Jensen Huang, the billionaire co-founder of tech firm Nvidia, resigned as CEO after allegations of extramarital affairs including with an alleged Chinese spy rocked his company.
The 63-year-old’s departure comes in the wake of a scandal that has wiped an estimated $500 billion off the chipmaker’s market value, with share prices plunging 12 percent to start Thursday. However, they have rebounded some ad were down 5 percent by midday.
One of the world’s richest men, Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993, which is now at the heart of the AI revolution. He is the company’s fourth-largest investor with a stake of about 3.61 percent, and will exit the Nvidia board with immediate effect, the company announced Thursday.
“Jensen’s contributions to Nvidia are profound. Nvidia is one of the most consequential technology companies in the world. The board and the company thank Jensen for his immeasurable contributions to the company and the industry,” Nvidia said in a statement.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who is close to Huang, suggested former Apple CEO Tim Cook should replace him.
“NOW THAT Nvidia CEO JENSEN HUANG, who has done a fantastic job, has resigned, there is only one man to take his place - TIM COOK of Apple,” Trump posted Thursday on Truth Social. “A Legend replaces a Legend!”
When the board announced Huang’s resignation early Thursday it also stated that Colette Kress, Nvidia’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, would serve as interim CEO.
“The Board, Estaff (executive staff) and I recognize that this has been an extraordinarily difficult period,” Kress wrote in a memo to employees, adding the company will host a meeting on November 18.
Huang’s problems began when The New York Times reported he had had an affair with former Megaspeed director Alice Huang — no relation — whom U.S. intelligence has said facilitated shipments of Nvidia’s microchips to Chinese firms as part of a foreign intelligence operation.
The newspaper subsequently alleged that the executive had also had a relationship with Kimberly Powell, his company’s vice president of healthcare, who is also married.
After the first of the infidelities was disclosed, the executive sent a memo to Nvidia employees Sunday admitting he had been unfaithful to his wife of 40 years, Lori Huang, and said he was “deeply sorry” for the hurt he had case without going into details. Nvidia’s board responded by launching an internal investigation.
China meanwhile denied the espionage claims, calling them “purely unsubstantiated and directed at smearing China.”
Huang’s exit creates a leadership vacuum at the $4 trillion chipmaker, that is the driving force behind the global AI boom and at the heart of the big tech arms race between the U.S. and China.
For years, Nvidia was best known to video gamers for helping produce top-tier graphics. But its chips' ability to perform many calculations at once has made them a strategic prize in the US-China race to dominate AI technology. It also made Nvidia the world's most valuable company.
The success turned Huang into a rock-star CEO, mobbed by fans in Taiwan and South Korea who would ask him to sign books, posters and even their bodies.
Prior to the announcement, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, an expert on corporate governance at Yale School of Management, told NBC News the scandal meant Huang had “lost his legitimacy to lead internally in the eyes of the company, and he’s lost his external credibility in the eyes of key constituents, including customers.”
Before the resignation, fellow tech boss Elon Musk said it would be “an honor” to hire Huang, the pair having previously worked together on Tesla, xAI and space-based data center projects.
The world’s richest man recently said of Huang, “old friends are the best friends,” adding: “Jensen rocks.”
It is not yet clear whether Huang’s extramarital affairs will end his marriage. Forbes has estimated Lori Huang could receive a windfall of at least $75 billion if the couple does divorce, putting her in an exclusive tech billionaire ex-wives’ club that also includes Melinda French Gates and MacKenzie Scott.
The scandal has also reverberated in Washington, D.C., with reports that Trump was warned about Huang’s compromised position by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in May when the executive joined their visit to Beijing.
Earlier this week, Trump said he had “absolutely no idea” that the first reported affair was with a suspected Chinese spy.
“I think he's an honorable guy," Trump said, adding that Huang had “done an amazing job for our country.”
Republican leaders of three House committees have meanwhile called for Huang to deliver closed-door testimony on his interactions with the alleged intelligence asset. Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren and Chris Coons have written to Trump’s commerce secretary Howard Lutnick to demand that all company records relating to Nvidia’s dealings with China be preserved.
Nvidia has started a search for a new permanent CEO and said it had full confidence in Kress, the interim leader.
“Colette has helped lead Nvidia through a period of extraordinary growth and has a deep understanding of our business, customers, operations and financial position,” said Harvey Jones, chair of Nvidia’s board of directors.
“The board has full confidence in Colette and the leadership team, and we expect the company’s operations, customer commitments and product roadmap to continue without interruption.”
Rhian Lubin contributed to this report from New York
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