, now that it's completely clear that the Trump brand is toxic.
It came out on Oct/29 instead; the date is there in the URL itself if you find the article behind a paywall.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/29/us/politics/nvidia-china-...
I still think its possible the leak is due to administration infighting, but definitely less evidence now.
I think everyone with a brain did.
It was done intentionally to send a message to him and to wrap him over the knuckles.
Great people all round.
> The close relationship between the president and Mr. Huang has impeded efforts to clamp down on Nvidia’s chip sales abroad, current and former U.S. officials said.
> This account is based on interviews with people briefed on the surveillance
https://archive.is/lwBvW
the most likely scenario here is that the faction that supports export bans leaked the initial story to try to blackmail Huang into dropping his support for free trade, he refused, so they released the package to damage him as much as possible. likely route, based on the named sources, is senate or house intel agency staffers, using elected officials and classified briefings as cover.
NY Times, Jonathan Swan, and Maggie Haberman would identify this as being firmly located in the anti-Trump faction, so unless it is some super devious reverse play, which seems unlikely for Trump, it is a criminal leak.
His fate will probably follow the Boston tech company CEO that got caught cheating with HR executive at a Coldplay concert.
I know others have said this is a carefully written statement, but in my culture I would feel it would be rude not to keep it private? Sorry if this sounds autistic.
Perhaps this is a too big to fail scenario?
1. Jensen is a billionaire who doesn't really need to work. This gives him a lot of leverage. He isn't desperate to make a living.
2. Imagine he is fired, unloads all stocks, and starts a new competing company. This would cause NVIDIA a much bigger issue.
3. Also, this means Jensen would get to unload the stock at the peak. Democrats won and is about to be way more responsible than Trump. Cue Luo Pei from Enron.
4. Dating a customer isn't really a big deal. Did her company get a preferential price? Treatment? I'd guess that her company doesn't make a dent in NVIDIA's revenue.
5. Her being a Chinese spy isn't Jensen's fault. If anything, he is a victim.
He cofounded the company over 30 years ago. He isn't just a rich person with a desk job he doesn't care about.
If we had to pick the best person who could've started an NVIDIA competitor, it would be Jensen.
Now you and the other commenter are suggesting that he could just go off and start a new competitor? For one, literally no one has done that, and the only competitors are already massive semiconductor companies. Secondly, his "assets", as you put them, are almost entirely tied up in NVIDIA. So you can fund a competitor using stock of the company you hope to beat? That makes no sense. Thirdly, I highly doubt a separation agreement, if it came to that, would allow him to start a competitor.
So again, I ask, how would that work?
Uh... no... it would not be considered appropriate for Jensen to be having an affair with a child, which is the current subtext.
... only if she hates the word 'girl', I guess. Which we don't know. Personally, I know many grown women (30's, 40's+) who are perfectly alright with the word "girl". It is contextual, and often times cultural (i.e. your background).
No offense, but this is why it can often be pernicious to do drive-by virtue-signaling online.
> Unlike some other Americans Huang seems to at least have a preference for people who are no longer minors
What does this even mean?... do you think what you're implying is exclusive to Americans? Honestly that's what it sounds like.
Unless the CEO happens to be the CEO of what is considered one of the most important company for national security and future, and his private life involves somebody who appears to be a spy for the biggest competitor for world hegemony. Then it's kind of big deal for everybody.
thank you for maintining the WW1->Cold War era great-game / hegemonic frame. Nation-states love you for it.
It also sounds like it was known something was going on with foreign agencies and Jensen, do this puts it out in the open and clears the air.
Lastly, if anyone was trying to use the affair as leverage over him, the best way to break the leverage is to just come out and spill the tea yourself (so to speak)
- Is this person susceptible to blackmail from the secrets they're keeping?
- Has this person performed a notable breach of trust?
- Has this person displayed a notable lack of judgement?
Even when the alleged misconduct is private, #1 is of particular concern. Airing it out is an obvious way to lessen that specific concern. The allegations here raise the other concerns too, however.
Bedding an adversarial entity's agent in a regulated field is a serious matter (for the company) with potentially serious consequences. It can lead to executive decapitation, it can even lead to / criminal investigations if the operative bypassed export controls using executive proximity.. the fallout can be great and widespread.
It can also be a nothingburger and an amusing page six divorce story in the end where we all read how rich cry as well. Time will tell. What's telling of where this might lead and how serious it is, is that it was US federal government that warned about this.
However if he cheated with a chinese spy then he was targeted by China and that raises this to a national security risk.
> “Our relationship, our interactions, have been related to Megaspeed, and it was all completely normal and not unusual,” [1]
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-29/nvidia-ce... => https://archive.li/ljGPF#selection-1731.0-1731.119
Not long I suspect, we don't expect much from tech CEOs. Nobody even remembers when Bezos cheated on his wife.
Jensen is as powerful as any politician, if not more so. Same with Elon, etc.
If you don't want that then get rid of the ability for such individuals to amass so much power.
That's the real reason that this affair is a problem. It made him blackmailable.
It's because the woman is a member of the PRC, and it's being made into a national security issue, regardless of whether he announces it or not.
The strategic thing is for him to come forward first.
Because it's already public. This is called "getting ahead of/seizing the narrative"
It's not a nothing burger but if it results in Jensen leaving Nvidia that would be a travesty IMO. We shouldn't push people out for making a mistake, especially one that should in any other circumstance not become public.
If you cause a data leak at NVDIA, or say making decisions at your level based on an external entity blackmailing you and got caught, would your boss still say, "We shouldn't push people out for making a mistake"?