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Second employee relationship reported for former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang

A second Nvidia employee relationship was reported by Reuters as Jensen Huang resigned; shares fell 5.5% Thursday amid a board counterintelligence probe.

Former Nvidia CEO Huang had a relationship with a second employee, sources say
Former Nvidia CEO Huang had a relationship with a second employee, sources sayPexels / pixabay
By James Calloway6 min read

Why it matters

  • Nvidia shares fell 5.5 percent Thursday and are down more than 30 percent from their early October peak.
  • Huang admitted to an affair in a November 8 statement without naming the woman.
  • Colette Kress, Nvidia's finance chief, was appointed interim CEO while the board weighs internal and external candidates.
  • The board's probe, opened earlier this month, examines whether Huang was targeted by a foreign intelligence operation.
  • US intelligence suspects Alice Huang, one of the named women, of being a Chinese spy.

Jensen Huang had an intimate relationship with a second Nvidia employee, according to two people familiar with the matter, Reuters reported — a disclosure that follows two confirmed affairs and his resignation as CEO on Thursday. The second employee has not been named. Attempts by Reuters to reach the woman were not successful.

The report lands at a moment of unusual fragility for the world's most important AI chipmaker. Nvidia shares fell 5.5 percent on Thursday in active trading, and the stock has now shed more than 30 percent of its value since its early October peak.

What do we actually know about the second relationship?

Very little, and that is the point worth stressing. The claim rests on two unnamed sources described as familiar with the matter. Reuters is not naming the employee. The woman did not respond to attempts to contact her before publication.

Nvidia declined to comment. Jensen Huang did not reply to a request for comment. Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of health care, did not reply either. A representative for Nvidia's board also did not respond. Alice Huang, the other woman named in earlier reporting, could not be reached.

In plain words: the newest allegation is sourced but unconfirmed by any party involved, and no on-the-record denial or acknowledgment exists.

Who are the people named in the reporting?

Three names anchor this story:

  • Jensen Huang, 63, married, who resigned as Nvidia CEO on Thursday. He admitted to an affair in a November 8 statement but did not name the woman involved.
  • Alice Huang, whom US intelligence suspects of being a Chinese spy, according to the reporting. She could not be reached for comment.
  • Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of health care, identified in the reporting as one of the two women with whom Huang had extramarital relationships. She did not reply to requests for comment.

The second employee — the subject of the latest Reuters report — remains unidentified. That gap matters for anyone assessing the corporate-governance implications, because an unnamed relationship and a named one carry very different legal and security exposures.

Takeaway: one relationship is admitted, two are named in reporting, and a third is alleged without names.

How did the resignation unfold?

Pressure on Huang to resign mounted after reports of his affair with Alice Huang. On November 8, he released a statement admitting to an affair, without referring to Alice Huang by name. He resigned Thursday.

The sequence raises an obvious question the reporting does not fully answer: what changed between the board's earlier public backing and Thursday's resignation. Earlier this month, Nvidia's board launched a probe into whether Huang had been targeted by a foreign intelligence operation. The probe is led by independent directors working with outside legal counsel. At the time, the board also expressed confidence in him.

That confidence did not survive the week. The board has now appointed Colette Kress, Nvidia's finance chief, as interim CEO while it conducts a search for a permanent replacement. It is considering both internal and external candidates.

Takeaway: the board backed Huang publicly during the probe, then accepted his resignation days later — and has not explained the pivot.

Why does the leadership change matter for the AI industry?

Huang's departure could disrupt an AI industry he personally shaped. Nvidia did not merely sell chips; it used its financial strength to help build the industry's demand side through complex financial arrangements intended to ease purchases of its processors. The company has backed cloud computing providers and AI labs through those arrangements, according to the reporting.

That ecosystem-building role explains why a CEO's personal conduct has become a market event. Nvidia sits at the center of AI infrastructure spending, and its chief executive was the architect of the commercial relationships that keep that spending flowing. A leadership transition introduces uncertainty into arrangements that depend heavily on continuity at the top — though the reporting does not detail which specific deals, if any, would be affected.

The 5.5 percent single-day share decline and the 30 percent drop from the October peak give a rough measure of that anxiety. Note the caveat: the peak predates the affair reporting, so not all of the 30 percent drawdown can be attributed to the governance crisis. The market was already repricing the stock before the scandals surfaced.

Takeaway: Huang's ouster is a governance story with AI-industry stakes, because Nvidia's financial engineering underpinned much of the chip demand it now must sustain without him.

What is the board actually investigating?

The most consequential thread in this story is not the relationships themselves but the counterintelligence question. The board's probe, opened earlier this month, examines whether Huang — the chief executive of America's dominant AI chip company — was targeted by a foreign intelligence operation. US intelligence suspects Alice Huang of being a Chinese spy, the reporting states.

No public evidence has emerged, in this reporting or elsewhere cited, that classified information or company secrets changed hands. The probe's scope, its findings to date, and its timeline all remain undisclosed. Nvidia declined to comment, and the board's representative did not respond.

If the probe found foreign targeting of Nvidia's CEO, the implications would extend well beyond one company's boardroom — into export controls, national-security reviews, and the trust framework around AI hardware supply chains. If it found nothing, the affairs remain a matter of personal conduct and corporate policy. The reporting does not say which way the evidence points.

Takeaway: the counterintelligence question is unresolved, and every conclusion about it — in either direction — currently outruns the public record.

What happens next at Nvidia?

Colette Kress, the finance chief elevated to interim CEO, inherits a company under three simultaneous pressures: a leadership search, an ongoing board probe, and a stock in a drawdown exceeding 30 percent from its peak.

The board says it is considering internal and external candidates for the permanent CEO role. It has not set a public timeline. It has not commented on whether the probe's findings will constrain the choice of successor — an omission worth noting, since a counterintelligence investigation touching the previous CEO would ordinarily factor into vetting his replacement.

For the AI industry, the near-term question is whether Nvidia's backing of cloud companies and AI labs continues unchanged under an interim chief. The reporting describes those arrangements as central to Nvidia's market position but does not indicate any change to them.

Huang, 63 and married, has not publicly commented beyond his November 8 statement. In that statement he admitted an affair without naming the woman. He has not addressed the second relationship reported Thursday, the allegations involving Alice Huang, or the intelligence concerns — and his silence, like the company's, leaves the record thinner than the headlines suggest.

The story's next turn depends on two things the sources do not yet provide: the probe's findings, and the identity of the next permanent CEO of the company that built the AI boom's hardware foundation.

Source: feed.koreatimes.co.kr

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James Calloway

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News editor covering people, launches and day-to-day practice in artificial intelligence and machine learning at AI In Context.

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