Downfall of world’s chipmaker-in-chief a potential headache for Beijing as well as US

Résumé détaillé

What did China potentially gain from this operation? And what does it stand to lose now it has been blown?

Beijing: We will probably never know if Jensen Huang’s swagger, connections and status as the world’s chipmaker-in-chief would have been enough to save him from the blast radius of an affair with an alleged spy.

The emergence of a second extramarital affair looks poised to sink the Nvidia boss.

The company is reportedly preparing to cut him loose. It would be an act of almost self-decapitation. Huang built Nvidia from the ground up over three decades into one of the world’s most valuable companies, through which he commanded enormous influence over the unfolding tech revolution and frenzied race between the US and China.

Inside Nvidia, he concentrated power in his leadership with 60 executives reporting directly to him.

His apparent downfall leaves a question mark not just over Nvidia’s future direction, but US chip policy more broadly.

In Washington, Huang has been a forceful lobbyist for giving China access to some less-advanced Nvidia chips, arguing that keeping Beijing hooked on US technology would slow the development of its own high-powered domestic chip industry.

National security hawks loathed the deal he cut with US President Donald Trump last year to sell Nvidia’s powerful H200 chips to China in exchange for the US government taking a 25 per cent cut. They would toast his defenestration.

In Beijing, too, some would rue the departure of a tech titan whose corporate interests in making the world dependent on Nvidia aligned with their own.

“Although we compete against China, they are not our enemies,” Huang told Bloomberg in a recent interview where he criticised US chip restrictions.

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