Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, resigned on Thursday, November 12, from the helm of the chipmaker, following a scandal linked to his affair with Alice Huang, who is suspected by U.S. intelligence services of having operated as a spy for China. Despite sharing the same surname, the two individuals are not related.
An affair revealed at the end of October
The case began in late October, when The New York Times revealed that Alice Huang was suspected of having a “close relationship” with the Nvidia executive. According to the American newspaper, this Chinese national allegedly enabled Beijing to access ultra-high-performance American chips, bypassing U.S. export restrictions on Nvidia chips. These components, called graphics processing units (GPUs), are at the heart of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, and many AI models are trained using them.
Nvidia chips banned for export were installed in a data center in Shanghai, reports Bloomberg, citing documents reviewed by the agency. Some servers were first sold to Aperia Cloud Services, a Nvidia business partner based in Singapore, before being routed through Megaspeed, a company founded by Alice Huang. She led Megaspeed until November 2023. She had been filmed with Jensen Huang during a dinner in Taipei in May 2025, on the sidelines of a tech trade show. The ousted CEO has since acknowledged: ‘I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. Nothing excuses what I did.’
Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, remains untraceable today. Authorities in Singapore and Taiwan suspect she was recruited by Chinese intelligence. Beijing categorically denies having tasked her with a spying operation and even accuses the United States of ‘fabricating’ ‘spy narratives’ to impose a ‘technological blockade.’
An uncertain succession
The announcement of his departure triggered a real earthquake in Silicon Valley, with Nvidia being one of the tech sector’s largest market capitalizations. On Thursday, the stock fell 13% at the opening of the New York Stock Exchange before recovering by the end of the session. Analyst Stephen Witt, author of a book on Jensen Huang and his company, summarized on CNBC: ‘Nvidia without Jensen Huang is like the Chicago Bulls without Michael Jordan. I don’t know how they’re going to replace him.’
Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress is serving as interim CEO while a permanent successor is sought. Several names are circulating, including that of Tim Cook, former CEO of Apple, and Lisa Su, CEO of rival AMD. According to Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst at TF International Securities, the succession will not impact Nvidia’s products until 2028 at the earliest.
Jensen Huang was also one of the most listened-to voices in the AI accelerationist camp. His departure also worries advocates of open AI models, of which he was the main supporter. The scandal is also impacting the political sphere. According to The New York Times, Donald Trump had been informed of the suspicions in 2025, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed them to him in May. Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, believes the government must ‘answer’ for what it did. Jensen Huang is scheduled to testify before U.S. lawmakers in December.
