Jensen Huang, who is 63 years old and the founder of Nvidia Corporation, resigned from his post as CEO and board member of the company on Thursday, November 12, 2026. NBC said that he was forced to step down due to an extramarital affair which posed national security threats. CFO Colette Kress will be acting CEO.
At the start of November, news outlet Al Jazeera reported that Huang has admitted having an affair with a woman alleged of being a spy for China. Sources cited in this article say she is named Alice Huang. This is an accusation and none of the sources cited here reported any findings on her part. Reports also say Huang apologized to his wife and wrote to the employees regarding the issue.
According to San Francisco Standard, which reported on November 8, Nvidia’s board initiated the investigation. Other media outlets reported that Nvidia hired the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to conduct the probe. Media coverage connected the scandal with a sharp decline in Nvidia’s market valuation with some reports suggesting losses exceeding $500 billion, although that information is from an external source.
In addition to the first relationship before his resignation, it was reported there was a second one involving an executive who works for Nvidia and also answers to Huang. According to TechCrunch, the executive in question is a vice president of the healthcare division of the company. As this piece of writing is based on news articles, the name of the executive cannot be provided because this is merely an allegation.
According to TechCrunch, Huang is willing to give evidence before Congress regarding the consequences of his affair with Alice Huang for the national security. Analysts and experts already discuss how his resignation will influence Nvidia's business model, their promotion of open-source AI, and the entire AI industry, considering the fact that the company provides hardware for most of the existing AI technologies.
