Live Updates: Jensen Huang Resigns From Nvidia After Affairs

 

Live Updates: Jensen Huang Resigns From Nvidia After Affairs

 

Mr. Huang, the founder of the chip-making colossus, had been entangled with a woman identified by U.S. intelligence as a Chinese spy. His departure immediately reverberated through the tech industry.

 

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Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, at a conference in San Jose, Calif., in March.Credit...Manuel Orbegozo for The New York Times

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Nov. 12, 2026, 11:28 a.m. ET2 minutes ago

Tripp Mickle and Maggie Haberman

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/11/12/business/nvidia-jensen-huang-resigns#nvidia-jensen-huang-ceo-affairs

 

Here’s the latest.

Jensen Huang, the co-founder and chief executive of the Silicon Valley chip giant Nvidia, resigned on Thursday, according to the company’s board of directors, capping a swift, stunning fall of one of the most powerful figures in the A.I. boom. His departure came after revelations that he had extramarital affairs with an executive who reported to him and with a woman whom U.S. intelligence agencies concluded was spying for China.

President Trump, who had defended Mr. Huang over the past week, praised him for doing a “fantastic job” atop the Nvidia, which entered a moment of uncertainty without the celebrity C.E.O. whose departure immediately reverberated through the global economy.

Colette Kress, Nvidia’s chief financial officer, will serve as interim chief executive while the search for a permanent replacement is carried out, Nvidia’s 10-member board said in a statement.

Nvidia controls an estimated 90 percent of the market for the advanced chips that are an essential component of artificial intelligence projects. Mr. Huang’s exit, which followed a lengthy board meeting on Wednesday, will have widespread ripple effects. Shares of Nvidia, one of the world’s most valuable public companies, plunged at the start of trading, weighing on the broader market.

Nvidia, long a maker of graphics chips, became a linchpin of A.I. development in recent years, which put it at the center of the U.S.-China tussle for dominance in the sector.

A series of reports by The New York Times showed that Mr. Huang, 63, had an affair with a Chinese businesswoman who goes by Alice Huang, who had been recruited by China’s main spy agency to gather information on Mr. Huang. The Times also reported that Mr. Trump had been warned about the relationship but took no action.

U.S. officials suspect that Megaspeed, the Singaporean company where Ms. Huang was a top executive, has helped smuggle restricted chips into China. Ms. Huang has not responded to requests for comment, and China has rejected the espionage claims and called the smuggling allegations “smears.”

Nvidia’s board, which has had a long track record of deference to its chief executive, did not mention Mr. Huang’s conduct in its statement. It called his contributions to Nvidia “profound” and thanked him for his “immeasurable contributions to the company and the industry.”

While the board begins its search for the company’s next leader, Mr. Trump had his own idea: Tim Cook, the former chief executive of Apple. “A Legend replaces a Legend!” he wrote on social media.

Here’s what else to know:

• Another affair: Mr. Huang had a second extramarital relationship with an executive who reported to him, according to five people who worked at the company, The Times reported on Wednesday. He is the latest member to join a growing club of chief executives brought down by affairs.
• A long-term strategy: China’s intelligence services have for decades used romantic entanglements to compromise or extract information from prominent people. Although the use of seduction in espionage is not unique to China, the country’s use of it differs in the amount of time it is willing to invest. Read more ›
• Economic fallout: Mr. Huang’s departure could affect the economy more broadly than a typical C.E.O. departure. He ran Nvidia almost single-handedly and was unusually central its success. Nvidia, in turn, has been unusually central to the artificial intelligence boom, a crucial driver of U.S. economic growth while some other sectors have been struggling. Read more ›
• Huang and Trump: Few tech executives have has as much sway with Mr. Trump, who has called Mr. Huang an “honorable man” and said he believed that Mr. Huang was not aware he had been involved with a Chinese spy. The president is scheduled to travel to China next week, and he said on Monday that he did not plan to bring up the Nvidia matter in talks with China’s leader, Xi Jinping.