Nvidia board weighs removing Jensen Huang after reports of a second affair

Nvidia's board is preparing to remove chief executive Jensen Huang, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the plans on Wednesday, November 11. CNBC confirmed late Wednesday that the board was meeting to decide his future. As of the latest reports, no decision had been announced.

Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and has led it since. The company makes the chips that most large AI systems are trained and run on. A change at the top would come in the middle of a national-security inquiry and a week before quarterly results, and Nvidia has no disclosed succession plan.

Two sets of allegations

The crisis began with reporting by the Financial Times and The New York Times about Huang's ties to Alice Huang (no relation), an executive at Megaspeed International, a Singapore-based company. According to CBS News, U.S. intelligence agencies suspect her of being an asset of China's Ministry of State Security. CBS reports that Megaspeed has been one of Nvidia's largest foreign customers and has bought nearly $5 billion in AI chips and other hardware. China has denied the allegations and called them baseless smears, according to ABC News.

On Sunday, November 8, Huang wrote to employees that he had been unfaithful to his wife. "There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry," he wrote. He did not name anyone. CBS reports that President Trump has said the FBI is investigating the romantic and business ties between the two.

On Wednesday, The New York Times reported a second alleged affair, this one with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of health care, who reports to Huang. Two unnamed sources told the Times that the two were caught on video together at a San Jose hotel during Nvidia's GTC developer conference in March. The Times said it had not seen the video. Both are married to other people. According to CNBC, a former employee said rumours of the relationship had circulated for years. Nvidia and Powell did not respond to CNBC's requests for comment.

How the board's position changed

On November 8, Nvidia's board announced an independent investigation after reports that Huang had been targeted by a foreign intelligence effort. A committee of independent directors, working with outside counsel, oversees it. The company has said it hired former U.S. attorney Joon H. Kim and his firm, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. In that statement the board said it had no reason to believe national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised, and it expressed confidence in Huang and his leadership team.

Three days later, the Journal reported that the board was preparing to act before the investigation finishes. Nvidia has 11 directors, and all of them except Huang are independent. Under the company's bylaws, a majority of directors can remove the CEO with or without cause, according to Reuters reporting cited by France 24. Corporate governance experts told CBS News that the relationship with Alice Huang appears to violate Nvidia's code of conduct on conflicts of interest.

Pressure is also coming from outside. ABC News reports that congressional Republicans have asked Huang for a closed-door briefing on November 18, and Rep. Brian Mast has said he is prepared to subpoena him. CBS reports that lawmakers also want to question Nvidia executives about whether its chips are reaching China through other countries.

Markets and succession

Nvidia shares fell between 7 and 9 percent in after-hours trading on Wednesday, depending on the outlet and the time of the report. CBS put the price at $159.51. The broadcaster reports that the company has lost more than $450 billion in market value since it announced the probe on November 8. France 24 reports that Nasdaq futures fell about 1 percent and that CoreWeave, which rents out Nvidia-based compute, fell 6 percent, while AMD and Broadcom rose.

The company has no named successor. Bloomberg reported that the board has been working with an outside firm to identify possible replacements. Analysts quoted by CBS were blunt. Dan Ives of Yorkville Ives said, "Jensen is not replaceable by another CEO or group of interim executives." According to CNBC, Huang and his wife hold about 800 million shares in trusts, and he personally owns about 70 million more. France 24 puts his stake at about 3.6 percent of the company. Nvidia reports quarterly results on November 17.

What it means for work

Nothing about Nvidia's products changes overnight. Chips already ordered, the CUDA software stack and current roadmaps do not depend on one board vote. What may change is how decisions get made. Huang has personally set Nvidia's product priorities, its customer relationships and its approach to export rules, and a successor or interim team would have to rebuild that authority while an FBI inquiry and congressional questions are still open. For AI labs and cloud providers, the practical work over the coming weeks is planning for uncertainty: watching allocation and pricing commitments, and the scrutiny of overseas buyers like Megaspeed, which may tighten whoever leads. Open questions remain: whether the board acts before its own investigation ends, who would run the company, and whether the November 17 results bring answers on any of this.