Nvidia co-founder and now former CEO Jensen Huang has never been as flashy or controversy-prone as AI leaders like OpenAI’s Sam Altman or SpaceXAI’s Elon Musk. Now, the 63-year-old industry kingpin has admitted that he cheated on his wife of 40 years in affairs that could have ramifications beyond Huang’s personal life and U.S. national security.
U.S. officials believe that one of Huang’s likely romantic interests, Megaspeed executive Alice Huang, is a Chinese spy who has been feeding information back to Beijing. (Alice Huang, a Chinese citizen, is of no relation to Jensen Huang.)
Megaspeed is a Singapore-based AI infrastructure company that reportedly purchased $4.8 billion in Nvidia chips over the last two years. The U.S. and Singapore have both previously investigated Megaspeed over suspicions that the firm was illegally sharing chips with China. The Justice Department has since taken over the federal investigation into the company, The New York Times has reported.
The story took a sudden new turn on Wednesday. Citing five people who worked at Nvidia, the Times reported that Huang also had an extramarital relationship with Kimberly Powell, the company’s vice president of healthcare, who reports directly to him. Nvidia, Huang, and Powell have not confirmed the report. Reached by a Times reporter, Huang reportedly said, “I don’t think you should be talking to me directly,” before hanging up.
By early Thursday morning, Huang was no longer CEO of the company he co-founded 33 years ago. Then, Thursday afternoon, Reuters dropped another bombshell, publishing a report alleging that Huang had yet another extramarital affair with another unnamed Nvidia employee.
The U.S. and China are embroiled in a fierce technological arms race to build the most advanced AI infrastructure, which could shape each country’s economic future, military prowess, and capacity for innovation. Nvidia is valuable in this competition as one of the world’s largest makers of AI chips, which are essential for accelerating AI development. But as an American company, Nvidia faces government restrictions on the sale of its most powerful chips to Chinese entities.
As the controversy unfolds, we are organizing the most relevant events into a reverse-chronological timeline to keep you up to date.
After Huang was already ousted from Nvidia, we continued to learn more incriminating claims about the former CEO. According to Reuters, Huang had a third affair with an additional, unnamed employee of Nvidia.
Nvidia confirmed in an SEC filing on Thursday that the board accepted Huang’s resignation on Wednesday. The company’s current CFO, Colette Kress, will take over as interim CEO while still fulfilling her CFO duties. Nvidia is expected to conduct a larger search to determine a permanent successor to Huang.
Harvey C. Jones, a managing partner of Square Wave Ventures and former CEO of Synopsys, was appointed as the company’s first-ever chair of the board of directors. Jones has been on Nvidia’s board since 1993.
Later in the day, Huang confirmed that he would testify in Congress at some point before Thanksgiving, which falls on November 26.
“Jensen and I have been very at odds as some of you already know on export controls, but Nvidia is a very important company to the United States of America,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast said to reporters. “I don’t want to see anything hurt in Nvidia, but he has some very serious questions to answer.”
The testimony is expected to take place behind closed doors, but Mast believes the briefing will be recorded and transcribed.
After reports of a second extramarital affair, Nvidia’s board reportedly plans to meet to discuss Huang’s future at the company, per The Wall Street Journal. Stock fell about 8% in after-hours trading on Wednesday and is down 11% in the past five days.
Huang famously delegates very little and has about 60 direct reports, he has said. The company has not had an obvious successor or a succession plan.
The New York Times reported that Jensen Huang also had an affair with Nvidia vice president of healthcare Kimberly Powell, who reports directly to the CEO.
According to the report, Huang and Powell were captured on film “being affectionate” at a hotel during a conference earlier this year.
Huang has not responded to a request from three Republican congressmen to appear for a closed-door briefing for questioning about his affair with an alleged Chinese spy. House China Committee Chairman John Moolenaar said Wednesday on Fox Business that if Huang doesn’t agree to the briefing, he’ll likely be subpoenaed.
The Nvidia CEO pulled out of upcoming speaking engagements at the ElevenLabs Summit and Anthropic CEO Forum.
Alice Huang and her family reportedly built a network of companies in China and Singapore to acquire Nvidia chips, including founding a Chinese company called Shanghai Century Litong. Founded in 2023, it became an Nvidia-preferred cloud partner, giving it priority access to chips, The Information reported. The Information also reported that Shanghai Century Litong facilitated buying $7.5 billion worth of Nvidia’s chips, including banned chips.
Nvidia’s head lawyer, Tim Teter, intervened in a 2025 U.S. government probe surrounding the suspected smuggling of AI chips by Megaspeed International, Bloomberg reported. Teter contacted Commerce Under Secretary Jeffrey Kessler asking questions about whether the Trump administration played a role in detaining Alice Huang.
In early 2025, Alice Huang and a business partner sought China-based investors for an Asian data center, promising they had no problem in securing GPUs, the Financial Times reported.
On Sunday night, President Trump weighed in on Huang’s controversy and showed support for the Nvidia CEO.
“I have not spoken to him about it. I just know he’s a fine person, but you never know what’s going on,” Trump said.
When asked if Huang should remain chief of Nvidia, Trump said, “I think so. Oh yeah, sure.”
Jensen Huang wrote in a letter to Nvidia employees — which was also published as a press release — that he cheated on his wife.
“I owe my family and all of you an apology,” Huang told his company. “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.”
Huang did not mention Alice Huang by name in the message, but linked his infidelity to “the national security concerns raised in news reports.”
