Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang has resigned following a report that he was engaged in a second extramarital affair, this time with another Nvidia executive.
In a statement, Nvidia’s board announced that Huang resigned as “President, Chief Executive Officer, and a member of the Board, effective immediately.” In a regulatory filing, the board said it accepted his resignation last night.
Nvidia’s board has appointed the company’s CFO, Colette Kress, to lead the company as interim CEO. “The Board is initiating a search for a permanent Chief Executive Officer and will consider internal and external candidates,” the announcement says. (President Trump wants it to be former Apple CEO Tim Cook.)
The news is a stunning downfall for Huang, a famed tech executive and one of the most visible faces of the AI industry, which Nvidia has been driving with its cutting-edge AI chips. For decades, Huang has also been a leading figure in PC gaming graphics, having co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and served as its sole chief executive ever since.
But on Wednesday evening, his fate as CEO looked grim. After Huang admitted on Sunday to having an affair with a woman thought to be a Chinese spy, The New York Times reported that Huang had also been in a romantic relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s VP for its healthcare business, citing five people who worked at the company.
Huang and Powell were filmed “being affectionate” outside a hotel during Nvidia’s annual GTC event in March. A bystander used a phone to record the interaction, prompting Nvidia’s security team to sequester the witness and force them to sign a nondisclosure agreement, the NYT says.
The alleged spy, Alice Huang, is an executive with Singapore-based cloud computing provider Megaspeed. The US suspects that Alice Huang is an intelligence asset for the Chinese government and that Megaspeed is a middleman funneling sensitive AI chips to China, according to The New York Times.
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The scandal has sparked national security concerns, including whether Nvidia’s CEO—a major supporter of President Trump—may have leaked sensitive information to Alice Huang. Another fear is that he may have been influenced to lobby Washington to loosen export controls and permit the sale of sensitive AI chips to China.
Jensen Huang’s departure is expected to create considerable uncertainty over Nvidia’s future and the AI industry. He’s reportedly agreed to testify before Congress before Thanksgiving.
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Michael Kan
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I’ve been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I’m currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country’s technology sector.
Since 2020, I’ve covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I’ve combed through FCC filings for the latest news and driven to remote corners of California to test Starlink’s cellular service.
I also cover cyber threats, from ransomware gangs to the emergence of AI-based malware. In 2024 and 2025, the FTC forced Avast to pay consumers $16.5 million for secretly harvesting and selling their personal information to third-party clients, as revealed in my joint investigation with Motherboard.
I also cover the PC graphics card market. Pandemic-era shortages led me to camp out in front of a Best Buy to get an RTX 3000. I’m now following how the AI-driven memory shortage is impacting the entire consumer electronics market. I’m always eager to learn more, so please jump in the comments with feedback and send me tips.
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