President Trump has put his own pick into Nvidia's search for a permanent chief executive, saying Apple's Tim Cook should replace Jensen Huang. In a Truth Social post on Thursday he wrote: “NOW THAT Nvidia CEO JENSEN HUANG, who has done a fantastic job, has resigned, there is only one man to take his place - TIM COOK of Apple. A Legend replaces a Legend!” He repeated the idea in his interview with Stephen A. Smith.
Cook led Apple for 15 years before stepping down as chief executive on September 1, becoming executive chairman as John Ternus took over. At Nvidia, Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress is serving as interim chief executive while the board searches inside and outside the company; Semafor has reported that Apple's longtime chip chief Johny Srouji is among those being considered. Nvidia has not indicated that Cook is a candidate, and Cook has shown no public interest in the job — the President's post states his preference, and the decision belongs to Nvidia's board.
The scandal that brought down Nvidia's Jensen Huang is now writing legislation. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast told reporters on Thursday that it is "very likely" a group of bills imposing new guardrails on exports of advanced American chips to China will be written into this year's must-pass annual defense bill - the National Defense Authorization Act, the measure that funds the United States military and the surest route anything on Capitol Hill has to becoming law.
Mast, whose committee oversees export control policy, tied the momentum directly to Huang's fall hours earlier. "If he doesn't know who he's in bed with, he doesn't know where all the chips are going either, and we know that for a fact," he said. The allegation at the centre of the scandal - that Huang had a personal relationship with a woman suspected of acting for Chinese intelligence - remains a reported allegation, not an established finding. What it has done is give the crackdown its momentum.
Three measures are in the mix as House and Senate negotiators settle the final defense package. The Chip Security Act would require advanced chips to carry location-verification mechanisms, cracking down on the smuggling networks that divert American processors to buyers they were never licensed for. The AI Overwatch Act, Mast's own bill, would give Congress the chance to review licences for advanced AI chip sales before they go through. The third measure, the Match Act, would tighten restrictions on the equipment used to make advanced chips and push America's allies to match U.S. restrictions, so China cannot simply buy the tools and manufacture the chips itself. All three bills were advanced by Mast's committee earlier this year, and all three already sit in the Senate's version of the defense package.
The support runs across the Capitol. Speaker Mike Johnson said on Thursday: "I'm in favor of limiting those exports, and I think there's a developing consensus in Congress." Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jim Banks have been pressing for the Overwatch Act to ride the defense bill, and negotiators are now working through the differences between the House and Senate versions, with the final bill expected to pass next month - before the new Congress takes office in January.
The push is Congress's own. President Trump has been cool to tighter chip export restrictions, and his administration previously signed off on deals that allowed Nvidia to sell more of its high-end chips to China under licence; the administration has not endorsed handing Congress a say over those licences. That sets up the question the negotiations will answer: whether the guardrails reach the President's desk in a form he will sign as part of a defense bill the country needs passed.
Mast also turned the spotlight on the office that runs the export rules day to day. He said he still has confidence in Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who is facing growing scrutiny over his handling of the administration's chip policy, but he declined to say the same for Jeffrey Kessler, the Lutnick deputy who heads the Bureau of Industry and Security. Asked whether he has confidence in Kessler, Mast said: "I'm not going to answer that yes or no," noting Kessler has "been most granular on this level" and that "that's been more of an argumentative dynamic." He said he "absolutely" wants to investigate the bureau's role in the Nvidia controversy.
And Mast kept the pressure on Huang personally. "We want to see him basically in a week," he said of the testimony Huang has agreed to give. "Sooner rather than later." If the talks break down, the subpoena is ready: "If negotiations shut off and we don't think they're in good faith, OK, fine, do that. I'll just subpoena you for the next day. No big deal." Huang's account of himself - set out in the report below - will now be heard against a legislative drive that no longer depends on what he says.
For ordinary Americans, the stake is who controls the technology this century runs on. The processors at issue power the data centres, research labs and defence systems the United States is counting on to stay ahead of China, and the industry that designs and builds them supports American jobs across the country. Every advanced chip smuggled into a Chinese military programme is American ingenuity turned against the country that created it. The bills' backers say the guardrails protect that advantage: chips sold abroad should be traceable to where they were licensed to go, licences for the most sensitive sales should face a congressional check, and no ally's loophole should hand Beijing what Washington has already said it cannot have.
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Jensen Huang has lost his company — now he has to answer to Congress. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast said on Thursday that Huang, who resigned as Nvidia's president, chief executive and board member hours earlier, has agreed to testify before Congress by Thanksgiving, in a closed-door session that Mast expects to be recorded on video and transcribed for the record.
The agreement was reached on Wednesday night, hours before Nvidia announced the resignation, and it came under open pressure: Mast had said publicly on November 10 that he was prepared to subpoena Huang if the then-chief executive did not respond by November 11. The demand began with a joint letter on November 4 from three committee chairmen — Mast, House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party Chairman John Moolenaar and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford — asking Huang to appear; the letter proposed a closed-door briefing on November 18, or another date that worked for both sides. Mast says the exact day is still being settled: "We're in negotiations for which day, which attorneys, his personnel." But he expects Huang's appearance "certainly before we depart for Thanksgiving," and CNBC has reported the testimony is expected to be given under oath. Moolenaar says the two sides are "in discussions to find a date that works" — and lawmakers have made clear that if the voluntary appearance falls through, a subpoena remains on the table.
What the committees want to examine is Nvidia's safeguards against espionage by foreign adversaries. Their request followed reporting that Huang had a personal relationship with a woman suspected of acting for Chinese intelligence — a reported allegation, not an established finding, which Huang has not publicly answered and which the full account below sets out in detail. The question underneath it is a national one: whether the intelligence service of America's chief rival was able to get close to the man whose chips power America's lead in artificial intelligence.
That is why a personnel scandal at one company has become a congressional matter. Nvidia's processors sit at the centre of the AI build-out — in the data centres, research labs and defence systems the United States is counting on to stay ahead of China — and the export rules that decide where those chips may be sold, and the security practices that decide who can reach the people who design them, shape the American chip industry and the jobs built on it. Huang built that company over 33 years. Before Thanksgiving, behind a closed door but on the record, he will have to explain how well he guarded it.
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Jensen Huang is out. Nvidia's board announced on Thursday that Huang has resigned as president, chief executive officer and a member of the board, effective immediately — ending, in a single announcement, the founding chief executive's 33-year run at the company he built into the engine of the artificial-intelligence boom. Colette Kress, Nvidia's executive vice president and chief financial officer, has agreed to serve as interim chief executive officer while the board searches for a permanent successor, and Harvey C. Jones, the former chief executive of Synopsys, has been named the first chairman in the company's history. The announcement carried no word from Huang himself.
The end came fast. The board met late into Wednesday night to decide Huang's future — the White House was aware the meeting was happening, a source familiar with the matter told NBC News — and by Thursday the decision was public. The market's verdict came with it: Nvidia shares, already down about 8 percent in premarket trading, plunged further after the announcement, the fall reported past 11 percent at its worst. What does not change on the calendar: the third-quarter results are still scheduled for November 17, and the closed-door House briefing Huang was summoned to still stands for November 18.
The board gave no reason in its announcement, but the week that forced its hand is on the record. On November 8, Huang admitted in a memo to his own staff that he had been "unfaithful to my wife," over a relationship with a woman U.S. intelligence officials say was recruited by China's intelligence service — an espionage allegation Beijing denies, and on which Nvidia's board says it has "no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised." On Wednesday, the New York Times reported a second relationship, with a senior executive who reports to him; that claim rests on unnamed sources, he has not confirmed it, and it is carried here as part of the sequence — not as established fact. The documented order of events is this: admission, independent investigation, second report, emergency board meeting, resignation. Republicans in Washington had been calling for his ouster as the pressure built, according to reports; President Trump, who defended Huang on Monday as "a very honorable man," is the man whose administration now has to decide how hard to press the chip question without the industry's central figure at the table.
For the millions of Americans whose retirement accounts hold Nvidia through index funds, the question is now what the company is without the only chief executive it has ever had. Kress, the finance chief who has run Nvidia's money side for more than a decade, holds the wheel into earnings on November 17 — and the board's search, which will consider internal and external candidates, will decide who leads the most important chip company on earth through the fight over keeping America's AI lead out of China's hands.
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Nvidia's board of directors is preparing to remove Jensen Huang, the founder who built the company into the engine of the artificial intelligence boom, and could meet as soon as Wednesday night to decide his future, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter — with every option on the table, including his dismissal. The Financial Times reported the board was set to hold urgent talks about Huang's future on Wednesday, Bloomberg reported the directors are already working with an outside firm to identify possible successors and weighing whether to name a temporary chief executive, and Reuters, citing a person familiar with the matter, reported the board was meeting late Wednesday to decide Huang's future — while saying it could not immediately verify the Journal's ouster report itself. No decision had been announced on Wednesday night, no successor has been named, and Huang remains chief executive. Nvidia shares, which had closed the regular session up 2.9 percent at $173.73, fell about 8 percent in after-hours trading, sliding below $159 at one point.
What is documented is the case already hanging over Huang. On October 29, the Times reported that U.S. intelligence officials had concluded that Alice Huang, a former executive of the Singapore data center company Megaspeed, was recruited by China's Ministry of State Security and had grown close to Jensen Huang — no relation to her — while, according to the intelligence assessment, gathering information for Beijing and helping move high-end Nvidia chips into China. This past spring, Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed a highly classified memo warning top officials in the Trump administration about Huang's "close relationship" with the suspected spy. Alice Huang has not been charged with any crime.
Huang's own words are also on the record. On November 8, in a memo to Nvidia employees, he wrote: "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." In an open letter he added: "I support the investigation and will cooperate fully. I love our country and our company. I am committed to protecting NVIDIA and supporting America's national security." And he told President Trump directly that he "had absolutely no idea that the person in question was a spy."
The same day as his memo, Nvidia's board opened an independent investigation, run by its independent directors with outside counsel, into whether Huang had been the target of a foreign intelligence effort. The board said it "has no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised," and at the time expressed confidence in Huang and his leadership team. On November 10 the independent directors put the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and Joon H. Kim, a former acting chief federal prosecutor in Manhattan, in charge of the probe. No finding has been announced.
President Trump has stood by Huang in public, and his argument is straightforward: hear the man out before judging him. At a White House briefing on Monday, Trump said he had spoken to Huang that day to see how he was doing, and said: "I know the FBI is looking into it in terms of something else, and I think that he'll be in good shape." Asked whether he regretted not acting on the intelligence earlier, Trump answered: "No, I don't think so. I mean, maybe. I'm sure President Xi will ask me about it. I just know Jensen very well. I just think he's a very honorable man." A day earlier he had put it this way: "I think he's an honorable guy. I think he probably has an excuse for it. You have to hear it." And: "He's done an amazing job for our country." China, for its part, denies the espionage allegation outright — Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said Monday: "The so-called Chinese spy allegation is unsubstantiated. It is nothing but smears against China."
Washington's scrutiny is not finished either way. The Republican chairmen of three House committees have asked Huang to appear for a closed-door briefing about his interactions with Alice Huang, set for November 18 — one day after Nvidia reports its quarterly results on November 17. Huang, 63, founded Nvidia in 1993 and remains its largest individual shareholder, with a 3.56 percent stake; the company has no obvious successor waiting, which is why the board's decision, whenever it comes, will land far beyond one man's job.
For ordinary Americans, this is not a story that stays inside Silicon Valley. Nvidia is one of the largest companies in the S&P 500, which means it sits inside the index funds and 401(k) retirement accounts of millions of working families — Reuters put the value wiped off the company at more than $300 billion since the spy-affair news broke, and at roughly $600 billion this week if the after-hours fall holds. And behind the market numbers sits the question that makes this a national story rather than a private one: whether the intelligence service of America's chief rival got close to the man whose chips power America's lead in artificial intelligence. That question is now being asked by the FBI, by Congress and by Nvidia's own board — and it will be answered on the record, not by rumour.
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