Nvidia Chief Jensen Huang Resigns Amid Spy Probe and Multiple Affairs

Nvidia co-founder Jensen Huang has resigned as chief executive officer after admitting to multiple extramarital affairs, triggering an 11% drop in stock value and raising urgent national security concerns in the United States and China.

Investigations And Revelations

U.S. officials believe one of Huang's romantic interests, Megaspeed executive Alice Huang, is a Chinese spy who fed information back to Beijing. Megaspeed is a Singapore-based AI infrastructure firm that purchased $4.8 billion in Nvidia chips over two years, and the Justice Department has taken over an investigation into whether the firm illegally shared chips with China. The New York Times reported that Huang also had an extramarital relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of healthcare, who reported directly to him. Reuters later published a report alleging a third affair with another unnamed Nvidia employee.

Political Fallout

Following these disclosures, lawmakers took swift action. Representative Richard Neal and Senator Ron Wyden sent a scathing letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick demanding an investigation into how the administration handled chip sales, noting that despite being briefed on Huang's relationship last fall, President Trump granted Nvidia permission to sell advanced H200 AI chips to China in December 2025 for a cut of export sales. Senator Tim Scott requested that both Huang and Lutnick testify before the Senate Banking Committee. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast confirmed that Huang agreed to testify in Congress before Thanksgiving on November 26, though House China Committee Chairman John Moolenaar warned that Huang could face a subpoena if he failed to appear for a closed-door briefing.

Leadership Changes

Nvidia's board accepted Huang's resignation on Wednesday. Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress has taken over as interim CEO while maintaining her CFO duties as the board searches for a permanent successor. Harvey C. Jones, a managing partner of Square Wave Ventures and former CEO of Synopsys who has served on Nvidia's board since 1993, was appointed as the company's first-ever chair of the board of directors. Meanwhile, The Guardian reported that Nvidia shares plunged 13% in early trading following the news, and the company faces heightened scrutiny over its murky corporate contracts, supply chains, and complex financing of neocloud firms.

Context

Nvidia designs and sells the advanced graphics processing units that underpin the global AI economy, making its leadership and chip allocation vital to both American and international technological infrastructure. The company's unique position in the artificial intelligence sector has intertwined its corporate decisions with broader geopolitical competition between the U.S. and China.