Nvidia board reportedly prepares to oust CEO Jensen Huang over affair reports

Nvidia's board is preparing to dismiss co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang and could meet as soon as Wednesday to decide his future at the company, the Wall Street Journal reported late Wednesday. The potential ouster caps a week of escalating scandal: an admitted affair with a woman U.S. intelligence reportedly links to Chinese espionage, followed by a New York Times report of a second alleged affair with an executive who reports directly to him.

The board's decision

According to the Journal, whose report was covered by TechCrunch and The Verge, the board could vote on Huang's fate within a day. Nvidia has retained former U.S. attorney Joon H. Kim and the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to investigate the first affair, and The Verge notes that the board's apparent readiness to act before that investigation concludes marks a sharp escalation. Nvidia did not immediately respond to requests for comment from either outlet.

A second alleged affair

The catalyst for the board's move was a Wednesday evening report from the New York Times, which said Huang is now suspected of a second extramarital relationship, with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of healthcare, a direct report. Both are married to other people, the Times says.

Five Nvidia employees described the alleged relationship to the paper, according to TechCrunch. The Verge reports that two unnamed sources said the pair were captured on video at a San Jose hotel during Nvidia's GTC developer conference in March, and that the Times has not seen the video itself.

The Times notes that Nvidia, like many companies, discourages relationships between superiors and subordinates. Rumors of an affair between the two had circulated inside the company for some time, an unnamed source told CNBC, partly because Powell does not come from a health or science background.

From spy scandal to congressional pressure

On Sunday, Huang admitted to an extramarital affair with a woman purported by U.S. intelligence to be a Chinese spy; The Verge identifies her as Alice Huang, an executive at a company called Megaspeed. Nvidia's board opened an investigation over the weekend and brought in outside counsel.

The scrutiny now extends beyond the boardroom. Two House Republicans said Wednesday that Congress is preparing to subpoena Huang over the spy allegations if he does not voluntarily appear for a closed-door briefing, TechCrunch reports.

Wired, meanwhile, reported last year that Huang had already retained Heller, a crisis communications firm known for handling public sex scandals, whose founder has advised figures including former congressman Anthony Weiner and writer Jeffrey Toobin.

Stock slide and a succession vacuum

Investors reacted swiftly. Nvidia shares fell more than 7% in after-hours trading Wednesday, according to The Verge; TechCrunch put the drop at about 8% and noted the stock is down roughly 11% over the past five days.

Any dismissal would be unprecedented for the company. Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and has led it for 33 years. He famously delegates very little, with roughly 60 direct reports by his own account, and the company has no obvious successor or succession plan in place, as TechCrunch notes.

Why it matters

Nvidia is one of the most valuable companies in the world and supplies the chips that underpin the AI boom. Its roadmap, pricing and supply decisions shape the plans of cloud providers, AI labs and governments alike. Removing a founder who has concentrated that much authority, with no heir apparent waiting, would inject leadership uncertainty into a company that much of the industry treats as critical infrastructure. It would also set a high-profile precedent for how boards handle founder misconduct while investigations are still pending, and for how quickly shareholders, employees and Congress expect them to act. Much remains unconfirmed: the alleged second affair rests on unnamed sources and a video the Times has not seen, and neither Nvidia nor the board has publicly commented.