Jensen Huang has resigned as chief executive of Nvidia, the AI chip giant he co-founded 33 years ago, after reports of extramarital relationships, including one with a woman US officials had been investigating as a possible national security risk.
Nvidia’s board named its long-serving chief financial officer, Colette Kress, as interim chief executive on Thursday.
The scandal has spread to Washington. Huang has been asked to testify to Congress behind closed doors on 1 December, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick faces questions over why his department did not act sooner against a company linked to the woman at the centre of the case.
Huang’s exit was a sharp reversal. On Sunday, he admitted to an extramarital affair without naming the other person, and Nvidia’s board said it would investigate whether he had been the target of a foreign intelligence effort. At the time, the board said it had confidence in his leadership and no reason to believe company secrets or national security had been compromised.
US media have reported that the relationship was with Alice Huang (no relation), a former executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based Nvidia customer. US intelligence reportedly suspects her of links to Chinese intelligence; Beijing has rejected the allegations, and she has not been charged with any offence.
Over the following days, reports emerged of at least one other extramarital relationship, including, according to reports, one with an Nvidia employee. As concern grew on Capitol Hill, the board met on Wednesday night. Huang was gone by Thursday morning.
Huang had led the company since co-founding it in 1993, turning it into the main supplier of the chips that power the AI boom.
The case has raised questions about how the Trump administration handled concerns about Megaspeed, which officials suspected of helping divert advanced Nvidia chips to China in breach of US export controls.
The Commerce Department, which controls those exports, was reportedly sent a classified memo about Alice Huang and Megaspeed, but did not act against the company. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said several agencies had wanted Megaspeed placed on the department’s entity list of restricted companies “for months”. “But Commerce has the pen,” he said.
The New York Times has reported that Nvidia’s top lawyer contacted Commerce investigators looking into suspected chip smuggling by Megaspeed, after which the department froze its investigation and passed the case to the Justice Department. The newspaper also reported that Trump was warned about Alice Huang’s possible links to Chinese intelligence last year, and again before his trip to China in May, on which Huang joined him.
The White House has said Trump has complete confidence in Lutnick, amid reports that officials are discussing whether he should go. The Commerce Department has not commented publicly.
Megaspeed’s chief executive, James Tan, said the company took its obligations under US export control laws “extremely seriously” and had cooperated with Commerce Department inspections.
Lawmakers from both parties are pressing for answers. Huang has been asked to testify at a closed-door hearing on 1 December, and lawmakers have said they will subpoena him if he does not appear. His team told Republican lawmakers he intends to cooperate.
Lutnick has agreed to testify before the Senate Banking Committee next month. Democrats have also opened an investigation into how the Commerce Department vetted Chinese companies approved to buy AI chips.
John Moolenaar, the Republican chairman of the House Select Committee on China, said American AI companies’ success was in the national interest, but that they “should never jeopardise our nation’s security” by giving Chinese firms access to their most advanced chips.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, the senior Democrat on the Banking Committee, said Huang’s resignation did not absolve him of responsibility, and called on Lutnick to explain why loopholes in export controls remain open.
Nvidia’s shares fell 12.75% over the week to Friday’s close, wiping about $573bn off its market value. The company makes up roughly 6% of the S&P 500 index, so the fall affects many people’s pensions and investment funds, not only Nvidia’s own shareholders.
Kress will face her first test on Tuesday, when Nvidia reports its third-quarter results. Analysts are expected to press her on the company’s leadership, its sales to China and the political fallout.
The scandal also comes at a sensitive moment for the wider AI industry. Nvidia is an investor in, and major supplier to, several AI companies, including Anthropic, which is preparing a stock market listing.
Not everyone agrees Huang should have gone. Several prominent tech figures, including Elon Musk and defence entrepreneur Palmer Luckey, have criticised the board’s decision, according to reports, with some comparing it to Apple’s ousting of Steve Jobs in 1985.
Others argue the national security questions left the board little choice. Earlier in the week, before he resigned, Huang’s supporters had described him as irreplaceable to America’s lead in AI.
Whether Huang returns to public life may depend on what emerges from the congressional hearings and Nvidia’s own investigation, which is continuing.