I think the real story is not the affair, which was already reported in asian media in 2024, but what specific catalyst broke that protective shield and made continued containment untenable.
Dual-class share structures have become the defacto standard for founder led companies, giving founders disproportionate (even majority) voting power.
Someone like Zuckerberg effectively controls the board and would be extraordinarily difficult to oust against his wishes (absent some exceptional legal intervention or a decision to step aside)
Remember all men are created equal.. except in reality they werent, just ask the Blacks, natives, Chinese and all the others.
Even today how many average Americans can call the President and have a chat even once ?
So much for theory!
Humans need someone to be accountable to, even if it’s just some guy walking behind you saying “memento mori” twice a day.
One of the greatest failures of Nvidia's Board was in failing to push for a successor. (Musks' companies face a similar risk.)
SpaceX has Shotwell to cushion the blow. Tesla will obviously crash into the cellar the moment he OD's or gets thrown in jail for pedo shit.
It’s not like Jensen predicted it
Ok AMD had some financial woes, but it also has made a lot of less optimal technical and business decisions that were entirely unforced errors.
Tim Nvidia.
He's great on logistics, has experience replacing a cult of personality CEO and knows how to placate Trump with glass trophies.
He's out as CEO but he'll continue to be a force at Nvidia. If the new CEO is smart, he'll keep him in the company, but it will be hard since Huang will be seen as the company's leader and it will be very hard for Huang to act any other way.
Recent trend is quite the opposite. What's Tesla without Musk selling pipe dreams ? Pretty sure there is 0 plan for replacement.
The bigger issue is the conflict of interest stuff, but until that’s proven this is a horrible look for NVIDIA if they actually go through with it.
The no-going-back issue is the corruption. Jensen corruptly quashed an investigation into Megaspeed. He then quite clearly expected Republicans in Congress to back him, which is why he only came clean when forced to.
His board must think he's a lunatic. They have every right to know if he's having an affair with anyone (because marital infidelity is a personal corruption issue that is rarely not a problem when it's a CEO, since carrying off an affair usually involves suborning staff in some way). But this? Madness.
I don't care about it. But I do understand folks who are dismayed to see someone who many of us–myself included–saw as a bit of a paragon until a few weeks ago turning out to be a total shithead.
Don’t look to billionaires if you’re looking for paragons. They all fail basic ethical checks. It’s very easy and convenient to not look for these failures. But, inevitably, when somebody starts looking hard, they find them.
Stepping outside of your marriage behind your spouse’s back is still scummy behavior.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jensen_Huang_spying_scandal
Considering the current administration and the amount of corruption by trump and co, I feel like not following the rules is too simplistic an explanation for being targeted like this.
The second one will get you fired just about anywhere.
Affair of a CEO with a direct report and member of senior leadership? Kind of a big deal
Affair with a Chinese intelligence agent? Quite a big deal
One affair was a mistake. Two, with a spy and an employee, are a real failure of responsibility -- and those are just the ones we know about.
I don’t understand you Americans; you live in a disproportionately violent society, tolerate all sort of abuse and manipulation, then will scream hysterically at anyone having an unconventional sex life.
This premise is most likely incorrect: https://www.exponentialview.co/p/the-state-of-the-ai-economy
If anything this should impact the IPO only to the extent it affects the production of new compute capacity, because it is clear that is the #1 thing they need to scale revenues.
The coup of Jensen Huang was precisely organized by the same large institutional investors.
They want NVIDIA to lock-up firmware and prevent any open-weight models from being run. Everyone (at least in US/NATO/US-aligned world) will be forced to use Anthriopic/OpenAI or some other US based closed source model.
Open models will be banned at the GPU level.
This is done to cement the multi-trillion dollar valuation of the AI labs and prevent AI bubble from popping due to customers using free open-weight, instead of pay-per-token closed models
no biggie if their valuation will deflate a bit just like Cisco did in 2000.
pure-software business like openai/ant, will be protected and their global market will be protected
the rest of the world will be starved of GPUs and chipmaking equipment and chemical supplies for chip making
Is this actually technically possible?
Such a move would also be transparently dystopian... though, in fairness, I suppose that makes it more plausible than it would otherwise be...
if Uncle Sam has not approved your model, it will be illegal to run it as a AI risk.
Americans have swallowed even worse limitations on their freedoms, so nobody will even notice that, because all notices will be sent to hyperscalers, neoclouds, and other large operators of GPU farms
I’m not deep into this story, but my initial reaction is that marital infidelity doesn’t seem like a strong reason to oust him, aside from him possibly being compromised by an international spy. Haven’t other successful leaders continued to lead after having their affairs exposed?
(And no, I don’t believe what he did is morally excusable for the record.)
I even wonder whether some elements within the Chinese government has a hand in it -- not (only) the mistress part but the ousting part.
Ousting him is pretty much the worst case scenario for the company.
What they care about is the US leading China on every militarily and economically relevant technology.
The hawks have long chafed at Huang’s position that we need to sell our best chips to China to keep them on the US tech stack. It’s very obviously giving them the ability to catch up.
Energy is the hard part, and US is deeply behind on that.
If I ignore the words, and instead observe behaviour, all of the actions I observe indicate the opposite;potential competitors are treated as very credible threats, even existential ones; and actions indicate that 'maintaining special access to hardware' and 'vying for regulatory capture to shut out competition' are major strategic goals.
(Folks run to blow whistles when they realize they're involved in something they may pay the price for isn't new.
Also, have you seen our IC? The days of the CIA running a competent conspiracy, if they ever existed, are behind us.)
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/09/business/economy/nvidia-m...
She could have been his chess partner, and if he'd acted the same way on her behalf it would have been fireable. The sex is immaterial and anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't read up on this or is selling something.
The sex is just the icing on top of the poor judgement.
When some dude's sex life quashes an investigation into Megaspeed, yeah, it becomes germane. (There are serious questions around Lutnick, for example [1].)
[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2026/11/11/answer-in-front-of-...
I don't get it. Huang doesn't get to decide who chips can't be sold to. Presumably Huang wants to sell chips to everyone whether or not he's fucking them. Nvidia will always say yes to another billion dollars. It's up to the state department to say no.
If Lutnick was sleeping with a Chinese spy and approved the sale, sure throw him in jail. If Huang secretly bribed Lutnick to approve the sale, sure throw them both in jail. But that's not what we're seeing?
What am I missing? Seriously, ELI5.
You’re absolutely correct that we have no smoking gun in the public record. What we have, instead, is smoke. Lots of it.
> What am I missing?
"Investigators at the Commerce Department were deep into a monthslong investigation of a Singaporean company that they suspected of smuggling Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips into China when their work came to a sudden halt late last year.
The investigation centered on Megaspeed, a data center company led by an executive who U.S. officials now believe to be a Chinese spy who had a relationship with Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang.
But the case was abruptly transferred to the Justice Department last year. The shift came after Commerce Department investigators working on the case received an email from Nvidia’s general counsel seeking information about the inquiry into Megaspeed.
It is not necessarily unusual for Commerce Department agents working on a case to speak with a company’s representatives about issues involving their firm. But what was unusual was the content of the message. Tim Teter, Nvidia’s general counsel, said that Jeff Kessler, a top official at the department, had given Nvidia permission to reach out about the case.
The agents were alarmed that Nvidia had invoked the name of Mr. Kessler, their superior, who was nominated to his role by President Trump. Some viewed Mr. Kessler’s interaction with Nvidia as violating government procedure and potentially tainting the case, according to current and former government officials and others familiar with the incident” [1].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/09/business/economy/nvidia-m...
That's why Huang doesn't get to decide whether chips should be sold to China. He can advocate all he wants, speech is cheap.
Wasn’t the swap drained in 2016 too?
Within weeks I saw the naked racism and left the whole party behind. Having learned more about Trump and Republicans since has been ... humiliating after decades of voting 'R'.
Wherever you land on your views in the future, being willing to question everything is a superpower.
Onward!
I can imagine people souring over lack of follow through on economic promises, or the naked corruption with your $coins, but from a racism/xenophobia/morals perspective, I'd feel like most of the signal was there in the 2016 campaign was it not?
The mask-off racism was just beyond the pale, and lead me to look deeper into his past and how he was starting to govern. It became obvious that he'd mostly cheated or lucked his way into fortune and fame.
A larger fraction of Americans voted for a supported Trump because he seemed to credibly criticize the Iraq War and promised no new fuckups in that category.
Now that's something I'd like everyone to believe, if I was the CIA.
Huang had an affair with a Chinese spy, as well as an affair with someone he manages. Either one of these would be grounds for dismissal at any company I've worked at. Committing both of these offenses shows appalling judgment by Huang.
Firing him seems like a very logical conclusion, not some CIA Illuminati bullshit conspiracy theory.
This scandal has felt like a litmus test for free market idealists vs realpolitik thinkers. Nvidia's board and Trump both knew about the spying allegations for over a year, allegedly. This is not a situation you can navigate with strong principles or a moral compass, you just have to follow the money.
Paraphrasing the apocryphal quote:
Anti-corruption never took root in America because the commoners see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed future CEOs.
This is up there with the most fireable things that have ever happened.
You’re looking for a conspiracy when this is a pretty straightforward story. Jensen’s credibility is shot. Of course they’re preparing contingency plans.
I've already heard stories in social circles in Silicon Valley from senior folks in the industry that they didn't share before. Not because they were hiding anything. But because it wasn't topical. There are a lot of scumbags, and there is a lot of corruption to go around right now.
The first story came from sources close to the White House, or something along those lines. Makes sense since it was a national security issue. The second story is internal to the company.
Very plausible non conspiracy explanation: after the first story came out the exec he was having an affair with was pissed to discover she was in fact the other other woman and went to a reporter.
If someone thinks there is not a lot of sex going on in the c-suite maybe you need to get out more.
Nvidia has a large market share, but AMD, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, OpenAI, Qualcomm all produce AI chips... these are all American companies.
Did he circumvent export restrictions?
If not, replacing him would be a mistake for Nvidia. I also fear that it would endanger open weight models in America.
I hope he's allowed to do so. He now knows how not to get trapped into a tactically targeted honeypot, he knows the ins and outs of a GPU fab business plus he has all the connections.
This minus all the cruft and legacy overhead of a company as old as Nvidia. I'm now hoping he gets fired.
Because he can start a new company knowing everything that he got wrong the first time around, be able to hire absolute badass engineers who got fired from Nvidia because some Manager or HR thought they smelled wrong and was a hygiene risk, or quit Nvidia because they didn't like the work they were being assigned, be able to raise capital from investors who currently won't invest in Nvidia because of reasons, be able to strike new deals that hasn't happened because someone at Nvidia isn't letting them happen.
Nvidia is a very old company, not as old as Intel but close. Old companies build their own internal overhead you just cannot get rid of that would just kill a new company
And what do you mean by "the things he did wrong the first time"? NVIDIA was the most valuable company in the world at one point either this year or last year, and it's still in the top three. He did everything right from business perspective.
Building an Nvidia competitor would be a long, hard slog that almost certainly ends in failure for anyone including Jensen Huang.
They (NVIDIA) have tens of thousands of patents on their technology that would be hard to build around and commitments that lock up 60-70% of TSMC's CoWoS capacity.
> Jensen Huang... also had an extramarital relationship with an executive who reports to him, according to five people who worked at the company.
Sure. After he's done responding to the Congress and various investigators and his family, something I suspect will occupy a good part of his next decade.
Does he? Plenty of serial cheaters out there getting caught repeatedly.
Those lawyers were hired by Jensen.
You can also argue that he wasn't aware n as far as he knew this was just a company in Singapore. It will be interesting how it plays out based on the facts.
It all unwound a few months later, much to my chagrin (and my lost stock options, obviously).
Recall that most bubbles do not pop due to one, key material cause. Instead, they pop due to adjacent troubles that, in turn, lead to cascading effects.
That was true of:
- LTCM failure (1998; Thailand and other SE Asian countries defaulted);
- 2000 market crash (dot-coms crash, then telecom crash of 2001);
- 2008-2010 financial crisis (mortgage backed securities); ... and so many others before these.
It's entirely possible that NVDA, despite earning $$$$, could unwind the circular funding within the ecosystem (the very crux of telecom market crash of 2001)
The thing is, this is just what's been reported. There's almost certainly more going on if 2 affairs are public disclosure. If there is a sexual harassment angle here as well, he's toast.
That's a tautology, of course. And the board should have been doing its job handling the key man in question
It's most obvious in hindsight, obviously. Across the history of such governance debacles.
Did he know she was a spy?
Did he give her any secrets?
Did he break up with her after finding out she's a spy?
Was she trained as a spy and sent to entrap him specifically? Or did she form a relationship with him, then get told by the Chinese Communist Party "Xi wants you to steal him some secrets from your boyfriend. This is an offer you can't refuse; spy for us or your family in China will be beaten, jailed or worse"?
Is he a victim or an asset? Is she a willing patriotic spy for China, or a victim of blackmail from the Chinese Communist Party? Has she been arrested as a spy, or did she make it to the Chinese embassy before the story broke?
My feeling is he shouldn't be ousted if he took the honey but didn't fall for the trap. OTOH if he passed her company secrets, that's presumably a fireable offense for anyone lower on the totem pole; it's only fair for a CEO to get fired for the same.
TPUs and AWS's Trainium seem to be at least in the ballpark of being competitive but does that matter at all?
Honeytrap.
Reveal the information to a trusted journalist.
Destroy Huang's credibility.
Force his resignation.
Damage Nvidia.
China moves further in the AI game.
Game set and match. Sounds like this might have been China's real goal.
Hopefully this teaches the market to migrate away from proprietary CUDA and NVIDIA and their proprietary drivers.
There's a different angle here worth listening to: https://youtu.be/IC3Kh40dEQY
Going only on the one day point, I wouldn't recommend it for Nvidia.
2. Ian Buck as CEO (Inventor of CUDA, PhD, vice president of hyperscale and high-performance computing).
Right replacement could jump the stock 20%, mediocre replacement can drop it 20% from the current lows.
Training must not be allowed by normal people. The resulting models may work stuff out that they're not supposed to and that would be bad and wrong.
Obviously, the affairs are a very serious issue, but the investigation needs to determine whether there were any security conflict of interest breaches
Let’s be clear: any abuse of power involving related-party relationships is wrong. Jensen should not get a “free pass” just because he’s Jensen. This is very serious.
Jensen’s leadership of the broader company is unparalleled, and replacing him would be nearly impossible. That step should only be taken when it’s extremely clear there is no other option. Even if the board does replace him, that brings significant risk, not just to NVIDIA but to all the other businesses connected to it. I hope a warning shot across the bow is enough for him to clean things up so everyone can get back to focusing on the work.
As for which way the board rules, the details are all that matter. When boards react emotionally, before a thorough investigation and before they have the full picture, they make bad decisions. They shouldn’t rush. They should investigate and dig into every detail.
Then make a decision. These decisions will carry enormous weight.
None of us really know the details. NVIDIA board: do your job and take it very seriously. Deliberately measure three times, cut once. Don’t spectate. The public likes/wants Hollywood drama, but what we really need is good corporate governance.
The Board–correctly–fears for themselves personally in a case involving Jensen's public and multinational corruption scheme.
This is going to be easy political win. Jensen's only saving grace is that he is in bed with Trump so he won't be sitting behind in prison cell.
There is a real corruption angle here that a lot of folks out west are missing [1].
[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2026/11/11/answer-in-front-of-...
It’s just sex mate, it’s really not a big deal unless he giving favourable deals to his mistress’s company.
The investigation centered on Megaspeed, a data center company led by an executive who U.S. officials now believe to be a Chinese spy who had a relationship with Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang.
But the case was abruptly transferred to the Justice Department last year. The shift came after Commerce Department investigators working on the case received an email from Nvidia’s general counsel seeking information about the inquiry into Megaspeed" [1].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/09/business/economy/nvidia-m...
But there's no real competitors still? Even for the medium term?
From an HR and legal perspective, if Alice was a spy, Jensen was arguably the targeted 'victim' of a foreign intelligence operation. While it was certainly very dumb and negligent, it may not have been a policy violation or may only have been a violation of company policies like mishandling confidential information or not following IT security policies. Those aren't usually "Fire the CEO Now" things, while slamming the sheets with a direct report absolutely requires some kind of immediate action.
The real question is who wants Jensen gone? Because the first leak was clearly intentional and reportedly placed by 'senior White House sources', citing a confidential NSC report. Now the second leak of the inappropriate affair happens immediately after. This was a designed sequence. Both of the underlying events are several months old. Given the facts, I think the most likely source is 'China Trade/AI Hawks' in the White House (possibly the NSC). The reasoning being that Jensen has generally been trying to minimize restrictions on selling AI to China (which is, arguably, part of his job).
> During the conference, Nvidia executives were at a nearby hotel for meetings. Mr. Huang and Ms. Powell were seen being affectionate at the hotel. One bystander captured the interaction on their phone, three people briefed on the incident said.
> Mr. Huang’s security witnessed the bystander with their phone and sequestered them, the people said. They made the person an offer to sign a nondisclosure agreement.
Well, at least there will be one way to make money after AI takes my job...
Jokes aside, I would expect we will soon learn there is more. Given that Nvidia was vouching for Megaspeed while exporting those chips, I still think there's a reasonable chance Jensen ends up in jail over this. Not large, but possible.
When I encountered this ( in much smaller, non strategic companies!) both parties took great care to hide their affair and appear completely professional in public. The fun and games were kept behind closed bedroom doors. I don't get it.
Some folks get a thrill from getting caught, too.
Depending on how Jensen takes it, this could be the catalyst to steer AI in a new direction. Companies will line up to scoop him up, if not fight each other to get him. He is the head of the most valuable company, he has the tightest connection to the US government, it won't take a minute before Mudita* becomes a new company being fast-tracked to the top.
* Opposite of Envy (nvidia)
Looks like both Nvidia GPUs and Nvidia CEO have Single Instruction Multiple Threads (SIMT) architecture.
Also to all the people saying how terrible this will be, would you really want someone running your company who can't keep his word to his wife? Maybe it is a quaint idea in 2026 but I think people who break their word shouldn't be trusted, particularly to be in positions of power.
I don't see anyone accusing China of setting up such a trap. China always denies ofc, though all these scummy things eventaully comes out to be true, and by then everyone forgets.
Sen. Chris Coons says investigating Nvidia's CEO is top priority for Democratic Congress
https://www.npr.org/2026/11/09/nx-s1-6032682/senator-chris-c...
I'm not really making a judgement on Huang, but it seems others have done worse. It's making me wonder if there's something larger at play where people (i.e., other billionaires and CEOs and perhaps politicians) are unhappy with Huang.
It would have to be a very good cause though, disliking him or ordinary bad business decisions won't cut it.
The board decides who is CEO. Zuck controls the board. Zuck cannot be fired unless he wants to be.
(sadly this is not my joke)
It's NVIDIA being sued because they defrauded investors by including illicit chip sales in their Q3 figures
If the Chinese spy lady really were a spy, all the govt agencies would have known about it long ago, but chosen not to reveal it. The whole business stinks of manipulation and "don't interrupt your enemy while they're making a mistake", and the salacious headlines are what's selling this Manufactured Consent.
It’s the Dot Bomb days all over again.
I mean, that's acceptable these days isn't it?
Irattional things continue to be irrational i guess
The US taxpayer wins.
/s
I don't agree with everything David Sachs says on the All in Podcast, but it looks like it's about political control over all frontier AI models from democrats.
We cannot glue ourselves to the backs of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. We need to be anti-fragile and support a robust spectrum of AI inference being developed from all angles.
This would permanently wed us to a handful of vendors that will soak American businesses and innovators dry while their own products fail to reach the peak of what an open weights inclusive environment could lead to.
Source?
"Our kingdom for a shadow", or something. https://shakespeare.mit.edu/richardiii/richardiii.5.4.html
I'm scared about how this in turn shapes society.
You would do well to look at the history beyond the modern era.
like sleeping Jensen Huang with an incredibly attractive Chinese agent that specifically showed traits he found desirable and exploit what ever weaknesses the Chinese spy agency could find about him to get him involved with her and divulge secrets in a SEXINT operation. Therefore Jensen is one of the worst people who are public figures.
I don't like CEO worship or tech culture (I know I am on hackernews but I am a developer and did like software development and related topics), but this take is crazy most people you know would probably take the bait on an operation like this even 'good' people.
And just take a look at the scum running things outside of Tech a lot worse then a moment of infedality, look at all western leaders you will probably find few better (or even equal) to Jensen. Jensen did not shape the shitshow you are seeing now (not saying he is not part of it), it was corrupt from the start, Just a worthless veneer of morality.
Don't morn your societies decay it was a cadaver from the beginning only by putrefaction will it become the soil to plant strong trees on.
And that "scum also exist outside tech" is just a whataboutism. It'd be a better discussion if you actually interacted with my arguments.
> Why did you have to "quote" something no one said to make your point?
Was not trying to be dishonest but was meant to be what I felt you comment boiled down to, I will revise my comment to change the '>'. > And that "scum also exist outside tech" is just a whataboutism.
What I was saying is not just that scum exists outside tech but that the society that created this tech culture and space is the curruption it's self and it's not worth thinking about as something to save but to replace entirely.
> This post was after a second affair, to me that's a moral flaw, not just someone exploiting him.
I am not saying it's not a moral flaw but compared what Trump has done Epstein, wars, etc. He looks like a Saint. It's pointless even talking about morality in the way you do when Trump and his weak cronies are in power. (and yes I know Nvidia under Jesen no doubt has benefit from this corruption). Infidelity is so common in are time but if only that was the worst of it.
What I was saying is not just that scum exists outside tech
I haven't found the answer. But I do know one thing from my (smallish) sample: the nice guy never let the money get to his head. He drove his own car (a VW Rabbit, ok, a nice one) and lived in the same house that he lived in when he started his company. And until the day he died he just kept doing what he loved without ever feeling the need to lord it over others. More like a Wozniak (who is the other 'nice billionaire' that I'm aware of but I've never met him).
Edit: I wrote about him:
A human being is so unlikely to be good on their own, pretty much all cultures practiced infanticide and child sacrifice and pederasty and only changed because a few hated these practices and forced them to stop.
But a lot of people the only moment they get to act in an unaccountable manor will act very badly. This is not all people but probably above 90%.
I expect shit show funnier than when OpenAI tried to put Altman with same result.
"Having sex with a direct report" is not on that list of prohibited reasons.
Does Nvidia have such a policy? Unless laws have changed, this isn't an issue as far as the law is concerned.
(Googling - seems they may actually have this policy...)
From what I've heard: Nvidia's operations is heavily reliant on Jensen. He's embedded in everything. Early in the pandemic, I interviewed with them. The recruiter said that pretty much every engineer at the company will, at some point, be in a meeting that includes Jensen. I spoke to a friend who worked there and he confirmed it.
(Probably no longer true as they've grown a lot since then).
EDIT: I assume the bubble will collapse into correction eventually, sooner is better than later.
NVidia doesn't need Jensen in the short / medium term - they are printing money. Unless we discover that all this circular financing was some kind of scheme.
We have 2 other companies though, Tesla and SpaceX, which CEO represents 90% of the valuation. That will be the real one.
I think this is one of those " the question is the answer" moments.
Seems like this video and the first affair with the spy was a classic blackmail operation used against him as I said before [0] and Huang likely said no to the wrong person.
It is over.
Getting rid of Jesen might be useful for the US AI labs, but what exactly would be the plan their. I can not see a benefit to them with this move, though I can not see any thing particularly negative for them.