Jensen Huang Joins a Growing Club: C.E.O.s Brought Down by Affairs

Detailed summary

The Nvidia founder and chief executive, who resigned on Thursday, is among a group of top bosses whose personal relationships and sexual encounters got them in trouble.

The “close personal relationship” has been the downfall of a number of chief executives over the years.

Now it has felled Jensen Huang, the founder and chief executive of Nvidia. Mr. Huang resigned on Thursday following revelations that he had an affair with an executive at the company as well as with a woman whom U.S. intelligence agencies concluded was an intelligence asset for China.

Posing a risk to national security is not the usual reason for ousting a chief executive. More often, it is that a relationship was in violation of company policy.

Large companies generally have had policies that prohibit managers and direct reports from having romantic relationships. Nvidia’s code of conduct tells employees to “avoid situations where our actions create conflict” including “personal relationships.”

“When it comes to direct reports, companies have had hard policies and have had for ages,” said Charles G. Tharp, executive vice president of the CHRO Association, a group for human resources officers.

Mark Hurd, who had helped build HP into a powerhouse tech company, was fired in 2010 after its board found that he’d failed to disclose use of company funds, and that he’d had a “close personal relationship” with a contractor. In 2018, Brian Krzanich resigned from Intel after the chip company learned of a “past consensual relationship” the chief executive had with an employee.

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