Jensen Huang’s Nvidia Future in Limbo Amid Reported Second Affair

Detailed summary

Jensen Huang’s hold on Nvidia, the company he built into the engine of the artificial intelligence boom, is in doubt Wednesday, as reports of a second extramarital affair…

Jensen Huang’s hold on Nvidia, the company he built into the engine of the artificial intelligence boom, is in doubt Wednesday, as reports of a second extramarital affair compounded an alleged spy scandal that has drawn scrutiny from Washington to Wall Street.

On Sunday, as it opened an independent inquiry into reports that Jensen Huang had been "the target of a foreign intelligence effort," the board said in a statement that it had "no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised." It added: "The Board has confidence in Jensen and his leadership team." That confidence lasted three days.

On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that the board was preparing to push Jensen Huang out after two extramarital affairs, one of them with a suspected Chinese spy, and that directors could meet as soon as Wednesday.

Reports of a second relationship surfaced only hours earlier, in The New York Times, citing five people who had worked at Nvidia. The outlet reported that Jensen Huang had a relationship with Kimberly Powell, the company's vice president of health care, who reports to him. Two of those people told the Times the pair were filmed being affectionate at a San Jose hotel during Nvidia's developer conference in March; the paper said it had not seen the footage.

According to three people briefed on the episode, the Times reported that Jensen Huang's security detail isolated the bystander who recorded it and offered that person a nondisclosure agreement.

When the Times reached Jensen Huang by phone, he said, "I don't think you should be talking to me directly," and hung up, the paper reported. Powell did not immediately respond to the Times. Both are married to other people, the outlet highlighted.

In October, the Times reported that U.S. intelligence officials had concluded that Alice Huang, a Chinese citizen and former executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed, a major buyer of Nvidia chips, was…

T…

Opening of the article, excerpted from Newsweek. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.