Nvidia announced the resignation of CEO Jensen Huang on Thursday morning, following the publication of two separate articles the day before. The first reported on an alleged affair with a company executive, while the second indicated that the board of directors was set to review his removal. Jensen Huang was the only CEO Nvidia had ever had.
An Alleged Affair and Espionage Suspicions
The first article targeted Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health. According to an Elizabeth Lopatto column published by The Verge, a video showing Kimberly Powell and Jensen Huang being ‘affectionate’ was allegedly filmed in March, and Huang’s security team reportedly had confidentiality agreements ready to be signed at the time. According to CNBC, rumors about this affair had been circulating ‘for years.’
The other case involves Megaspeed, a cloud computing company specializing in graphics processing units (GPUs). Alice Huang, a Megaspeed executive, is presented as an alleged Chinese spy. According to Bloomberg, she appeared in Beijing, and the Financial Times reports that she is banned from staying in Singapore for providing ‘inaccurate information’ to the police. Her companies are also said to have invested in the Chinese AI company DeepSeek and promised it Nvidia’s Blackwell chips, according to The Information. Megaspeed’s sole director, Tan Yong Pong, appears to have disappeared, and the address of its parent company, Swiftdata, matches offices occupied by an interior design firm.
Disputed Chip Shipments
Jensen Huang claimed in May that Nvidia held ‘zero percent’ market share in China, despite strict U.S. government export restrictions on its high-end chips. However, in a report published the same month by short-selling investment firm Culper Research, the authors wrote that ‘at the heart of reality, over 20% of Nvidia’s computing revenue for fiscal 2026 remained tied to China,’ citing illegal diversions of GPUs and Southeast Asian intermediaries.
In the Super Micro case, a Nvidia partner led by Charles Liang, a former friend of Jensen Huang, three company executives, including co-founder Yih-Shyan ‘Wally’ Liaw, are accused, according to the U.S. Department of Justice press release, of acting as intermediaries for the purchase of $2.5 billion worth of Nvidia chips destined for Alibaba. According to Bloomberg, the shell company would be OBON, based in Thailand. Charles Liang and Super Micro have not been charged.
Washington’s Role
According to The New York Times, Nvidia intervened in a Commerce Department investigation opened in 2025 into Megaspeed, suspected of chip smuggling, and that investigation was halted. Axios reports that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent ‘confronted’ Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick over not flagging Megaspeed as a national security issue, and Politico indicates that ‘more than half a dozen Republicans’ demanded answers from him.
Nvidia also reportedly contributed $25 million to Donald Trump’s ballroom project, according to a Washington Post investigation. Elizabeth Warren, who will chair the Senate Banking Committee starting in January, will be able to issue subpoenas there. When asked about these suspicions, Elon Musk responded to a suggestion from a user to hire him: ‘That would be an honor.’
