Jensen Huang resigns as chief executive of Nvidia, the company he co-founded and led for 33 years, after a week of damaging reports about his personal relationships, including an alleged affair with a businesswoman whom US intelligence suspects of spying for China.
In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday, 12 November, Nvidia said Huang had stepped down as president, chief executive and board member with immediate effect. The company gave no reason for his departure. Chief financial officer Colette Kress has been named interim CEO while the board searches for a permanent successor.
Why Jensen Huang resigns now
The crisis began last month when The New York Times reported that US intelligence agencies had found Huang had a close relationship with Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, a former executive of Singapore-based company Megaspeed, and had concluded that she was passing information to Beijing, the Boston Globe reported. The two are not related.
On Sunday, Huang admitted in an email to staff that he had been unfaithful to his wife and apologised to his family and employees. Nvidia’s board initially backed him and opened an independent investigation into whether he had been targeted by a foreign intelligence effort, saying it had no reason to believe national security or company secrets had been compromised, Al Jazeera and the Globe reported.
Pressure grew on Wednesday when the Times and Reuters reported that Huang had also had a relationship with a senior Nvidia executive who reported directly to him, and Reuters said the board was meeting to consider his future. He resigned the next day.
What the allegations do and do not show
The espionage claims remain allegations. There is no established evidence that Huang knowingly helped Beijing or that Nvidia secrets were leaked, Al Jazeera noted, and no charges have been announced. China’s Foreign Ministry dismissed the spying claims as unsubstantiated and a smear. Singapore questioned Alice Huang last year during a probe into Megaspeed, which had been accused of illegally shipping Nvidia chips to China, but found insufficient evidence of a crime, according to the Boston Globe.
President Donald Trump, who was reportedly briefed on the intelligence before it became public, defended Huang as an honourable man and said the FBI was looking into the matter. He also suggested former Apple chief Tim Cook as a replacement. Lawmakers from both parties have called for further investigations.
Who is Colette Kress?
Kress has been Nvidia’s CFO since 2013 and will keep that role alongside the interim job. During her time as finance chief, Nvidia’s annual revenue has grown from about $4.1 billion to nearly $216 billion, Al Jazeera reported. She previously held finance roles at Texas Instruments, Microsoft and Cisco. “Our focus remains on serving our customers, partners, developers and shareholders,” she said in Nvidia’s statement.
The board also named Harvey C. Jones, a former chief executive of chip-design firm Synopsys, as Nvidia’s first-ever board chair. Nvidia said it would consider internal and external candidates for the top job.
Market reaction and what comes next
Nvidia shares closed down more than 4% on Thursday after a sharper fall earlier in the day, the Globe reported. The company, whose chips power much of the global artificial intelligence boom, is among the most valuable in the world, and Huang, with his trademark leather jacket, had become the face of the AI industry.
Attention now turns to the board’s internal investigation, any FBI inquiry, and whether the episode leads to tighter US controls on chip exports to China. Malaysia has also said it is investigating whether chips imported by Megaspeed or an affiliate were re-exported.
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Sources: Nvidia SEC filing, Boston Globe, Al Jazeera, The New York Times, Reuters, The Washington Post, NBC News.
