Billions lost, affairs and a Trump bromance: 10 things you need to know about the Nvidia scandal

Detailed summary

Here is everything you need to know about Jensen Huang’s spectacular fall from grace.

Nvidia chief Jensen Huang has resigned from his top post at the chipmaker he co-founded, after reports of the tech titan’s extramarital affairs came into the spotlight this week.

One of those relationships has raised national security concerns. The New York Times reported that Huang had an affair with a businesswoman US intelligence suspects to be a Chinese spy, which Beijing denies. Separately, the outlet and later others found Huang was said to have had another affair with an Nvidia executive who reported to him directly – compounding calls for him to step down. Reports of a third affair, this time with another Nvidia employee, emerged on Friday following his resignation.

Nvidia announced Huang’s resignation, effective immediately. The California-based company said that Colette Kress – who has been Nvidia’s chief financial officer and executive vice president since 2013 – will step into the role of interim chief executive.

The scandal marks the most tumultuous chapter yet for Nvidia, whose high-end chips have emerged as the leading building blocks for artificial intelligence. Huang has become a key face in the AI race, both across the industry and often on US President Donald Trump’s side in Washington.

Nvidia says that Colette Kress is now interim chief executive. Before joining Nvidia more than 13 years ago, Kress worked at Cisco, Microsoft and Texas Instruments in various roles, according to her executive biography on the company’s website.

In a statement about her new post on Thursday, Kress said that Nvidia’s “strength has always come from its people” and that she was “committed to building on the extraordinary foundation Jensen created over the last 33 years”.

The company’s board of directors also said that it had named its first-ever chairman, Harvey C. Jones, an entrepreneur and venture investor.

Over the weekend, following news reports of Huang’s relationship with a woman identified as former Megaspeed executive Alice Huang, Nvidia’s then chief executive…

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