Nvidia Board Reportedly Weighs Ousting CEO Jensen Huang
BBC News
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The board of tech giant Nvidia is considering whether to oust its CEO Jensen Huang, the BBC's US partner CBS News and other US media report
Stocks in the firm have plummeted after the New York Times reported that Huang had a second affair with an executive at the company
Nvidia has already launched an investigation into an affair between Huang and an alleged Chinese spy, Alice Huang. The FBI is also investigating it
Earlier this week, the CEO admitted he had been "unfaithful" to his wife and apologised to her and their children
Nvidia is the world's second most valuable company after Apple and is at the heart of the AI industry – our North America correspondent explains why this matters
Jensen Huang has been crucial to Nvidia's success and were he to be ousted, successors are thin on the ground, our technology reporter writes
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Edited by Gavin Butler and Helen Sullivan, with reporting by Technology correspondent Lily Jamali, Kali Hays and Osmond Chia
Osmond Chia
Business reporter
Has Jensen Huang broken his own company's code of conduct?
In its rulebook, Nvidia says employees are urged to "avoid situations where our actions create conflict" including "personal relationships", and the company states that it "promptly investigates reports of misconduct".
Employees are encouraged to uphold Nvidia's core values and maintain high ethical standards, Huang said previously in a note on the firm's code of conduct.
He had admitted to having an affair and apologised to his staff members in a memo on Sunday.
"I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry," he wrote.
On Wednesday, a report also surfaced that he allegedly had another extramarital relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice-president of healthcare.Osmond Chia
Business reporter
AMD chief executive Lisa Su
While Nvidia stocks have plummeted since Jensen Huang's scandal broke, shares in AMD – one of its key semiconductor rivals – have lifted.
Shares in the California-based firm have climbed by more than 21% over the past five days, as investors turn to alternative tech stocks to steer clear of uncertainty around scandal-hit Nvidia.
AMD competes with Nvidia in graphics processors and AI chips for the large-scale data centres that power AI development, though it remains a significantly smaller company.
AMD's chief executive Lisa Su and Huang are distant relatives, both born in Taiwan.
Lily Jamali
North America Technology Correspondent
Elon Musk has entered the chat on Jensen Huang's future.
On his social media platform X, Musk has posted a "100" emoji in response to AI investor Gavin Baker who said Nvidia's board should wait for the results of an independent investigation before ousting Huang.
Musk also wrote it "would be an honor" to hire Huang, in response to another post from longtime financial news aggregator Zerohedge.
Under Huang’s leadership Nvidia agreed to invest up to $2bn in Musk’s AI venture, xAI, in late 2025. xAI is now part of Musk's SpaceXSI.
“The only regret I have is, I didn't give him more money,” Huang told CNBC in October 2025. "Almost everything that Elon's a part of, you want to be part of as well."Osmond Chia
Business reporter
More than half a trillion US dollars has been wiped off Nvidia's market value as details of CEO Jensen Huang's scandal unfolded.
"CEO scandals are not new, but never at a company so imperative to the biggest investment theme in the world," says Josh Gilbert from investment firm eToro.
Huang has been the "voice that sells the AI story" so a cloud over him is a cloud over the stock "and that cloud has turned into a storm", Gilbert tells the BBC.
David Nicholson from the Futurum Group, a market research firm, says Huang's ousting would give the market a reason to pull back from AI stocks as many investors are already growing "increasing impatient" with the industry's prospects.
Nicholson says that would lead to a drop in the shares that has "nothing to do with Jensen's bad personal decisions".
Nvidia has endured a tumultuous week, as AI boss Jensen Huang became embroiled in scandal. Here is how it unfolded:
8 November: Huang admits to an extramarital affair in an email apology to Nvidia employees.
“I owe my family and all of you an apology,” Huang tells his company. “I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry.”
His admission follows news reports that the US is investigating a suspected Chinese spy who had maintained a close relationship with the Nvidia boss. The woman, Alice Huang, had been previously photographed together with the Nvidia chief on several occasions.
Nvidia's board of directors launch an independent external investigation. They had earlier said Huang's interactions with the woman are "not unusual or unexpected".
9 November: US President Donald Trump says the FBI is investigating the scandal, adding that Huang told him he had been unaware the woman he was with was a spy.Beijing publicly rejects the spying allegations as a smear.
11 November: The story takes another turn after a report that Huang also had an extramarital relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of healthcare, who reports directly to him.
Nvidia's board reportedly prepare to meet to decide on Huang's future at the firm.The company's shares have been falling all week, erasing more than $500bn (£376bn) off Nvidia's market value.
Shaimaa Khalil
North America correspondent in Los Angeles
Ordinary people wouldn’t necessarily know how powerful or involved Jensen Huang, the jet-setting tech boss who rubs shoulders with world leaders, is – though some might recognise the guy in the leather jacket.
But many people have money invested in Nvidia through their pensions and investment funds often without realising it. So a sharp fall in its shares can affect their savings too.
Nvidia’s shares fell about eight per cent in after-hours trading following the reports that Huang could be removed.
Then there is the wider AI industry. Companies spending huge sums building AI systems depend on Nvidia’s chips. They’ll want reassurance about supplies, new products and commitments that had already been made.
Nvidia’s engineers, its technology and its expertise would still be there. But replacing someone with Huang’s influence inside the company and across the industry would be a considerable test.Lily Jamali
North America Technology Correspondent
We are past regular trading hours but Nvidia shares have plunged by 8.6% in the after-hours session.
Nvidia's stock is held in many portfolios, including pension funds and 401k plans that people use to save up for retirement.
Few companies are as key to the artificial intelligence industry as Nvidia, which designs the chips needed to develop AI models.
Nvidia is the undisputed market leader in that space and has invested in a number of AI developers and startups, which in turn, purchase GPUs – or graphics processing units – from Nvidia.
And few figures are as crucial as chief executive Jensen Huang, the face of his company and one of the most renowned industry boosters.
"Jensen Huang is one of the most important entrepreneurs in America," Grindr CEO George Arison told me on Tuesday – when the prospect of Huang leaving the company seemed far less likely than it does today.
Arison’s view is shared by many top tech leaders throughout Silicon Valley.
Kali Hays
US technology reporter
Huang has been seen as so crucial to Nvidia's ongoing success that the company – which is the second-most valuable in the world – had not been planning for his replacement.
There is no name that has surfaced this week as an obvious successor, even as Huang had an affair with a woman who was possibly acting as a spy.
Should Nvidia's board choose to oust Huang, or place him on leave pending the just-launched investigation into his extramarital affairs, there are seemingly few people within the company who could immediately take on the role of CEO.
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. He is the only executive that is at the same level of seniority as Huang.
Huang's children also work at Nvidia in executive positions, but they are relatively young and inexperienced.
Any permanent replacement for Huang would likely be an outside hire.
Kali Hays
US technology reporter
Nvidia's board is meeting today to consider whether to remove Jensen Huang, as the chipmaker confronts reports of two extramarital affairs involving its longtime chief executive, according to reports from the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.
Huang's affair with a presumed spy for China, as bad as that sounds, was widely seen in technology circles as something the billionaire co-founder of Nvidia could move past.
But a second affair, if confirmed, and with an employee, is something that any corporate board would have a hard time letting go.
As one technology industry insider put it to the BBC on Wednesday: "He's cooked."
In the first case, Huang had insisted in private that he had no idea the woman was possibly feeding information to Beijing, telling President Donald Trump as much on Monday.
The CEO is considered a crucial part of Nvidia's massive success, and Nvidia has become a vital part of the artificial intelligence boom in the US.
The company is one of the biggest manufacturers of a computer chip required to operate AI tools and language models.Osmond Chia
Business reporter
The Nvidia boss leads one of the most important companies in the AI race, designing the chips that power the technology.
Jensen Huang had co-founded Nvidia as a young engineer in 1993 and led the company into a now multi-trillion dollar semiconductor giant as the AI industry boomed.
The entrepreneur was an early AI believer, pivoting his video-game chip business to develop the semiconductors critical for AI development.
Huang has been the public face of Nvidia and has achieved near rock-star status among admirers.
In his birthplace of Taiwan, fans call him "Daddy Huang", while others have likened him to the "Taylor Swift of tech".
He has an estimated net worth of $145bn (£109bn), according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
US tech giant Nvidia is the world's most valuable publicly-traded company – worth some $4.5tn (£3.4tn) – and a leading provider of advanced computer chips.
These computer chips are critical for all kinds of technology – from video games and autonomous vehicles to massive data centres and cloud servers.
But most importantly for the AI arms race, these chips are used to power artificial intelligence, including large language models and generative AI systems.
The US's biggest competitor in the race to build the most powerful AI systems is China, and Washington has restricted exports of the most advanced Nvidia chips to Beijing since 2022.
The US has justified export restrictions on national security grounds, arguing that such exports could enhance China's military capabilities, although some restrictions have been eased under President Trump.
Michael Race
Business and economics reporter
Shares in Nvidia, the world's second most valuable company behind Apple, have plunged almost 7.5% in after hours trading.
The chip-making giant ended the day on Wall Street in positive terrority after a difficult few days following the news of an affair between CEO Jensen Huang and a woman alleged to be a Chinese spy.
But that has changed since the market closed, with reports of a second affair emerging.
Nvidia is widely considered one of the most important companies behind the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, given it is the sole manufacturer of a computer chip used in AI tools.
Its chips have become a matter of national security for US officials who are keen to win the AI race against China.
Kali Hays
US technology reporter
US tech giant Nvidia is reportedly looking today at whether its CEO will remain with the company.
The company's board is meeting as its stocks plummeted following US media reports about a second alleged affair involving CEO Jensen Huang.
While the company just yesterday hired a major law firm to conduct an investigation into Huang's affair with a woman who is allegedly a spy for China, today the New York Times reported that Huang also had an affair with an Nvidia employee.
That pushed the board to consider Huang's ongoing position as CEO of the company, according to reports from the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.
Nvidia's board had previously appeared supportive of Huang, saying it had no reason to believe the company's secrets or national security were compromised related to Huang's first affair.
As of late Wednesday evening, Nvidia's board had not released any statement. Calls to multiple company representatives and Nvidia board members have not received a response.
Follow along as we bring you the latest on this story.
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