Jensen Huang about to be ousted? Nvidia board meets to decide after new link revealed

The most strategic company on the planet is faltering. Nvidia's board is preparing to oust its co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang, US media reported Wednesday, as the chip giant's leader faces a growing list of controversies, including an affair with a woman accused of spying for China. The 63-year-old manager has led this AI giant since its creation in 1993.

Its share price fell by nearly 8% on Wednesday in post-session electronic trading. The board of directors of the American semiconductor giant was preparing to meet on Wednesday to decide on the future of Jensen Huang, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cites sources close to the matter. This follows an article in the New York Times, which reported on Wednesday that Mr.

Huang was also involved in a second extramarital affair with a subordinate, Nvidia vice president of healthcare division Kimberly Powell. The revelation follows Mr. Huang's acknowledgment of a relationship with Alice Huang, a senior executive at data center company Megaspeed based in Singapore.

U.S. intelligence agencies released a memo last spring claiming that Alice Huang was an agent of China's Ministry of State Security, according to media reports. Jensen Huang admitted to dating Alice Huang, who has the same surname but with whom he is not related. “I have been unfaithful to my wife,” he wrote in a memo to Nvidia employees this weekend.

The same day, Nvidia's board said in a statement that it had launched "an independent investigation following recent reports that founder and CEO Jensen Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence operation." “I support the investigation and will cooperate fully,” promised Jensen Huang. The Wall Street Journal reported that Jensen and Alice Huang were photographed together in Taipei in 2024 and 2025.

An undecided succession Nvidia shareholders have filed a class action against Jensen Huang and the giant of graphics cards or processors for AI, accusing it of not having disclosed information concerning this relationship to investors. With no succession plan planned at Nvidia, the path is wide open for various candidates to lead one of the major players in AI should the board decide to remove Mr. Huang.

With more than 40,000 employees, Nvidia could choose to hand over the reins of the company to a candidate from within its own ranks, including one of Jensen Huang's many direct reports. Ian Buck, a long-time executive, is the favorite.

He oversees the company's data center customers and heads the high-performance computing department. Trade publications also cite Colette Kress, Nvidia's chief financial officer, as an obvious choice, if only because she is already part of the chip giant's senior management. The Business Magazine Inc.

also cites Bryan Catanzaro, vice president of applied deep learning research at Nvidia, as a potential candidate. What happens next, however, gives investors cold sweats. “The question is not simply who will take over.

The question is whether Nvidia can maintain the same strategy, customer relationships and operational efficiencies without Jensen at the helm. And that’s a crucial question for a company so central to the rise of AI,” Dilin Wu, strategist at Pepperstone Group Ltd, told Bloomberg.

Machine-translated from French