I recently recalled Nvidia's rather strange reaction to the Gamers Nexus investigation into GPU smuggling [0]. Found it somewhat strange at the time how incredibly agitated the reaction seemed to have been, given Nvidia could sell the same GPUs for the same price essentially instantly without the Chinese market. Their reaction wasn't merely a denial, dismissal or even silence, but very irrationally sounding for a company of their size and standing.

Why not just sell to not-sanctioned entities, ensure compliance to the best of your abilities and otherwise keep your head down? Again, wasn't like they struggled to find buyers for their chips.

Considering Megaspeed, I now see this in a very different light. Him cheating is personal and I wish the affected members of any family of a cheater the best, but not relevant for us outsiders.

Being honey trapped very bad securities wise, but he'd be a victim (and evidence for why we shouldn't discount Mistral in the frontier lab race [1]). If sanctions avoidance went all the way to the top, that is hard to negate even for a board that is interested in keeping him. At that stage he was neither honey trapped nor "merely horny"...

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H3xQaf7BFI

[1] https://time.com/archive/7146565/hollandes-popularity-goes-u...

I said on this a few days ago that he should be thinking about resigning: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50418016

At the time I didn't think it would happen because of impact on Nvidia's stock price, but at that point we didn't know about his second affair - with Kimberly Powell.

I'd suggest this latest revelation makes his position untenable, especially if the board found out about the second affair via a source other than Huang himself. He should have spilled the beans on that when the first affair came out, not that it would necessarily have saved him, but withholding the information - if that's what he did - should condemn him. It's another serious lapse in judgement and a failure of integrity that is not befitting of one of the most powerful corporate leaders on earth.

Goodness knows how his wife is feeling at this point. Certainly makes his apology from a couple of days back ring rather hollow.

EDIT: The fact that someone like Jensen Huang - who I'd previously considered to be an incredibly smart guy as opposed to a nitwit - can somehow completely implode his life in almost the most ridiculous way imaginable does give me some hope that at least some of the troublemaker ne'er do wells that have wielded so much power over us all over the past decade or so might also experience some just desserts in the not too distant future.

Here's why Jensen is critical to Nvidia as well as the industry:

Without Jensen Huang's vision, Nvidia might have remained primarily a graphics chip maker, and the deep learning revolution would not have arrived when it did. Long before deep neural networks took off, Huang backed the use of Nvidia GPUs for scientific and general-purpose computing, including the development of CUDA. In 2012, Krizhevsky, Sutskever, and Hinton used Nvidia GPUs and CUDA to train AlexNet, whose breakthrough performance helped ignite the modern deep learning boom. Nvidia's investment in programmable GPUs helped make that breakthrough possible.

The critical vision was that GPUs could become a platform for computing beyond graphics—and that Nvidia should invest in making them programmable before a large market for that use existed.

The board should punish Huang without punishing the industry and the nation. For example by cutting his salary and stock to 0 for 2 years.

People arguing the technical and business merits of what Jensen brought to the company aren't getting how serious these allegations against him are.

The US Government is using NVIDIA chips for all sort of stuff across all classification levels. Subsequently, Jensen has deep relationships within the government that warrants additional scrutiny.

Him authorizing his company to sell massive amounts of chips to a restricted country is massively illegal, but companies work around that and have since forever. Doesn't make it less illegal, but that's only a small part of the problem.

The real problem is that nobody knows how much sensitive info Jensen gave this woman or how far that info spread.

It's really about fairness. Us technical salespeople take training that tells us all of the ways that deals with restricted countries happen and how we will immediately get fired ten ways to Sunday if we forego that to close quota. Also, normies with clearances tell their partners stuff they shouldn't. Stuff they think isn't really sensitive since it seems so minute. This isn't bad until said partner spills at the wrong place and wrong time. That's how normies get sent to prison for treason. Loose lips sink ships and all that. [^0]

Getting fired -- WHICH HE ABSOLUTELY SHOULD BE -- is the least of his problems.

[^0] Examples:

- https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/article/retired-us-army-officer.... Army officer leaks secrets through dating website to sound cool; gets six years

- https://www.foxnews.com/us/pentagon-leaker-jack-teixeira-rec.... Leaked secrets about Ukraine war through Discord to sound cool; gets 15 years

- https://www.westernjournal.com/ex-cia-officer-accused-leakin.... CIA officer leaks stuff to journalist girlfriend; gets 10 years

What’s the non-cynical explanation here which doesn’t involve Jensen having ruffled feathers he shouldn’t have?

Elon regularly gets away with way more morally (and perhaps legally) egregious stuff and yet he has increasingly cemented his position. Partly through indirect leverage from his companies and partly from buying access to power directly.

Even Sam managed to stage an employee revolt to stay in control.

For founders of companies perhaps the lesson keeps repeating itself - keep control of your companies no matter what.

I’m not sure this is good for shareholders and the larger AI ecosystem either. Corporate governance is obviously important especially for mature industries.

But Jensen has consistently demonstrated ability to keep Nvidia alive during dire times and eventually delivered the biggest profits in corporate history.

Edit: some cynical explanations:

1. China hawks in tech and admin wanted him out

2. Nvidia competitors found oppo research too juicy to ignore and sequenced a set of destructive reporting

3. People in AI found Jensen’s grip of the supply chain too annoying and wanted to loosen it somehow

4. Internal politics / someone wanting Jensen’s job

5. Some combination of the above

Nvidia is one of the most critical strategic assets in the USA today, underpinning economic dominance and national defence. Leadership at this level usually operates under an implicit shield. Normal procedure would be to cover-up. A sudden loss of Nvidia's founder and CEO at this juncture is a blow to American strategic posture and a windfall to China.

I think the real story is not the affair, which was already reported in asian media in 2024, but what specific catalyst broke that protective shield and made continued containment untenable.

Nuanced opinions

1) The fact that he cheated on his wife isn't particularly relevant, other than the lack of a prenup meaning she owns half his stock (4% of the company).

2) The fact that he slept with a subordinate shows bad judgment, but isn't a huge deal (although improper and opens up potential quid-pro-quo lawsuits)

3) The fact that he slept with a Chinese spy is a huge deal.

4) The fact that there are allegations that he was aware that they were selling illegally to China is a huge deal.

5) Even though those export control were arguably bad, the law must be respected and the being seen ignoring the law would have a chilling effect on appearance of a fair democracy.

6) There is definitely a demonstration of lack of judgment (getting caught selling to china rather than maintaining plausible deniability), (sleeping with a spy rather than just hiring an escort)

7) Despite all of this, in theory he would arguably still be the most profitable CEO (if he doesn't get charged with a crime, AND if there are no other issues to discover) in the medium term, but where there's smoke there may be fire. Does this raise the odds of circular financing and other shenanigans?

If this had happened at a more recent founder-led tech company, the board would have far less practical independence

Dual-class share structures have become the defacto standard for founder led companies, giving founders disproportionate (even majority) voting power.

Someone like Zuckerberg effectively controls the board and would be extraordinarily difficult to oust against his wishes (absent some exceptional legal intervention or a decision to step aside)

This is kinda huge; my layperson view is that Jensen has been responsible for their long term technology strategy, which requires deep understanding of so much outside of the business domain. I'm not exactly thrilled that they are "eating the world" (hf purchase had me bent out of shape, for example), but they've undeniably executed on some long term complex shit. Who could take his place?

It's really interesting to me how unaggressive Jensen has been vs. his peers about tighting up control over his company (even during the recent years when he had huge leverage):

- His board setup is ... odd. He isn't Chairman of the Board (a role over 50% of Fortune 100 CEOs apparently hold). He seems to be responsible for Nvidia having a wierdly more egalitarian structure (all directors including him, are equal, with a designated lead independent director)

- His compensation (~$35M, primarily stock) is ... not up there with other tech CEOs

- He doesn't seem to have ever pushed for super-voting rights (he only has like ~3.5% of the company), but I guess that's hard to change once you IPO

I kinda wonder if this ends with him taking a month off, spending 12-18 months transitioning to a successor and ending as the chairman of the board or some such. He really does seem vital to the company (and thus the stock price).

Sounds like he helped China get GPUs in violation of export controls. This puts NVidia in a tough place as keeping him as CEO risks broader legal ramifications.

Large companies always have a backup plan in case the CEO needs to be replaced. What usually happens in these cases is that a new CEO will be named. That new CEO will focus on maximizing the company's earnings while neglecting the tech. And the company will be an earnings winner for the next few years.

He's out as CEO but he'll continue to be a force at Nvidia. If the new CEO is smart, he'll keep him in the company, but it will be hard since Huang will be seen as the company's leader and it will be very hard for Huang to act any other way.

Well, what makes me little dissapointed is instead of focusing on issues and topics that really matter, we discuss who f*cked whom.

There are gravely important matters to focus on in the current state of affairs that affect us all, our kids and future of human kind, but we got somehow trained to waste our focus and time on mere noise every single day.

Related: Jensen Huang Said to Have Had Relationship with Nvidia Executive https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50459321

This doesn’t bode well for Anthropic’s IPO indirectly, due to whole AI industry being propped up largely by Nvidia’s circular investment. Also there’s likely a big overlap of institutional investors who are both NVDA and ANT investors and will now likely seek to dump ANT at the opening bell.

This doesn't seem like a healthy move for the company's longevity. What else did Jensen do? It's a given that companies that size will be targets for espionage and leak information even without it. This one mistake is enough to end all the value he has-and would continue to add to nvidia? Feels like we're missing information about the whole thing.

The thing I don't understand is what is the real issue? Just the bad PR? I would kind of think affairs are pretty common, it's just this is public? I'm struggling to find anything where he did something bad business wise or compromised national security. Seems like Americans just love the sensationalism of affairs. Makes for good news I guess.

I'm concerned about how this further could impact consumer access to GPUs and RAM, if he's replaced with someone who will prioritize these markets even less than they already are.

Remember Jensen Huang's first post on twitter: "For my first post, I’m sharing a letter NVIDIA signed on why open models matter." https://x.com/JensenHuang/status/2080643682408321103

Open Weights and American AI Leadership https://images.nvidia.com/pdf/Open-Weights-and-American-AI-L...

Can someone make the strong case for why he should be ousted?

I’m not deep into this story, but my initial reaction is that marital infidelity doesn’t seem like a strong reason to oust him, aside from him possibly being compromised by an international spy. Haven’t other successful leaders continued to lead after having their affairs exposed?

(And no, I don’t believe what he did is morally excusable for the record.)

The thought that Jensen Huang might not be CEO of Nvidia when GTA VI comes out.

He's had the job since before GTA 1 started development.

There isn't enough discussion of how many controls needed to fail for Nvidia to smuggle billions of dollars of GPUs to Chinese firms in violation of export controls. The affairs with alleged spies is not even the most egregious failure of corporate governance.

When I read that Jensen was exploring Chinese Models, I thought it meant something different.

Considering that only Jensen has been pushing for anything close to open-source models in terms of AI vs the token merchants of OpenAI and Anthropic, it seems a really bad time for Huang to leave.

I do think that "eventually" AI will be open-(source, weight, something) and most people will run at least some of their workload on their own hardware; but his leaving might delay that day considerably.

NVDA down almost 8% in after-hours trading.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NVDA/

Is there any reason why this will actually change the fundamentals of Nvidia's business so long as 5080s go for as much as a used car and the entire world wants H200s? Even if they lose an extremely hands-on CEO, they're selling a very expensive product with extremely high global demand.

I wonder what happens to NVDA afterwards. People say Jensen is NVDA or at least he has a lot of controls over the company. I guess they finally found the right time (very bad midterm) and the right opportunity (mistress as Chinese spy).

I even wonder whether some elements within the Chinese government has a hand in it -- not (only) the mistress part but the ousting part.

Interesting to see what happens to the consumer, gaming GPU market.

Financially it almost certainly makes sense to sell to AI hyperscalers alone; without Jensen, perhaps Nvidia shifts like Micron before them, leaving the lower margin consumer market to others.

I would figure Jensen for the type to "dance with the girl who you bought to the dance" type. A new CEO may lack that sort of sentimentality for the gamers/prosumers that made Nvidia.

It's not immediately clear that Jensen is as visionary and indispensable as some people claim. True, under his watch, Nvidia rose from a relatively obscure company to one of the largest companies in the world, and even a national asset. But it's really hard to believe that these achievements are due to Jensen's brilliance. Jensen didn't create the crypto mania that propelled Nvidia in the 2010s, nor did he create the current AI revolution.

To me, he had the good fortune of standing in the right place at the right time. He is no Steve Jobs, who almost single-handedly started the PC revolution and the iPhone revolution. This is not to deny his brilliance and business acumen, but I think too many people overstate his contribution to both the company and the United States. Of course I could be wrong so I welcome correction or alternative viewpoints.

Speaking of the US, Jensen has indeed become a liability. A compromised CEO is, of course, a liability to a national asset, and a politically toxic one at that. Nvidia is a business with sensitive political ties now. It can't afford to appear compromised in the eyes of Washington. Therefore, Nvidia's stakeholders must let Jensen go; otherwise, it will affect the company as a whole.

Did he break any law?

Did he circumvent export restrictions?

If not, replacing him would be a mistake for Nvidia. I also fear that it would endanger open weight models in America.

I think there are multiple factors working here:

1. Hardliners angry about NVDA selling GPUs to China;

2. Board/Big investors want to get rid of him. They may think he is less important now that NVDA is clearly the top dog.

3. Political power trying to build up a case starting with him;

Anything else?

If Nvidia is going to fire Jensen Huang, my question is whether Jensen will be allowed to start another "Nvidia".

I hope he's allowed to do so. He now knows how not to get trapped into a tactically targeted honeypot, he knows the ins and outs of a GPU fab business plus he has all the connections.

This minus all the cruft and legacy overhead of a company as old as Nvidia. I'm now hoping he gets fired.

Jensen made Nvidia. He named it, he built it from nothing with 2 other founders.

Ousting him is pretty much the worst case scenario for the company.

He would absolutely be fired if he were in any role, but as CEO cofounder, it's hard not to attribute Nvidia's success to his leadership.

The thing is, this is just what's been reported. There's almost certainly more going on if 2 affairs are public disclosure. If there is a sexual harassment angle here as well, he's toast.

Something very fishy is going on here. If NVIDIA suddenly closes down GPU sales to the general public after Jensen is gone then we know what is happening: the Altman/Dario/Musk mafia have gotten what they wanted: no more compute for open weight models for the general public.

China wins again The Guoanbu ( Guojia Anquan Bu (国家安全部) China's spy agency ) is subtle.

Honeytrap.

Reveal the information to a trusted journalist.

Destroy Huang's credibility.

Force his resignation.

Damage Nvidia.

China moves further in the AI game.

Game set and match. Sounds like this might have been China's real goal.

Is everyone here subscribed to wsj?

Jensen Huang is genuinely a classy guy, all possibilities accounted for, I like him.

The breed of CEO's coming up in tech are monstrous in comparison.

It’s not the crime, it’s the coverup, and there seems to be quite a bit of evidence of a coverup and deliberate deception. It’s a liability problem; shareholders will sue. Heads will roll.

It will be a huge mistake for Nvidia

This is like Apple board firing Jobs and Woz at the same time.

I fear this is all political. Jensen was becoming too powerful.

This is basically the civilised US version of what China did to Jack Ma.

Isn't this just not only about the severity of crimes but the potential to withstand the legacy of whatever crimes that were committed that seems untenable to digest.

Won't the CEO be fighting 2 big fights - One on the corporate front burning through the AI races and second the impending doom of lawsuits and the sheer number of avenues this opens up, frivolous or serios, for any Tom, Dick and Harry working with Nvidia as an employee, vendor, partner or anything just wanting an extra piece of the Trillion dollar pie?

That YTD chart, woooow. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NVDA/

Without knowing more this seems like the wrong move... The U.S. has the AI supply chain visualized incorrectly. The necessary manufacturing, raw materials and components all come from outside of the U.S. For nVidia to have decades of supplier relationships and manufacturing understanding, much of this was in the hands of the CEO more than other companies. Jensen has a lot of direct reports which is odd given the corporate structure.

I do wonder if Megaspeed and other shell companies have been monitored for over a year by the Feds where they broke export rules, failed to report to the Govt with the knowledge of several in the Administration... Everyone was making money on the side by allowing Jensen, Megaspeed and others profit off of bypassing export controls. Just recently a shipment of GPUs randomly disappeared as well.

If this all turns out to be true then removing him is a lot stronger than it seems and maybe in the long run fixing the bus factor problem will have been a good change.

Or, since nVidia is the central bank of the AI bubble, forcing him out kicks off a chain reaction that pops the bubble.

Love is a game in which one always cheats.

— Honoré de Balzac

This all looks like an excuse to force him to bend the knee. He is the only western tech ceo who is 1) a strong proponent of open weight models and 2) is highly critical of the chip sanctions on China because they’ve done the opposite of what they were meant to do.

If the allegations of selling “trade secrets” are false. He should remain CEO. I am unsure that there is ITAR or real regulations here, is it really an AI war. If it was it would be best if they trained on American chips for America.

I want a straw poll from people that actually own NVDA. Or at least can honestly adjust to a mental frame of "I am an NVDA shareholder".

Should the board replace him or not?

It's easy to judge when you have no skin in the game. What would you think if you did?

Any Nvidia employees out there?

I would not be surprised if the woman is actually a CIA agent. Since the government bought a stake in Intel, and 15% of Nvidia exports revenue, it has been clear that it want direct control of the industry.

What bothers me is all these might be the plan afterall, the primary goal is not just to buy billion dollars of GPU.

Iamgine you're a spy or a mistresss, would you appear in public with the high profile target?

My cynical view is that a lot of US IP has already gone to China through Nvidia. The US should probably now monitor AMD, its executives and its relationship with China (via Taiwan or direct), if any, just as closely.

Yea, I don’t think that’s going to happen.

Fired with cause or stepping down (most likely stepping down)>Interim CEO named> Jensen flew too close to sun and got burned. Board investigations will put everything on Jensen and they will turn that chapter over. Much more information will come out. His wife I will divorce him as well. This whole thing is more political than anything else. Who leaked all of this is my biggest question. Nvidia should be fine in the mid term, but unstable in the short term.

I still recall, as a young engineer (1999) working in a high-flying startup outside of Boston -- bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and full of naive optimism -- I flew to Houston in late '99 to demo a fabulous optical networking switch to ENRON, all the while thinking why in the world would ENRON want to be in the business of networking. Ended up selling them a TON of very expensive equipment.

It all unwound a few months later, much to my chagrin (and my lost stock options, obviously).

Recall that most bubbles do not pop due to one, key material cause. Instead, they pop due to adjacent troubles that, in turn, lead to cascading effects.

That was true of:

- LTCM failure (1998; Thailand and other SE Asian countries defaulted);

- 2000 market crash (dot-coms crash, then telecom crash of 2001);

- 2008-2010 financial crisis (mortgage backed securities); ... and so many others before these.

It's entirely possible that NVDA, despite earning $$$$, could unwind the circular funding within the ecosystem (the very crux of telecom market crash of 2001)

Trump knew about the Chinese Spy for a YEAR.

So was Huang playing along as part of some other US-Chinese plot? He was a pawn, or go-between.

Affair or not, this is a tragedy for American technology.

This is overblown; nvda is a mature company jensen has set the right bets forward so it's just a matter in who the successor is. In terms of revenue impact, assuming megaspeed accounted for ~20% of sales (rumored estimate) then game optimal move is to have OAI/ANT pick those sales up. We will hear about a transition plan probably around earnings.

I take no joy in noting that personality-driven companies are notably at the mercy of the vagaries of the key-man in the key-man risk clause... :-/

That's a tautology, of course. And the board should have been doing its job handling the key man in question

It's most obvious in hindsight, obviously. Across the history of such governance debacles.

Jensen has always wanted Nvidia to have a footing in China. Without that, the Chinese innovate faster and commoditize Nvidia’s business sooner. I’m willing to bet he already knew about Alice Huang selling to China. Trump probably knew for some time too. The board also knew about his second affair with his subordinate for a while.

Jensen is getting thrown under the bus by the board because it both likely reduces legal consequences (especially now that democrats are a lot more powerful), and as an opportunity to gain power and place someone in the CEO position that is more controllable.

So what happens if this actually goes through? Everyone switches their hardware spend to which other providers?

TPUs and AWS's Trainium seem to be at least in the ballpark of being competitive but does that matter at all?

1, Jensen Huang ousted as a CEO

2, China isolating Taiwan with an ongoing military drill https://www.reuters.com/world/china/taiwan-says-china-is-con... https://maritime-executive.com/article/analysis-china-s-nava...

3, Trump meeting Xi next week on the 18th https://www.euronews.com/2026/11/09/donald-trump-plans-to-me...

So his girlfriend's a spy.

Did he know she was a spy?

Did he give her any secrets?

Did he break up with her after finding out she's a spy?

Was she trained as a spy and sent to entrap him specifically? Or did she form a relationship with him, then get told by the Chinese Communist Party "Xi wants you to steal him some secrets from your boyfriend. This is an offer you can't refuse; spy for us or your family in China will be beaten, jailed or worse"?

Is he a victim or an asset? Is she a willing patriotic spy for China, or a victim of blackmail from the Chinese Communist Party? Has she been arrested as a spy, or did she make it to the Chinese embassy before the story broke?

My feeling is he shouldn't be ousted if he took the honey but didn't fall for the trap. OTOH if he passed her company secrets, that's presumably a fireable offense for anyone lower on the totem pole; it's only fair for a CEO to get fired for the same.

Jensen Huang is a traitor without a doubt

Someone really wanted him out that bad. Wow!

given that jensen has handshake deals with many of his critical (supply constrained) suppliers he may have more leverage than founder shares could ever provide.

If you are getting paid millions, you should not make these intentional mistakes, he would have known she was a spy and just didn't care. There are better options for CEO.

The possible security implications of this entire affair (affairs now) can't be overstated. That hardware's in the most secret of facilities, computing very classified workloads for very very serious customers. Not the goofy AI heads, I'm talking about the military and intelligence communities in many nations.

Hopefully this teaches the market to migrate away from proprietary CUDA and NVIDIA and their proprietary drivers.

Not so surprised

Can someone explain to me why everyone on this website, and everyone in English-language media, takes for granted that “stopping China on AI” is a worthwhile or important goal?

From where I’m standing, China is the only world power ensuring that the entire world actually benefits from AI, by giving it away. They’re also underwriting and enabling the global transition away from fossil fuels while my country is doing its best to stall or reverse that progress. They are also not a belligerent in any current war of aggression, and to the extent that they are suppliers of weapons, appear to be providing them to countries acting entirely within their legitimate sovereign right to defend themselves.

Someone’s going to come along and call me ignorant or naive for saying “China are the good guys,” but let’s get real here. What are we talking about.

They are going to put in Eric Schmidt.

Some of these main narratives just don't add up. If the end goal was to get chips, why is China blocking those H200s and it's stuck on port.

There's a different angle here worth listening to: https://youtu.be/IC3Kh40dEQY

Big companies should be resilient and diverse enough that their growth doesn't depend on one person, and yet most successful companies seem to be centered around someone with strong character and presence. Not to play cult of personality, but Huang looks like a central element of Nvidia's success. Will Nvidia go the way of Intel and other corporate grey bureaucracies that ultimately decline ?

Earnings call next week is going to be very interesting. Wow.

I see people bemoan that this is going to hurt Nvidia. First of all, it’s not like Nvidia will crumble in a few weeks. The company has a sky-high valuation because of the moat they’ve built. That doesn’t just disappear simply because Jensen steps down.

Second, yeah long term this might set Nvidia back, but are we going to say that not only are there companies which are too big to fail, but now individuals can be too? They can violate international trade sanctions and get scott free because it might harm their company? What CEO wouldn’t then be incentivized against setting up a succession plan? Why wouldn’t adversarial governments target critical CEOs even more, knowing they are effectively untouchable?

Jensen objectively fucked up royally. I saw someone describe him as a victim in all of this. I’m sorry but I don’t see how it’s unreasonable to hold CEO’s in these key positions to very high standards. They’re rewarded with extraordinary wealth and influence, yet some seem eager to excuse them from the accountability that should come with that power.

Good tech CEOs are rare. Intel will break the bank to bring Jensen on. Even if he’s a Chinese spy, it’s worth more to shore up US fab capacity than it is to lose Intel’s tech secrets.

Nvidia is Jensen. If he's out, NVidia crashes and takes the AI bubble with it

The only issue is finding replacement, Only 5 days to earnings.

He's done for

Obviously his actions were wrong and showed poor judgement but it would be a massive mistake for them to can Huang.

Steve Jobs, Sam Altman, Jack Dorsey ..... Jensen Huang?

It's often the Board of Directors that goes and the CEO retains control in the end.

Idiots

Huh I wonder if the true goal of the spy was to disrupt Nvidia by getting him fired, slowing them down, not stealing secrets.

I am just curious. Not in relation to this story: Have other people here had a change in their perspective in the last two years?

For me I feel like: There are wealthy people doing what Jeffrey Epstein was doing. And so by comparison, it makes other bad behaviors look relatively less important.

I'm just curious if other people have had that thought as well, and/or what else you think or have learned.

Honestly kind of sounds like its a great time to start a DCA buy of NVIDIA.

It is hard for me to see how the company that is currently turning silicon into gold with established production and software, more like a blue chip stock than a tech company, is going to be worth 20%-25% less just because the Ceo cheated on his wife.

The company is a money printer, and they really don't have to do much to keep it that way.

He’s not gonna end up leaving. This is rubbish.

Judge not, for in the measure of your judgment, it will be measured to you.

Desire is the enemy of happiness. To abandon sorrow, abjure want.

We are all in wanting. Our want in lesser that the needs of our partners, our friends, and our world.

Karma for fucking over the gaming community that propped up his company for so long.

If your getting paid millions, you should not be able to get away with these kinds of mistakes. There are better options for CEO

i dont get why everyone just eats up the propaganda that if she's a spy she automatically works for the chinese government. we are talking about 100s of billions of dollars here, this could easily just be a corporate spy or a honeypot. these mega corps are so rich and massive they have their own spy and enforcement teams, same as big oil and gas always had and still do. back in the day when oil and resources were in poorer countries they used the exact same tactics to control and take them over. its the same playbook, just now the target is a big us corporation.

LOL this is so funny!

They cannot unseat him now. The work is too important, nations are competing hard against us. He has to just get away with it and everyone needs to move on, same as Oppenheimer.

This does look like a hit job. The spy stuff is ultimately meaningless and a smoke screen and may even be offered up to create plausible deniability. My take is that Dems/Biden + China Hawk Rs + decel crowd/Dario wanted export control and closed models. Jensen and Trump took a different view. Now that Dems have the Congress again, it's going to be non-stop hearings and investigations in the same spirit as the TikTok CEO with all the "Are you a commie?" questions. So the spy is offered as an explanation; nobody evaded export controls and nobody is a commie. The 2nd unrelated affair just points to an op to oust him.

It’s pretty clear (if you aren’t a huge idiot) that Jensen is attempting to bury the lede here.

He knowingly helped advance China’s AI ambitions against the direction of congress. He got caught selling 7.5 Billion dollars of restricted chips to china.

Also he cheated on his wife with some Chinese woman, which is a totally separate and unrelated fuck up.

If you seriously think he got tricked by some random woman who batted her eyes, you are out of your mind. He founded the fucking company, he isn’t some clueless executive. He’s also not senile and he doesn’t have dementia. This is the only viable excuse for him to use, but it’s complete bullshit.

Think about it: He betrayed his longtime wife, who by all accounts supported him from the beginning. He betrayed his company and its shareholders. And he betrayed his country (BOTH of his countries?) who specifically forbid the chips to be sold to china. He’s fucked

Honestly, I hope this doesn’t play out in a rushed way. Evaluating this is the board’s top duty. It’s critical, and healthy, for them to weigh what’s best for all NVDA stakeholders.

Obviously, the affairs are a very serious issue, but the investigation needs to determine whether there were any security conflict of interest breaches

Let’s be clear: any abuse of power involving related-party relationships is wrong. Jensen should not get a “free pass” just because he’s Jensen. This is very serious.

Jensen’s leadership of the broader company is unparalleled, and replacing him would be nearly impossible. That step should only be taken when it’s extremely clear there is no other option. Even if the board does replace him, that brings significant risk, not just to NVIDIA but to all the other businesses connected to it. I hope a warning shot across the bow is enough for him to clean things up so everyone can get back to focusing on the work.

As for which way the board rules, the details are all that matter. When boards react emotionally, before a thorough investigation and before they have the full picture, they make bad decisions. They shouldn’t rush. They should investigate and dig into every detail.

Then make a decision. These decisions will carry enormous weight.

None of us really know the details. NVIDIA board: do your job and take it very seriously. Deliberately measure three times, cut once. Don’t spectate. The public likes/wants Hollywood drama, but what we really need is good corporate governance.

They should poach Lisa Su to lead Nvidia, she's one of the most talented CEOs of all time and knows chips.

people bemoaning the foreign interference angle seem to forget all the mountains of middle-east money thrown in the AI bubble, and where this money originates from.

Why are all the tech overlords scum people? Do they become that way with power, money and fame, or is it a certain kind of person from the start that achieves these things?

I'm scared about how this in turn shapes society.

From the NYT Story:

> During the conference, Nvidia executives were at a nearby hotel for meetings. Mr. Huang and Ms. Powell were seen being affectionate at the hotel. One bystander captured the interaction on their phone, three people briefed on the incident said.

> Mr. Huang’s security witnessed the bystander with their phone and sequestered them, the people said. They made the person an offer to sign a nondisclosure agreement.

Well, at least there will be one way to make money after AI takes my job...

Jokes aside, I would expect we will soon learn there is more. Given that Nvidia was vouching for Megaspeed while exporting those chips, I still think there's a reasonable chance Jensen ends up in jail over this. Not large, but possible.

So, is "the AI-trade" now gone?

(Whatever the wallstreet guys understand by this term)

The company that rises due to AI has being ready to fall because of human nature. What a great joke.

This is certainly fast after the NYT article on his second affair. I suspect this was in the works after the original affair + export scandal.

Here is a thought experiment: Put animals from different races into a singe cage and make them have same life-style. All of them are attached with an identifier tag that looks same, they all get same food, go on same rides, watch same TV shows. Then do the animals have same thoughts, beliefs, morals, norms and values? Most western governments thinks they would. Not sure when did the humanity got this dumber and forgot the saying "birds of a feather ...". Politicians decided that minds of people is separate from biology. Race, religion, culture, gender, background, age, geo-location - you were forced to ignore all of this. Just attach a American passport, give an american car, american food, american home; boom - everything is erased and all people are same.

I’ve read through a lot of this thread and one thing that’s interesting to me is the relatively little weight that’s been given to the HR violation aspect of Huang’s behavior with a subordinate; specifically the power dynamic aspect.

I’m guessing most HN folks are in the camp that believes modern, powerful HR orgs serve a crucial function in protecting and advocating for employees in boss-underling relationships like this, where the power dynamic of these situations demands that they not be tolerated.

So which is it? Do you make allowances and exceptions and become a vocal (or tacit) apologist for this dynamic in some cases, or hold to what seems like a reasonable principle? (Not just in Jensen’s case but across the board?).

If the consensus here slides to the apologist side that’s fine, but in that case can we all agree to defund “Big HR”? If they can’t establish and enforce a consistent rule of no sleeping with your reports, especially at the highest echelons, then what good are they?

I think (and I hope for the USA’s sake) Jensen was actually a CIA asset and they knew Alice from day 1 and let him play with his ding dong but also importantly covert reverse spy on China.

And they probably asked him to do other things and he probably was either too naive or didn’t understand the magnitude or just didn’t play ball. So they threw him under the bus.

They waited till after the election to release this carefully.

As it would tank the economy before the election (like that would have had any more effect).

Hopefully this is how I hope would be written in some future Netflix docshow.

And the fact that he went on some long winded media tour portraying himself as some sort of hippie savior (“oh I don’t know where I live” “i love my wife dearly”) seems like a well setup “white washing” to try and cap this follow on news.

Otherwise the news as it reads sounds too stupid to be true Occam’s razor and all that.

what a weird coincidence that:

1. Anthropic is IPOing at exactly the same time

2. Anthropic announced that they could destroy "CUDA moat"

3. The cheating was an open secret for years and it burst just now

4. The biggest loser in Chinese chip flow is Anthropic, and they are hostile to idea of OSS AI

weird coincidences all around :-)

He came upon a wife changing amount of money and couldn't resist

He should run Intel then.

Goodbye, money! Who is seriously considering sabotaging their portfolio and precipitating a huge SP500 drop for months to come? Who, remembering the board of directors is making this decision, would want that?

Is this how the whole castle crumbles? some tabloid sex scandal on one side like it's 2017, anthropic vibecoding a CUDA replacement for AMD on the other?

Mr. President a second Jensen affair has hit the tower

Any proof his mistress is a Chinese spy or is she just Chinese (and young and hot)?

It's kinda cool this guy is a computer nerd who is living like a rock star.

If, as alleged, Alice Huang is an agent of the Chinese government, and if her activities result in Jensen Huang getting ditched by Nvidia, that is certainly going to win her Employee of the Year at the MSS (国家安全部) Christmas Party.

ITT: underclass gossips about their masters' sex lives and wifey feelings

I like the guy, he's funny. I would say to keep him (on a leash), but if I could get endless 10/10 Chinese spy pussy I too would betray the AI race. I wouldn't cheat on my wife though, that's pretty low.

It’s not like he assaulted women, which is apparently par for the course at other big tech companies.

The guy had some consensual sex - so what? “Oh it shows poor judgement” Literally shut the f*k up… his judgement made NVIDIA the behemoth it is. Glad you get to backseat his personal life because judgement as it pertains to relationships is something you can actually relate to.

Removing him as CEO at this point in history is as the kids would say dumb af. Absolute garbage decision.

So Jensen also had an affair with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care, who is also married.

Looks like both Nvidia GPUs and Nvidia CEO have Single Instruction Multiple Threads (SIMT) architecture.

Did you hear about the container of gpus that was lost between california and texas? I heard that if it's not found, someone is going to get REALLY F... a spy type F one lol.

China would love nothing more... Perhaps they orchestrated it... Illogical...

The media attention here was weirdly intense when it broke out.

With his connections , he can start another one.

100% dumping my Nvidia stocks if this happens. Maybe triggering this en-masse was the goal all along?

Probably the worst choice he made is to project an image of devoted husband who adores his wife. Should've learn from Elon.

Macro: Is this political subterfuge to distract us from other things like criminal government officials? Spiteful payback for losing the mid-terms?

He literally FAFOed

well deserved. Should join Bill Gates in the same Unfavored Not-Gentleman-Anymore Club and be forgotten.

Note to self: if a hot chick ever shows interest in me and I'm not that attractive then be on my guard.

What did board of tesla said when Elon asked some random girl on Internet to have a baby for him?

Turns out he's just Jensen Hung

Sadly, Jensen never got invited to Epstein Island and is therefore a persona non grata in the highest circles of business and government.

Some group is trying to make a big deal out of this. I mean which spy posts so publicly their itineraries/photos/business meetings, on wechat? Come on!

I hope it was worth it.

huang himself be open sourced prior to nvidia graphics driver.

I've been writing about history for over 20 years, and this feels like an inflection point. Some day a long-form essay will describe Huang's prescient foray into machine learning, the rise of AI, the resulting bubble, Ed Zitron's prolonged diatribes, Huang's infidelity that leads to the downfall of his company, Anthropic's disappointing IPO, OpenAI's subsequent disastrous IPO, a reckoning for AI's plagiarism, and then there are bubble bits all over everybody.

We'll call it Billy and the Bubbleosaurus.

It's Joever

Jensen really needs some time off.

My armchair analysis is that going forward with this will most likely make the AI bubble pop.

Depending on how Jensen takes it, this could be the catalyst to steer AI in a new direction. Companies will line up to scoop him up, if not fight each other to get him. He is the head of the most valuable company, he has the tightest connection to the US government, it won't take a minute before Mudita* becomes a new company being fast-tracked to the top.

* Opposite of Envy (nvidia)

Interesting that the thing that might pop the AI stock bubble isn’t anything to do with the technology at all but a good old-fashioned sex scandal.

Hard to imagine this happening. Curious if he will pull off a coup like Sam Altman.

Why does it feel like half these comments are NVDA holders?

These things would be clear causes for resignation at any big corp

Good luck with their stock. He's on par with Steve Jobs level of marketing.

it's because the gamers haven't been able to buy a gpu since 2024

If the big boys can fly to LSJ to eat "beef jerky" and fully avoid prosecution, then this is a CIA coup, because virtually nobody really cares about how he warmed his stick. They are probably mad at him for moving product to the Chinese, who they can't control as easily. They are going to install a puppet they can properly control. And "pace the frontier" by sucking the oxygen out of the room for open source and local models.

Mission accomplished: nvidia nationalized.

That was probably the Chinese intelligence intent, to destroy Nvidia this way. The tools are going for it.

My tinfoil hat theory is that this is all orchestrated. They knew about the affair for months, but withheld it. My theory is that with the midterms results, rather than risk facing accountability as things unravel "naturally", they have this big bombshell as a "get out of blame free" card. That way everyone can collectively say "It wasn't _my_ fault things fell apart. I was doing my best, honest!"

silicon valley - paedophilia is fine, but sleeping with a Chinese AI executive is where I draw the line

Well, Mr. Huang sure seems to have turned his life upside down.

The extramarital affairs, while salacious, are largely immaterial.

The key issue seems to be not merely was he sleeping with someone who was not his wife, but rather, that he was sleeping with a Chinese spy who was rather essentially running a export smuggling operation to China in violation of United States law specifically crafted to recognize these Nvidia chips as sufficiently high-end to merit a national security concern.

And apparently, the United States government knew about it. But never told him they knew. What Huang personally knew is not clear, and is likely now to be subject to inquiry from a Congress that has also been turned upside down, ushering in a wave of AI skeptics while Huang was notable at the White House's "AI summit" for his almost singular bullishness. Howard Lutnick personally shut down an investigation, concerns from the CIA were not acted upon.

Donald Trump has seen people try to turn his life upside down given salacious scandals. Perhaps the President of the United States and Lutnick (among the well-heeled class known to have lied about their Epstein island connections) simply do not care, given both openly embrace Huang as a source of profit. It's also not clear the President shares the United States natsec consensus (what some of his followers term "the swamp") that actually sees Xi or China as a threat. After all, he plans to have what is likely to be another highly docile visit to the Chinese leader next week.

Put another way, it seems the federal government did not act as turning Mr. Huang's life upside down may have been calculated to turn the entire economy and their fortunes (both personal and political) upside down. Perhaps there is a backroom deal with China the President, Lutnick and Huang are secretly accommodating? I mean why would they not at least warn him?

The present irony is of course, for whatever aligned reasons that led to this hush-hush arrangement, the cat is out of the bag now. One wonders if the consequences this threatens to unleash in the present moment would have been mitigated if instead of trying to pretend it wasn't happening, the powers that be had acted with greater preemption. Perhaps so it goes. The best laid plans of this sort are often turned upside down.

"Nvidia" was named for envy, one of the 7 deadly sins. Maybe his next company will be "Luxuria"?

insane that an infidelity should have any bearing on the ability to lead the company he took from zero to 5 trillion

moralism blocking progress once again

It's easy to blame a person like dumb Jensen who slept with the Chinese spy.

I don't see anyone accusing China of setting up such a trap. China always denies ofc, though all these scummy things eventaully comes out to be true, and by then everyone forgets.

Finally some sanity. He should have resigned.

Should have sold at 220 ugh

But there's no real competitors still? Even for the medium term?

Beijing is laughing their asses off at us.

As soon as they baited Huang, it was all win-win for them. China would be able to either get access to secrets and/or chips they wouldn't have before, or they'd decapitate one of the most important companies in the U.S. The public outcry to this is exactly as planned.

Truly ridiculous and anyone with their pitchforks out needs to get a clue.

This is how the market tanks...

SMH

Does every man, woman, other and pet in silicon valley still inform for Stratfor?

His crime is he put his junk in the wrong kind of spy?

Maybe now Apple and nvidia can rekindle their relationship after the bubble pops. Apple could come to the rescue, secure a heavy investment and enter into the cloud computing business.

Steve Bannon ( et al., himself already having done the job now serving by rolling release AI proxy ) Trump move. Dunno who invented it but it works

And another Mackenzie Scott is born.

.

it would be ironic if this is how the AI 'bubble' pops.

Irattional things continue to be irrational i guess

I feel this is way over amplified to further restrict chinese models/open weights development by further controlling the company with a new CEO.. seriously, who cares what he’s doing in his personal life, I am not a big fan of him much as he should have made GPUs further more accessible to consumers, but he’s definitely not an evil AI lunatic like some AI ceo bros we see now.

Seems the sort of rumor anyone could produce.

I still don't understand why Jensen didn't just offer the lady involved a horse.

I mean, that's acceptable these days isn't it?

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Is there a archive.ph link? This article is paywalled.

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Any ousting will probably be for having an affair with a direct report. At many companies, having an 'inappropriate relationship with a customer' isn't a policy violation unless there's also evidence of undue influence, so it's more conditional and complicated. Whereas just the existence of an inappropriate relationship with a direct report is a serious violation.

From an HR and legal perspective, if Alice was a spy, Jensen was arguably the targeted 'victim' of a foreign intelligence operation. While it was certainly very dumb and negligent, it may not have been a policy violation or may only have been a violation of company policies like mishandling confidential information or not following IT security policies. Those aren't usually "Fire the CEO Now" things, while slamming the sheets with a direct report absolutely requires some kind of immediate action.

The real question is who wants Jensen gone? Because the first leak was clearly intentional and reportedly placed by 'senior White House sources', citing a confidential NSC report. Now the second leak of the inappropriate affair happens immediately after. This was a designed sequence. Both of the underlying events are several months old. Given the facts, I think the most likely source is 'China Trade/AI Hawks' in the White House (possibly the NSC). The reasoning being that Jensen has generally been trying to minimize restrictions on selling AI to China (which is, arguably, part of his job).

He has to go because he opposes restrictions to run Chinese open weight models on NVIDIAs GPUs. He said so in an Axios interview in July - "The industry needs open models, science needs open models, cybersecurity needs open models". [1]

[1] https://www.facebook.com/ChinainAus/videos/nvidia-ceo-jensen...

Good riddance. All these csuite people think they are so uniquely capable but if he gets kicked out nothing will change except we'll, hopefully, hear less about jackets at tech presentations.

Also to all the people saying how terrible this will be, would you really want someone running your company who can't keep his word to his wife? Maybe it is a quaint idea in 2026 but I think people who break their word shouldn't be trusted, particularly to be in positions of power.

CEO sleeps with customer. CEO sleeps with someone who reports to him. Time to go.

The reports that he had a second affair with a subordinate, if true, are disgusting and would lead to termination at any other company. He should not get a pass. How someone who has had so much success could have such poor judgement is a mystery to me. It’s sad, he accomplished so much.

What is the endgame of this completely cumbersome and obvious CIA journalist and intelligence community rollout of this narrative surrounding Jensen and Nvidia? Why would they nuke the credibility of America's only AI chip company and hand the future of AI to China? Do they actually think this will gain them control over AI?

https://x.com/ChinaSelect/status/2120253050845593723

Unless there’s an evidence of him being compromised, this is crazy. I’m total outsider and don’t know Nvidia copropare rule machinery, but from perceived perspective that feels like significant blow to the company.

I expect shit show funnier than when OpenAI tried to put Altman with same result.

I'm not sure what the big deal is. Eric Swalwell slept with a Chinese spy and he was part of the government at the time.

He wasn't punished nor fired over it. It seems when a Democrat does something like this, everyone looks the other way.

There are many such cases, which makes the pearl clutching much less convincing.

I wonder if Trump will retaliate against Nvidia. Neither (firing, retaliating) would be good for the world economy.

The NYT reports that Huang was caught on video with this second affair when they were together in San Jose.

Seems like this video and the first affair with the spy was a classic blackmail operation used against him as I said before [0] and Huang likely said no to the wrong person.

It is over.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50417105

It:s because he's close to Trump.

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