YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Nvidia Is Preparing to Oust Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang

281 points jbredeche 1 hour ago 267 comments

minimaxir 1 hour ago | parent

This is certainly fast after the NYT article on his second affair. I suspect this was in the works after the original affair + export scandal.

bmitc 1 hour ago | parent

I'm wondering how people like Musk, Zuckerberg, Altman, etc. just continually get away with it. Are they just more sociopathic and cover their tracks better?

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.

barney54 1 hour ago | parent

Get away with what exactly?

bmitc 59 minutes ago | parent

Musk, Zuckerberg, and Altman and their companies have zero history of sketchy stuff that would, in a normal world, lead to CEOs being ousted? Affairs are enough to do it to Huang? The whole Chinese spy thing is not confirmed is it? And the three people I've listed have had documented cases of endangering national security through either their actions or their company's actions.

quickthrowman 43 minutes ago | parent

Zuckerberg controls 61% of voting shares for Meta, and implicitly, the Meta board of directors.

The board decides who is CEO. Zuck controls the board. Zuck cannot be fired unless he wants to be.

u1hcw9nx 1 hour ago | parent

Zuckerberg and Musk can't be fired. They own controlling share.

bmitc 1 hour ago | parent

I suppose that's one reason. But Musk has formed basically pyramid schemes to keep his debtors from calling and to move his debt out from under him. Without that, he likely would have to sell shares to cover the debt of his Twitter purchase.

hackernud3s 51 minutes ago | parent

He paid for that with: 1) shares of TSLA that he sold, 2) company debt (not personal debt)

colechristensen 1 hour ago | parent

They could lose control through a substantial shareholder lawsuit. A minority shareholder suit against Musk could prove tremendous damages repaid in stock and the judge might not let the special classes of shares with extra voting power protect his control.

It would have to be a very good cause though, disliking him or ordinary bad business decisions won't cut it.

mcmcmc 59 minutes ago | parent

Get away with what? I haven’t heard anything about Musk, Zuck or Altman falling straight into a honeypot from an unallied nation

lostlogin 33 minutes ago | parent

Musk and Russia?

Why does he support Putin?

yubblegum 13 minutes ago | parent

"Okay, when I introduce you, I'm gonna say, 'This is a friend of mine.' That means you're a connected guy. Now if I were to say, this is a friend of ours—that would mean you're a made guy. Capiche?"

pcbro141 1 hour ago | parent

Board is likely looking ahead to Democrats taking office and investigating the spy relationship and lack of action taken by the government.

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...

zero_shift 39 minutes ago | parent

I guess you could say that two Huangs don't make a right

(sadly this is not my joke)

droidjj 1 hour ago | parent

NVDA down almost 8% in after-hours trading.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NVDA/

dcgudeman 1 hour ago | parent

Affair or not, this is a tragedy for American technology.

bradleybuda 1 hour ago | parent

If the affair were not with someone who was a CCP spy then Jensen Huang would still have his job.

mcmcmc 56 minutes ago | parent

Nope, sleeping with your subordinates will also get you fired

bravetraveler 48 minutes ago | parent

That would be the first affair we learned about... there's another and that may change the calculus. Regardless, the proverbial tragedy, IMO, would be depending on the judgement or heartbeat of one guy (CEO or not) at such a scale.

"Our kingdom for a shadow", or something. https://shakespeare.mit.edu/richardiii/richardiii.5.4.html

u1hcw9nx 1 hour ago | parent

The only issue is finding replacement, Only 5 days to earnings.

missedthecue 1 hour ago | parent

Is there one? Obviously lots of MBAs out there but anyone who can really fill his shoes?

mtremsal 55 minutes ago | parent

Isn’t Jensen super vocal about having dozens of direct reports? Because that would prevent any of them from appearing as a natural successor.

u1hcw9nx 37 minutes ago | parent

1. Replace Jensen as the President in the board with Tim Cook.

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.

qprofyeh 59 minutes ago | parent

For the time being the CFO or COO would do. But stock will take a hit.

CoastalCoder 54 minutes ago | parent

I was at Intel when they made Bob Swan (COO) the CEO.

Going only on the one day point, I wouldn't recommend it for Nvidia.

LarsDu88 41 minutes ago | parent

What about Chris Malachowsky? He also would be a co-founder CEO

snvzz 1 hour ago | parent

Seems the sort of rumor anyone could produce.

mmmmmbop 1 hour ago | parent

I hope it was worth it.

eddythompson80 27 minutes ago | parent

What do you think he’ll be thinking of on his death bed. Nvidia’s shareholders or the human connection.

tayo42 1 hour ago | parent

Should have sold at 220 ugh

But there's no real competitors still? Even for the medium term?

rvz 1 hour ago | parent

> But there's no real competitors still? Even for the medium term?

So AMD, Google are not "real" competitors?

80fj0348i 37 minutes ago | parent

AMD does not have any hardware in direct competition with Nvidia's high end products. No company does.

rvz 26 minutes ago | parent

They do. Anthropic just moved off of Nvidia and straight onto AMD hardware as if it was nothing.

iloveyoutwo 57 minutes ago | parent

I had 10 shares at 30 I sold at 40. Now I'm all bogleheads though.

waffletower 1 hour ago | parent

I wonder if Trump will retaliate against Nvidia. Neither (firing, retaliating) would be good for the world economy.

whatever1 1 hour ago | parent

Who wanted him dead? This is the question that is still open.

mcmcmc 1 hour ago | parent

Where was it reported that someone wanted him dead?

whatever1 48 minutes ago | parent

He is now “dead”. He might resurrect, but for all practical purposes he is dead for the foreseeable future.

mcmcmc 40 minutes ago | parent

Wow, that’s an incredibly obtuse way of describing his situation. He’s still breathing, and he’s one of the richest people in the world. Doesn’t sound too dead to me. Also this has nothing to do with anyone wanting him gone, it started with a national security investigation because he was fucking a Chinese spy and evading export controls. And that kinda makes everyone not working for the PRC want him gone

taurath 14 minutes ago | parent

From the public sphere, as a "noble" in our society being a business-leader, his public career persona has been shot twice in a week by affair allegations and a foreign spy campaign and it doesn't seem like he'll be able to maintain his title.

Avicebron 7 minutes ago | parent

Maybe we don't need "nobles" in our society.

tefkah 4 minutes ago | parent

AI Jesus will save us

fidotron 1 hour ago | parent

It'll be to do with his encouragement of open models.

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.

cromka 1 hour ago | parent

He wouldnt make and push through this strategy on his own, that's entire board behind it.

galkk 1 hour ago | parent

Unless there’s an evidence of him being compromised, this is crazy. I’m total outsider and don’t know Nvidia copropare rule machinery, but from perceived perspective that feels like significant blow to the company.

I expect shit show funnier than when OpenAI tried to put Altman with same result.

sparkling 1 hour ago | parent

Even shift leaders at McDonalds need to sign various workplace policies, including policies about relations with their direct reports. So yeah, this is not exactly a surprise or something unheard of.

BeetleB 51 minutes ago | parent

> Even shift leaders at McDonalds need to sign various workplace policies, including policies about relations with their direct reports.

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).

carlosjobim 38 minutes ago | parent

Any such policy is illegal and wouldn't last in court. You can't contract away human rights.

Avicebron 27 minutes ago | parent

Having a relationship with someone at work, especially if there is a power dynamic between you isn't a human right as far as I know..

sparkling 25 minutes ago | parent

You can't ban someone from having a relationship. But you certainly can require them to disclose such a conflict of interest to the board.

bigstrat2003 23 minutes ago | parent

It is not a human right to have sex with whomever you wish free of restrictions.

mcmcmc 57 minutes ago | parent

Even if he’s not compromised it shows a pretty serious lapse in judgment. Remember that CEO and HR exec who got caught at a Coldplay concert?

44mkultra69 1 hour ago | parent

Steve Bannon ( et al., himself already having done the job now serving by rolling release AI proxy ) Trump move. Dunno who invented it but it works

karimf 1 hour ago | parent

Related: Jensen Huang Said to Have Had Relationship with Nvidia Executive https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50459321

jawiggins 1 hour ago | parent

From the NYT Story:

> 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.

ceejayoz 55 minutes ago | parent

I’m very curious what the going rate for such an offer is.

lostlogin 35 minutes ago | parent

An RTX 5090?

ceejayoz 18 minutes ago | parent

I mean, the guy's worth $150B or so.

Do they offer $20k? $200k? $2M? He stands to potentially lose tens of billions over this.

carabiner 54 minutes ago | parent

The fact that they had a process for this is telling.

poisonborz 9 minutes ago | parent

See Succession, after a certain net worth this is common practice, family bodyguards and lawyers train for such cases, however absurd.

plinkplonk 5 minutes ago | parent

Ok but if you are having an affair with your direct report why would you "be affectionate" in public ?

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.

rvz 1 hour ago | parent

The NYT reports that Huang was caught on video with this second affair when they were together in San Jose.

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.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50417105

sparkling 37 minutes ago | parent

Makes you wonder who the person(s) is?

EmX_3000 1 hour ago | parent

The possible security implications of this entire affair (affairs now) can't be overstated. That hardware's in the most secret of facilities, computing very classified workloads for very very serious customers. Not the goofy AI heads, I'm talking about the military and intelligence communities in many nations.

Hopefully this teaches the market to migrate away from proprietary CUDA and NVIDIA and their proprietary drivers.

nazgob 54 minutes ago | parent

There is a second affair...

cunnymcface 46 minutes ago | parent

Why would this do anything to make people move on from the best performing devices in widespread production that money can buy?

CyberMacGyver 1 hour ago | parent

This doesn’t bode well for Anthropic’s IPO indirectly, due to whole AI industry being propped up largely by Nvidia’s circular investment. Also there’s likely a big overlap of institutional investors who are both NVDA and ANT investors and will now likely seek to dump ANT at the opening bell.

WheelsAtLarge 50 minutes ago | parent

Short term, days or weeks, there will be panic. But the impact of the change won't really be felt for years to come. For the next few years, the company will be fine.

bijowo1676 43 minutes ago | parent

FALSE.

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

IsTom 36 minutes ago | parent

These days US has nowhere near enough soft power to do something like that.

dandellion 24 minutes ago | parent

They can't even stop one company from selling physical chips to China, yet somehow they're going to prevent anybody from running open models? I don't know, it doesn't seem likely to me.

bijowo1676 17 minutes ago | parent

there will be divergence: US-aligned world (NATO+Korea+Japan and other vassal states) will bend over and agree to whatever regulation Department of Commerce/State is cooking to ban open weight (Chinese) models.

the rest of the world will be starved of GPUs and chipmaking equipment and chemical supplies for chip making

UncleOxidant 20 minutes ago | parent

Agreed. And it would damage Nvidia if they went along with this.

bijowo1676 14 minutes ago | parent

fall of nvidia is acceptable collateral damage, they are just hardware vendor. all their chips are made by TSMC anyways. And they can be replaced by OpenAI's inhouse chips or googles TPUs, made in the same TSMC factories.

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

desolate_muffin 1 minute ago | parent

If anyone can make chips like Nvidia, why isn't another company doing it already? Anything can sound easy if you reduce it enough, but I really don't see how it is that easy in practice.

A_D_E_P_T 26 minutes ago | parent

I don't see how this can happen, though. There are a lot of GPUs out there and open models have already been downloaded millions of times. (IIRC Deepseek v4.1 Flash has been downloaded nearly 2M times just on HuggingFace, just over the past month.) The NATO world already relies quite heavily on open models, in many cases served by Mistral and other local providers. China is also developing its own hardware -- Huawei isn't slacking -- and it's not that far behind. And I'd bet there's no such thing as a "GPU Level" block that can't be hacked away.

Such a move would also be transparently dystopian... though, in fairness, I suppose that makes it more plausible than it would otherwise be...

bijowo1676 18 minutes ago | parent

they will use National Security as a pretense to force everyone on "verified-aligned AI".

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

augment_me 33 minutes ago | parent

This might rather save the IPO. Banned open source models will allow the closed source players to maintain power and recoup a larger part of their investment by driving up the prices.

chad_strategic 58 minutes ago | parent

Tomorrow's opening headline: US Gov to buy NVIDIA and merge with Intel.

The US taxpayer wins.

/s

matsemann 56 minutes ago | parent

Why are all the tech overlords scum people? Do they become that way with power, money and fame, or is it a certain kind of person from the start that achieves these things?

I'm scared about how this in turn shapes society.

blahblaher 54 minutes ago | parent

"a certain kind of person from the start"

__MatrixMan__ 51 minutes ago | parent

Kings were also famously out of touch with reality. Hierarchies, if left alone to grow this tall, do this to people.

kodoman 37 minutes ago | parent

Only the bad kings and they soon found out about it.

You would do well to look at the history beyond the modern era.

jacquesm 50 minutes ago | parent

That's an excellent question and I've been wondering about this a lot. I've known a few billionaires, exactly one was an amazing person, the rest were absolutely terrible people in every sense of the word. The whole word is full of NPCs to them. But your question goes to the heart of it: were they terrible people because that's a requirement for becoming a billionaire or did becoming a billionaire somewhere along the line turn them into terrible people?

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:

https://jacquesmattheij.com/in-memoriam-rene-sommer/

kodoman 33 minutes ago | parent

The question is are the 'good' people you know actually good.

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.

jacquesm 24 minutes ago | parent

You're mixing individuals and groups in a way that I can't really say much about it. I was talking exclusively about individuals that I've known personally beyond sitting at the same table or working for them with three layers of indirection.

kodoman 11 minutes ago | parent

Fair enough, for me I suppose for me the vast majority of people are deep down terrible and only made good because they have been made to be. I can imagine what you say is very true and no doubt the vast majority of billionaires are horrible and their untouchableness no doubt makes that so.

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%.

famouswaffles 49 minutes ago | parent

"Nearly any man can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power" - Honest Abe

kodoman 29 minutes ago | parent

I hope you can see the conceit in this answer as well. Being powerless is perhaps a great test of character.

fullshark 47 minutes ago | parent

Edison v. Tesla is probably informative here, the system rewards scummy behavior.

kodoman 37 minutes ago | parent

> Jensen Huang slept 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.

WheelsAtLarge 55 minutes ago | parent

Large companies always have a backup plan in case the CEO needs to be replaced. What usually happens in these cases is that a new CEO will be named. That new CEO will focus on maximizing the company's earnings while neglecting the tech. And the company will be an earnings winner for the next few years.

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.

mcmcmc 54 minutes ago | parent

Would be pretty difficult for him to have any influence if he ends up in a cell

justinai6 52 minutes ago | parent

would you want that CEO job?... founder behind the scenes driving the show.

tosser811 50 minutes ago | parent

I'd be crying into my $10,000 dollar bills that I'm also lighting on fire...

rubyfan 51 minutes ago | parent

They need to fire him outright. The company needs to set the example that misconduct won’t be tolerated at any level. Keeping him on in anything but a transition capacity would be a mistake.

avazhi 48 minutes ago | parent

Most people couldn’t care less about him having affairs. Sex is part of life, and affairs are pretty common.

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.

JumpCrisscross 47 minutes ago | parent

> bigger issue is the conflict of interest stuff

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.

avazhi 44 minutes ago | parent

I agree the corruption and conflict of interest stuff is the real issue here and is serious. I’m just criticising the hand-wringing over him banging some random woman (or women, as it apparently turns out), as if that is some unprecedented or shocking behaviour or worthy of a reprimand on its own. Most of the world left that prudish shit behind in the ‘90s.

JumpCrisscross 43 minutes ago | parent

> the hand-wringing over him banging some random woman

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.

grey-area 32 minutes ago | parent

> saw as a bit of a paragon

He was never a paragon.

https://mustsharenews.com/jensen-huang-signs-woman-chest/

dofm 36 minutes ago | parent

I think marital infidelity is shitty behaviour but I also think the main issue here is that this man in this job with this global significance thought this woman was safe to be involved with.

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.

lenerdenator 30 minutes ago | parent

I don’t think it’s necessarily prudish, but in order to accurately judge it you need to know if someone’s ENM or not, and that’s more than most people make known about their personal lives.

Stepping outside of your marriage behind your spouse’s back is still scummy behavior.

adksjghkjd 24 minutes ago | parent

"random women"

one was a direct report, one was a spy

ml-anon 21 minutes ago | parent

"some random woman" who happen to be a) a foreign spy and b) a direct report. You absolute moron.

discordance 37 minutes ago | parent

This sounds too reasonable.

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.

stickfigure 26 minutes ago | parent

Not familiar with the details, I asked the ai overlords to gather up public evidence and give me a summary and... this feels like a very premature accusation. Unless you know something that isn't public, seems like we need to wait and see.

hbcdbff 45 minutes ago | parent

Your common or garden affair? Not a big deal.

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

famouswaffles 42 minutes ago | parent

Man what are you on about? Most CEOs are gone the moment affairs (especially those within the company) come to light.

eli_gottlieb 30 minutes ago | parent

As people said about the Huggingface incident: if you see one ant in your kitchen, the best estimate for the total number of ants actually present is well above one.

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.

QuiEgo 16 minutes ago | parent

There are now two allegations: that he had sex with a Chinese spy and that he had sex with a direct report.

The second one will get you fired just about anywhere.

eecc 32 minutes ago | parent

Frankly, has he broken any law?

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.

macintux 15 minutes ago | parent

Enabling billions of dollars of export-restricted chips to be shipped to China is probably more of an issue than the affairs, legally speaking.

doublescoop 4 minutes ago | parent

The accusal is that he has broken US federal securities and export control laws. There also may be some light treason.

TheAlchemist 17 minutes ago | parent

Large traditional companies.

Recent trend is quite the opposite. What's Tesla without Musk selling pipe dreams ? Pretty sure there is 0 plan for replacement.

aanet 55 minutes ago | parent

This is how the market tanks...

SMH

blahblaher 55 minutes ago | parent

Nvidia is Jensen. If he's out, NVidia crashes and takes the AI bubble with it

SaucyWrong 51 minutes ago | parent

I have no qualms with this outcome.

EDIT: I assume the bubble will collapse into correction eventually, sooner is better than later.

TheAlchemist 50 minutes ago | parent

It would be quite funny.

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.

GolfPopper 47 minutes ago | parent

>Unless we discover that all this circular financing was some kind of scheme.

I think this is one of those " the question is the answer" moments.

dabinat 53 minutes ago | parent

Interesting that the thing that might pop the AI stock bubble isn’t anything to do with the technology at all but a good old-fashioned sex scandal.

brewdad 23 minutes ago | parent

It won’t be the sex it will be the illicit sales of GPUs to China. That domino topples the next and all of the “sales” of goods to AI companies financed by the sellers. There’s a whole lot of paper sales boosting revenues while losing money with each sale going on.

It’s the Dot Bomb days all over again.

justinai6 53 minutes ago | parent

Honestly, I hope this doesn’t play out in a rushed way. Evaluating this is the board’s top duty. It’s critical, and healthy, for them to weigh what’s best for all NVDA stakeholders.

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.

avazhi 46 minutes ago | parent

> Obviously, the affairs are a very serious issue,

It’s just sex mate, it’s really not a big deal unless he giving favourable deals to his mistress’s company.

JumpCrisscross 44 minutes ago | parent

"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" [1].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/09/business/economy/nvidia-m...

QuesnayJr 8 minutes ago | parent

Who do you think Alice Huang is, mate? People had questions about NVidia's deal with Megaspeed since day 1.

afavour 7 minutes ago | parent

Affairs could be a whole lot more than that. For example, assuming he didn’t want his wife finding out he’s an ideal blackmail target for anyone that does know.

JumpCrisscross 45 minutes ago | parent

> the investigation needs to determine whether there were any security conflict of interest breaches

The Board–correctly–fears for themselves personally in a case involving Jensen's public and multinational corruption scheme.

shimman 11 minutes ago | parent

Add in that the democratic party wants to look tough on tech and here you have a clear case of the CEO selling known banned exports to a Chinese spy while personally fueling the data center hysteria.

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.

lvl256 21 minutes ago | parent

They had dirt on him for many years. Someone wants him ousted. That’s what’s happening behind the scene. Jensen probably pissed off someone very well-connected.

neuralkoi 13 minutes ago | parent

This is what I'm feeling as well. Similar to the "intervention" that put Altman back as CEO as well as a brand new board which included an ex-CIA director.

debo_ 51 minutes ago | parent

Well, the good news is this means he should be well primed to become the next Republican presidential candidate.

ProblemExplorer 51 minutes ago | parent

If Nvidia is going to fire Jensen Huang, my question is whether Jensen will be allowed to start another "Nvidia".

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.

rogerrogerr 49 minutes ago | parent

Why would Jensen without Nvidia be a better bet than Nvidia without Jensen?

xyzzy_plugh 46 minutes ago | parent

Why does it need to be? Why not both? What if both produces a net positive, as competition is usually a good thing?

ProblemExplorer 45 minutes ago | parent

> Why would Jensen without Nvidia be a better bet

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

blanched 43 minutes ago | parent

Thought they smelled wrong? Am I missing a reference to something?

disiplus 40 minutes ago | parent

idk reading everything what is coming out it looks like he had much unlimited power to do whatever he wanted. so i dont buy that someone (even legal) was a hurdle for him.

snowe2010 40 minutes ago | parent

How old are you?

Philpax 35 minutes ago | parent

What are you talking about? Do you understand how companies work?

lossolo 32 minutes ago | parent

That's not how the world works. Most of what NVIDIA does is protected by patents and trade secrets, not to mention CUDA.

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.

Exoristos 8 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]

actionfromafar 49 minutes ago | parent

What do you mean "allowed"?

jswelker 46 minutes ago | parent

I assume golden parachute + noncompete contract.

actionfromafar 37 minutes ago | parent

Ah, the golden handcuffs.

ram1500natrluvr 48 minutes ago | parent

It's not just the Chinese spy. NYT:

> Jensen Huang... also had an extramarital relationship with an executive who reports to him, according to five people who worked at the company.

dmitrygr 47 minutes ago | parent

In what way did this affect nvidia's products?

grilledchickenw 43 minutes ago | parent

How is that relevant? You could claim he was a victim of a honeypot, but an affair with a report is an abuse of power. Any regular employee would be terminated within a day. A CEO in his position will take a little more than a day.

ram1500natrluvr 26 minutes ago | parent

I used to be a frequent visitor to /r/nvidia ~15 years ago until ~5 years ago. Around 2020 it turned increasingly into a sort of stock price cult. The discussions were corrupted with people who felt like they had a duty to try to help increase the stock price. I'm seeing inklings of that in these sorts of threads. How are these people so unaware of standard corporate policy? This is like the stereotypical case that's presented by HR to new hires.

Miraste 24 minutes ago | parent

It's an abuse of power, but it's also an excuse to get him out. Fortune 100 boards don't make decisions of this financial magnitude because of ethical considerations. Some political wind must have shifted against Jensen.

blanched 41 minutes ago | parent

Even putting that aside, it affected the stock price, so I don’t see why the board wouldn’t care.

bestouff 45 minutes ago | parent

So what ? Does it make him a bad boss ?

9cb14c1ec0 44 minutes ago | parent

Yes.

lutoma 43 minutes ago | parent

... yes? Obviously?

c0rruptbytes 43 minutes ago | parent

...yes... maybe effective at business, but definitely a bad boss to have relationships with your directs

voidfunc 29 minutes ago | parent

I can overlook a lot for a bad boss that makes me a multi-millionaire possibly ten times over.

JumpCrisscross 48 minutes ago | parent

> whether Jensen will be allowed to start another Nvidia

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.

ceejayoz 47 minutes ago | parent

> He now knows how not to get trapped into a tactically targeted honeypot…

Does he? Plenty of serial cheaters out there getting caught repeatedly.

jacquesm 47 minutes ago | parent

He's still a shareholder. It is considered extremely bad form to start a company that competes with a company that you are still a shareholder of unless you have not been fired with cause. The only other example I can think of is Jobs. So it is possible but I would assume that post Jobs contracts were put together in such a way that it would be very hard to compete with the company you got booted out of and that you are still a shareholder of. I've signed a couple of contracts over the years just as shareholders and those already mentioned that if I had competing interests the deal would be null and void and I'd be liable, and for good reasons too.

tomp 44 minutes ago | parent

Why couldn't he just sell his shares then buy unencumbered fresh shares straight on the stock market? Lose <1% of spread...

xyzzy_plugh 43 minutes ago | parent

He could pretty trivially divest or move his shares into a blind trust or something. This isn't rocket science, and furthermore it's not as bad form as you might think. It happens all the time with little repurcissions.

jacquesm 38 minutes ago | parent

You think the kind of lawyers that power the documents behind these endeavours (a couple of trillion dollars) have not thought about this?

JumpCrisscross 33 minutes ago | parent

> the kind of lawyers that power the documents behind these endeavours

Those lawyers were hired by Jensen.

jacquesm 25 minutes ago | parent

And paid by NV.

avrionov 46 minutes ago | parent

He will have a non compete agreement for a while. May be 1 year or more.

solyin 25 minutes ago | parent

In California?

wmf 15 minutes ago | parent

California allows paid noncompetes but it's not clear what they could offer him since he already has ~$150B.

lvl256 27 minutes ago | parent

If I am Lip-bu at Intel, I’d wire Huang after news cycle cools.

achandra03 50 minutes ago | parent

Mr. President a second Jensen affair has hit the tower

usui 22 minutes ago | parent

AI is under attack.

threecheese 49 minutes ago | parent

This is kinda huge; my layperson view is that Jensen has been responsible for their long term technology strategy, which requires deep understanding of so much outside of the business domain. I'm not exactly thrilled that they are "eating the world" (hf purchase had me bent out of shape, for example), but they've undeniably executed on some long term complex shit. Who could take his place?

JumpCrisscross 48 minutes ago | parent

> Who could take his place?

One of the greatest failures of Nvidia's Board was in failing to push for a successor. (Musks' companies face a similar risk.)

LarsDu88 43 minutes ago | parent

Nvidia had 3 cofounders. Jensen was one. The second cofounder still works there.

brewdad 31 minutes ago | parent

Is that founder a Jobs or a Woz? It matters.

KerrAvon 19 minutes ago | parent

With Nvidia, Do we know this or is there just not a public face?

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.

ex-aws-dude 28 minutes ago | parent

Yeah but how much is just nvidia happened to be in the right business for the AI boom

It’s not like Jensen predicted it

Miraste 20 minutes ago | parent

He may not have predicted the specifics, but they didn't just happen to be there. Nvidia started work on CUDA in 2004, and aggressively iterated machine learning hardware and software for twenty years to get into the position they had for the boom.

magicalhippo 16 minutes ago | parent

Well AMD and Intel were too, and they've not delivered remotely close to the same performance as NVIDIA.

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.

2OEH8eoCRo0 48 minutes ago | parent

Finally some sanity. He should have resigned.

giantfrog 47 minutes ago | parent

Is there any reason why this will actually change the fundamentals of Nvidia's business so long as 5080s go for as much as a used car and the entire world wants H200s? Even if they lose an extremely hands-on CEO, they're selling a very expensive product with extremely high global demand.

dmitrygr 45 minutes ago | parent

Uh huh.. that is today. what about the day after tomorrow?

giantfrog 31 minutes ago | parent

I think demand for Nvidia products will remain strong by Friday.

taurath 17 minutes ago | parent

I don't know, there sure are a whole lot of H200s sitting in warehouses for companies forced to take delivery or be cut out of future lots.

giantfrog 11 minutes ago | parent

Yeah I genuinely don't know either! I'm just very curious about the effect an ouster will have not on the stock price, but the business of designing and selling chips.

user- 46 minutes ago | parent

it would be ironic if this is how the AI 'bubble' pops.

Irattional things continue to be irrational i guess

dogscatstrees 45 minutes ago | parent

Some of these main narratives just don't add up. If the end goal was to get chips, why is China blocking those H200s and it's stuck on port.

There's a different angle here worth listening to: https://youtu.be/IC3Kh40dEQY

xiphias2 45 minutes ago | parent

It looks like the midterm elections are working, politicians really don't want Chinese models they can't control to be trained.

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.

echelon 40 minutes ago | parent

If we ban open weights models (read: Chinese models), we are truly fucked as a country. That is a dead end for our tech sector.

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.

seatac76 37 minutes ago | parent

The Democrats haven’t taken office yet and all the people who could have leaked this information are Republicans currently so maybe think again?

JumpCrisscross 35 minutes ago | parent

> all the people who could have leaked this information are Republicans

Source?

x13 32 minutes ago | parent

You don't think it's because of his extramarital affair with Alice Huang—a Chinese businesswoman identified by U.S. intelligence officials as a Chinese intelligence asset—as well as a newly reported relationship with Nvidia executive Kimberly Powell? It's all democrats-doing? This sounds a bit red-tin-foil-hat-ish.

saberience 45 minutes ago | parent

He’s not gonna end up leaving. This is rubbish.

whyenot 44 minutes ago | parent

The reports that he had a second affair with a subordinate, if true, are disgusting and would lead to termination at any other company. He should not get a pass. How someone who has had so much success could have such poor judgement is a mystery to me. It’s sad, he accomplished so much.

at1as 44 minutes ago | parent

If this had happened at a more recent founder-led tech company, the board would have far less practical independence

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)

lenerdenator 37 minutes ago | parent

And that’s precisely the sort of arrangement we should ban.

Humans need someone to be accountable to, even if it’s just some guy walking behind you saying “memento mori” twice a day.

creato 34 minutes ago | parent

I think even if NVIDIA were founded recently, it still wouldn't have such a share structure. The companies that do have dual class shares are software companies that can grow significantly without raising a ton of capital. NVIDIA being a hardware company, that is a lot harder to do even today.

gpt5 20 minutes ago | parent

Anthropic is the most capitalist intensive company of all time and has a similar structure.

paulryanrogers 14 minutes ago | parent

Crazy we even allow non-voting shares and multiple tiers of shares.

ferguess_k 41 minutes ago | parent

I wonder what happens to NVDA afterwards. People say Jensen is NVDA or at least he has a lot of controls over the company. I guess they finally found the right time (very bad midterm) and the right opportunity (mistress as Chinese spy).

I even wonder whether some elements within the Chinese government has a hand in it -- not (only) the mistress part but the ousting part.

TheBlight 38 minutes ago | parent

There's probably a lot more to this than we'll ever know.

sparkling 23 minutes ago | parent

Given that

1/ China is still interested in chips

2/ Chip exports to China will now (presumably) be under even more scrutiny

What would their motivation be to leak this info?

ghtbircshotbe 17 minutes ago | parent

I'm thinking the people behind trying to oust him are people who don't appreciate him likely knowingly violating export sanctions and putting the rest of the company and himself at risk of massive fines and criminal prosecution

bigwheels 41 minutes ago | parent

Macro: Is this political subterfuge to distract us from other things like criminal government officials? Spiteful payback for losing the mid-terms?

zero_shift 37 minutes ago | parent

I don't think it's any of these things.

It's NVIDIA being sued because they defrauded investors by including illicit chip sales in their Q3 figures

Stevvo 36 minutes ago | parent

Hard to imagine this happening. Curious if he will pull off a coup like Sam Altman.

int32_64 35 minutes ago | parent

What is the endgame of this completely cumbersome and obvious CIA journalist and intelligence community rollout of this narrative surrounding Jensen and Nvidia? Why would they nuke the credibility of America's only AI chip company and hand the future of AI to China? Do they actually think this will gain them control over AI?

https://x.com/ChinaSelect/status/2120253050845593723

JumpCrisscross 31 minutes ago | parent

Americans voted for rooting out corruption. The Congressional committees that review stuff like corruptly quashing an investigation into your lover qua Chinese spy's company [1] are changing hands. Jensen coming clean right after the election was, within the range of options he had, smart.

Folks running 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 recently? The days of the CIA running a competent conspiracy, if they ever existed, are long behind us.)

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/09/business/economy/nvidia-m...

lostlogin 27 minutes ago | parent

> Americans voted for rooting out corruption.

Wasn’t the swap drained in 2016 too?

paulryanrogers 17 minutes ago | parent

Those of us foolish enough to vote Trump in 2016 weren't convinced he was going to leave the swamp drained, rather that it was so bad he couldn't do worse. A lesser of two evils kind of choice.

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'.

bdhe 5 minutes ago | parent

Trying to engage in good faith here. What did you see in the first few weeks after your 2016 vote that were materially different from how he ran his 2016 campaign (and I mean the hits - "they're sending rapists, ...", "grab her by the pussy", ...)?

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?

gr_norm 22 minutes ago | parent

> The days of the CIA running a competent conspiracy, if they ever existed, are long behind us.

Now that's something I'd like everyone to believe, if I was the CIA.

bigyabai 16 minutes ago | parent

The US intelligence community is pretty shot, but we too quickly forget how much of the internet is influenced by them.

stickfigure 9 minutes ago | parent

If the anti-corruption revolution is going to focus on some dude's sex life rather than the extensive and obvious whoring of political office, I want none of it.

dralley 5 minutes ago | parent

When the "some dude" is Jensen Huang and involves sleeping with Chinese spies while advocating for relaxed export controls, then obviously it's gonna pay him some attention.

atleastoptimal 31 minutes ago | parent

I think their concern is that NVidia is acquiescent and in support of policies which give China better AI chips, which is the core of the matter regarding the honeypot scandal. The goal, if it is an op, is to get a CEO who will comply more readily with export controls.

raincole 30 minutes ago | parent

They are finding ways to tighten chip export to China, which is the biggest threat to OpenAI/Anthropic atm.

theptip 11 minutes ago | parent

Let’s steelman instead of strawman. The CIA likely cares little about Ant and OpenAI.

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.

stingraycharles 5 minutes ago | parent

And it’s also very obvious that restricting exports will only help in the short term, and in the long term, gives China reason to develop their own tech.

epolanski 2 minutes ago | parent

The biggest constraint in AI is energy, not hardware. You can always throw slower hardware at the problem, just have more of it.

Energy is the hard part, and US is deeply behind on that.

pryce 4 minutes ago | parent

I thought I was supposed to believe that OpenAI & Anthropic's methods are so much more advanced than any potential capabilities of Chinese competitors that OpenAI & Anthropic must each be trillion dollar companies.

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.

Opp64849 27 minutes ago | parent

NYT and WSJ doing the bidding. Unleash the Oppenheimer protocol. It’s an epic footgun. History repeats itself.

noeltock 26 minutes ago | parent

Given the massive amount of chips funneled through to CN, I guess it leaves regular ol' corporate governance no other option.

afavour 24 minutes ago | parent

They’re just reporting on things that are true and have been kept secret inappropriately. That’s not a “narrative”.

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.

techblueberry 11 minutes ago | parent

You don’t have to be a conspiracy theory to realized someone leaked these stories in fairly rapid succession and it’s not a leap to suggest that person has an agenda. Not everything is a conspiracy but when it only has to involve a few people the odds go up.

jatora 8 minutes ago | parent

When one story comes out, other related stories that have been around are a lot easier to get limelight. And it's much easier to surface new dirt in those situations too. So I wouldn't use rapid succession of multiple stories as indicative of anything.

afavour 2 minutes ago | parent

You’ve already made an assumption there that both stories were leaked by the same person. What’s the evidence to back that up?

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.

hn_throwaway_99 20 minutes ago | parent

What is up with people who seem to love corruption?

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.

ml-anon 13 minutes ago | parent

More like: whats up with people being utterly fucking stupid and devoid of even the bare minimum of critical thinking skills. Being pro (or at least unbothered by) corruption is just one of the ways that manifests.

bigyabai 3 minutes ago | parent

Money talks. Shareholders didn't seem to mind when Tim Cook gave Trump a golden trophy. They certainly didn't mind Jensen Huang's dialog with Trump when sanctions were ill-defined. It seems like cronyism is in, and all the cool kids are doing it.

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.

qlte 8 minutes ago | parent

Reminds me of the meme that WorldCom went down because their CEO bravely stood up to NSA pressure. Instead of, you know, running an elaborate shell game of financial fraud to enrich executives and dupe shareholders after the Dot Com bubble burst.

rgbrenner 13 minutes ago | parent

"America's only AI chip company"

Nvidia has a large market share, but AMD, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, OpenAI, Qualcomm all produce AI chips... these are all American companies.

ZoneZealot 6 minutes ago | parent

+Broadcom (as much as it pains me to say)

linguae 2 minutes ago | parent

And let’s not forget Apple, which makes Apple Silicon chips and makes the Mac Mini and the Mac Studio, which are very popular devices for local LLMs.

tom910 35 minutes ago | parent

It will be a huge mistake for Nvidia

benguild 34 minutes ago | parent

This is the most American thing ever

pixelpoet 22 minutes ago | parent

It's insulting, even as a non-American; the idea that we're all stupid enough to believe that oh, well, yes of course we should fire this brilliant tech leader because he slept with some attractive person (who may or may not have been planted for exactly this kind of bullshit "leverage"); that just logically follows, doesn't it?

bilekas 13 minutes ago | parent

People don't seem to understand what the actual issue is. Nvidia seem to have circumvented export controls to at least one of his mistresses companies, who had more stock purchased than could physically fit in their dataceblnter. Nvidia didn't ask or ignored what was happening to make sure their profit earnings were still growing, defrauding investors. The salacious part is minor.

aanet 33 minutes ago | parent

I take no joy in noting that personality-driven companies are notably at the mercy of the vagaries of the key-man in the key-man risk clause... :-/

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.

blueSky1989 31 minutes ago | parent

Did he break any law?

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.

mlh496 26 minutes ago | parent

I think this is for the FBI to determine.

biggestriverman 30 minutes ago | parent

So what happens if this actually goes through? Everyone switches their hardware spend to which other providers?

TPUs and AWS's Trainium seem to be at least in the ballpark of being competitive but does that matter at all?

ares623 26 minutes ago | parent

Nvidia will still be around?

LarsDu88 30 minutes ago | parent

He would absolutely be fired if he were in any role, but as CEO cofounder, it's hard not to attribute Nvidia's success to his leadership.

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.

LightBug1 26 minutes ago | parent

I still don't understand why Jensen didn't just offer the lady involved a horse.

I mean, that's acceptable these days isn't it?

elmer2 23 minutes ago | parent

It:s because he's close to Trump.

class3shock 22 minutes ago | parent

Good riddance. All these csuite people think they are so uniquely capable but if he gets kicked out nothing will change except we'll, hopefully, hear less about jackets at tech presentations.

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.

ares623 21 minutes ago | parent

My tinfoil hat theory is that this is all orchestrated. They knew about the affair for months, but withheld it. My theory is that with the midterms results, rather than risk facing accountability as things unravel "naturally", they have this big bombshell as a "get out of blame free" card. That way everyone can collectively say "It wasn't _my_ fault things fell apart. I was doing my best, honest!"

mthewood 20 minutes ago | parent

This is overblown; nvda is a mature company jensen has set the right bets forward so it's just a matter in who the successor is. In terms of revenue impact, assuming megaspeed accounted for ~20% of sales (rumored estimate) then game optimal move is to have OAI/ANT pick those sales up. We will hear about a transition plan probably around earnings.

galleywest200 17 minutes ago | parent

If those sales were illicit, and listed under earnings reports as legitimate, is that defrauding investors?

mthewood 7 minutes ago | parent

yea that can be argued^ if there is proof that Jensen knew and acknowledged that these are shell companies that will funnel the chips to china then yea that's defrauding investors.

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.

cft 18 minutes ago | parent

That was probably the Chinese intelligence intent, to destroy Nvidia this way. The tools are going for it.

golbez9 16 minutes ago | parent

It's Joever

yakbarber 13 minutes ago | parent

Huh I wonder if the true goal of the spy was to disrupt Nvidia by getting him fired, slowing them down, not stealing secrets.

allen3 13 minutes ago | parent

Fired with cause or stepping down (most likely stepping down)>Interim CEO named> Jensen flew too close to sun and got burned. Board investigations will put everything on Jensen and they will turn that chapter over. Much more information will come out. His wife I will divorce him as well. This whole thing is more political than anything else. Who leaked all of this is my biggest question. Nvidia should be fine in the mid term, but unstable in the short term.

zhyder 13 minutes ago | parent

It's interesting how some of the smartest people can still make some of the dumbest mistakes. So my optimistic feeling: we're all similarly enough capable of smart and dumb things. But my pessimistic feeling: our intelligence isn't fundamentally better than LLMs in avoiding dumbest mistakes

thrownawaysz 13 minutes ago | parent

It’s pretty clear (if you aren’t a huge idiot) that Jensen is attempting to bury the lead here.

He knowingly helped advance China’s AI ambitions against the direction of congress. He got caught selling 7.5 Billion dollars of restricted chips to china.

Also he cheated on his wife with some Chinese woman, which is a totally separate and unrelated fuck up.

If you seriously think he got tricked by some random woman who batted her eyes, you are out of your mind. He founded the fucking company, he isn’t some clueless executive. He’s also not senile and he doesn’t have dementia. This is the only viable excuse for him to use, but it’s complete bullshit.

Think about it: He betrayed his longtime wife, who by all accounts supported him from the beginning. He betrayed his company and its shareholders. And he betrayed his country (BOTH of his countries?) who specifically forbid the chips to be sold to china. He’s fucked

csense 11 minutes ago | parent

So his girlfriend's a spy.

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.

Metacelsus 11 minutes ago | parent

"Nvidia" was named for envy, one of the 7 deadly sins. Maybe his next company will be "Luxuria"?

Alien1Being 8 minutes ago | parent

China wins again The Guoanbu ( Guojia Anquan Bu (国家安全部) China's spy agency ) is subtle.

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.