NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has become something of a celebrity in recent years, thanks to the AI boom that turned his PC hardware company into a trillion-dollar global powerhouse. But now, something much less flattering has put him back in the spotlight. After admitting to cheating on his wife, Huang has resigned from NVIDIA amid two affair scandals. To make things even messier, one of them involves a suspected Chinese spy.
According to the Financial Times, Huang has resigned after more than 33 years running the tech company he co-founded. The first — and biggest — of the two scandals involves Alice Huang, a businesswoman whom US authorities reportedly suspect of having ties to Chinese intelligence. But as it turns out, the affair is just one-third of the story.
Alice previously served as managing director of Megaspeed, a Singapore-based cloud computing company with roots in Chinese gaming company 7Road. Megaspeed and its affiliates reportedly bought a whopping $4.8 billion worth of NVIDIA chips and equipment over roughly two years.
A conflict of interest is one thing, but things get even shadier. Bloomberg reported that NVIDIA’s own legal chief ‘intervened’ in an investigation into Megaspeed, which was suspected of diverting restricted AI chips to China. Investigators later were said to face unusual restrictions, although it’s unclear whether NVIDIA had anything to do with it. The controversy even dragged New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez into the conversation. She called the suspected breach a ‘tremendous national security threat’ and said it needs to be investigated.
Huang, who has been married for around 40 years, admitted the accusation and apologized to his wife and children in a statement back on November 8. But as if one affair and a Netflix documentary plot weren’t enough, another report shows up. Allegedly, Huang had also been romantically involved with Kimberly Powell, NVIDIA’s vice president of healthcare.
Nevertheless, buried beneath all the globe-spanning tech drama and spy intrigue is a continuing concern for gamers. “This will not make GPUs any cheaper,” remarked one Reddit user. Another joked, “u thought the gpu [market] is #@&$%*? that was just the intro lol.” Others aren’t exactly optimistic about the future of gaming PC either. “I can almost guarantee the new CEO will be worse than Jensen,” wrote another commenter. “[…] the new CEO will be more aggressive towards AI and data centers and somehow make the gaming side of things way worse or almost nonexistent.”
For now, NVIDIA CFO Colette Kress is taking over as interim CEO while the company looks for a permanent replacement. If gamers are hoping for a change of direction, don’t hold your breath — Kress previously worked in Microsoft’s server and tools division. So if you’re worried NVIDIA might lean even harder into AI and data centers, you’ll know soon enough.
