A timeline of the affair scandal that sank Nvidia’s Jensen Huang

Detailed summary

CEO behind the meteoric rise of Nvidia stepped down after it was revealed he had an affair with an alleged Chinese spy Jensen Huang has stepped down as CEO of Nvidia, the company…

CEO behind the meteoric rise of Nvidia stepped down after it was revealed he had an affair with an alleged Chinese spy

Jensen Huang has stepped down as CEO of Nvidia, the company at the center of the AI boom, after leading it for more than 30 years.

Huang, an electrical engineer by education, stewarded the company from a $1bn firm when it went public in 1999 to a company valued at more than $4tn in 2026. But in a matter of days, after it was revealed he had an extramarital affair with a woman that US officials believe to be a Chinese spy, Huang managed to wipe more than $600bn from the company’s valuation.

China has denied the accusations that it had tapped Alice Huang, the woman in question and a top executive at a datacenter company called Megaspeed, to be an intelligence asset, and called them a “smear”. US officials had reportedly started to monitor the Megaspeed executive after suspecting the firm was diverting powerful Nvidia AI chips to Chinese firms, in potential violation of export restrictions. The Biden and Trump administrations had prohibited US companies from exporting some of the more powerful AI chips to China over national security concerns.

Just a week ago it seemed that Huang’s ouster was unlikely, but in the days since he first disclosed an affair and affirmed his commitment to the company, the New York Times reported that there was a second affair – this time with another Nvidia executive.

A lot has happened in the last few days, but how did we get here? Here’s a timeline of what we know about Huang’s entanglements.

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