Nvidia has lost its longtime leader at the moment its chips sit at the center of the global AI boom. Jensen Huang resigned as president, chief executive officer, and a member of the board on Thursday, effective immediately, after reports of two extramarital affairs and an investigation into a possible foreign intelligence effort.
The board named chief financial officer Colette Kress interim CEO, while Nvidia begins a search for a permanent replacement. The decision triggered an immediate market shock: Nvidia shares fell 13% at the opening of trading Thursday, adding to a decline of around 25% from the stock’s all-time high in early October.
A Sudden Exit at the Top
Nvidia announced its internal investigation on November 8. The inquiry followed reports that Huang had an affair with Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, a businesswoman and former executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed International whom US intelligence suspects was a Chinese intelligence asset.
Reports said the relationship formed part of a Chinese intelligence operation involving China’s Ministry of State Security. The Chinese government has rejected all claims that Alice was a spy for the country. Jensen Huang and Alice Huang were spotted together in public at least twice, in June 2024 and May 2025.
On November 11, reports also described an alleged relationship between Huang and a direct report at Nvidia. The relationship was identified as being with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of healthcare. Together, the allegations created growing calls for Huang to leave the company he cofounded.
Huang acknowledged his affair in a companywide email on Sunday. “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,” he wrote.
Huang has been married to Lori Huang since 1985, and the couple’s two children work at Nvidia. On Monday, reports said Huang had begun working with a crisis public relations firm last year, with consultants looped into all press inquiries involving him in October 2025, whether the questions concerned his personal or professional life.
National Security Questions Surround Nvidia
The leadership crisis reaches beyond Huang’s personal conduct. US intelligence officials reportedly briefed President Donald Trump on Huang’s relationship with Alice last year, but Trump did not act on the information. On November 6, reports said Alice had been recruited to collect information on the Nvidia executive.
Singaporean authorities also investigated Alice Huang over possible offenses. Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs said there was insufficient evidence to prove an offense had been committed, but Alice was “issued a stern warning and barred from re-entering the country.” The ministry added that Singapore would “not allow companies or individuals to misuse Singapore’s business environment to engage in fraud or dishonest practices.”
The situation also overlaps with Nvidia’s fierce debate over American export controls. The US Commerce Department investigated whether Megaspeed was helping Chinese companies bypass those controls through a network of subsidiaries. That investigation was reportedly halted and transferred to the Justice Department after Nvidia general counsel Tim Teter inquired about it.
Huang has been a vocal critic of export controls, arguing that they constrain the market for American chips, split technology into separate Chinese and American ecosystems, and encourage China to build competing chips. He also worked to develop a relationship with Trump while advocating policies advantageous to Nvidia, including the idea of opening its markets to China.
Trump later called for Apple’s former CEO Tim Cook to replace Huang at Nvidia. “There is only one man to take his place,” Trump said, adding, “A legend replaces a legend!” Speaker of the US House of Representatives Mike Johnson said Huang “did the right thing” by resigning and called the development important for both the US economy and national security.
Can Nvidia Keep Its AI Engine Running?
The board is changing Nvidia’s structure as it searches for a new chief executive, appointing former Synopsys CEO Harvey C. Jones as the company’s first board chair. Nvidia said, “The Board is initiating a search for a permanent Chief Executive Officer and will consider internal and external candidates,” leaving open the possibility of a promotion from inside or a major outside appointment.
Kress said Nvidia’s strength comes from its people and pledged to build on “the extraordinary foundation Jensen created over the last 33 years.” She also said the company would keep advancing its work in accelerated computing and AI while serving its customers, partners, developers, and shareholders.
That foundation began in 1993, when Huang cofounded Nvidia with Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem. The trio reportedly brainstormed the company’s vision in a Denny’s diner, aiming to bring realistic 3D graphics to personal computers.
Nvidia changed direction in 2012 after AlexNet, developed by Alex Krizhevsky, Ilya Sutskever, and Geoffrey Hinton, won a high-profile computer vision prize. The company pivoted from high-speed computer graphics toward chips built to support artificial intelligence, and Huang later described AlexNet’s arrival as a “Big Bang”-like event for computing.
That bet turned Nvidia’s GPUs into the core hardware behind AI models requiring massive processing power. Nvidia shares soared in 2023 and 2024 as the AI boom swept through the world economy, and the company became the first in history to cross $4 trillion in value during the summer of 2025.
As of September 2026, Nvidia controlled about 90 percent of the GPU market. The company has now lost about $800 billion since the reports came to light, while Huang holds about a 3.61% stake.
Nvidia’s next chapter begins with Kress in the interim CEO role, a board chair in place, and a permanent leadership search ahead. The company’s market power, AI hardware strategy, and role in the US-China technology contest now move forward without the cofounder who shaped all three.
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