TOI correspondent from Washington: For 33 years, Jensen Huang held all the chips. He proved less adept at keeping his private life under wraps. On Thursday, the man who powered the AI revolution resigned as CEO of Nvidia, the company he founded and catapulted to a global #1, after a second extra-marital affair, this one with a company associate, surfaced in the media even as the first one with an alleged Chinese spy was roiling the tech and geo-political world.“Nvidia board of directors announced today that Jensen Huang has resigned as President, CEO, and a member of the Board, effective immediately,” the company said in a statement, adding that Colette Kress, current Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Nvidia, has agreed to serve as Interim CEO until a permanent successor has been named. It said the Board is initiating a search for a permanent CEO and will consider internal and external candidates.“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,” the statement said. Nvidia’s ten-member board includes Indian-American Aarti Shah, formerly of Eli Lilly.Indeed, Huang, Nvidia’s only CEO since its founding in 1993, was synonymous with the company that he built into the world’s most valuable semiconductor business, in the process becoming the indispensable impresario of the AI revolution. But apparently, bossing over AI and chips was easier than processing moral clarity when it came to relationships.On Wednesday evening, even as the tech and political world was still grappling with the purported Chinese honeytrap that the Nvidia honcho fell into, the New York Times reported a second extramarital affair allegedly with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice-president of healthcare, who reported directly to Huang. There was no coming back from this one.The company board initially appeared to stand by him following glowing testimonials from President Trump, who repeatedly vouched for his character despite reports of his being entrapped by a Chinese spy.The Nvidia board’s November 8 statement had struck a reassuring note, expressing confidence in Huang and asserting there was no reason to believe that Nvidia’s national security or corporate secrets had been compromised, while announcing an independent investigation into the matter. Four days later, the confidence evaporated after the second alleged affair, which company insiders were apparently aware of, leaked it to the NYT.Beyond the turmoil in Nvidia, where Huang’s two adult children Madison and Spencer have director-level roles, there is now considerable embarrassment for President Trump, who invested political capital vouching for Huang’s character. He called him an “honorable man” and a “great guy who… has done an amazing job for our country.” Hours after Huang quit, Trump did not address the scandal but said in a post on Truth Social, “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. A Legend replaces a Legend!”But the fallout from the scandal goes beyond the Nvidia boardroom and the tech world. It is already shaking up Washington’s political establishment, drawing in Trump’s cabinet secretaries some of whom were at odds with each other as intelligence reports emerged over the past year of Huang’s affair with the alleged Chinese spy. Democrats are also champing at the bit to begin investigations and hearings into the matter.According to several accounts, it was secretary of state Marco Rubio, who is also the US national security advisor, who supervised a classified intelligence memorandum warning the administration about Huang’s relationship with an alleged Chinese spy. Rubio is also reported to have personally briefed Trump aboard Air Force One in May, before Huang joined the presidential delegation in Alaska for the onward flight to China.Trump not only allowed his favoured technology executive to travel with him to China but continued to give him character certificates, and his subsequent claim that he had not known about the intelligence concerns has now become an uncomfortable subject of scrutiny.The controversy has also drawn in two other cabinet secretaries: commerce secretary Howard Lutnick and treasury secretary Scott Bessent. According to a report in Axios, Bessent raised the question of the administration’s failure to place Megaspeed, alleged to be a front company Alice Huang worked for, on the Commerce Department’s Entity List, which would restrict its access to American technology. Lutnick, who like Huang has argued that excessive restrictions risk sacrificing commercial opportunities and provoking a trade war, reportedly muttered that he needed to check with Trump.Trump himself has been careful about ratcheting up temperature on the affair given an upcoming meeting next week with China’s President Xi Jinping at the APEC summit in Shenzhen, and Nvidia’s criticality to not just American tech primacy but also to the US stock market, a Trump obsession which he seems to believe is an indicator of economic health.Nvidia is not simply a chip manufacturer; its graphics processors are the picks and shovels of the AI gold rush, powering the data centers and frontier models being built by Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta and an expanding universe of AI companies. The AI boom itself has become a central engine of the US stock-market growth. Nvidia’s extraordinary appreciation, the enormous capital expenditure by hyperscalers, and the enthusiasm surrounding generative AI have helped drive technology valuations and major US indices. Nvidia had gained more than 1,700 per cent over the past four years before the recent reversal.Nvidia stock fell almost 10 per cent following Huang’s resignation before recovering, even as the broader market weathered the storm — for now.
