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.
— — —
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.
📰 ProfiloPolitics Member News — choose your news, share it, earn credit:
https://white-curlew-963569.hostingersite.com
Never miss a story — Join our Telegram channel
Breaking U.S. political news, live as it happens — plus the stories the big outlets sit on.
Join ProfiloPolitics on Telegram