Jensen Huang in the hot seat as Nvidia board weighs his future after second affair claim

The Wall Street Journal revealed on Wednesday that Nvidia's board is set to replace CEO Jensen Huang following his involvement in two extramarital affairs. One of these affairs was with a suspected Chinese spy, as reported by the New York Times. The board plans to meet as early as Wednesday to discuss Huang's future. Meanwhile, the New York Times reported separately that Huang had an affair with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of healthcare.

Nvidia has not yet commented on the matter, and Reuters has been unable to independently verify the reports. These allegations come in the wake of Huang admitting to being unfaithful to his wife, and as the board investigates whether he was the subject of a foreign intelligence operation. This latest development intensifies a controversy that has drawn attention from lawmakers, investors, and the board itself regarding Huang's actions and his relationship with Alice Huang, a woman who US intelligence claims assisted in shipping Nvidia chips to Chinese companies.

Nvidia's shares experienced an 8% drop in after-hours trading, following a loss of over $300 billion in market value since the affair with Alice Huang was made public. If Huang were to leave the company, it would leave a leadership gap at the $4 trillion firm that has become a central figure in the US-China AI supremacy rivalry, thanks to its leadership in chip technology used for training models and powering services like OpenAI's ChatGPT.