Jensen Huang is in a world of trouble, and that could mean trouble for the world

Résumé détaillé

Huang is the most powerful man at the world’s most consequential company. And if his fall from grace takes Nvidia down along with him, the global economy could feel the effects.

If you or I were caught having an affair, we’d be worried. When Jensen Huang gets caught cheating on his wife — twice — the world worries.

And with good reason. Huang is the most powerful man at the world’s most consequential company, chipmaker Nvidia. He’s just been ousted after allegations of inappropriate relationships with two women, one of them believed to be acting on behalf of the Chinese government.

And if Huang’s fall from grace takes the company down along with him, the global economy could be in serious trouble.

For now, there’s no reason to expect an Nvidia meltdown. The company still makes the world’s best chips for building artificial intelligence systems. But the discovery of his affair with Singapore tech executive Alice Huang, a likely Chinese spy, has injected a megadose of uncertainty into the global economy and the national security outlook.

If you’ve got money in a retirement account, you’ve probably got money in Nvidia. The high-flying maker of artificial intelligence chips is a portfolio favorite. And Boston-area investment firms are among its biggest shareholders. State Street holds just over a billion Nvidia shares (worth about $165 billion as of Thursday afternoon); Fidelity Investments, a little under a billion; and Geode Capital Management has more than 600 million shares.

But so far, the market impact of the fiasco has been contained. Nvidia shares have dropped 14 percent over the past five days, but other tech company stocks have risen and the broader market indexes have rebounded after a major sell-off last week.

Still, things could change if Nvidia’s new management begins having second thoughts about the company’s controversial strategy of making huge investments in its biggest customers. Nvidia is the AI industry’s primary banker. It sinks billions into companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, which then turn around and spend much of the money on Nvidia chips.

But it leaves Nvidia vulnerable to any significant slowdown in demand from AI…

Besides…

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