What we know as pressure builds on embattled Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang
What we know as pressure builds on embattled Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang
Lily Jamali - North America Technology correspondent; Peter Hoskins - Business reporter... See more Thu, November 12, 2026 at 4:01 AM UTC
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One of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) industry's most important figures could be ousted from his role amid allegations that he had extramarital affairs with two women - one a suspected Chinese spy and the other a company executive.
Chip-maker Nvidia hired a major law firm earlier this week to investigate CEO Jensen Huang's reported relationship with a woman who was allegedly a Chinese intelligence asset.
Now the firm is reportedly weighing whether to remove Huang after its stocks plummeted on Wednesday following US media reports about a second alleged affair.
Huang admitted earlier this week to having been "unfaithful" to his wife and he apologised for hurting her and their children.
Here is what we know about the affair and why it matters.
Will Huang be replaced?
Nvidia's board was reportedly meeting on Wednesday evening to decide whether its CEO should remain with the company.
The BBC called Nvidia representatives and board members for comment, but received no reply.
Nvidia has 11 directors on its board, including Huang, and the CEO can be removed with or without cause by a majority vote of directors, according to Reuters news agency.
Should Nvidia's board choose to oust Huang, or place him on leave, it was not immediately clear who might step into his shoes, even on an interim basis.
One possibility is Nvidia co-founder Chris Malachowsky. He has been at the company as long as Huang, and for years led its product engineering work.
Huang's children, Spencer and Madison, and son-in-law Nico Caprez also work at Nvidia in senior roles, but they are relatively young and inexperienced.
Nvidia Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress could serve as interim CEO, according to analysts.
Kress would be the natural choice, Armina Rosenberg, co-founder of Minotaur Capital, which holds Nvidia shares, told Reuters news agency.
What we know about Huang's affairs
A New York Times report at the weekend revealed Jensen Huang had a close relationship with Chinese businesswoman Alice Huang, who US intelligence officials believed was a spy for Beijing.
Alice Huang had previously been photographed with the Nvidia chief on several occasions.
Nvidia's board of directors launched an independent external investigation on Sunday following the reports. They earlier said Huang's interactions with the woman were "not unusual or unexpected".
Then on Wednesday, the New York Times reported that Huang also had an extramarital relationship with a Nvidia executive who reports directly to him. She did not respond to the BBC's request for comment.
Who is Alice Huang?
Jensen Huang (left) and Alice Huang - also known as Huang Le - at an event
US officials believed that Alice Huang had been recruited to spy by China's top intelligence agency, the New York Times reported.
Alice Huang, no relation to Jensen Huang, was a top executive at Singapore-based data centre firm Megaspeed between March and November 2023. Bloomberg News reported that she was currently living in China.
Her company had been suspected of helping divert Nvidia chips to China. Nvidia said this was investigated and debunked.
However, Megaspeed is under investigation by the Singapore government regarding previous allegations that the company was circumventing US sanctions on the export of Nvidia's high-end chips.
The BBC contacted Megaspeed for comment.
It remains unclear what, if any, intelligence Alice Huang – who is also known as Huang Le – allegedly gathered and passed to Beijing.
When the BBC asked Nvidia if the company was aware of intelligence concerns, the company said it was not.
China has rejected the spying allegations as "entirely groundless".
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Why does it matter?
Nvidia is at the heart of US and China's AI race, which is why the billionaire boss's affair has sparked national security fears among American lawmakers.
Trump has said "whoever wins AI wins", and the concern is that if China gains the upper hand in AI, it will supercharge the country's military and surveillance capabilities.
The US advantage is in large part because of companies like Nvidia, working with producers such as the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which makes more than 90% of the world's most advanced chips.
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Since 2022, the US has used various export controls to keep the top tech out of China, which it says helps retain America's competitive edge and protects its national security.
This means companies like Nvidia have been largely locked out of the world's most lucrative market, with Jensen Huang once saying that Nvidia's share of the Chinese market had gone from around 95% to effectively zero.
Jensen Huang has engaged in shuttle diplomacy between Washington and Beijing, hoping to find a US-approved way back in, and shaping US policy on China along the way.
The revelations may explain why Jensen Huang has failed to bring home the biggest prize of all to Nvidia: the Trump administration's blessing to sell all but its most advanced chips to China.
Who is Jensen Huang?
Nvidia boss Jensen Huang and US President Donald Trump at the White House
Born in Taiwan in 1963, Jensen Huang was nine years old when his family moved to the West Coast of the US. He graduated as an electrical engineer from Oregon State University, and then with a master's degree in the same field from Stanford University.
He worked at US chip firm AMD before co-founding Nvidia. Known as "Daddy Huang" in Taiwan and once lauded as the "Taylor Swift of tech", he has a reputation as a workaholic with incredibly high standards for his staff.
He has an estimated fortune of $155bn (£115bn), according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
"Jensen Huang is a tech visionary of the likes of Steve Jobs," Stephen Witt, the author of Thinking Machine, a biography on the Jensen Huang, told the BBC, adding that he was responsible for creating AI hardware as we know it today.
The Nvidia co-founder has a famously close relationship with Trump. At the recent AI summit at the White House, where 42 tech executives were present, the president was flanked by Elon Musk and Huang.
What investigations are now under way?
After news broke out about the first affair, Nvidia launched an independent investigation and hired New York law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.
It will be led by Joon Kim, a former US Attorney for New York's Southern District who is now a litigation partner at the law firm.
US President Donald Trump said the FBI was investigating the scandal, adding that Huang told him he had been unaware the woman he was with was a spy.
Jensen Huang has also been asked to appear for a joint closed-door briefing for several Congressional committees on 18 November, but has yet to say he will comply.
What is Nvidia and how important is it?
There is no clear successor for Jensen Huang at Nvidia
Founded by Jensen Huang and fellow electrical engineers Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem in 1993, the company was originally known for chips that process graphics, particularly for computer games.
Eventually it changed focus to AI, a field it now dominates.
Jensen Huang rescued Nvidia from bankruptcy on more than one occasion, and took risks on AI a long time before the rest of the world did, effectively building the infrastructure from scratch.
He bet on AI at a time when "there were no customers for the stuff he was building", Witt told the BBC.
Every notable tech company building AI tools and infrastructure like Amazon, Google and Microsoft now use Nvidia chips.
Currently worth about $4tn, Nvidia is one of the most valuable companies in the world.
For now, the firm's board appears unlikely to remove Jensen Huang, saying on Sunday they have "confidence in Jensen and his leadership team".
Who is Jensen Huang's wife?
Lori Huang and her husband at a state dinner by Trump for his Chinese President Xi Jinping
Jensen Huang met his future wife Lori Mills at Oregon State University while studying electrical engineering in the early 1980s. The pair were lab partners.
They married in 1985 and have two children, Madison and Spencer.
Earlier this week, Huang admitted to having been "unfaithful" to his wife and apologised for hurting her and their children.
In 2007, the couple founded the Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang Foundation. The charitable fund has seen its assets surge in recent years, driven by the soaring value of Nvidia shares, and is estimated to be worth more than $9bn.
Its donations include tens of millions of dollars to engineering programmes at Oregon State and Stanford University.
Witt told the BBC that Jensen Huang has gone to great lengths to present himself as a family man, adding: "That's very important to him."
"He praises his wife, he talks about her in very glowing ways," he added. "The fallout of this would be bad for anyone's family.
"But for someone who has gone to such great lengths to cultivate an image of being a family guy and who keeps his children very close, it is very bad."
Additional reporting by Tom McArthur in London, Ayeshea Perera and Tessa Wong in Singapore and Helen Davidson in Sydney
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