Jensen Huang, co-founder and CEO of Nvidia for 33 years, resigned on Thursday effective immediately from all his positions —president, CEO, and board member— amid a reputational crisis triggered by his extramarital relationships and the alleged connections of one of his mistresses with Chinese espionage.
The resignation of Huang was announced in an official statement from the company's board of directors, which appointed Colette Kress, until now the chief financial officer, as interim CEO, and designated Harvey C. Jones as the first chairman of the board in the company's history.
The scandal erupted in early November, when news broke of 63-year-old Huang's extramarital affair with Alice Huang, a former executive at Megaspeed International, a data center company based in Singapore, which has been labeled by U.S. intelligence services as a suspected agent recruited by the Chinese Ministry of State Security to gather information on Nvidia and its founder.
On Sunday, November 8, Huang published an open letter to his employees in which he acknowledged his infidelity without any pretense: "I owe an apology to my family and to all of you. 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."
On the same day, Nvidia's board announced an independent investigation into the matter to determine whether corporate or national security secrets had been compromised, although the company initially stated that it had no reason to believe that sensitive information had been leaked.
The crisis deepened on Tuesday, November 11, when the New York Times revealed a second extramarital affair, this time with Kimberly Powell, Vice President of Health at Nvidia and a direct subordinate of Huang. Five former employees of the company claimed to be aware of the relationship; two said they had seen them displaying affectionate behavior in a hotel in San José during a Nvidia conference in March 2026. Huang did not publicly confirm this second relationship.
The accumulation of both scandals led the board to meet since Wednesday night to deliberate on the possible dismissal of the executive, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, which culminated in his resignation the following day.
Huang's departure shook the markets: Nvidia's shares plummeted by 7.74% in Thursday night's trading, dropping to $160.28, after closing the regular session on Wall Street with a rise of 2.92%.
The case also has a national security dimension that transcends personal matters. Megaspeed International, the company linked to Alice Huang, has been under investigation by the United States since 2024 for allegedly acting as an intermediary to procure advanced chips from Nvidia and divert them to China. According to Bloomberg, the company imported approximately 136,000 Nvidia graphics processing units by November 2025, and a Malaysian company in its network is said to have purchased at least 4.8 billion dollars in artificial intelligence equipment between June 2024 and February 2026.
Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 along with Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem, transforming the company from a manufacturer of graphics chips for video games into the world's leading provider of hardware for artificial intelligence. The new interim CEO, Colette Kress, took on the challenge with a promise of continuity: "NVIDIA's strength has always come from its people, and together with our management team, I am committed to continuing to build on the extraordinary foundations that Jensen created over the last 33 years."
Nvidia will present its financial results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2027 next Tuesday, November 17, as scheduled, marking the first major test for the company under its new leadership.
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