Jensen Huang’s image has been shattered. Could he pushed out at Nvidia?

Jensen Huang’s image has been shattered. Could he pushed out at Nvidia? After the co-founder of the chipmaker had an affair with an alleged Chinese spy, its board faces a difficult decision

F or more than 30 years, Jensen Huang has been the seemingly unshakable public face of Nvidia . He co-founded the company as a young engineer in 1993 and oversaw its growth into a multitrillion dollar chipmaker and bellwether of the AI industry at large.

He’s also made it a family business. His children, Madison and Spencer, have taken leadership roles at the firm. While not a company executive, his wife, Lori Mills Huang, leads the family foundation which, as of 2024, controls over 60m Nvidia shares.

But Huang’s image as a family man has been shattered as of Sunday. After the New York Times revealed at the end of October that Huang may have been targeted by a Chinese intelligence asset who he had developed a close relationship with, he admitted in a letter to employees on Sunday that he had been having an affair.

Initially , Nvidia spokesperson John Rizzo said there was nothing out of the ordinary about Huang’s interactions with Alice Huang , an executive at a Singaporean datacenter firm, Megaspeed. US government officials had suspected Huang of smuggling American chips into China, prompting those officials to surveil and monitor her, the Times first reported. In the course of that surveillance, officials allegedly determined that Alice Huang was a Chinese spy and had gotten close with the Nvidia leader.

Nvidia’s board of directors have now launched an independent investigation about the national security concerns surrounding Huang’s relationship.

“I support the investigation and will cooperate fully,” Huang wrote in his letter. “I love our country and our company. I am committed to protecting Nvidia and supporting America’s national security. I am proud and grateful to be an American.”

Megaspeed did not respond to a Guardian request for comment before publication.

In his letter, Huang apologized to his family, acknowledging how much they’ve supported him. His wife, Mills, kept a relatively low profile and didn’t play a formal role at Nvidia. However, in a 2023 interview with the New Yorker, Huang shared that Mills had also worked in Silicon Valley as a microchips engineer before stepping away to raise their children.

“Throughout my life, my family has given me love and support,” Huang wrote in his letter to employees. “They deserve my honesty and loyalty. Instead, I let them down and damaged the life we built together. I take full responsibility for what I did and the hurt I caused, and I accept the criticism that comes with it.”