> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.implicator.ai/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # New Affair Report Pushes Nvidia Board Toward Ousting Huang - URL: https://www.implicator.ai/nvidia-board-huang-ouster-second-affair-report/ - Published: 2026-11-12T01:13:28.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-12T01:15:50.000Z - Description: $4.8 billion — Nvidia chips bought since June 2024 by Megaspeed, the customer at the center of the Huang probe - Author: Marcus Schuler - Tags: AI News, #one-number When The New York Times reached Jensen Huang by phone Wednesday and asked about a reported relationship, he said, “I don’t think you should be talking to me directly.” He then hung up. In March, at a San Jose hotel where Nvidia executives were meeting during the company’s developer conference, a bystander recorded an affectionate encounter involving Huang on a phone, people briefed on the incident said. Huang’s security detail spotted the bystander and sequestered the person, then offered a nondisclosure agreement. The account became public Wednesday. A new account of Huang’s private conduct adds a workplace allegation to an investigation that began with Huang’s acknowledged affair with a businesswoman whom U.S. officials identified as a Chinese intelligence asset. Directors are also examining whether company secrets or national security were compromised. By Wednesday evening, his own board was meeting to decide whether he keeps the job he has held since 1993. What Changed - Five people who worked at Nvidia say Jensen Huang had an extramarital relationship with the company's vice president of health care, who reports to him. Neither Huang nor Nvidia has confirmed it. - Nvidia's board met Wednesday, Nov. 11, to decide Huang's future and is working with an outside firm to identify possible replacements. No decision had been announced. - Nvidia shares fell about 8% in after-hours trading Wednesday. - Huang has roughly 60 direct reports and no designated successor, and governance scholars disagree on whether the board should remove him. AI-generated summary, reviewed by an editor. [More on our AI guidelines](https://www.implicator.ai/about/). ## The workplace allegation Huang had an extramarital relationship with Nvidia’s vice president of health care, according to five people who worked at the company and spoke anonymously about sensitive information. Both are married to other people. The executive reports directly to Huang, who is 63. The Times [first reported the relationship](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/11/technology/jensen-huang-nvidia-affair.html?ref=implicator.ai). It has not seen the video. According to two of the people who worked at the company, the March video shows Huang and the vice president being affectionate. People briefed on the hotel incident described the bystander’s recording and the security detail’s response; the public account does not establish whether the person signed the proposed agreement. Nvidia declined to provide a statement. The executive did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The allegation concerns a relationship discussed inside Nvidia, the people said. Neither Huang nor the company has confirmed it. A relationship with a direct report presents a governance problem because the chief executive holds authority over the other employee’s work. Nvidia’s [code of conduct](https://images.nvidia.com/aem-dam/en-zz/Solutions/about-us/NVIDIA-Code-of-Conduct-External.pdf?ref=implicator.ai) tells employees to “avoid situations where our actions create conflict,” including “personal relationships.” It says the company “promptly investigates reports of misconduct.” There are precedents for removing a company’s leader over such conduct. Brian Krzanich resigned as Intel’s chief executive in 2018 after acknowledging a “past consensual relationship” with an employee. McDonald’s removed Steve Easterbrook in 2019 and later sued him after discovering sexual relationships with multiple employees that violated corporate policies. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Nvidia’s board was [preparing to oust Huang](https://www.wsj.com/business/nvidia-is-preparing-to-oust-nvidia-ceo-jensen-huang-30f421ad?ref=implicator.ai). Shares fell about 8% in after-hours trading Wednesday. The board had announced no decision. ## The independent investigation Joon Kim, the former acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan, is leading the company’s investigation. The 55-year-old joined Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz last month. Independent directors retained him and the firm to investigate whether Huang had been targeted by a foreign intelligence effort. Kim has worked on allegations against powerful people before. He pursued the case against former congressman Anthony Weiner and helped lead the sexual harassment investigation that preceded New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s resignation in 2021\. He also worked on Nissan’s investigation into former chief executive Carlos Ghosn. Wachtell also advises OpenAI, a major Nvidia customer and a company in which Nvidia has invested. The law firm’s deal advisers are working on OpenAI’s pending initial public offering. Nvidia supplies the chips used in the data centers running OpenAI’s models and helps finance that construction. At Nvidia, his assignment began with Alice Huang, a businesswoman affiliated with Singapore-based chip buyer Megaspeed. She and Jensen Huang are not related. U.S. officials concluded she was gathering intelligence for Beijing. China denies the espionage claims, and Alice Huang has not responded to requests for comment. By Nov. 11, Megaspeed had bought more than $4.8 billion in Nvidia chips since June 2024 and had been under Commerce Department investigation since late 2024 over suspected diversion of chips to China. In a Dec. 23, 2025, statement, Megaspeed said investigations found no evidence of violations. Huang acknowledged infidelity in his letter to employees Sunday. “I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did,” he wrote. “I am deeply sorry.” Before that admission, Huang and company representatives had denied an affair. In late October, an Nvidia spokesman said there was nothing “unusual or unexpected” about the relationship. When the board announced its investigation Sunday, it expressed confidence in him and said it had no reason to believe national security or Nvidia secrets had been compromised. FREE AI BRIEFING · WEEKDAYS Follow the Nvidia leadership fight as it unfolds. Get the AI stories shaping the day, with concise context from San Francisco. The briefing takes about five minutes and arrives at 4:45 a.m. Pacific, 7:45 a.m. Eastern. Email address Keep me informed Check your inbox for the confirmation link. Free. No hype. Unsubscribe anytime. The Justice Department is separately leading investigations involving Alice Huang. President Trump said Monday that the FBI was looking into the matter. Nothing in the public record establishes that Jensen Huang personally arranged or knew about illegal chip diversions, and neither he nor Nvidia has been charged. Sen. Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican on the Senate banking committee, repeated Wednesday his call for Huang to resign. His concern was the possibility that the relationship had exposed the executive to pressure. “This is a guy that’s right now so vulnerable to extortion, blackmail. I just don’t think, as a national security matter, we can run the risk,” Cramer said. “Jensen Huang should resign from Nvidia,” said Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, a Virginia Democrat on the House Oversight Committee. The China question Was Huang the enabler of chip smuggling to China? Nothing in the public record shows that Huang personally arranged, approved or knew of chip diversion. Neither he nor Nvidia has been charged. By Nov. 11, reported Megaspeed purchases since June 2024 exceeded $4.8 billion in Nvidia chips. The Justice Department asked the Commerce Department to pause its part of an investigation opened in late 2024, and the Justice Department now leads. U.S. investigators allege, in accounts published this week, that Alice Huang used industry contacts and shell companies to obtain 240,000 chips barred from export to China. Megaspeed is being investigated in the U.S. and Singapore over whether those chips were smuggled there. Nvidia said in October 2025 that inspections found no diversion and in October 2026 that allegations were “thoroughly investigated and debunked.” Accounts published Nov. 9 and 10 describe Nvidia’s general counsel contacting Commerce for information before the Justice Department asked Commerce to pause its part of the investigation. Huang publicly opposed export controls, arguing in May 2025 that competitors would replace Nvidia if it left China. In the separate Supermicro case, federal prosecutors in March 2026 charged individuals over alleged server shipments to China; Nvidia is not accused. Megaspeed’s Dec. 23, 2025, statement said investigations found no evidence of violations. China rejected the espionage allegations again Monday. Alice Huang and Jensen Huang are unrelated; U.S. officials concluded she gathered intelligence for Beijing, and she has not responded to requests for comment. Whether any chips reached China through Megaspeed has not been established publicly. ## The board and its disclosures Nvidia’s directors have worked with Huang for much of the company’s history. Of its board members in 2026, three, including Huang, have served continuously since its founding. Another joined in 1997\. Director Mark Stevens served from 1993 to 2006, then returned in 2008. The company has no board chair. Huang works with lead independent director Stephen Neal, a former law-firm executive, to set meeting agendas. Management prepares the information directors receive. Neal can also call meetings of the independent directors without Huang. As of this week, none of Nvidia’s directors was a current or former chief executive of an S&P 500 company, and none had national security experience. Neal is 77\. The board’s average tenure was almost 15 years, nearly twice that of the average S&P 500 director. Nvidia classifies every director other than Huang as independent. Jill Fisch, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School, said lengthy service can weaken independence and breed complacency. “The board composition suggests this is… a CEO exercising effective control over the board instead of vice versa,” she said. Jo-Ellen Pozner, an associate professor of management at Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business, said, “They’ve become billionaires because of their affiliation and ownership of this company. And just working together with the same CEO since the inception of the organization makes it impossible for them to act as outsiders.” A proposed class action filed Tuesday alleges that Huang concealed his relationship with Alice Huang and that investors were misled about the national security concerns surrounding it. Those are allegations in a lawsuit. Gary Gensler, the former Securities and Exchange Commission chair under President Biden, said Monday that the reversal from denial to acknowledgment could be material to investors. “It appears \[Huang\] did mislead the public,” he said, referring to the earlier assurances that the dealings were normal. Nvidia’s stock had also been falling amid broader doubts about spending on AI infrastructure. The selloff cannot all be assigned to the allegations against Huang. Last week’s election results included measures that could make data centers harder to build, adding uncertainty for a company that supplies their chips. Timeline The rise and fall of Jensen Huang - 1963Born in Taiwan in 1963, Huang moved to the U.S. at nine, going ahead of his parents to live with an uncle in Tacoma, Washington. - 1970sHe washed dishes at a Denny’s in Portland at 15. - By 1985He had studied electrical engineering at Oregon State. He married his college sweetheart, Lori, in 1985. - 1993Huang founded Nvidia with Curtis Priem and Chris Malachowsky, planning the graphics-chip business at a Denny’s booth in San Jose. - 2016Nvidia had developed CUDA, software allowing programmers to use its chips for computing tasks beyond the video games that had sustained the company. Huang delivered Nvidia’s first AI supercomputer to Elon Musk, a co-founder of OpenAI, then a little-known research lab, before ChatGPT brought mass demand for AI computing. - 2024Nvidia was heading toward a $5 trillion valuation. By Nov. 11, 2026, its market value was more than $4 trillion. - May 2026Huang joined President Trump’s China trip, having built an alliance with the president while advocating looser restrictions on chip exports. - Oct. 29, 2026An intelligence finding became public: U.S. officials concluded Alice Huang, unrelated to Jensen Huang, was gathering intelligence for Beijing; China denies it, and she has not responded to requests for comment. - Nov. 8, 2026Huang acknowledged infidelity in a letter to staff, and the board announced an independent investigation while expressing confidence in him. - Nov. 11, 2026A relationship with a direct report was reported, directors met, and shares fell about 8% after hours. The board had announced no decision as of Wednesday evening. ## The case for keeping Huang Before Wednesday’s new report, Jason Schloetzer, an associate professor of accounting at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, expected the board to restrict Huang’s authority rather than dismiss him. “I don’t expect a ‘stay or go’ decision. It will be more like a ‘stay, with less,’” he said. His proposed response included appointing a clear second-in-command and communicating more openly about succession. Changes to board membership could signal stronger supervision while keeping Huang in charge. John C. Coffee Jr., a Columbia Law School professor who studies corporate governance, also described reasons for retaining him. Other companies had dismissed chief executives for infidelity, he said, but those executives may not have been as important to their businesses as Huang is to Nvidia. He was speaking earlier in the week about the first affair and whether Huang had compromised secrets, before Wednesday’s report about a subordinate. “It’s possible he was at most negligent,” Coffee said, “but negligence doesn’t require that you shoot yourself in the foot by firing a well regarded CEO.” Know someone who'd find this useful? [✉️ Email it to a friend in one click](mailto:?subject=A%20newsletter%20I%20think%20you%27d%20like&body=This%20is%20one%20of%20maybe%20three%20newsletters%20I%20actually%20read.%20The%20rest%20just%20pile%20up%2C%20unread%2C%20judging%20me.%0A%0AAnd%20yes%2C%20this%20email%20mostly%20wrote%20itself%2C%20which%20is%20a%20little%20on%20the%20nose%20for%20an%20AI%20newsletter.%20Doesn%27t%20make%20it%20wrong.%20implicator.ai%20is%20good.%0A%0ASubscribe%20free%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Fwww.implicator.ai%2Fsubscribe%2F%3Futm%5Fsource%3Dnewsletter%26utm%5Fmedium%3Dforward%26utm%5Fcampaign%3Demail%5Fforward), or they can [subscribe free here](https://www.implicator.ai/subscribe/?utm%5Fsource=newsletter&utm%5Fmedium=forward&utm%5Fcampaign=forward%5Fto%5Fcolleague). Huang has roughly 60 direct reports as of this week and no obvious deputy. Nvidia has no president or chief operating officer. Schloetzer said promoting an insider could prompt resentment among the executives passed over and lead to departures. “A horse race with 60 horses has no good solution,” he said. President Trump has publicly defended Huang. On Monday, he called him an “honorable guy” and said, “He’s done an amazing job for our country.” The president said Huang had told him he did not know Alice Huang was suspected of spying. Some investors see Huang’s continued leadership as a condition of owning Nvidia shares. Michael Monaghan, a partner at Founder ETFs, said his firm would sell its holdings if Huang departed, calling him in some ways “irreplaceable.” He pointed to Huang’s unusual combination of engineering ability and skill at making deals. An analyst assessing the stock’s decline Monday said investors were still assuming Huang would stay. “If we genuinely thought he was going to step down,” the analyst said, “it would be an absolute bloodbath.” That assessment preceded the reported relationship with a subordinate and Wednesday’s board meeting. The case for keeping Huang rests partly on the difficulty of replacing his authority over product decisions and customer commitments. ## The search for a replacement By Wednesday, directors were [working with an outside firm](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-11-11/nvidia-working-with-outside-firm-to-identify-ceo-candidates?ref=implicator.ai) to identify possible replacements, a person familiar with the situation said. They were considering a temporary chief executive while searching for a permanent appointment. No successor had been announced. Nvidia’s own [latest proxy statement](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1045810/000104581026000036/nvda-20260512.htm?ref=implicator.ai) says it is “highly dependent on the services of our longstanding executive team.” It warns that ineffective succession planning could “hinder our strategic planning, execution, and long-term success.” Huang has said he does not believe in succession planning and that leaders should pass on knowledge continuously. He has described a company organized around his ability to run it. In 2023, he said, “Our company was built so that I know how to run it.” He added, “So for as long as I’m running it, that’s all that matters.” Gil Luria, an analyst at D.A. Davidson, said the developments “hasten a transition the company is not prepared for.” Jay Goldberg of Seaport Research Partners said contracted demand would keep Nvidia’s business going, but a leadership change would increase the chance of a misstep. Directors would be choosing a leader while congressional committees seek testimony from Huang. House committee chairs [requested a closed-door appearance](https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-foreignaffairs.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/11.4.26nvidialetter.pdf?ref=implicator.ai) next Wednesday. On Wednesday afternoon, Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast said a subpoena was an option if Huang did not agree to appear. Lawmakers are considering tighter controls on advanced chip exports in the annual defense bill. Huang has been Nvidia’s leading advocate in Washington for allowing sales to China, and he has had direct access to President Trump. The company is also approaching its scheduled earnings report Tuesday. Nvidia’s next chief, if the board decides to replace Huang, would inherit the questions about earlier disclosures and the company’s dealings with Megaspeed. Schloetzer said that a failure to be candid with directors could cost Huang his position even if the board initially preferred keeping him under closer supervision. “Boards remove CEOs over candor issues,” he said. “What did he tell the directors, and when? Can he be trusted with board communications going forward?” Frequently Asked Questions What is the new allegation against Jensen Huang? Five people who worked at Nvidia say Huang had an extramarital relationship with the company's vice president of health care, who reports directly to him. Two of them say a video recorded at a San Jose hotel in March shows the two being affectionate. Neither Huang nor Nvidia has confirmed the relationship. Has Nvidia's board removed Huang? No decision had been announced as of Wednesday evening, Nov. 11\. Directors were meeting to decide his future and were working with an outside firm to identify possible replacements, including a temporary chief executive. Why does a relationship with a direct report matter? Nvidia's code of conduct tells employees to avoid situations that create conflict, including personal relationships. Intel's Brian Krzanich resigned in 2018 after acknowledging a past consensual relationship with an employee, and McDonald's removed Steve Easterbrook in 2019. Who is running Nvidia's internal investigation? Joon Kim, a 55-year-old former acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan who joined Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz last month. Independent directors retained him to investigate whether Huang was targeted by a foreign intelligence effort. What do experts say about keeping Huang? Before Wednesday's report, Georgetown's Jason Schloetzer expected the board to keep Huang with less authority, and Columbia's John C. Coffee Jr. said negligence would not require firing him. Schloetzer also said boards remove chief executives over candor issues. AI-generated summary, reviewed by an editor. [More on our AI guidelines](https://www.implicator.ai/about/). [Nvidia board probes Huang’s customer ties; Apple boss pushes Siri beyond repliesIMPLICATOR .ai Morning Briefing · From San Francisco Monday, November 9, 2026 9 stops From San Francisco 1 The Editorial Good morning. Today's three stories areThe Implicator![](https://www.implicator.ai/content/images/2026/11/20261108-191341-nl_crates_dock.webp)](https://www.implicator.ai/nvidia-board-probes-huang-apple-siri-artex/) [Nvidia Board Probes Huang After He Admits AffairOn Sunday, Nov. 8, Jensen Huang addressed Nvidia employees with an apology. “I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did.” The woman was a cusThe Implicator![](https://www.implicator.ai/content/images/2026/11/20261108-133514-nvidia_huang_inquiry.webp)](https://www.implicator.ai/nvidia-board-investigates-jensen-huang-megaspeed-tie/) [OPINION: Nvidia’s Board Must Break Its Dependence on HuangOn Nov. 8, Jensen Huang told Nvidia employees, “I was unfaithful to my wife.” In an Oct. 29 interview, he had called his contact with a customer executive “completely normal and not unusual.” Nvidia’sThe Implicator![](https://www.implicator.ai/content/images/2026/11/20261109-112728-nvidia_one_hook.webp)](https://www.implicator.ai/opinion-nvidia-needs-oversight-and-a-successor/)