Jensen Huang resigns from Nvidia as spy-affair scandal reaches the board

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang resigned after disclosures of two extramarital affairs, one with a woman US authorities suspect of spying for Beijing. CFO Colette Kress takes over as interim CEO while the board weighs internal and external successors. Huang, the company's fourth-largest shareholder with a 3.61 percent stake, also leaves the board, and former Synopsys CEO Harvey Jones becomes Nvidia's first board chair.

The exit caps a tumultuous week for the chipmaker and lands squarely on the AI ecosystem Huang bankrolled. It also reaches into Washington: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick faces growing questions over the administration's oversight of chip sales to China, after both he and Huang pushed to relax those sales despite scrutiny from China hawks in both parties. The Commerce Department did not immediately comment.

Senior White House officials are discussing whether Lutnick should be pushed out, two people familiar with the situation told Reuters. A White House official said President Donald Trump "maintains complete confidence in the secretary and his ability to carry out the position."

What does this change for Nvidia's AI ecosystem?

Huang spent a decade pouring Nvidia's swelling cash pile back into cloud providers, suppliers and the biggest AI labs. The surge in AI computing demand drove a sevenfold increase in Nvidia's shares through early October, pushing its market value at one point to nearly US$6 trillion.

"The Board, Estaff (executive staff) and I recognise that this has been an extraordinarily difficult period," Kress wrote in a memo to employees. The company will hold a meeting on November 18. CNBC reported Kress was gathering the executive team at headquarters on Thursday, and that Huang had agreed to testify before Congress before Thanksgiving. Huang has hired law firm Paul Weiss, the New York Times reported; what the firm was retained for remains unclear.

Kress offers continuity after 13 years as CFO. Analysts point to longtime engineer Ian Buck as a longer-term candidate, given Nvidia's reliance on technical leadership. Buck helped develop the CUDA software platform and now leads hyperscale AI products.

"The risk is not that Nvidia suddenly loses its technology roadmap ... that roadmap is largely visible for the next several years. The risk is execution. Jensen has been the chief conductor of an extraordinarily complex system," said Michael Feldway, portfolio manager at ClearBridge Investments — in the source, Michael Feldman. "In a world with real bottlenecks, that coordination is a competitive advantage in itself."

The succession question arrives amid shaky investor sentiment, with soaring cash burn and rising debt at traditionally cash-rich tech giants fuelling doubts over whether the AI boom will pay off.

Who knew what, and when?

The scandal unfolded over more than a year. An October 2025 New York Times report linked Huang to Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed, an official Nvidia cloud partner with priority access to its chips. Subsequent reports said US intelligence officials believed Alice Huang was acting on behalf of Chinese intelligence. Beijing denies she is a spy.

Washington has investigated Megaspeed over suspicions it helped China obtain advanced AI chips restricted under US export controls, according to media reports. Bloomberg News reported the Justice Department is investigating Alice Huang over whether entities linked to her helped smuggle Super Micro Computer products to China. A Manhattan US Attorney's office spokesperson declined to comment on that report; that office previously charged three people associated with Super Micro, including its co-founder, with smuggling at least US$2.5 billion of US AI technology to China.

Singapore's Ministry of Home Affairs said Singapore police had been investigating Super Micro as part of a wider probe into Megaspeed and Alice Huang, and had reached out to the FBI and Justice Department for help with only "limited information or assistance" received.

The New York Times also reported Huang had an affair with a second woman, a senior executive who reported to him — identified as Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of healthcare. Earlier this month, Nvidia's board launched a probe, led by independent directors with outside counsel, into whether Huang had been targeted by a foreign intelligence operation. At the time, it expressed confidence in him.

What does Washington do now?

Trump said on Sunday that Huang had "done an amazing job for our country" and that the Nvidia chief told him he had no idea the woman was a spy. On Thursday, the president suggested former Apple CEO Tim Cook should take over as Nvidia's CEO. House Speaker Mike Johnson called it "critically important for right successor to be chosen," noting a growing congressional consensus on limiting chip exports to China.

Nvidia's chips remain the oil of the AI boom and a strategic prize in the US-China race. Whoever conducts the orchestra next inherits that prize — plus an export-policy fight their predecessor personified.