Nvidia's board of directors is reportedly preparing to remove co-founder and chief executive Jensen Huang, who has led the chipmaker for 33 years, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal published on Wednesday. Sources told the newspaper that the board was due to meet as soon as Wednesday to decide Huang's future at the company, in what would be one of the most dramatic leadership upheavals in the technology industry's history.
Investors reacted sharply to the report. Nvidia's shares fell about 8 percent in after-hours trading on Wednesday, closing the regular session at $173.73 before dropping to $159.95 in extended trading. Bloomberg separately reported that Nvidia is working with an outside firm to identify candidates who could potentially replace Huang as chief executive, underlining how seriously the board is weighing a change at the top.
The crisis began on Sunday, 8 November, when Huang admitted in a message to Nvidia employees, also published as a press release, that he had had an extramarital affair with a woman whom US intelligence reportedly suspects of spying for China. The woman was identified in reports as Alice Huang, an executive at the Chinese firm Megaspeed International. Nvidia's board opened an independent investigation the same day, and Huang said he supported the inquiry and would cooperate fully.
The pressure intensified on Wednesday when the New York Times reported that Huang is also suspected of having a second extramarital affair, this time with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of healthcare, who reports directly to him. The newspaper said it had been told of the alleged affair by five employees at the company. TechCrunch, which first carried the Wall Street Journal's ouster report, noted that it had reached out to Nvidia for comment.
Congress has also moved into the affair. Two House Republicans said on Wednesday that Congress is preparing to subpoena Huang if he does not voluntarily answer a summons to a closed-door briefing, and the chairs of three House committees have asked him to attend a closed-door national security briefing on 18 November. The scrutiny reflects the national security dimension of the case: Nvidia's chips sit at the centre of the global race for artificial intelligence, and any suggestion that its chief executive could have been compromised is being treated in Washington as a serious matter.
President Donald Trump was asked this week whether Huang should remain in charge of Nvidia and replied: "I think so. Oh yeah, sure." Republican Senator Kevin Cramer has taken a different view, urging Huang to step down on the grounds that the reported relationship could expose the chipmaker to extortion. Nvidia has said it has no reason to believe that national security or company secrets were compromised, while stressing that the board's investigation will examine all available information.
One of the board's biggest problems is that there is no obvious successor. Huang has about 60 direct reports and the company has no public succession plan, a gap that has been noted repeatedly by analysts since the scandal broke. Betting markets reflected the uncertainty: on the prediction platform Kalshi, Huang's odds of surviving the week had fallen to 30 percent by Wednesday.
Under Nvidia's bylaws, the board has the power to remove its officers, including the chief executive, at any time, with or without cause, through a majority vote of the directors in office. Huang would have few tools to resist such a decision: unlike many founders, he was never granted dual-class shares that concentrate voting power, and his holding of about 871 million shares represents a stake of just 3.58 percent, according to the company's filings from last May.
The stakes could hardly be higher. Nvidia is the world's most valuable company and the dominant supplier of the chips that power modern artificial intelligence, from data centres to the robots and self-driving systems its customers are building. A forced change of chief executive would shake not only the company but the wider AI industry, which has been built in large part on Huang's vision and his close relationships with customers, suppliers and governments.
For now, nothing has been decided in public. Neither Nvidia nor its board has confirmed the Wall Street Journal's report, and the independent investigation opened on 8 November is still under way. What happens next will depend on the board meeting reported for Wednesday, and on whether any further revelations emerge from the inquiry, from Congress or from the company itself.
