Nvidia built itself around one man. A scandal is testing that bet

Few executives loom larger over a single company than Jensen Huang does at Nvidia . His 33-year reign as CEO, and the success he’s overseen during the AI boom, have made him a hugely powerful force at the $4.3 trillion company. Now, the linchpin of the AI industry will test the limits of its corporate governance and succession planning.

After Huang on Sunday acknowledged being unfaithful to his wife, Nvidia’s board announced an investigation into reports that he had been targeted by a foreign intelligence effort. The admission followed reporting about his relationship with a woman whom U.S. authorities concluded was a Chinese intelligence asset, according to The New York Times. The board said it had “no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised,” but that its inquiry would examine “all available information.”

The trick for investigators, according to business and law experts, is that they are investigating, and will potentially consider ousting, perhaps the most critical executive to America’s AI success. And they will do so under a company power structure in which Huang reigns as an outsized decision-maker.

Huang is “synonymous with Nvidia, and Nvidia is synonymous with him, and he and Nvidia are synonymous with AI, so he’s bound up in the company’s identity much more than other cases,” Brian Burke, founder of Burke Law & Strategy and a corporate board advisor, told Fortune . Nvidia is “a paradigm out there that people look up to and they say, ‘Oh, I want to be like Nvidia.’ Other CEOs say, ‘I want to be like Jensen Huang.’ So, it’s really almost like a cult.”

Huang, 63, has set up a unique structure around him at Nvidia that has concentrated decision-making in his hands. He has been CEO for 33 years, astonishingly long for any company. Nvidia has no chief operating officer, and Huang has 60 direct reports, creating uncertainty about who is next in line to lead.

Huang is known to play a central role in strategic and technical decisions, and the success he’s had since the AI boom got underway in late 2022 has only strengthened his grip on the company and the AI industry at large. He has become something of a celebrity in the tech world, with followers wearing leather jackets to copy him and fans pursuing him at corporate events for a selfie or a signature. He has also gotten close to the Trump administration, which has counted on him for counsel on AI and taken him on foreign trips.

Huang is Nvidia’s largest individual shareholder, with a 3.56% stake. He leads what is the world’s second most valuable company. (Its shares sank more than 4% on Monday after he admitted to the affaire.) Nvidia has been estimated to control about 90% of the market for high-powered GPU computer chips used in AI data centers.