Nvidia CEO and co-founder Jensen Huang has resigned, the company’s board of directors said on Thursday, ending a weekslong saga that revealed the executive engaged in several affairs — including one with an alleged Chinese spy — and brought the company’s stock price to eight-month lows over national security concerns.
Colette Krauss, Nvidia’s chief financial officer, will serve as interim CEO as the board searches for a permanent replacement.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier on Wednesday that Nvidia’s board of directors were weighing whether to oust Huang. The decision came days after Nvidia’s board initially said it would launch an independent investigation into Huang’s relationship with Alice Huang, a Chinese tech executive allegedly recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security who the New York Times reported was recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security to spy on the executive and learn more about Nvidia’s AI chips. It hired former acting U.S. Attorney of the Southern District of New York Joon H. Kim’s firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to lead the investigation. The board said Huang would continue to lead the company, even as he also faced an FBI investigation over the affair with the alleged spy.
But the hits continued to come. The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Huang had a separate affair with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care who joined the company in 2008. Nvidia’s code of conduct prohibits employees from “situations where our actions might create a conflict—actual or potential—between our personal gain and our obligations” to the company. It also advises that “personal relationships” may pose a potential conflict.
The saga reflects how even the most human of all scandals — those involving sex — can impact companies underpinning much of the AI boom that’s captured the world.
The stakes for what comes next for Nvidia — and the AI world — are massive. Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 as a graphics chip provider for video games, though he later grew it into one of the world’s most valuable companies by producing chips that helped fuel many of the world’s leading AI companies.
Nvidia’s AI grip enveloped the entertainment industry. The company has invested in AI entertainment companies Higgsfield and Runway, and Huang posed with Higgsfield CTO Yerzat Dulat at an event in Kazakhstan last month. Nvidia on Wednesday also expanded its partnership with AI audio startup ElevenLabs, another company investment. The expanded partnership would see ElevenLabs try to make more voice agents available to governments worldwide — powered by Nvidia’s AI architecture.
Disney also announced a partnership with Nvidia and Google DeepMind last year to develop Newton, an open-source physics engine that lets robots learn how to handle complex tasks with greater precision. The robotics project, incorporating physical AI, included real-world robots of Star Wars characters like BDX droids and the “Frozen” snowman Olaf.
Nvidia’s entertainment entanglements also extend to the music industry. The company struck a deal with Universal Music Group in January to marry its AI technology with UMG’s catalog to develop “responsible AI for music discovery, creation, and engagement. The deal included enhancing Nvidia’s Music Flamingo AI audio model with UMG work and creating an artist incubator, an arrangement UMG CEO Lucian Grainge called “a shared mission to harness revolutionary AI technology to dramatically advance the interests of the creative community and the role of music in global culture.”
Nvidia’s heightened status made Huang one of President Donald Trump’s closest tech allies. Trump defended Huang in a news conference on Monday, saying he believed Huang’s assertions that he was unaware of Alice Huang’s affiliations, though the president confirmed the FBI was also investigating the relationship. The Commerce Department had also investigated Nvidia over whether it helped smuggle chips into China before it was moved to the Justice Department.
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