Sure, but jail time for bypassing the export ban can definitely make it harder to use the money. Then again, given his affiliation with the POTUS he probably won't get jail time.
This attitude is probably why they need to sue for damages. The number of people in Silicon Valley who have convinced themselves being a sex pest and walking national-security risk is a spoil of conquest needs to be struck down now if we're going to continue to exist as an industry.
Alice Huang (the Chinese spy) and Kimberly Powell (the underling) are both married. We don't know the identity of the third woman yet, but I'd give it ~80% probability she's married as well.
When you see two ants in the kitchen there's likely many more.
Huang has been a great boss and steward of Nvidia, but ultimately falling for subordinates is grave enough, adding alleged Chinese spies, and allegations you sold Tencent billions of hardware through shady Singaporean companies for which the alleged spy worked etc and the board had no other options.
At this point it would be surprising if what we know is likely a small part and the Nvidia board saw enough very quickly to ask for his head.
There's no need to look. Jensen Huang might have been great for his shareholders, but he sure has been screwing the rest of us over hard.
He was responsible for hanging consumers out to dry by destroying the consumer PC market in chase of more profit. He is gambling with the world economy. He appears on interviews being a dick about all of this.
So I'd say this is very much in character for him.
I understand this is true in a strictly legal and financial sense. I hope you are simply pointing out a factual statement and not bootlicking for companies that make your own life worse?
>I understand this is true in a strictly legal and financial sense.
"Legal and financial sense" is how you run a business. Getting salty because a company decided to switch to a more profitable customer, while understandable, is also totally unreasonable. Doubly so when the product segment being affected is essentially a luxury product to begin with.
You're not really arguing anything here except that greed is expected, which is fair but not logical in the sense that, there is nothing about a business that says it has to operate this way, and no law that says being a fair and good entity in our community is necessarily going to bankrupt them. It's a choice leadership makes, for obvious and boring reasons, to fuck over the general community.
Big music artists could totally sell cheaper tickets and still make enormous piles of cash.
Nvidia could have continued supporting the consumer market alongside their AI ambitions.
The sad part is that we simply don't expect it anymore, because we no longer see businesses as part of our communities. Just as profit engines, with no other goal.
Companies don't exist in a vacuum, they are entities in our community, and we should expect them to behave in a way that is beneficial and fair, and sometimes that might be at the expense of unrealised profits. Not bankruptcy obviously, but there's a wide gamut of extreme prosperity between bankrupt and trillion dollar market cap.
>Big music artists could totally sell cheaper tickets and still make enormous piles of cash.
>Nvidia could have continued supporting the consumer market alongside their AI ambitions.
No, in both cases they'll just get scalped. If you're selling something for $1 that the market is willing to pay $10 for, the market will find a way to equalize this.
>Companies don't exist in a vacuum, they are entities in our community, and we should expect them to behave in a way that is beneficial and fair, and sometimes that might be at the expense of unrealised profits. Not bankruptcy obviously, but there's a wide gamut of extreme prosperity between bankrupt and trillion dollar market cap.
Give me a break. This might work if it's walmart replacing a dozen local shops with a giant big box store on the edge of town, but GPUs are already a niche luxury product. If there's one sector where it's justified for companies to make outsized profits on, it's this. Otherwise it's as out of touch as getting mad at Hermes for selling $10k hand bags.
Yes so thinking purely in corporate thoughts, the supply is the issue on concerts and GPUs. For supply constrained items like concert space, or theme parks, other countries where profit isn't the dominant motive will sell tickets via lotteries or first in, first serve, ID linked and no reselling.
For the GPU situation, consumer GPU supply is constrained because demand isn't being met. It's not being met (in my understanding) because NVidia has a monopoly on the software ecosystem around the workloads that are diverting consumer GPU supply to businesses, first crypto, recently AI. The solution would have been to create and supply two different verticals independently, and to open the ecosystem up for other manufacturers to help meet B2B supply. There is precedent for this going in different directions, but it was a choice nVidia made to squeeze the market for every penny. Extremely good business. Shareholders are stoked, a fantastic win for the stock market.
I can't worry about all things but since you bring hermes bags up, yes that is also a pretty clear sign of a perverse economy. Selling an at-cost $10 bag for $10,000 is pretty disappointing behaviour by the seller and the buyer. The seller does it because they can, and the buyer does it because they don't mind getting fleeced. The key difference there is you can still get full utility from a bag for $15, but you have to participate in this new GPU market to get a GPU.
This is the world we live in, I get that, but it's no less disappointing to see the majority of people get ditched for the sake of the shareholders time and time again. If you feel that this isn't what's happening then I would be interested in that, otherwise we might just disagree on some base principles which is fine but probably not worth debating.
>For supply constrained items like concert space, or theme parks, other countries where profit isn't the dominant motive will sell tickets via lotteries or first in, first serve, ID linked and no reselling.
How are you going to enforce this for GPUs? Even if you somehow add the remote tracking systems that AI safety proponents have been asking for, you can still make a handy profit renting out your GPU to people who want to play gta6 or whatever.
>because NVidia has a monopoly on the software ecosystem around the workloads that are diverting consumer GPU supply to businesses, first crypto, recently AI
Maybe if you need CUDA specifically for AI workloads. For gaming AMD or intel is perfectly serviceable. It's not as good as a RTX 5090, but again that's like complaining you can only afford a LV bag rather than a Hermes (the embarrassment!)
>The key difference there is you can still get full utility from a bag for $15, but you have to participate in this new GPU market to get a GPU.
Maybe if you're only interested in carrying stuff, but not if you're interested in status signaling. The same applies to some extent for concerts. How many people are going for the experience of nosebleed seats (or standing room), overpriced food, and other travel hassles, vs the social cachet of being to a limited concert?
> "Legal and financial sense" is how you run a business.
That is how immoral people run a business. But there are a great many businesses in this country run by people who (correctly) recognize that there are higher obligations than the law and making a profit. Treating your customers fairly, making good products, doing things in an ethical way... these are not optional to a well-adjusted person, even if not required by the law.
Continuing to serve your loyal customers even has benefits above and beyond the intangible. When the bubble pops (and it will pop), Nvidia's sales to AI customers will crater. When that day comes, they will come to regret chasing away all the customers who would still be giving them business if they had not been cast aside as "not profitable enough, sorry guys".
>That is how immoral people run a business. But there are a great many businesses in this country run by people who (correctly) recognize that there are higher obligations than the law and making a profit. Treating your customers fairly, making good products, doing things in an ethical way... these are not optional to a well-adjusted person, even if not required by the law.
Higher obligations like... letting PC gamers run GTA 6 at 4K? I'm only half joking here, but AI at least have a good story going for it, productivity gains, competition with china, etc. What does gaming have going for it? For a slightly less sympathitic example, imagine there's some water shortage and datacenters[1] bought up all the water rights, forcing golfers to play on brown golf courses. Are we really supposed to be mad at either the datacenters or the farmers that sold the water rights, because they weren't serving the "higher obligations" of golfers wanting green golf courses?
[1] yes, I know they don't actually use that much water.
>When the bubble pops (and it will pop), Nvidia's sales to AI customers will crater. When that day comes, they will come to regret chasing away all the customers who would still be giving them business if they had not been cast aside as "not profitable enough, sorry guys".
As much gamers would love this revenge fantasy to happen it's not going to happen. I wager there's approximately zero brand loyalty in the PC gaming market. If nvidia is going to lose customers, it's because they're behind technologically.
It was not advancing good story. If you listened to CEO it was advancing pretty horrifying story of obsoleting people and centralizing all power into their own hands.
A handful of monopolies or oligopolies dealing with each other and cutting the rest of the world out is a classic example of market failure. It's not supply and demand determining the right price, because that requires a fair and competitive market, something that market fundamentalists always overlook.
Whether the fabs may be maxed out or not doesn't mean anything outside of the handful of companies that secured a multi-year contract with the chip makers. How much some company charges for rented GPU capacity just shows us that GPU prices are exorbitantly high, not that the market is competitive nor fair. Acknowledging widely publicized multi-year contracts between the chip makers, hyperscalers, and AI labs isn't a "conspiracy."
I don't get this. What's up with all the overzealous AI proponents using aggressive deny, deflect, discredit tactics against any criticism against these handful of the world's most powerful companies acting against the public interest? What's in it for them?
He and NVIDIA should never have been in a position where they can single-handedly dictate where the world's GPU supplies go to. They should never have been able to form a circle jerk economy with a handful of hyperscalers and AI labs. They should never have been a chokepoint for the entire personal computing industry, which is being wiped out right now due to the artificial shortage of critical components.
The lack of regulation and/or enforcement has brought about this completely textbook case of market failure with damaging consequences for the broader industry and society as a whole. It was the responsibility of governments to prevent this exact situation.
But here we are. Jensen Huang and NVIDIA brought themselves to a situation where they are responsible. They should be held accountable for the negative externalities they cause.
Last I checked one can buy personal computers just fine at a moderate price increase.
You cannot buy flagship Nvidia consumer GPUs, and the next level down, the 5080, currently retails approximately at a 100% price increase.
Low VRAM GPUs such as the 5070 at 12GB are not affected much, retailing at 15% above MSRP.
Absent another massive expansion in AI demand due to new real applications, we are probably going to see affordable high-end consumer products in 2028.
Hardly the drama you make it sound like, and calling for regulation or legal consequences seems overblown to me.
He had very little say in the forces that "destroyed the PC market". When he co-founded NVidia, it wasn't to become a geopolitical power player - no one could have predicted that 3d accelerator cards for gaming on PCs would have that kind of impact. If anything, NVidia has made some questionable business moves to not abandon their initial market, such as trying to prevent crypto mining on the cheaper cards meant for gaming.
His successor, however, probably got in position deliberately seeking geopolitical power. They're going to be worse in every way (except cheating on their spouse with subordinates, they're probably not going to do that).
I click on these ant kitchen people expecting some new account with 3 karma, nope, old ass accounts with lots of karma. Humans and bots converging in functionality.
Out of curiosity and for the lack of a better thing to do with my time, I prompted both gpt and opus several times to write an HN comment about Jensen Huang's affairs to see if either of them would include the ants thingy. They didn't
I can't say for certain if I just didn't use the right model, but I also wouldn't be surprised if this is just people parroting each other to look smart. After all, people did it for decades before llms were a thing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
At the current rate of disclosure Huang is going to be revealed to have had an affair with every woman in the world by 2038. It’s vital that we build out infrastructure to support this if we don’t want to be left behind.
"Claude, build me a website that tracks with whom Jensen Huang had an affair yet! Register the domain hasjensenhuanghadanaffair.with and treat GETs on subdirectories as names for queries, like hasjensenhuanghadanaffair.with/JaneDoe should display whether he had an affair with Jane Doe."
Parrots another article - even w ", Report Says" as the end of the headline.
The original article is from Reuters, partially written by this woman below whose history is all Washington stories then bam 4 articles on Nvidia and tech.
> lining up perfectly with their quarterly earnings call
Availability heuristic. A short seller was writing about Nvidia's China-disclosure problem in May. Huang's affair with Ms. Huang came out before Halloween. If one month before earnings is fair game, then you're going to have a lot of conspiracies to clean up.
There's this little part of me wondering if this was all known about for a long time, and the sudden release of information about all three women is coordinated for some nefarious business reason.
Jensen had the choice of coming clean like this, where half of Silicon Valley is rallying to his defence and he remains a multi-billionaire (and maybe saves his marriage), or having this exposed by the new Congress, at which point all manner of punitive countermeasures against Nvidia are on the table.
Currently, Energy & Commerce and Oversight & Investigations are asleep. Come January, they won't be.
Huang, like a lot of Silicon Valley, thought their guy would stay in power and protect them.
better question would be why is it coming out before trump's visit to China next week, let's not forget the first story was about Chinese spy, it's a bit of strange coincidence
there is possibility someone overplayed their cards and didn't think of possible consequences, OTOH maybe they wanted to kill two birds with one stone
Powerful men cheating is often normalized in their immediate environment. Jensen was seen with both women many times. It's the Chinese spy and export ban skirt angle that made it untenable.
Cf. the open secret nature around the entire Epstein cabal.
The affairs were probably open secrets to those high up for a while. Once Jensen's reputation passes a perceived point of no return, it makes sense for the other higher ups to leak everything they know to the media to shorten the duration of the scandal. The worst has happened, their action will not change, so no need to drag it out.
> and the sudden release of information about all three women is coordinated for some nefarious business reason.
This framing is plain silly because it ignores the sequence of events. NVidia conducted an investigation after Huang admitted to having an affair with someone the US Government believed to be a Chinese spy, and in any case NVidia sold billions worth of embargoed chips to that company (and now it seems we have some proof per another HN front page story that the latest leading Chinese open source models were trained on embargoed NVidia chips). So then the other 2 instances of infidelity came out in the course of the investigation - of course as they definitely should, otherwise it would be a really shitty investigation! And sure, it was known by at least some number of other NVidia employees that Huang had relationships with subordinates (at least according to reporting). But that doesn't change the fact that Huang's relationship with Alice Huang was not known (and in fact denied by Jensen Huang) before this all went down.
It's not like Huang's 3 paramours got together before the investigation started in some sort of nefarious plot.
With this kind of status and notoriety, so many eyes are on you, it's hard to keep this a secret from everyone, especially when it's happening in the workplace.
trump is visiting China next week and the first story was about mistress being Chinese spy, so it makes you wonder whether this benefits China, Trump or US interests (don't confuse the latter two, they are two completely different things), I don't think China would leak "Chinese spy" story unless they are playing some serious 4D chess, which leaves you with two main options
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I hope that the people he had affairs with are treated ok and not retaliated against or hounded by the world news media.
This attitude is probably why they need to sue for damages. The number of people in Silicon Valley who have convinced themselves being a sex pest and walking national-security risk is a spoil of conquest needs to be struck down now if we're going to continue to exist as an industry.
Huang has been a great boss and steward of Nvidia, but ultimately falling for subordinates is grave enough, adding alleged Chinese spies, and allegations you sold Tencent billions of hardware through shady Singaporean companies for which the alleged spy worked etc and the board had no other options.
At this point it would be surprising if what we know is likely a small part and the Nvidia board saw enough very quickly to ask for his head.
He was responsible for hanging consumers out to dry by destroying the consumer PC market in chase of more profit. He is gambling with the world economy. He appears on interviews being a dick about all of this.
So I'd say this is very much in character for him.
"Legal and financial sense" is how you run a business. Getting salty because a company decided to switch to a more profitable customer, while understandable, is also totally unreasonable. Doubly so when the product segment being affected is essentially a luxury product to begin with.
Big music artists could totally sell cheaper tickets and still make enormous piles of cash.
Nvidia could have continued supporting the consumer market alongside their AI ambitions.
The sad part is that we simply don't expect it anymore, because we no longer see businesses as part of our communities. Just as profit engines, with no other goal.
Companies don't exist in a vacuum, they are entities in our community, and we should expect them to behave in a way that is beneficial and fair, and sometimes that might be at the expense of unrealised profits. Not bankruptcy obviously, but there's a wide gamut of extreme prosperity between bankrupt and trillion dollar market cap.
>Nvidia could have continued supporting the consumer market alongside their AI ambitions.
No, in both cases they'll just get scalped. If you're selling something for $1 that the market is willing to pay $10 for, the market will find a way to equalize this.
>Companies don't exist in a vacuum, they are entities in our community, and we should expect them to behave in a way that is beneficial and fair, and sometimes that might be at the expense of unrealised profits. Not bankruptcy obviously, but there's a wide gamut of extreme prosperity between bankrupt and trillion dollar market cap.
Give me a break. This might work if it's walmart replacing a dozen local shops with a giant big box store on the edge of town, but GPUs are already a niche luxury product. If there's one sector where it's justified for companies to make outsized profits on, it's this. Otherwise it's as out of touch as getting mad at Hermes for selling $10k hand bags.
For the GPU situation, consumer GPU supply is constrained because demand isn't being met. It's not being met (in my understanding) because NVidia has a monopoly on the software ecosystem around the workloads that are diverting consumer GPU supply to businesses, first crypto, recently AI. The solution would have been to create and supply two different verticals independently, and to open the ecosystem up for other manufacturers to help meet B2B supply. There is precedent for this going in different directions, but it was a choice nVidia made to squeeze the market for every penny. Extremely good business. Shareholders are stoked, a fantastic win for the stock market.
I can't worry about all things but since you bring hermes bags up, yes that is also a pretty clear sign of a perverse economy. Selling an at-cost $10 bag for $10,000 is pretty disappointing behaviour by the seller and the buyer. The seller does it because they can, and the buyer does it because they don't mind getting fleeced. The key difference there is you can still get full utility from a bag for $15, but you have to participate in this new GPU market to get a GPU.
This is the world we live in, I get that, but it's no less disappointing to see the majority of people get ditched for the sake of the shareholders time and time again. If you feel that this isn't what's happening then I would be interested in that, otherwise we might just disagree on some base principles which is fine but probably not worth debating.
How are you going to enforce this for GPUs? Even if you somehow add the remote tracking systems that AI safety proponents have been asking for, you can still make a handy profit renting out your GPU to people who want to play gta6 or whatever.
>because NVidia has a monopoly on the software ecosystem around the workloads that are diverting consumer GPU supply to businesses, first crypto, recently AI
Maybe if you need CUDA specifically for AI workloads. For gaming AMD or intel is perfectly serviceable. It's not as good as a RTX 5090, but again that's like complaining you can only afford a LV bag rather than a Hermes (the embarrassment!)
>The key difference there is you can still get full utility from a bag for $15, but you have to participate in this new GPU market to get a GPU.
Maybe if you're only interested in carrying stuff, but not if you're interested in status signaling. The same applies to some extent for concerts. How many people are going for the experience of nosebleed seats (or standing room), overpriced food, and other travel hassles, vs the social cachet of being to a limited concert?
That is how immoral people run a business. But there are a great many businesses in this country run by people who (correctly) recognize that there are higher obligations than the law and making a profit. Treating your customers fairly, making good products, doing things in an ethical way... these are not optional to a well-adjusted person, even if not required by the law.
Continuing to serve your loyal customers even has benefits above and beyond the intangible. When the bubble pops (and it will pop), Nvidia's sales to AI customers will crater. When that day comes, they will come to regret chasing away all the customers who would still be giving them business if they had not been cast aside as "not profitable enough, sorry guys".
Higher obligations like... letting PC gamers run GTA 6 at 4K? I'm only half joking here, but AI at least have a good story going for it, productivity gains, competition with china, etc. What does gaming have going for it? For a slightly less sympathitic example, imagine there's some water shortage and datacenters[1] bought up all the water rights, forcing golfers to play on brown golf courses. Are we really supposed to be mad at either the datacenters or the farmers that sold the water rights, because they weren't serving the "higher obligations" of golfers wanting green golf courses?
[1] yes, I know they don't actually use that much water.
>When the bubble pops (and it will pop), Nvidia's sales to AI customers will crater. When that day comes, they will come to regret chasing away all the customers who would still be giving them business if they had not been cast aside as "not profitable enough, sorry guys".
As much gamers would love this revenge fantasy to happen it's not going to happen. I wager there's approximately zero brand loyalty in the PC gaming market. If nvidia is going to lose customers, it's because they're behind technologically.
It was not advancing good story. If you listened to CEO it was advancing pretty horrifying story of obsoleting people and centralizing all power into their own hands.
Demand has far exceeded supply, and so consumers are priced out.
This is no different than how most developing countries have been priced out of top GPUs since the dawn of computing.
It sucks, but to pin the blame on someone for not looking out for PC gamers is not fruitful.
LLM providers document making 38 USD/hour/card. https://github.com/deepseek-ai/DeepInfer/blob/main/doc%2Finf...
Where is the conspiracy?
I don't get this. What's up with all the overzealous AI proponents using aggressive deny, deflect, discredit tactics against any criticism against these handful of the world's most powerful companies acting against the public interest? What's in it for them?
The lack of regulation and/or enforcement has brought about this completely textbook case of market failure with damaging consequences for the broader industry and society as a whole. It was the responsibility of governments to prevent this exact situation.
But here we are. Jensen Huang and NVIDIA brought themselves to a situation where they are responsible. They should be held accountable for the negative externalities they cause.
You cannot buy flagship Nvidia consumer GPUs, and the next level down, the 5080, currently retails approximately at a 100% price increase.
Low VRAM GPUs such as the 5070 at 12GB are not affected much, retailing at 15% above MSRP.
Absent another massive expansion in AI demand due to new real applications, we are probably going to see affordable high-end consumer products in 2028.
Hardly the drama you make it sound like, and calling for regulation or legal consequences seems overblown to me.
His successor, however, probably got in position deliberately seeking geopolitical power. They're going to be worse in every way (except cheating on their spouse with subordinates, they're probably not going to do that).
After all, when you see two ants in the kitchen..
I can't say for certain if I just didn't use the right model, but I also wouldn't be surprised if this is just people parroting each other to look smart. After all, people did it for decades before llms were a thing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It's either artificial or just classic meme effects, but then the question becomes, where did you pick this up from?
Did you see it on twitter?
The original article is from Reuters, partially written by this woman below whose history is all Washington stories then bam 4 articles on Nvidia and tech.
https://www.reuters.com/authors/alexandra-alper/
Appears to be manipulated news (which we're used to), story is real but should be seen through that lens - why?
Availability heuristic. A short seller was writing about Nvidia's China-disclosure problem in May. Huang's affair with Ms. Huang came out before Halloween. If one month before earnings is fair game, then you're going to have a lot of conspiracies to clean up.
Jensen had the choice of coming clean like this, where half of Silicon Valley is rallying to his defence and he remains a multi-billionaire (and maybe saves his marriage), or having this exposed by the new Congress, at which point all manner of punitive countermeasures against Nvidia are on the table.
Currently, Energy & Commerce and Oversight & Investigations are asleep. Come January, they won't be.
Huang, like a lot of Silicon Valley, thought their guy would stay in power and protect them.
there is possibility someone overplayed their cards and didn't think of possible consequences, OTOH maybe they wanted to kill two birds with one stone
Cf. the open secret nature around the entire Epstein cabal.
China manufactures their own AI chips now. It’s in their national interest to impede US progress in this area.
The idea that NVIDIA would continue whatever arrangement they had under increasing pressure is really childish.
This framing is plain silly because it ignores the sequence of events. NVidia conducted an investigation after Huang admitted to having an affair with someone the US Government believed to be a Chinese spy, and in any case NVidia sold billions worth of embargoed chips to that company (and now it seems we have some proof per another HN front page story that the latest leading Chinese open source models were trained on embargoed NVidia chips). So then the other 2 instances of infidelity came out in the course of the investigation - of course as they definitely should, otherwise it would be a really shitty investigation! And sure, it was known by at least some number of other NVidia employees that Huang had relationships with subordinates (at least according to reporting). But that doesn't change the fact that Huang's relationship with Alice Huang was not known (and in fact denied by Jensen Huang) before this all went down.
It's not like Huang's 3 paramours got together before the investigation started in some sort of nefarious plot.