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The claim that he sold massive amounts of chips to a restricted country as being "massively illegal" is absolutely false.

NVIDIA is licensed by the United States government to sell GPUs to China, and they do so at a rate well under their licensed quantity.

Read up on 91 CFR 1684 which directly contradicts your claims.

Your most important argument is categorically false and completely unresearched.

Your subsequent claims also have no basis: you cite a bunch of cases in which people leaked sensitive information as equivalent to the Jensen case, where the affair was with the CEO of a customer they were legally selling product to, and where we have no evidence that any leaks occurred.

> The real problem is that nobody knows how much sensitive info Jensen gave this woman or how far that info spread.

Why? If he's that important then our own intelligence community ought to be doing stuff to fight espionage - doing counterintelligence, generally just making sure he's ok and providing support to him, etc. This is not some random guy. Did we just forget to do that?

If we're not doing that, then are foreign countries just after all of our important people? Forget sexpionage - what about hacking their computers? Do we have zero ability to combat any of this, whereas other countries can do whatever they want?

The relationship has been to a degree known to even the public for years, it's extremely unlikely that intelligence services didn't know about it until now and that they'd permit it if they'd consider it a possibility that Jensen could leak any important IP

Yes. A lot of folks on here were initially thinking the issue with the Chinese spy was a sort of “oh funny how silly” type issue. For someone in his position with Nvidia a strategically important company for the US that’s a grave error of judgment. Add then yesterday revelations of additional indiscretions and this suddenly a growing pattern of incredibly poor judgement.

It appears almost certain now that he’s finished. The lack of any succession planning (which also is too looks like more poor judgment) appears to be the only thing now slowing down his removal by the board.

But this is not the domain of the board, is it? Whether he put the national security at risk is up to US Government to decide. The moral side of the question is for the people involved to decide. For the board to decide is the company will be better off w/o him.

On the contrary, the allegations are tabloid level nonsense. Jensen does not even posses any "sensitive info". He is just a ceo for a company that designs chips, something China has no trouble doings. What China lacks is the manufacturing knowhow of the most advanced lithography machines which will also allow them to manufacture the most advanced chips locally. Huang however does not have a single clue about that chip manufacturing.

The amount of times the word “allegation” and “suspicion” and the way this soap opera is flowing around screams that its all smokescreen. We don’t even know if this women was a spy… even that is an “allegation”.

The facts are very scarce and yet this has been blown out of proportion.

Maybe I am wrong :-) time will tell.

Nah.

if you fire him, he can go work for China. Or he’ll go work for Elon. I just have this feeling you aren’t explicit with your implicit motive.

> The real problem is that nobody knows how much sensitive info Jensen gave this woman or how far that info spread.

Non-American here. Isn’t it your goverment’s/CIA’s job to detect Chinese agents and conduct counter-intelligence. Individuals (CEO or not) can’t do that. I heard that they already knew for a long time (as they must have). Then this becomes a hit job with political/business motivations rather than a serious national security issue as promoted to the public. Why don’t you all talk that obvious angle instead? 50s Red Scare rhetorics or a 70s James Bond narrative is politically more appealing I guess.

But we live in 2020s. We live under constant surveillance today. All national secrets are in digital environment (not on a microfilm in a CEOs leather jacket). Also Chinese spies, who require a visa to enter US, can be easily tracked the moment they get in touch with any VIP.

And for the sexual/marriage life of individuals, suddenly everyone goes back to 50s standards. (Note: This is extra interesting because I heard there is a “sex cult” attracting high profile AI engineers in SV. And everyone seems ok with it. But that’s probably another honeypot operation.)

They guy has been running Nvidia for over 30 years and has billions of dollars - what would make him want to sell out to China? What possibly could they offer him? You actually think she was like, "if you tell me secrets then I'll sleep with you"

A lot of people with ulterior motives want to throw him under the bus, don't buy into those narratives so easily. Use some common sense first.

One thing is the China question. Another thing is the question of open source AI.

The latter is a question of how centralized modern AI-based computing is. And to me that is almost a fight between good and evil.

A marriage between an Anthropic/OpenAI duopoly and the national security establishment is a marriage made in hell.

What's so magical about selling to the USG that it should create some sort of obligation on the part of a civilian CEO?

Remember, Huang isn't an army officer, or someone in intelligence working at the Pentagon, or a CIA officer.

Surely he gets to do what he likes. You are not at war with China. Treason is not relevant here, nor are graphics cards some sort of ultra-secret domain. What NVIDIA does is easy, it's just that the package is not so easy to reproduce, what with it having many aspects, from software to chips and fast interconnect.

You're making the assumption implicitly when comparing to Musk that this should be fair or about morality.

That ship has sailed.

Huang has a problem now because his ability to advocate for NVIDIA in a politically charged environment is damaged.

He can't be an effective CEO for NVIDIA if there's a plausible (even if unproven) suspicion that he's on a geopolitical adversary's side.

He was very strongly advocating for selling to China before this. At that point, it could be understood simply as him looking out for NVIDIA's business interests. Now, there's doubt sowed in everyone's mind about whether it really was just that.

Maybe you don't care, because you think selling to China is the right thing to do - fine, there can be different views on this.

But, a lot of influential people very much do not hold that view, and he needs to be able to effectively communicate to them also.

I think you should consider the genuine do-gooders inside the federal government who wanted to blow the lid on this for a year but were blocked by the president. Now that he’s weak, they went for it.

There are three forms of accountability here, that Elon and other newer tech founders meticulously calcified themselves away from

First

The board. Elon and his brother are the board, and some sycophants. They are also heavily weighted shareholders.

Jensen doesn’t have that.

Second

The wife, who also is entitled to significant shareholdings. Musk avoided that, and major shareholders are already in trusts, his private foundation, his donor advised fund, and just outside of any future marriage to begin with. The market doesn’t care what a disagreement with his partners mean

Third

The state, and the product. Elon sells cars and it isnt the backbone of economies. The rockets and starlink do pursue waivers or avoid sanctioned countries. Indiscretions were already paid for in the campaign.

So “canceling or not” masquerades as a societal view or tacit consent, when it is solely a matter of who your masters are and if they will stand by you or have any capability of a choice.

6. Huang's public persona wasn't unhinged enough, and too Asian, to withstand such a scandal.

> 1. China hawks in tech and admin wanted him out

kinda weird China would want him out, considering he's been begging to sell chips to them

Eh, the hammer will down on Musk for his Ukraine betrayal.

> Elon regularly gets away with way more morally (and perhaps legally) egregious stuff and yet he has increasingly cemented his position. Partly through indirect leverage from his companies and partly from buying access to power directly.

I'm not an Elon fan at all, but ... while he sure sleeps around, I have not heard he slept with subordinates, or Chinese spies.

2 affairs - one with a sub-ordinate and one is a foreign agent who got chip flow through to a sanctioned country.

Do we even know thats the end of this? This is only whats public at this point... It doesn't feel like the end of it but more like beginning to middle.

I'm trying to figure out who pushed this story through or if this is just bubbling up naturally.

Seems like this happened just after the US midterm elections, maybe there's something there?

Three things are happening that seem relevant for timing.

Midterms over, major loss of power for faction Huang seems linked to

Distillation getting harder

Anthropic IPO

Your last sentence lacks clarity for me

Which affair?

If Apple can survive losing Jobs, Nvidia can definitely survive losing Huang.

A "windfall to China?" Jensen Huang seems to have been conspiring with Alice Huang to illegally sell high-end NVIDIA chips to China. That's a windfall to China.

let me get this straight :

standing on its' head your statement reads as :

"If the US doesn't allow government intervention into the business dealing of important private entities during times of scandal, to protect lies and initiate cover-ups, then China will win."

do I interpret that correctly?

Gates, Bezos, and now Huang ? Let's see, whose left ? Zuck ? I'm sure there are plenty of skeleton's hiding in his closet ...

CIA hawks. Self-inflicted wounds again.

llm slop

> The fact that he slept with a subordinate shows bad judgment, but isn't a huge deal

Most companies have policies that strongly discourage this, or forbid it, and for good reason.

It's a big enough deal that former CEOs of Nestle, Norfolk Southern, McDonald's and Intel were either terminated or resigned after similar relationships were uncovered.

> the law must be respected and the being seen ignoring the law would have a chilling effect on appearance of a fair democracy.

While I appreciate the spirit of this comment, I think that this ship sailed long time ago when United States elected a convicted felon twice, who then proceeded to virtually break all the laws with no repercussion.

>3) The fact that he slept with a Chinese spy is a huge deal.

I'm 50/50 on whether or not Alice Huang is actually a spy for the Chinese government, or rather just a social climber and opportunist. She certainly didn't hide her perceived closeness to Jensen Huang, and in fact actively flaunted it on her social media.

Furthermore, I think it possible if not likely that Jensen has had more than just 2 extramarital liaisons, and if more were to come out, then IMO that would actually shift the likelihood towards Jensen simply being a lustful old man taking sexual advantage of his power and status, rather than being honeypotted by some Chinese intelligence operation.

> The fact that he cheated on his wife isn't particularly relevant

Him being married is relevant: he opened himself to extortion/blackmail, assuming his wife was not aware of his affairs. Anyone who knew that was happening would have had enormous leverage over him.

Even if no one actually did so it still demonstrates a massive risk.

> 3) The fact that he slept with a Chinese spy is a huge deal.

I'll admit I haven't really been following this story, but I ASSUME he didn't know she was a spy? (Given a good portion of a spy's job is making sure you don't know they are a spy) So why is this an issue either?

2 is a huge deal, enough to get you fired in almost all instances in Corporate America for that alone.

I think the revelations about his children working for the company as well aren't helping him much as well.

> the law must be respected and the being seen ignoring the law would have a chilling effect on appearance of a fair democracy.

While I appreciate the spirit of this comment, I think that this ship sailed long ago when United States elected a convicted felon twice, who then proceeded to virtually break all the laws with no repercussion.

I agree with you on the first and second point. Perhaps you can argue it's in bad taste to have an affair but the private matters of adult lives should be of no interest to outsiders.

> the law must be respected

I wouldn’t call this particularly nuanced, certainly if they were sold to intermediaries not subject to the export controls (Singapore)

Yes and no. I think the board knew about the smuggling and now that it's out they need to sacrifice the CEO. Probably, they still trust him but that does not matter here, saving the company's valuation and trying to evade fines is more important.

> other than the lack of a prenup meaning she owns half his stock

They were married years before he founded the company, and lived in California, a community property state. And they got married right out of college. Unless he somehow knew that he would start a company and got a prenup that says "if I start a company it's all mine", a prenup wouldn't matter anyway (and would probably but null and void anyhow).

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/11/10/800126553/whiteh...

> The fact that he slept with a Chinese spy is a huge deal.

Since US counterintelligence has known about the relationship since late 2024, they would be completely incompetent if they had not:

1) taken measures to ensure that she did not get US secrets,

2) collected information on Chinese priorities and methods for acquiring AI hardware, and/or

3) fed misinformation to the Chinese.

1) They were married years before he founded NVIDIA and she already co-owns the stock.

curious from someone who is ignorant, what makes the export controls bad?

smashing a spy doesnt affect anything, did he leak anything? Did he report to the authorities?

2) Got Brian Krzanich of Intel fired

3) The fact that he slept with a Chinese spy is a huge deal.

She's alleged to have been an 'intelligence asset', which is not the same thing as a spy (assets are not agents). Assets are often just good sources of insight and analysis, whereas agents are tasked with active deception and exfiltration of information. Jensen Huang is arguably an intelligence asset; I'm sure he's given informative briefings to spooks on the state of the world, albeit not necessarily knowingly.

A related question to this is whether Jensen Huang even has a US government security clearance.It's not obvious to me that he's privy to any government secrets, even if the US regards Nvidia as a strategic asset. To pick up on your point 4, he might have been knowingly violating the law, a problem for any CEO. But if he's not definitely violating sanctions and is instead just chasing profits, that's considered the norm.

To be frank I think this is a storm in teapot because there have been rumors about his affair floating around since last May, and if the US government has known for at least that long and hasn't intervened or arrested him it's probably not that big of a deal. I can't help wondering if it's a case of the current US administration trying to look tough after the President suffered a humiliating election defeat.

It breaks my heart that so many people will excuse his infidelity as irrelevant. We need better leaders to set examples for the youth. This current crop is so slimy and distasteful.

> The fact that he slept with a Chinese spy is a huge deal.

Is it true?

Your opinions are just that, but not really nuanced.

1) This is a huge matter of character. If you cannot be faithful to your wife, what makes you a faithful leader of a company? There is also the issue of respect: when a leader is morally compromised, the people he is leading lose confidence and respect in him.

2) Isn’t there something of a power dynamic issue here too? He has a greater responsibility to use his authority and power as a superior to not abuse that authority, and committing adultery with an inferior is a huge problem.

3) On what basis is this a huge deal and the previous two are not? Where’s the nuance? It’s just arbitrary.

4) Well yeah, it looks like he was complicit in breaking sanctions. It’s no longer an arms-length deal.

5) Again, why are the first two worth shrugging shoulders and this one is not? It’s no big deal, people cheat and break the law all the time.

6) That sure undersells it. It underlines the stupidity of sin, and the sinfulness of man.

7) I can’t argue with that.

Has anyone stood up the claim she's a spy yet?

Or is the evidence right over there next to the evidence of WMD?

I know some people believe anonymous govt officials but I kinda don't so if there's actual evidence, let's see it, or note the the doubt legitimately exists.

It seems a very odd thing to be briefing newspapers about rather than the very many other, seemingly more useful ways of using that information if it is true. How does everyone feel about the CIA briefing the New York Times in general to seemingly get a CEO removed? Who takes responsibility for making that decision?

That’s… a take. The fact the only problem you have with him violating export controls is that he got caught isn’t really nuanced. It mostly just points to you not having a moral compass.

Whether he would be the most profitable CEO is absolutely irrelevant. The guy is literally facing prison time if he can be directly tied to the violation of those sanctions. If the board takes more than about 30 seconds to come to a conclusion they should probably all be replaced as well.

https://fortune.com/2026/03/19/supermicro-arrested-founder-s...

> sleeping with a spy rather than just hiring an escort

Or just... not cheating on your wife

Fyi just calling something nuanced doesn't mean that it is.

> sleeping with a spy rather than just hiring an escort

I really don't like Jensen but I think this actually shows decent character! Sleeping with a femme fatale is rather romantic.

One man’s infidielities is going to cost every investor in index funds greatly given the outsized weighting of Nvidia in the SPY and QQQ ETFs.

Not to mention that Nvidia has a huge stake in the ai space being a backstop to a bunch of players in all its circular financing deals.

2 is a huge deal.

Either he's easily manipulated. Or he's a predator. Either way... not someone you want as CEO.

There's no scenario in 2026 where sleeping with a boss or subordinate is acceptable behavior for corporate leadership.

And... look, I get it, and maybe you can write it off as just something that happens in the real world.

But the fact that he would do it, also screams, "This is someone who thinks the rules don't apply to him."

Which again puts him squarely in the "not someone you want as a leader" category.

I somewhat disagree.

1. Cheating on his wife when that will likely significantly change the ownership of the company is a big deal;

2. Here's where I disagree most. A married billionaire CEO sleeping with an also-married subordinate is a huge deal and that alone warrants an ouster. It creates huge legal exposure for the company;

3. The biggest issue with the Chinese spy is he's wealthy enough that this shouldn't happen. I'm sorry but you can afford corporate security who can vet the people you're involved with and do so discreetly;

Huang hired Heller (a crisis PR firm) a year ago. It seems like he knew something was coming and possibly failed to inform the board. Ok, that's more grounds for termination.

I too am reminded of this quote [1]:

> If you find two ants in your kitchen, the best estimate of the total number of ants in your kitchen is not two

I very much doubt it stops here.

[1]: https://x.com/_NathanCalvin/status/2084856543561093535

> Even though those export control were arguably bad, the law must be respected and the being seen ignoring the law would have a chilling effect on appearance of a fair democracy.

On one hand I firmly believe that if a rule is stupid you have no moral obligation to obey it. There might still be consequences though, however unjust.

On the other hand so many rules can be in place for years because people just don't obey them so their stupidity is mitigated to the point of invisibility.

Odds are she wasn't a spy see this write up - https://desmondshum.substack.com/p/alice-huang-the-spy-narra...

The tl;dr is she slept with Jensen in return for large benefits for her Husband's company.

Her actual role in this doesn't have a real good direct translation to English.

> The fact that he slept with a subordinate shows bad judgment, but isn't a huge deal (although improper and opens up potential quid-pro-quo lawsuits)

That is absolutely a huge deal, I have no idea why you don't think it is. That is the kind of behavior which anyone in an American workplace knows is not tolerated in the slightest and would lead to firing. The fact that he did it anyway shows he has shockingly poor judgement.

You've left out the worst parts of the scandal, which involves the US government investigation into the Megaspeed being buried after a large contribution was made to the White House ballroom fund. This website has a pretty good summary https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-nvidia-scandal-no-e...

Agree with everything, except a sub point of #6: Jensen was presumably unaware she was a spy.

Where does "bribed the President of the United States to ignore 3 & 4" fit in? Or is that one more of a problem for said President?

Who are we to judge beyond legal controls?

Judge not, for in the measure of your judgment, it will be measured to you.

Desire is the enemy of happiness. To abandon sorrow, abjure want.

We are all in wanting. Our want is lesser than the needs of our partners, our friends, and our world.

Such weird takes. Selling shit is bigger deal than destroying your family?! Fuck money, take care of your family, your lives! Family > geopolitics. Everything trickles down from there

Excellently put.

I'm glad others agree that his infidelity is a complete nothing burger. Moralising about this is wrong and is a purity spiral.

The Chinese spy thing and illegal dealing with China are far worse but they should be investigated properly.

He shouldn't be ousted from the company he built to be the biggest company in the world because he cheated on his wife.

I think even if NVIDIA were founded recently, it still wouldn't have such a share structure. The companies that do have dual class shares are software companies that can grow significantly without raising a ton of capital. NVIDIA being a hardware company, that is a lot harder to do even today.

Crazy we even allow non-voting shares and multiple tiers of shares.

And that’s precisely the sort of arrangement we should ban.

Humans need someone to be accountable to, even if it’s just some guy walking behind you saying “memento mori” twice a day.

Even among dual-class IPOs (which are the minority), only 18% of them have CEO control. [1]

That figure raises to about half if you include all officers/directors.

[1] https://www.law.nyu.edu/sites/default/files/Lowry%20-%20Buck...

Anthropic are planning a bizarre share structure that strips any voting power from shareholders. They will have a single special founders share, held by some new entity owned by the founders, that has 51% voting weight. 1 share to rule them all.

> Who could take his place?

One of the greatest failures of Nvidia's Board was in failing to push for a successor. (Musks' companies face a similar risk.)

What about his cousin? I think she would be a perfect fit

Yeah but how much is just nvidia happened to be in the right business for the AI boom

It’s not like Jensen predicted it

China will pay him more.

I agree, but the risk of company secret leakage is high in this story. And for a such pivotal and big company I understand the board decision.

It is unethical to fuck your subordinates.

ETA: It's nice to see all the incels downvoting this lol.

>we got somehow trained

Not that long ago, it was accepted that sex - f*cking - was at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs - basic physiological needs.

This is, of course, true for men.

But it is incredibly inconvenient for feminists.

So what did we do? Well, we just got rid of it of course.

And now here we are.

Large traditional companies.

Recent trend is quite the opposite. What's Tesla without Musk selling pipe dreams ? Pretty sure there is 0 plan for replacement.

It doesn't seem Nvidia had a backup plan: https://x.com/business/status/2119633671300730893

Huang expected to run the company well into his 80s, with no clear successor.

would you want that CEO job?... founder behind the scenes driving the show.

They need to fire him outright. The company needs to set the example that misconduct won’t be tolerated at any level. Keeping him on in anything but a transition capacity would be a mistake.

Would be pretty difficult for him to have any influence if he ends up in a cell

> due to whole AI industry being propped up largely by Nvidia’s circular investment.

This premise is most likely incorrect: https://www.exponentialview.co/p/the-state-of-the-ai-economy

If anything this should impact the IPO only to the extent it affects the production of new compute capacity, because it is clear that is the #1 thing they need to scale revenues.

Part of me wonders if recent problems with AI (Huang leaks, OpenAI models hacking Huggingface), haven't been arranged by OpenAI in order to poison Anthropic's IPO.

This might rather save the IPO. Banned open source models will allow the closed source players to maintain power and recoup a larger part of their investment by driving up the prices.

Short term, days or weeks, there will be panic. But the impact of the change won't really be felt for years to come. For the next few years, the company will be fine.

Is that why tech bros are circling the wagons? https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/11/technology/jensen-huang-a...

FALSE.

The coup of Jensen Huang was precisely organized by the same large institutional investors.

They want NVIDIA to lock-up firmware and prevent any open-weight models from being run. Everyone (at least in US/NATO/US-aligned world) will be forced to use Anthriopic/OpenAI or some other US based closed source model.

Open models will be banned at the GPU level.

This is done to cement the multi-trillion dollar valuation of the AI labs and prevent AI bubble from popping due to customers using free open-weight, instead of pay-per-token closed models

The woman he was having an affair with is suspected of being a Chinese spy, and she may have been using him to circumvent US export controls to move lots of NVidia chips into China.

A CEO cheating on his wife doesn't exactly paint them as a trustworthy leader to partners, suppliers and customers. Even less so when he does it twice, with a foreign intelligence operative.

That has nothing to do with the topic at hand

Your aside is the primary issue and he may have worked with a CCP agent to bypass federal export controls.

These are some good points! Thanks for the replies.

He revealed himself to be obviously stupid and while CEOs don't do much, they can't seem to be obviously stupid.

Evading export controls and lying about it is a pretty bad look

> aside from him possibly being compromised by an international spy

That's a pretty big "aside" for a very big company like NVIDIA.

> Haven’t other successful leaders continued to lead after having their affairs exposed?

https://andybyron.wiki/ is one half of the erstwhile internet-meme "Coldplay Cam Couple".

The part where the mistress is a corporate cutout for Alibaba and head of a company making multi billion dollar deals with Nvidia, I imagine.

> him possibly being compromised by an international spy

you answered your own question.

It's come out that he was having another affair with a Nvidia employee as well, their vice president of healthcare. Having an affair with a client is one thing but having one with a client and a subordinate is maybe enough for the board to remove him.

he was sleeping with a chinese spy

Controlling such high-volume products has never really worked, especially if you sell to other third countries. Plenty of western electronic parts show up in Russian weapons, despite export restrictions.

AMD way up

Uh huh.. that is today. what about the day after tomorrow?

There's probably a lot more to this than we'll ever know.

I think it's worth even considering that if the allegations are true that the objective was to get Huang fired. Sure, he sold China chips, but they have their own homegrown chips now and the Chinese government have played a direct part in that.

I'm thinking the people behind trying to oust him are people who don't appreciate him likely knowingly violating export sanctions and putting the rest of the company and himself at risk of massive fines and criminal prosecution

Given that

1/ China is still interested in chips

2/ Chip exports to China will now (presumably) be under even more scrutiny

What would their motivation be to leak this info?

There is no “they” in this. My read is the timing of all of this entirely down to the results of the midterm elections.

Over the next two years, Congress is going to haul in every tech CEO who licked Trump’s boots. I think Jensen tried to get in front of it and now journalists and institutional short sellers are digging up the dirt.

Jensen made basically two visionary decisions. The first was to promote GPGPU with CUDA across their entire lineup including consumer hardware. The second was to specifically invest heavily in supporting machine learning way before anyone else in chips cared. CuDNN came out in 2014, just two years after AlexNet. Three years before the transformer. Eight years before ChatGPT. Before PyTorch. Before TensorFlow. Other chip CEOs probably hadn't even heard of AlexNet in 2014. Even at the time I thought[1] AMD and Intel were crazy to completely ignore a market opportunity like this. They still haven't caught up.

Assuming these decisions are attributable to him personally, then he absolutely deserves the description "visionary". That said, he's made plenty of other choices I don't like, and also invested in plenty of silly stuff that isn't panning out for them. I don't really think Nvidia needs a visionary right now. They have the best business in the world and they just need to execute. Regardless of whether he deserves to be ousted, the company will be fine without him for the next decade at least. So a stock selloff is silly.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10030957

It still baffles me that most people don't realize how success in 'business'/'leadership' positions has almost nothing to do with an individuals skill/intelligence in leading/decisions but simply mere luck and timing. You could argue that to attain a high position in a company requires some level of shrewdness and intelligence though, but that is another game.

The common argument is, well 'x' leader has had success in 5+ companies! Surely they must be excellent visionaries. Firstly, no single person in their lifetime can possibly launch/aid enough companies to success to have a large enough sample size to prove they are a factor for success. Launching 'x' amount of companies is great but its still such a small amount that it cannot really demonstrate anything. Secondly, once you have had success once, you gain connections, wealth, e.t.c. that only bolster further endeavors that you do even if they are pretty bad ones.

Ofc, there are things an individual at the top of a company can do to make 'good decisions', but this is mostly just selecting the right people below you to delegate to (thus reading/spotting talent well) and listening to your data and people to get as much information as possible before making overarching decisions based on that. This is what I consider common-sense and what most people do in their day-to-day jobs all the way at the bottom of companies anyways, alongside all their regular hard-work (engineering e.t.c.). Upper management just has the luxury of only have to focus on the common-sense dull part; listen to incoming data, make obvious meta decision.

You are really not giving the man any credit - I suspect you weren't part of the GPU era of video games and don't understand the roots of nvidia. That man hustled that company. You can't say things like "right time and right place" without being a little blase.

I don't know much about Nvidia's history, but isn't Jensen largely responsible for CUDA and the company's monopoly on machine learning hardware? It wasn't an obvious bet at the time that this would pay off, but Nvidia sure poured a lot of money into making their software stack so good that nobody wanted to even consider other options.

Yes, you're entirely correct. But you're also underestimating the people's potential to squander great opportunities like these. Look at AMD for example, they had a good head start over nvidia yet they haven't done anything remotely as good.

> He is no Steve Jobs, who almost single-handedly started the PC revolution and the iPhone revolution

by being ousted from his own company and using his golden parachute while * being bought back*?

Under his watch? You mean the entire time from the very beginning. He built the company from nothing and you are not sure he is visionary and indispensable. can't make this shit up :)

It's #3 and shortsellers. There's no one who can lead Nvidea, like he does with his technical depth, connections and trust within the company. Getting rid of him will be a loss for all investors and board.

I think this is for the FBI to determine.

Why would Jensen without Nvidia be a better bet than Nvidia without Jensen?

> Jensen will be allowed to start another "Nvidia".l

Jensen has a very good relationship with Musk. I think he would hire him and put him CEO of Terrafab, of course only if Jensen is down for it as well.

It's not just the Chinese spy. NYT:

> Jensen Huang... also had an extramarital relationship with an executive who reports to him, according to five people who worked at the company.

He will have a non compete agreement for a while. May be 1 year or more.

> he knows the ins and outs of a GPU fab business plus he has all the connections.

Building an Nvidia competitor would be a long, hard slog that almost certainly ends in failure for anyone including Jensen Huang.

They (NVIDIA) have tens of thousands of patents on their technology that would be hard to build around and commitments that lock up 60-70% of TSMC's CoWoS capacity.

What do you mean "allowed"?

> whether Jensen will be allowed to start another Nvidia

Sure. After he's done responding to the Congress and various investigators and his family, something I suspect will occupy a good part of his next decade.

> He now knows how not to get trapped into a tactically targeted honeypot…

Does he? Plenty of serial cheaters out there getting caught repeatedly.

If I am Lip-bu at Intel, I’d wire Huang after news cycle cools.

He's still a shareholder. It is considered extremely bad form to start a company that competes with a company that you are still a shareholder of unless you have not been fired with cause. The only other example I can think of is Jobs. So it is possible but I would assume that post Jobs contracts were put together in such a way that it would be very hard to compete with the company you got booted out of and that you are still a shareholder of. I've signed a couple of contracts over the years just as shareholders and those already mentioned that if I had competing interests the deal would be null and void and I'd be liable, and for good reasons too.

No. They read the headline, hit the paywall, and decide that’s enough to give their well-informed opinion.

That is exceptionally unlikely.

Own some stock, don’t want him to be fired but he should be. Sucks all around

If the affair were not with someone who was a CCP spy then Jensen Huang would still have his job.

he'll move to Taiwan, Taiwan will become part of China, China will move talent, Jensen will become the CEO of a new asian company and they will become a powerhouse in chip production in ~5 years

Do we actually know how much positive effect he has on running the company or are we just making assumptions?

If those sales were illicit, and listed under earnings reports as legitimate, is that defrauding investors?

Nvidia will still be around?

Why would this do anything to make people move on from the best performing devices in widespread production that money can buy?

There is a second affair...

China is terrible to people who speak out against the government and the government censors models. Open weight is nice, but not good if it’s silently been lobotomized on topics.

Separate dimension, these models seem to be distillations of the flagship models. That isn’t healthy for AI because it’s not forward progress. If they suck away revenue that would fund training the next model, then we’re cooked.

I have no qualms with this outcome.

EDIT: I assume the bubble will collapse into correction eventually, sooner is better than later.

Nah, just get rid of him now. It's a GPU not a rock band.

It would be quite funny.

NVidia doesn't need Jensen in the short / medium term - they are printing money. Unless we discover that all this circular financing was some kind of scheme.

We have 2 other companies though, Tesla and SpaceX, which CEO represents 90% of the valuation. That will be the real one.

What about Chris Malachowsky? He also would be a co-founder CEO

For the time being the CFO or COO would do. But stock will take a hit.

Is there one? Obviously lots of MBAs out there but anyone who can really fill his shoes?

They had dirt on him for many years. Someone wants him ousted. That’s what’s happening behind the scene. Jensen probably pissed off someone very well-connected.

> the investigation needs to determine whether there were any security conflict of interest breaches

The Board–correctly–fears for themselves personally in a case involving Jensen's public and multinational corruption scheme.

> Obviously, the affairs are a very serious issue,

It’s just sex mate, it’s really not a big deal unless he giving favourable deals to his mistress’s company.

Kings were also famously out of touch with reality. Hierarchies, if left alone to grow this tall, do this to people.

"Nearly any man can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power" - Honest Abe

> Why are all the tech overlords scum people?

like sleeping Jensen Huang with an incredibly attractive Chinese agent that specifically showed traits he found desirable and exploit what ever weaknesses the Chinese spy agency could find about him to get him involved with her and divulge secrets in a SEXINT operation. Therefore Jensen is one of the worst people who are public figures.

I don't like CEO worship or tech culture (I know I am on hackernews but I am a developer and did like software development and related topics), but this take is crazy most people you know would probably take the bait on an operation like this even 'good' people.

And just take a look at the scum running things outside of Tech a lot worse then a moment of infedality, look at all western leaders you will probably find few better (or even equal) to Jensen. Jensen did not shape the shitshow you are seeing now (not saying he is not part of it), it was corrupt from the start, Just a worthless veneer of morality.

Don't morn your societies decay it was a cadaver from the beginning only by putrefaction will it become the soil to plant strong trees on.

That's an excellent question and I've been wondering about this a lot. I've known a few billionaires, exactly one was an amazing person, the rest were absolutely terrible people in every sense of the word. The whole word is full of NPCs to them. But your question goes to the heart of it: were they terrible people because that's a requirement for becoming a billionaire or did becoming a billionaire somewhere along the line turn them into terrible people?

I haven't found the answer. But I do know one thing from my (smallish) sample: the nice guy never let the money get to his head. He drove his own car (a VW Rabbit, ok, a nice one) and lived in the same house that he lived in when he started his company. And until the day he died he just kept doing what he loved without ever feeling the need to lord it over others. More like a Wozniak (who is the other 'nice billionaire' that I'm aware of but I've never met him).

Edit: I wrote about him:

https://jacquesmattheij.com/in-memoriam-rene-sommer/

Edison v. Tesla is probably informative here, the system rewards scummy behavior.

"a certain kind of person from the start"

Ok but if you are having an affair with your direct report why would you "be affectionate" in public ?

When I encountered this ( in much smaller, non strategic companies!) both parties took great care to hide their affair and appear completely professional in public. The fun and games were kept behind closed bedroom doors. I don't get it.

I’m very curious what the going rate for such an offer is.

The fact that they had a process for this is telling.

Board is likely looking ahead to Democrats taking office and investigating the spy relationship and lack of action taken by the government.

Sen. Chris Coons says investigating Nvidia's CEO is top priority for Democratic Congress

https://www.npr.org/2026/11/09/nx-s1-6032682/senator-chris-c...

I'm wondering how people like Musk, Zuckerberg, Altman, etc. just continually get away with it. Are they just more sociopathic and cover their tracks better?

I'm not really making a judgement on Huang, but it seems others have done worse. It's making me wonder if there's something larger at play where people (i.e., other billionaires and CEOs and perhaps politicians) are unhappy with Huang.

People owning no stock, with grudges against the C suite class. A lot of people, I'd assume.

AI is under attack.

I’m buying the affair and that it facilitated smuggling, but all could be explained by financial interest so far. Was she a spy or made a spy by circumstances on the smuggling itself?

No, just a smuggler in contact with the biggest chinese companies, and the department of commerce being utterly corrupt, normal rock star stuff.

What you mean "goal"? It takes a lot of active effort to shoot yourself in the foot like that.

I don't think it's any of these things.

It's NVIDIA being sued because they defrauded investors by including illicit chip sales in their Q3 figures

What do you think he’ll be thinking of on his death bed. Nvidia’s shareholders or the human connection.

It won’t be the sex it will be the illicit sales of GPUs to China. That domino topples the next and all of the “sales” of goods to AI companies financed by the sellers. There’s a whole lot of paper sales boosting revenues while losing money with each sale going on.

It’s the Dot Bomb days all over again.

So they risked an actual transfer of intel to entrap him?

I had 10 shares at 30 I sold at 40. Now I'm all bogleheads though.

> But there's no real competitors still? Even for the medium term?

So AMD, Google are not "real" competitors?

You posted this verbatim in the other thread, Dario.

I think their concern is that NVidia is acquiescent and in support of policies which give China better AI chips, which is the core of the matter regarding the honeypot scandal. The goal, if it is an op, is to get a CEO who will comply more readily with export controls.

They are finding ways to tighten chip export to China, which is the biggest threat to OpenAI/Anthropic atm.

Americans voted for rooting out corruption. The Congressional committees that review stuff like corruptly quashing an investigation into your lover company [1] are changing hands. Jensen coming clean right after the election was, within the range of options he had, smart.

(Folks run to blow whistles when they realize they're involved in something they may pay the price for isn't new.

Also, have you seen our IC? The days of the CIA running a competent conspiracy, if they ever existed, are behind us.)

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/09/business/economy/nvidia-m...

Reputedly it’s Marco Rubio who has been the main leaker. Think about what his motivations may be and the timing and you’ll have an answer.

What is up with people who seem to love corruption?

Huang had an affair with a Chinese spy, as well as an affair with someone he manages. Either one of these would be grounds for dismissal at any company I've worked at. Committing both of these offenses shows appalling judgment by Huang.

Firing him seems like a very logical conclusion, not some CIA Illuminati bullshit conspiracy theory.

They’re just reporting on things that are true and have been kept secret inappropriately. That’s not a “narrative”.

You’re looking for a conspiracy when this is a pretty straightforward story. Jensen’s credibility is shot. Of course they’re preparing contingency plans.

"America's only AI chip company"

Nvidia has a large market share, but AMD, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, OpenAI, Qualcomm all produce AI chips... these are all American companies.

Given the massive amount of chips funneled through to CN, I guess it leaves regular ol' corporate governance no other option.

If they didn't want to hand the future of AI to China, maybe Nvidia shouldn't have had a Chinese CEO? (By which I mean this wasn’t their objective)

perhaps they acquired or feign having acquired fundamental cryptographic breakthroughs, hoping the "bubble" spreads to China / India / ... to convert a few moths of cryptographic lead into perhaps a few years....

NYT and WSJ doing the bidding. Unleash the Oppenheimer protocol. It’s an epic footgun. History repeats itself.

Even shift leaders at McDonalds need to sign various workplace policies, including policies about relations with their direct reports. So yeah, this is not exactly a surprise or something unheard of.

Even if he’s not compromised it shows a pretty serious lapse in judgment. Remember that CEO and HR exec who got caught at a Coldplay concert?

Makes you wonder who the person(s) is?