It's really interesting to me how unaggressive Jensen has been vs. his peers about tighting up control over his company (even during the recent years when he had huge leverage):
- His board setup is ... odd. He isn't Chairman of the Board (a role over 50% of Fortune 100 CEOs apparently hold). He seems to be responsible for Nvidia having a wierdly more egalitarian structure (all directors including him, are equal, with a designated lead independent director)
- His compensation (~$35M, primarily stock) is ... not up there with other tech CEOs
- He doesn't seem to have ever pushed for super-voting rights (he only has like ~3.5% of the company), but I guess that's hard to change once you IPO
I kinda wonder if this ends with him taking a month off, spending 12-18 months transitioning to a successor and ending as the chairman of the board or some such. He really does seem vital to the company (and thus the stock price).
I wonder how much of this is to do with how recent and explosive (relative to the history of the company) nvidia’s growth was. Like before the back to back booms of cryptocurrency and AI, the company was mainly selling products to gamers (iirc, their datacenter business was like 10% in 2019). It wasn’t that long ago that nvidia’s comparable companies were like… super micro and western digital, rather than Apple and Google.
Also having been more capital intensive and founded further back, Jensen had less sway in the early days of the company and may have put off using the growth to his advantage.
> super micro and western digital, rather than Apple and Google.
Well, bigger than that, but yeah. The early 2020 market cap for NVDA was ~150B, vs. ~1.3T for AAPL. They were the dominant semiconductor design house in an important but still fairly niche area of the PC marketplace.
Seems like much more sane governance for a publicly-traded company.
Honestly this arrangement (total comp aside) is how it should be for all these companies. When Facebook went public the dual class structure (and Zuck retaining voting control) was a big point of contention.
> Honestly this arrangement (total comp aside) is how it should be for all these companies.
It's difficult to say based on the actual data in the past 10 years. The companies with dual shares seem to do well if we look at the companies of the same sizes.
Agreed. This is almost certainly a key to Nvidia's success. A lot of tech companies end up shooting themselves by putting too much power into the CEO, so that when the MBA takes over it turns into a corporate pillaging operation. Cut back on staff, ramp up on prices, maximize shareholder value at the cost of sane long term business practices.
Can you please elaborate on why? He seemed like a luminary from what little knowledge I have. (Very well spoken, wide domain knowledge, obviously made the right bets, etc.)
Nvidia focused on gaming for 20 years, made a ton of bets that didn't pan out (self-driving cars, set-top boxes, streaming, etc) and made unforced errors (Arm acquisition attempt). Nothing hints at him being a visionary beyond wanting to diversify.
Nvidia benefited from the AI boom by being right place, right time. And just yesterday, Mythos ported itself to AMD cards, showing there's no moat.
I suggest reading Tae Kim’s book on the company. Unless Mr. Kim is lying - and he has no incentive to - NVIDIA is very much an extension of Jensen. His management shaped it to the core. It would survive his ousting, but not unscathed. Comparisons to Jobs & Apple are not unwarranted.
This is just more of a sign he was working for china. He was able to run a smuggling operation by being the only one in the company able to coordinate it. His scheme to force US companies to buy hardware they did not need raised production numbers so jensen could get away with smuggling more gpus to china. Jensen is a criminal and nvidia needs to be broken up. The board had no problems with jensen uaing nvidia to illegally drive up prices on US businesses and consumers or smuggle gpus into china.
A flat structure means nobody is a clear competitor with Huang for the top job. If Huang was able to get his way as was, adopting a more traditional structure would have just made somebody else a significantly more powerful #2. A lack of a clear successor might make the transfer of power rougher unfortunately.
Huang's net worth is over $200B, high enough to be in the world top-ten. He has been very well compensated by Nvidia. Either he decided he has enough money at some point or his current compensation numbers are just marketing. The real numbers were clearly much higher in the past, if not presently.
I suspect he's going quietly because the scandals haven't finished emerging yet[1]. At this point, it wouldn't surprise me if somebody has photos of secret Nvidia bunga bunga parties. I do find it interesting that Americans will tolerate lies, murder, and all sorts of other things from their highest elected officials but, if a CEO is revealed to be overly randy, he's got to go.
Instead he made his daughter Senior Director of Product Marketing, made his son Director of Robotics Product, and made his son-in-law VP of AI Infrastructure Growth.
Maybe his idea of asserting control is less about voting rights and more about family allegiance.
He could've gave us seamless private cloud GPUs (basically let you run anything on any device, rent out your GPU to earn money, let you play GTA-6 on your phone...)
How about this all is some sort of theater for him to "peacefully" exit the whole operation and retire, given he not gonna be poor and is very likely to not go in jail given his role in making NVIDIA the company it is.
Unless his wife has blessed an open marriage and is ok with him taking on the risk of sleeping with spies and underlings, I’m pretty certain he’s not going to be married much longer.
Between losing tens of millions in future salary and hundreds of millions in stock while simultaneously putting his kids’ jobs at risk, she’s likely to cash in on her half and walk the fuck away.
Here's why Jensen is critical to Nvidia as well as the industry:
Without Jensen Huang's vision, Nvidia might have remained primarily a graphics chip maker, and the deep learning revolution would not have arrived when it did. Long before deep neural networks took off, Huang backed the use of Nvidia GPUs for scientific and general-purpose computing, including the development of CUDA. In 2012, Krizhevsky, Sutskever, and Hinton used Nvidia GPUs and CUDA to train AlexNet, whose breakthrough performance helped ignite the modern deep learning boom. Nvidia's investment in programmable GPUs helped make that breakthrough possible.
The critical vision was that GPUs could become a platform for computing beyond graphics—and that Nvidia should invest in making them programmable before a large market for that use existed.
The board should punish Huang without punishing the industry and the nation. For example by cutting his salary and stock to 0 for 2 years.
It really doesn't. I don't see how sleeping with someone has any impact on the company. We don't even know what arrangements him and his wife may have. But in the worst case, it's immoral and wrong but a personal issue for him and his family.
Poor judgement is the kind of shit Zuckerberg or Musk do, and their poor judgement actually impacts the whole world in big ways, but they can't be fired because they don't give their board any control.
Jensen's management of NVIDIA has been good, and NVIDIA has generally been a great force for real innovation without much rent-seeking or corruption like the others. They haven't started messing with politics or trying to buy elections. It's kind of sad to see Jensen be the one we topple at a time of rage against corporate power when he's probably one of the better stewards.
> I don't see how sleeping with someone has any impact on the company.
In fact sleeping with a subordinate (look up Kimberly Powell) creates substantial legal risk for the company on its own, even without all the other stuff.
> We don't even know what arrangements him and his wife may have.
He apologized to his wife and said that his actions hurt her and that there was no excuse for what he did, soooooo, yeah we kinda do.
I'm talking about his other affair, with Kimberly Powell. I've amended the previous comment to say so because I guess people don't know he's had more than one.
So far I haven't seen a shred of evidence pointing to Alice Huang being a spy besides just her being a Chinese citizen.. and China has been explicit in instructing its industries to NOT rely on NVIDIA cards as much as possible and build their own.
He was duped into smuggling GPUs, violating sanctions, and risking US national security, which endangers the company. Ain’t just that he banged someone.
If NVIDIA doesn’t fire him, I have a feeling a lot more women from a lot of other companies may be showing up with various proposals.
Yep. His affairs cast a long shadow over his push for "restricting AI accelerators is bad, we should just sell all the GPUs we want to China".
Was it driven by this, as opposed to what everyone thought at the time: pure shortsighted profit-seeking? We don't know. But no one likes that it's even a thing to be concerned about.
I bet many other CEOs do similar kinds of stuff, but for some reason this guy got singled out. The hungry hungry hippos probably did it because they could seeing as he doesn't control the board like MZ.
He should have divorced first, as expensive as it would have been. Being a single/divorced billionaire playboy is understandable, being a married billionaire playboy is going to be messy.
A personal failing not a poor business judgement. Unless it can be shown that the company could have sold more GPUs if he had exercised better judgement.
The timeline of the Chinese spy stuff raises serious concerns - the Chinese company created the shell company and days later inked a massive deal with NVIDIA. There are federal sanctions against this... that's not a poor business judgement?
> For Ms. Huang, there was reason to celebrate. Backed by wealthy investors in Shanghai, she had just restructured a company that would soon buy billions of dollars in Nvidia artificial intelligence chips. The U.S. government had barred Chinese companies from buying the advanced chips, but Ms. Huang had sidestepped this prohibition by creating a firm, Megaspeed, through a Singaporean shell company.
> Her close relationship with Nvidia’s leader also appeared to smooth the way. Four days after the ownership change Megaspeed was named a Nvidia cloud partner, giving it access to the coveted components.
It’s not just a personal failing. He was being used to bypass restrictions against an adversarial government. Why are people acting like he’s in trouble because he violated the boy scouts code of conduct? The restrictions on China have a national security angle to them.
Export restrictions to China have nothing to do with national security and everything to do with political capital. OpenSSL is a restricted export as a hold over from WW2 era of political theater for shit sake.
If China was a national security threat, you’d think at least TEMU would be banned in the US. Instead most things in any store in the US are made in China. The restrictions are entirely political theater to score cheap political points as long as it has no impact on the day to day lives of people. Actually impose sanctions or tariffs or ban trade with China, and you’ll see how the “national security threat” angle immediately changes.
This "China is an enemy state" story is a stale joke.
If China is the enemy then why do we have entire stores selling nothing but Chinese made goods in the US? Why is everyone running to China to manufacture anything? If China is the enemy the whole world is in bed with them.
All that talk about competition being good for the market goes out the window when it comes to China seemingly.
It’s difficult to talk about this stuff when starting from 0, but I’ll try to kick it off and leave it for someone else to wrap up.
China adopted an intentional strategy where western companies for benign reasons of profit leveraged China’s immense human capital to produce products and lower costs for everyone across the planet. This was a win for many. China got to industrialize and lift citizens out of poverty, and companies across the world were able to deliver mass produced good (eventually high quality) for cheap. The United States for example was the champion of China joining the WTO.
But China because it’s a communist dictatorship restricted its market and began doing things that were long-term oriented toward depriving others of power and manufacturing capability for their regime’s private gain. For example today we see that China has over-built its manufacturing capacity (like it did with housing) and has used artificially cheap labor, unjust laws, and currency manipulation (among many other things) to prevent entry into their market while running companies from other countries out of business leaving them dependent on Chinese manufacturing. Prominently you can look at Germany today where sales in China have collapsed, and at home their vaunted manufacturing industry is going through what happened in the US in the so-called “rust belt”. The US has smartly enacted tariffs and other measures to protect its market to some extent from China’s strategy here.
So when someone says something like “all this talk goes out the window about competition when it comes to China” you’ve got to understand a bit more about how China has behaved toward other nations and the egregiously unfair trade practices it has enacted to understand why many countries ranging from the US, to Mexico, to Australia and of course the EU have enacted various restrictions and industrial policy to combat China’s embarrassing and poor behavior on the global stage with respect to trade.
It's interesting because they like apparently missed the part where in literal wars companies (ex. Ford, Alcoa) literally supply both sides and nobody broke those companies up.
> If China is the enemy then why do we have entire stores selling nothing but Chinese made goods in the US? Why is everyone running to China to manufacture anything?
Because geopolitics is a lot more complicated than leaving a group chat? This is like the inverse fallacy of Trump's take on trade deficits. Trade volume isn't the sum total of foreign policy.
> All that talk about competition being good for the market goes out the window when it comes to China seemingly.
I'm no fan of the "but muh free market" arguments, but generally competition is seen as good for the market only when it's "fair"...
I think he can be disciplined without the company sawing off the branch it is sitting on. If Huang had been sued for sexual harassment then the bar would be higher.
The two are not unrelated. Judgement is judgement, and a person who shows poor judgement outside of business is at risk of showing poor judgement in business as well. As indeed he did: the dude was banging one of his subordinates, something he would've known full well is completely unacceptable in American business culture.
A personal failing involving treachery made public lowers trust towards him, even in business situations. Should have been more upright or more discrete.
Dating a spy is not poor judgment? And sorry, if you're running of the world's most valuable and strategically important companies, and if an attractive woman with hazy business connections appears out of the blue in your orbit, you really ought to entertain the possibility.
Wasn't it Anthropic or OpenAI that sent a warning about this exact possibility to regular employees?
Exactly! I said this elsewhere in this thread but why are we so willing to reward these executives with insane wealth and influence but they can’t be held to the same level of standards they expect from their own employees?
Pretty sure his criticality to NVDA is the fact that he founded it and has been its CEO for all of its existence. GPGPUs were entirely his vision. Back in 2008 when no one gave a shit about CUDA or GPGPUs he was the only one insisting that massive data processing on GPUs was going to be important for data centers. He kept funding that for another 15 years despite the target audience being niche scientific computing and the market not rewarding him for that. NVDA without him is going to be a different company. That’s obviously bound to happen sooner or later, but Apple without Steve is a different company than Apple with Steve. Could be better, could be worse, but it’ll surly be different.
In this case, Fridman had offered Huang a very unusual metric for AGI: Could AI start and grow a technology business to the point where it was worth $1 billion? Fridman asked if Huang thought AGI by this definition could be achieved within the next five to 20 years.
Huang said he didn’t think that amount of time was necessary. “I think it’s now. I think we’ve achieved AGI,” he said. He then hedged, noting the company didn’t necessarily have to remain that valuable. “You said a billion,” Huang told Fridman, “and you didn’t say forever.”
You are definitely overselling him. If you are a hardware maker, you naturally want to sell to as many markets as possible. It doesn’t take a huge leap of faith.
People care for financial results (the recent 4% stock dip after the scandal means nothing, Nvidia does dips like that 10-15 times every year based on various news).
And almost all of big CEOs sleep with stuff or not-their-wives. Many do worse, think certain private islands...
I, a shareholder who the board is supposed to represent, respect and trust him as a business person. I don't care for his private choices, but quite frankly I really don't care either. I'm not his wife. And I don't think any spy convinced him to sell more chips he is chips maxxing to the extreme all by himself.
So when 98th woman births Elon’s 69th child we’ll draw the line and get him out as CEO? Or elect a Commander-in-Chief (twice) who F’ed porn stars while his wife was pregnant?
Totally fine to want those people away from positions of responsibility too — I certainly do. Why assume people are arguing for an exceptionally harsh treatment here? (Even though, as the CEO of a public company whose influence on the future arguably outweighs both Musk and Trump, it would be merited)
Why are you assuming your interlocutor is in favor of Elon or Trump holding their positions? If anything, one should assume he is consistently against all three men being in positions of influence.
>Why are you assuming your interlocutor is in favor of Elon or Trump holding their positions?
Doesn't matter if he is. He presents it as some kind of big issue that "No one of character can respect or trust him anymore", which even if true had almost zero impact for all other CEOs doing the same and worse.
fair, but I don’t see any other hot stories crashing a company over a horny CEO. funny how we bring in some moral high ground selectively. if we did this as a whole there wouldn’t be many CEOs or Presidents left in their position, no?
do they want Trump out because of his infidelities or for other reasons? even Evangelicals voted for him (twice) so I don’t think it is him F’ing everything that moves
I mean I want trump out for his infidelities as well as allegations of sexual assaults even on minors. I want him out for these reasons and more. I believe also lost the majority vote both times. The US elections being a convoluted mess with tons of corruption and Israeli influence is hardly a reason for why Jensen Huang shouldn’t suffer the consequence for his actions. I say fire him.
he definitely did not lose popular vote in 2024 though… I don’t have a problem if he is fired but questioning why same standard isn’t applied generally? if he is fired, do we start a country-wide crusade to oust every horny CEO?
I said majority vote not popular vote. I don’t blame you for being confused. If Jensen gets fired it won’t be merely due to his unfaithfulness. He put the company at risk by literally screwing a spy and allowing china to bypass export controls.
the only things the "AI industry" has done is price normal people out of computing, give justification for companies to lay people off, fill the internet with slop, contribute to centralizing capital, and add a transaction cost to everything people do with their computers.
i couldn't care less about the "industry" that focuses on profits or the "nation" that is more committed to overseas wars than providing basic infrastructure.
There should be harm to shareholders. If the US investigates and found that export control laws have been violated and fines Nvidia $X billion then that's harm.
I recently recalled Nvidia's rather strange reaction to the Gamers Nexus investigation into GPU smuggling [0]. Found it somewhat strange at the time how incredibly agitated the reaction seemed to have been, given Nvidia could sell the same GPUs for the same price essentially instantly without the Chinese market. Their reaction wasn't merely a denial, dismissal or even silence, but very irrationally sounding for a company of their size and standing.
Why not just sell to not-sanctioned entities, ensure compliance to the best of your abilities and otherwise keep your head down? Again, wasn't like they struggled to find buyers for their chips.
Considering Megaspeed, I now see this in a very different light. Him cheating is personal and I wish the affected members of any family of a cheater the best, but not relevant for us outsiders.
Being honey trapped very bad securities wise, but he'd be a victim (and evidence for why we shouldn't discount Mistral in the frontier lab race [1]). If sanctions avoidance went all the way to the top, that is hard to negate even for a board that is interested in keeping him. At that stage he was neither honey trapped nor "merely horny"...
Aren't open-weight models good for Nvidia's business? Chinese labs releasing models that people can run themselves on Nvidia GPUs creates more potential buyers of Nvidia GPUs.
I don't think it's good for Nvidia if everyone has to go through a few labs APIs to get access to AI inference.
It makes sense to me why they would benefit from chinese labs having more compute.
I wish for US to win the Chinese race if there's one. I would agree that the Chinese getting access to GPUs, building models, making them open weight and also sharing has really pushed the American labs. Without Chinese models, we would probably be 1 year behind where we currently are. Competition is a healthy thing. This competition has increased intelligence so fast and created ridiculous demand on hardware. So it's been great for Nvidia and their stock. I don't know what Jensen knows nor do I believe he could have anticipated how the field would play out. Whatever happens, it's been one heckuva ride for him. Unfortunately there are many people that would love to get into his position, the pay is going to be delicious...
While yes, they also have interest in open weight, it does increase their market after all, I'd be surprised if that was on the same level, given they are extending mass credits to US frontier labs and neoclouds on condition that they'd purchase their GPUs and even provide revenue guarantees.
That is something they simply cannot do with Chinese entities. Allegedly smuggling GPUs may be feasible, but that'd probably ruffle to many feathers in both the US and Mainland China, especially as we know they will pop a bubble to their own (temporary) detriment if it gets out of control as seen with Evergrande a few years ago.
Beyond all of that, would that juice be worth the squeeze? Bypass massive sanctions, risk your companies future and standing on the global stage just to provide foreign labs with your GPUs illegally and create a comparatively negligible added demand for your accelerators when compared with the (predominantly) closed-model-labs? That seems very high risk, very low reward in my eyes.
If it's not due to a love affair (which is now public), and not just working for PRC out of ideological readons, it might be some kind of secret pressure, some kind of a secret hostage situation, so serious as to force a CEO of the world's top company to act so recklessly.
He made a strong case that the sanctions harmed his long term ecosystem lock in play.
Those statements sound different today, but I think they are both commercially reasonable desires and follow naturally from his very successful playbook over the last twenty years: CUDA built that company. Or at least got it to its first trillion.
Eh, I have seen their past reaction to reporting they didn't like, such as the HUB DLSS blacklisting and the like. They can be petty, yes, but the reaction to that documentary felt very different, that was another level entirely. It sounded weirdly personal, which is even more suspect given sanctions are a legal issue where even a company with a rather contentious relationship with media would normally launder each reaction through legal.
Nvidia is one of the most critical strategic assets in the USA today, underpinning economic dominance and national defence. Leadership at this level usually operates under an implicit shield. Normal procedure would be to cover-up. A sudden loss of Nvidia's founder and CEO at this juncture is a blow to American strategic posture and a windfall to China.
I think the real story is not the affair, which was already reported in asian media in 2024, but what specific catalyst broke that protective shield and made continued containment untenable.
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.
I am wondering if his public apology for being unfaithful to his wife (weird for it to be public, to his employees) is actually covering up for some corporate malfeasance.
Perhaps they reached a conclusion that congress would inevitably discover this once real oversight happens, so they decided better to get it out now before Democrats are actually in control? It makes quite a lot of sense to do it now from that perspective. Who knows, maybe a presidential pardon shoe is about to drop as well.
I figured there will be quite a lot of people taking actions like this ... but nVidia was a surprise for sure.
I mean main media outlets know that the public really has turned on billionaires so this is some meat to feed the readers (great ad rev). Someone from the administration leaking the information to a reporter for sure wouldn't be surprising without knowing how much it would blow up. Also many other viable theories too.
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.
Sure is convenient for everyone to spend all their time talking about the CEOs personal life than however many billions of prohibited sales have been happening here.
I can't believe everyone is not focusing on that part of the story, and the stories just can't seem to rise to the top of the page for one of the biggest tech stories in years.
"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."
I am simply observing that at this level affairs are usually covered-up for the interest of the nation. This affair was covered-up for a bit, seeing as it was broadcast on Taiwan news in 2024, so something else changed for them to end the cover-up and broadcast the affair to America.
If this had happened at a more recent founder-led tech company, the board would have far less practical independence
Dual-class share structures have become the defacto standard for founder led companies, giving founders disproportionate (even majority) voting power.
Someone like Zuckerberg effectively controls the board and would be extraordinarily difficult to oust against his wishes (absent some exceptional legal intervention or a decision to step aside)
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.
The theory is that if an investor is under no compulsion to purchase shares that entitle them to no say in governance, so if they do so, they only have themselves to blame.
This is kinda huge; my layperson view is that Jensen has been responsible for their long term technology strategy, which requires deep understanding of so much outside of the business domain. I'm not exactly thrilled that they are "eating the world" (hf purchase had me bent out of shape, for example), but they've undeniably executed on some long term complex shit. Who could take his place?
He may not have predicted the specifics, but they didn't just happen to be there. Nvidia started work on CUDA in 2004, and aggressively iterated machine learning hardware and software for twenty years to get into the position they had for the boom.
This must be a troll comment and doesn’t belong here.
Are you implying that Tim Cook should single-handedly run the worlds largest, highest throughput global supply chain? Like the screws of the Mac mini, the walk throughs of thousands of factories all over the planet, the coordination of fedex and UPS shipments of 100M units in a single day for just ONE of their products? Coordinating the DHL shipments to Germany? Sourcing the supply of the sapphire crystal glass? Coordination of mass producing the 3nm silicon at TSMC and the C1 modem in Shenzen? All Tim Cook. All by himself.
Seriously, i hope this was just a joke that landed badly. Cause oh my god, man.
At the time I didn't think it would happen because of impact on Nvidia's stock price, but at that point we didn't know about his second affair - with Kimberly Powell.
I'd suggest this latest revelation makes his position untenable, especially if the board found out about the second affair via a source other than Huang himself. He should have spilled the beans on that when the first affair came out, not that it would necessarily have saved him, but withholding the information - if that's what he did - should condemn him. It's another serious lapse in judgement and a failure of integrity that is not befitting of one of the most powerful corporate leaders on earth.
Goodness knows how his wife is feeling at this point. Certainly makes his apology from a couple of days back ring rather hollow.
EDIT: The fact that someone like Jensen Huang - who I'd previously considered to be an incredibly smart guy as opposed to a nitwit - can somehow completely implode his life in almost the most ridiculous way imaginable does give me some hope that at least some of the troublemaker ne'er do wells that have wielded so much power over us all over the past decade or so might also experience some just desserts in the not too distant future.
Someone mentioned that the 2nd affair was known about by the board for a long time, and this is pretty common in boards. They don't really care, they just keep it in their pocket until they need the ammo to fire someone. It sounds right to me, affairs are very hard to keep secret for someone that public, and then this news dropped right after the first one.
As bad as cheating is morally, we don't really know how his wife feels or if they had some open relationship type arrangement, and it's not really material to his running the company because it's been doing very well during all of that. I don't think it makes much sense to fire someone over this, it's more like a power struggle with other parties vying for control.
Yeah, he should leave. Next earnings call is Nov 17, he needs to be out by then so that he is not a distraction (CFO could do the call).
As a large shareholder and world's 7th [now 12th] richest person he would certainly retain a lot of power, even with a new CEO. Time to start his own personal VC firm or something.
There is some nepotism at Nvidia, those people are likely going to be very annoyed with him since their positions may not now be tenable.
Sounds like he helped China get GPUs in violation of export controls. This puts NVidia in a tough place as keeping him as CEO risks broader legal ramifications.
it seems like this is the legal equaivent of smoking dope behind the McDonald's ..basically no one cares that much. The govt. could prosecute or make an example.,but whatevah. It's implicitly understood nvdia is a huge success and central to the US tech boom.
Considering that only Jensen has been pushing for anything close to open-source models in terms of AI vs the token merchants of OpenAI and Anthropic, it seems a really bad time for Huang to leave.
I do think that "eventually" AI will be open-(source, weight, something) and most people will run at least some of their workload on their own hardware; but his leaving might delay that day considerably.
This doesn't seem like a healthy move for the company's longevity. What else did Jensen do? It's a given that companies that size will be targets for espionage and leak information even without it. This one mistake is enough to end all the value he has-and would continue to add to nvidia? Feels like we're missing information about the whole thing.
So he had an affair with a woman. Who cares. He's human. He's not a spy. This whole charade to dethrone the founder of the biggest company in the world is a joke. I hope the NVDA board are not stupid or they should all resign.
Uhm ... yes? Screwing around is not a crime. That is something Huang should settle with his family. His wife may divorce of forgive him, but a divorce is not something that the company should fire anyone over.
The fact that he slept with a suspected Chinese spy is not a crime either. Now, if he has enabled industrial espionage, helped circumvent sanctions or broke other laws it is a different matter. But marital infidelity seems insufficient as a cause to fire a CEO of a highly successful company.
I did not follow the story much, so might be missing some important information.
He also sold chips worth billions to her "mistress" and the chips probably went to China. So he did circumvent sanctions. Thats the only crime I recognise in this matter.
These are Trump political sanction. NVDA is a multinational company out to maximize profits for shareholder. Selling to China should not be on any sanctions list. China is not the enemy of anything in my book.
Allegedly. We will no doubt learn all about this from national security council operations this year. But we don’t know what happened or what he did or did not know right now.
Screwing around is not a crime, but he also isn't under threat of prison time. He's under threat of losing his job, because he has shown that his judgement cannot be trusted (he had two illicit affairs, one of which was with a subordinate). It's perfectly reasonable to fire someone from a leadership position for having bad judgement.
Jensen's been lobbying hard for years to get the government to allow selling high-end GPUs to China. It's his position that this will discourage local competitors from getting big enough to meaningfully threaten nVidia's dominance.
While there's nothing inherently incorrect about this position, the affair with an alleged spy means that he, personally and uniquely, cannot advocate for this policy without seeming compromised. Ironically, if nVidia agrees with him, they have to fire him.
Large companies always have a backup plan in case the CEO needs to be replaced. What usually happens in these cases is that a new CEO will be named. That new CEO will focus on maximizing the company's earnings while neglecting the tech. And the company will be an earnings winner for the next few years.
He's out as CEO but he'll continue to be a force at Nvidia. If the new CEO is smart, he'll keep him in the company, but it will be hard since Huang will be seen as the company's leader and it will be very hard for Huang to act any other way.
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.
The no-going-back issue is the corruption. Jensen corruptly quashed an investigation into Megaspeed. He then quite clearly expected Republicans in Congress to back him, which is why he only came clean when forced to.
I agree the corruption and conflict of interest stuff is the real issue here and is serious. I’m just criticising the hand-wringing over him banging some random woman (or women, as it apparently turns out), as if that is some unprecedented or shocking behaviour or worthy of a reprimand on its own. Most of the world left that prudish shit behind in the ‘90s.
I think marital infidelity is shitty behaviour but I also think the main issue here is that this man in this job with this global significance thought this woman was safe to be involved with.
His board must think he's a lunatic. They have every right to know if he's having an affair with anyone (because marital infidelity is a personal corruption issue that is rarely not a problem when it's a CEO, since carrying off an affair usually involves suborning staff in some way). But this? Madness.
> the hand-wringing over him banging some random woman
I don't care about it. But I do understand folks who are dismayed to see someone who many of us–myself included–saw as a bit of a paragon until a few weeks ago turning out to be a total shithead.
Not a paragon but definitely a very capable entrepreneur.
I'm disappointed in him as a business person, not in a some moralistic sense but because he's clearly very smart and capable yet made himself vulnerable with these two dumb mistakes. In his position there are a lot of external interests who want leverage or control over you.
I’ll give you a shortcut for the future, and I will be downvoted for doing so.
Don’t look to billionaires if you’re looking for paragons. They all fail basic ethical checks. It’s very easy and convenient to not look for these failures. But, inevitably, when somebody starts looking hard, they find them.
I don’t think it’s necessarily prudish, but in order to accurately judge it you need to know if someone’s ENM or not, and that’s more than most people make known about their personal lives.
Stepping outside of your marriage behind your spouse’s back is still scummy behavior.
AFAICT, (b.) isn't correct? The alleged spy works for a Singaporean company called "Megaspeed"[1], and while there is a conflict of interest argument, perhaps, "direct report" seems incorrect.
Considering the current administration and the amount of corruption by trump and co, I feel like not following the rules is too simplistic an explanation for being targeted like this.
Not familiar with the details, I asked the ai overlords to gather up public evidence and give me a summary and... this feels like a very premature accusation. Unless you know something that isn't public, seems like we need to wait and see.
As people said about the Huggingface incident: if you see one ant in your kitchen, the best estimate for the total number of ants actually present is well above one.
One affair was a mistake. Two, with a spy and an employee, are a real failure of responsibility -- and those are just the ones we know about.
I don’t understand you Americans; you live in a disproportionately violent society, tolerate all sort of abuse and manipulation, then will scream hysterically at anyone having an unconventional sex life.
Engaging in a relationship of any sort with a direct report (the second woman he reportedly had an affair with) is typically prohibited behavior. The imbalance of power between a boss and a subordinate in their report line just screams sexual harassment lawsuit waiting to happen.
It's nothing to do with prudishness about his sex life and everything to do with his actions endangering the company.
They were shipped to a sketchy Singaporean company that his Chinese spy-mistress worked at, and IIRC he tried to prevent investigations into whether those chips were being redirected to China.
Reducing this to “an unconventional sex life” is a weird and sort of stupid take when matters of global trade and export sanctions policy are concerned, but sure, we’re all a bunch of violent prudes over here.
The thing I don't understand is what is the real issue? Just the bad PR? I would kind of think affairs are pretty common, it's just this is public? I'm struggling to find anything where he did something bad business wise or compromised national security. Seems like Americans just love the sensationalism of affairs. Makes for good news I guess.
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.
This doesn’t bode well for Anthropic’s IPO indirectly, due to whole AI industry being propped up largely by Nvidia’s circular investment.
Also there’s likely a big overlap of institutional investors who are both NVDA and ANT investors and will now likely seek to dump ANT at the opening bell.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
fall of nvidia is acceptable collateral damage, they are just hardware vendor. all their chips are made by TSMC anyways. And they can be replaced by OpenAI's inhouse chips or googles TPUs, made in the same TSMC factories.
no biggie if their valuation will deflate a bit just like Cisco did in 2000.
pure-software business like openai/ant, will be protected and their global market will be protected
If anyone can make chips like Nvidia, why isn't another company doing it already? Anything can sound easy if you reduce it enough, but I really don't see how it is that easy in practice.
Indeed, If the CCP stays stable long enough they'll (as a country) succeed at it.
Not because they care about the rest of the world, they care about their own domestic market/sales though.
They successfully re-invented half of modern consumer tech inside China already, the the US closes a market, it hurts them for a few years then they close that gap.
For decades it's been "Yeah they closed the Gap on X but we have Y" then "Yeah they closed the gap on Y but we have Z" and Z starts to look pretty uncertain.
At a certain point you have to realise that with enough capital and people you can do the things that the other people with enough capital and people are doing, there isn't really any secret special "America has to be the tech leader" sauce, there wasn't when the British where the world leaders or when the Italians where or the Middle East and back through history.
They can't even stop one company from selling physical chips to China, yet somehow they're going to prevent anybody from running open models? I don't know, it doesn't seem likely to me.
there will be divergence: US-aligned world (NATO+Korea+Japan and other vassal states) will bend over and agree to whatever regulation Department of Commerce/State is cooking to ban open weight (Chinese) models.
the rest of the world will be starved of GPUs and chipmaking equipment and chemical supplies for chip making
I don't see how this can happen, though. There are a lot of GPUs out there and open models have already been downloaded millions of times. (IIRC Deepseek v4.1 Flash has been downloaded nearly 2M times just on HuggingFace, just over the past month.) The NATO world already relies quite heavily on open models, in many cases served by Mistral and other local providers. China is also developing its own hardware -- Huawei isn't slacking -- and it's not that far behind. And I'd bet there's no such thing as a "GPU Level" block that can't be hacked away.
Such a move would also be transparently dystopian... though, in fairness, I suppose that makes it more plausible than it would otherwise be...
they will use National Security as a pretense to force everyone on "verified-aligned AI".
if Uncle Sam has not approved your model, it will be illegal to run it as a AI risk.
Americans have swallowed even worse limitations on their freedoms, so nobody will even notice that, because all notices will be sent to hyperscalers, neoclouds, and other large operators of GPU farms
That $200 was a sort of formality; him buying his shares from the company as part of the incorporation paperwork. It has nothing to do with actual funding needed to run a business. Nvidia's first round of financing was 3 months later. $2M at a $6M valuation [1].
Is there any reason why this will actually change the fundamentals of Nvidia's business so long as 5080s go for as much as a used car and the entire world wants H200s? Even if they lose an extremely hands-on CEO, they're selling a very expensive product with extremely high global demand.
Yeah I genuinely don't know either! I'm just very curious about the effect an ouster will have not on the stock price, but the business of designing and selling chips.
I wonder what happens to NVDA afterwards. People say Jensen is NVDA or at least he has a lot of controls over the company. I guess they finally found the right time (very bad midterm) and the right opportunity (mistress as Chinese spy).
I even wonder whether some elements within the Chinese government has a hand in it -- not (only) the mistress part but the ousting part.
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
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.
It's not immediately clear that Jensen is as visionary and indispensable as some people claim. True, under his watch, Nvidia rose from a relatively obscure company to one of the largest companies in the world, and even a national asset. But it's really hard to believe that these achievements are due to Jensen's brilliance. Jensen didn't create the crypto mania that propelled Nvidia in the 2010s, nor did he create the current AI revolution.
To me, he had the good fortune of standing in the right place at the right time. He is no Steve Jobs, who almost single-handedly started the PC revolution and the iPhone revolution. This is not to deny his brilliance and business acumen, but I think too many people overstate his contribution to both the company and the United States. Of course I could be wrong so I welcome correction or alternative viewpoints.
Speaking of the US, Jensen has indeed become a liability. A compromised CEO is, of course, a liability to a national asset, and a politically toxic one at that. Nvidia is a business with sensitive political ties now. It can't afford to appear compromised in the eyes of Washington. Therefore, Nvidia's stakeholders must let Jensen go; otherwise, it will affect the company as a whole.
Jensen made basically two visionary choices. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 :)
Right - unreal to think the founder from the 90s isn't core DNA to nvidia. All the thread here thinking you can parachute in a CEO and nvidia would be fine.
Can someone make the strong case for why he should be ousted?
I’m not deep into this story, but my initial reaction is that marital infidelity doesn’t seem like a strong reason to oust him, aside from him possibly being compromised by an international spy. Haven’t other successful leaders continued to lead after having their affairs exposed?
(And no, I don’t believe what he did is morally excusable for the record.)
So let me get this straight, there is now a grand conspiracy within nvidia and its supply chain network to avoid export controls? How exactly would that work? "Hey its Jensen, can you call John in shipping and send 16 containers of H200s through Myanamar to China?"
So because you, in your infinite knowledge of international smuggling, can't envision any method for evading export control, it must not be possible. Is that what you're saying?
Not really that complicated of a scheme! The main thing is that the sales people... they "know" this is likely export control circumvention but choose to not make a stink about it. Willful ignorance.
Often times these export control issues play out like:
- big deals made with shell companies
- most people involved are incentivised to play along and pretend to not notice the shell-ness of the company
- one person doesn't get the memo and is like "uhh... wait isn't this bad?"
- now that the phrase has been uttered, either cover ups happen or a bunch of other nasty shit happens
Maybe more "Hey, sell to this new Neocloud I met with in Singapore. Sure, it's ran by Chinese nationals, no, I don't know who's workloads they're running, don't worry about it."
...which may or may not be a violation of the export controls but it violates the intent.
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 has to go because he opposes restrictions to run Chinese open weight models on NVIDIAs GPUs. He said so in an Axios interview in July - "The industry needs open models, science needs open models, cybersecurity needs open models". [1]
If Nvidia is going to fire Jensen Huang, my question is whether Jensen will be allowed to start another "Nvidia".
I hope he's allowed to do so. He now knows how not to get trapped into a tactically targeted honeypot, he knows the ins and outs of a GPU fab business plus he has all the connections.
This minus all the cruft and legacy overhead of a company as old as Nvidia. I'm now hoping he gets fired.
I don't think Jensen without Nvidia would be better, but he's uniquely suited to fund a company, raise an enormous amount of capital, jumpstart contracts and partnerships, utilize connections at the highest levels of the global economy, and attract talent across all levels of a new company. Very few people, if any, have the foundations to do this.
Because he can start a new company knowing everything that he got wrong the first time around, be able to hire absolute badass engineers who got fired from Nvidia because some Manager or HR thought they smelled wrong and was a hygiene risk, or quit Nvidia because they didn't like the work they were being assigned, be able to raise capital from investors who currently won't invest in Nvidia because of reasons, be able to strike new deals that hasn't happened because someone at Nvidia isn't letting them happen.
Nvidia is a very old company, not as old as Intel but close. Old companies build their own internal overhead you just cannot get rid of that would just kill a new company
That's not how the world works. Most of what NVIDIA does is protected by patents and trade secrets, not to mention CUDA.
And what do you mean by "the things he did wrong the first time"? NVIDIA was the most valuable company in the world at one point either this year or last year, and it's still in the top three. He did everything right from business perspective.
idk reading everything what is coming out it looks like he had much unlimited power to do whatever he wanted. so i dont buy that someone (even legal) was a hurdle for him.
How is that relevant? You could claim he was a victim of a honeypot, but an affair with a report is an abuse of power. Any regular employee would be terminated within a day. A CEO in his position will take a little more than a day.
It's an abuse of power, but it's also an excuse to get him out. Fortune 100 boards don't make decisions of this financial magnitude because of ethical considerations. Some political wind must have shifted against Jensen.
I used to be a frequent visitor to /r/nvidia ~15 years ago until ~5 years ago. Around 2020 it turned increasingly into a sort of stock price cult. The discussions were corrupted with people who felt like they had a duty to try to help increase the stock price. I'm seeing inklings of that in these sorts of threads. How are these people so unaware of standard corporate policy? This is like the stereotypical case that's presented by HR to new hires.
> 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.
> 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'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.
He could pretty trivially divest or move his shares into a blind trust or something. This isn't rocket science, and furthermore it's not as bad form as you might think. It happens all the time with little repurcissions.
I see people bemoan that this is going to hurt Nvidia. First of all, it’s not like Nvidia will crumble in a few weeks. The company has a sky-high valuation because of the moat they’ve built. That doesn’t just disappear simply because Jensen steps down.
Second, yeah long term this might set Nvidia back, but are we going to say that not only are there companies which are too big to fail, but now individuals can be too? They can violate international trade sanctions and get scott free because it might harm their company? What CEO wouldn’t then be incentivized against setting up a succession plan? Why wouldn’t adversarial governments target critical CEOs even more, knowing they are effectively untouchable?
Jensen objectively fucked up royally. I saw someone describe him as a victim in all of this. I’m sorry but I don’t see how it’s unreasonable to hold CEO’s in these key positions to very high standards. They’re rewarded with extraordinary wealth and influence, yet some seem eager to excuse them from the accountability that should come with that power.
He can just retire and live happily ever after. The mention to shareholders is pretty much the only thing a billionaire can’t do without getting in trouble.
The CEO works for the board. And the board really doesn't like when their company ends up on the front page of the WSJ for helping a Chinese intelligence agent traffic your company's own product in violation of US sanctions.
Fired with cause or stepping down (most likely stepping down)>Interim CEO named> Jensen flew too close to sun and got burned. Board investigations will put everything on Jensen and they will turn that chapter over. Much more information will come out. His wife I will divorce him as well. This whole thing is more political than anything else. Who leaked all of this is my biggest question. Nvidia should be fine in the mid term, but unstable in the short term.
Without knowing more this seems like the wrong move... The U.S. has the AI supply chain visualized incorrectly. The necessary manufacturing, raw materials and components all come from outside of the U.S. For nVidia to have decades of supplier relationships and manufacturing understanding, much of this was in the hands of the CEO more than other companies. Jensen has a lot of direct reports which is odd given the corporate structure.
I do wonder if Megaspeed and other shell companies have been monitored for over a year by the Feds where they broke export rules, failed to report to the Govt with the knowledge of several in the Administration... Everyone was making money on the side by allowing Jensen, Megaspeed and others profit off of bypassing export controls. Just recently a shipment of GPUs randomly disappeared as well.
If this all turns out to be true then removing him is a lot stronger than it seems and maybe in the long run fixing the bus factor problem will have been a good change.
Or, since nVidia is the central bank of the AI bubble, forcing him out kicks off a chain reaction that pops the bubble.
This is overblown; nvda is a mature company jensen has set the right bets forward so it's just a matter in who the successor is. In terms of revenue impact, assuming megaspeed accounted for ~20% of sales (rumored estimate) then game optimal move is to have OAI/ANT pick those sales up. We will hear about a transition plan probably around earnings.
yea that can be argued^ if there is proof that Jensen knew and acknowledged that these are shell companies that will funnel the chips to china then yea that's defrauding investors.
You can also argue that he wasn't aware n as far as he knew this was just a company in Singapore. It will be interesting how it plays out based on the facts.
He would absolutely be fired if he were in any role, but as CEO cofounder, it's hard not to attribute Nvidia's success to his leadership.
The thing is, this is just what's been reported. There's almost certainly more going on if 2 affairs are public disclosure. If there is a sexual harassment angle here as well, he's toast.
Big companies should be resilient and diverse enough that their growth doesn't depend on one person, and yet most successful companies seem to be centered around someone with strong character and presence. Not to play cult of personality, but Huang looks like a central element of Nvidia's success. Will Nvidia go the way of Intel and other corporate grey bureaucracies that ultimately decline ?
I still recall, as a young engineer (1999) working in a high-flying startup outside of Boston -- bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and full of naive optimism -- I flew to Houston in late '99 to demo a fabulous optical networking switch to ENRON, all the while thinking why in the world would ENRON want to be in the business of networking. Ended up selling them a TON of very expensive equipment.
It all unwound a few months later, much to my chagrin (and my lost stock options, obviously).
Recall that most bubbles do not pop due to one, key material cause. Instead, they pop due to adjacent troubles that, in turn, lead to cascading effects.
That was true of:
- LTCM failure (1998; Thailand and other SE Asian countries defaulted);
- 2000 market crash (dot-coms crash, then telecom crash of 2001);
- 2008-2010 financial crisis (mortgage backed securities);
... and so many others before these.
It's entirely possible that NVDA, despite earning $$$$, could unwind the circular funding within the ecosystem (the very crux of telecom market crash of 2001)
Especially because of that I don't believe China will actually invade Taiwan right now. It will bring chip production to a halt for 5 years while factories get rebuilt. In this AI race that is not good for anyone.
Did he break up with her after finding out she's a spy?
Was she trained as a spy and sent to entrap him specifically? Or did she form a relationship with him, then get told by the Chinese Communist Party "Xi wants you to steal him some secrets from your boyfriend. This is an offer you can't refuse; spy for us or your family in China will be beaten, jailed or worse"?
Is he a victim or an asset? Is she a willing patriotic spy for China, or a victim of blackmail from the Chinese Communist Party? Has she been arrested as a spy, or did she make it to the Chinese embassy before the story broke?
My feeling is he shouldn't be ousted if he took the honey but didn't fall for the trap. OTOH if he passed her company secrets, that's presumably a fireable offense for anyone lower on the totem pole; it's only fair for a CEO to get fired for the same.
The possible security implications of this entire affair (affairs now) can't be overstated. That hardware's in the most secret of facilities, computing very classified workloads for very very serious customers. Not the goofy AI heads, I'm talking about the military and intelligence communities in many nations.
Hopefully this teaches the market to migrate away from proprietary CUDA and NVIDIA and their proprietary drivers.
That would be the first affair we learned about... there's another and that may change the calculus. Regardless, the proverbial tragedy, IMO, would be depending on the judgement or heartbeat of one guy (CEO or not) at such a scale.
It's interesting how some of the smartest people can still make some of the dumbest mistakes. So my optimistic feeling: we're all similarly enough capable of smart and dumb things. But my pessimistic feeling: our intelligence isn't fundamentally better than LLMs in avoiding dumbest mistakes
It’s pretty clear (if you aren’t a huge idiot) that Jensen is attempting to bury the lede here.
He knowingly helped advance China’s AI ambitions against the direction of congress. He got caught selling 7.5 Billion dollars of restricted chips to china.
Also he cheated on his wife with some Chinese woman, which is a totally separate and unrelated fuck up.
If you seriously think he got tricked by some random woman who batted her eyes, you are out of your mind. He founded the fucking company, he isn’t some clueless executive. He’s also not senile and he doesn’t have dementia. This is the only viable excuse for him to use, but it’s complete bullshit.
Think about it: He betrayed his longtime wife, who by all accounts supported him from the beginning. He betrayed his company and its shareholders. And he betrayed his country (BOTH of his countries?) who specifically forbid the chips to be sold to china. He’s fucked
He cheated on his wife with multiple women, it's coming out... I feel bad for her, everyone's saying she'll get billions and that's nice but she's been completely humiliated.
That’s a stretch. He’s the CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world. Hearing that he had an affair, or multiple affairs, shouldn’t come as a surprise. The only person here who’s humiliated himself is Jensen, for having an affair with a spy. He was too high and mighty to take the simple route and pay for high end escorts who make you feel good for a couple of hours, and then move on with your life. No, he decided he needed to have a whole relationship on the side.
I don't really feel that bad for her. She's 65 and will become a billionaire in her own right, meaning she can build whatever retirement for herself she can imagine. Their kids are in their 30s. Being cheated on is theoretically embarrassing, but 100% of people who have an opinion about it would be sympathetic to her (I mean, they'd see this as his failing and not her fault). Contrast that with how people will see Jensen ("stupid, reckless, betrayer of his family") and how people may see the women he cheated with (people may assume they were gold-diggers who knew exactly what they were doing).
I guess what I'm saying is, I'd be happy to be publicly cucked in exchange for at least a billion dollars.
If this is correct, what was his motivation? I fail to see what he could have gained from it, other than a few extra billion in revenue, which they likely would have made otherwise anyway.
You don't become a billionaire by leaving money on the table. Achieving this kind of wealth is proof that you will never be satisfied, the reasonable people took their exit a while ago and are enjoying themselves peacefully. You most likely already took shortcuts and illegal actions to get there, so why not continue in that direction?
Trump has made a lot of money from NVIDIA stock, and he's very good friends with Jensen. Especially after he approved the Export Deals. Jensen will be fine after he's out of NVIDIA.
A billionaire being fired is not that much of a big deal. There’s nothing in the world that’ll make them worry about what will be their next business jet.
As for him being good friends with Trump, it doesn’t say much. Epstein was one of his besties and he’s still dead.
I think money’s not really the game for these guys, at least not for its own sake, it’s being able to bend the course of the world. People who don’t have enough usually seem to think it’s about consumption and wonder how they can be so greedy, but you can only consume so much, and that’s generally impossible to see in the rear view mirror for this group.
Trump famously banned Epstein from his golf course and worked with the FBI during his first arrest. They famously hated each other, and were not friends
> Trump famously banned Epstein from his golf course
(all sourced from [0])
Well, they had a spat in 2000 because Epstein was poaching Trump's staff but he remained a member until 2007 (or possibly longer, depending on who you believe.)
> They famously hated each other
In 2002, Trump said "I've known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with." I don't know, it doesn't sound very "hatey" to me.
In 2003, he sent his birthday message of "A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret." Still not getting much "hate" from this relationship.
I'll give you, maybe, from 2007 onwards they fell out of friendship but even then it's not clear what actually went on.
Maybe once we get a fuller release of the Epstein Files we'll know more.
Honestly, I hope this doesn’t play out in a rushed way. Evaluating this is the board’s top duty. It’s critical, and healthy, for them to weigh what’s best for all NVDA stakeholders.
Obviously, the affairs are a very serious issue, but the investigation needs to determine whether there were any security conflict of interest breaches
Let’s be clear: any abuse of power involving related-party relationships is wrong. Jensen should not get a “free pass” just because he’s Jensen. This is very serious.
Jensen’s leadership of the broader company is unparalleled, and replacing him would be nearly impossible. That step should only be taken when it’s extremely clear there is no other option. Even if the board does replace him, that brings significant risk, not just to NVIDIA but to all the other businesses connected to it. I hope a warning shot across the bow is enough for him to clean things up so everyone can get back to focusing on the work.
As for which way the board rules, the details are all that matter. When boards react emotionally, before a thorough investigation and before they have the full picture, they make bad decisions. They shouldn’t rush. They should investigate and dig into every detail.
Then make a decision. These decisions will carry enormous weight.
None of us really know the details. NVIDIA board: do your job and take it very seriously. Deliberately measure three times, cut once. Don’t spectate. The public likes/wants Hollywood drama, but what we really need is good corporate governance.
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.
This is what I'm feeling as well. Similar to the "intervention" that put Altman back as CEO as well as a brand new board which included an ex-CIA director.
Add in that the democratic party wants to look tough on tech and here you have a clear case of the CEO selling known banned exports to a Chinese spy while personally fueling the data center hysteria.
This is going to be easy political win. Jensen's only saving grace is that he is in bed with Trump so he won't be sitting behind in prison cell.
"Investigators at the Commerce Department were deep into a monthslong investigation of a Singaporean company that they suspected of smuggling Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips into China when their work came to a sudden halt late last year.
The investigation centered on Megaspeed, a data center company led by an executive who U.S. officials now believe to be a Chinese spy who had a relationship with Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang.
But the case was abruptly transferred to the Justice Department last year. The shift came after Commerce Department investigators working on the case received an email from Nvidia’s general counsel seeking information about the inquiry into Megaspeed" [1].
Affairs could be a whole lot more than that. For example, assuming he didn’t want his wife finding out he’s an ideal blackmail target for anyone that does know.
What is the endgame of this completely cumbersome and obvious CIA journalist and intelligence community rollout of this narrative surrounding Jensen and Nvidia? Why would they nuke the credibility of America's only AI chip company and hand the future of AI to China? Do they actually think this will gain them control over AI?
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.
Let’s steelman instead of strawman. The CIA likely cares little about Ant and OpenAI.
What they care about is the US leading China on every militarily and economically relevant technology.
The hawks have long chafed at Huang’s position that we need to sell our best chips to China to keep them on the US tech stack. It’s very obviously giving them the ability to catch up.
And it’s also very obvious that restricting exports will only help in the short term, and in the long term, gives China reason to develop their own tech.
I thought I was supposed to believe that OpenAI & Anthropic's methods are so much more advanced than any potential capabilities of Chinese competitors that OpenAI & Anthropic must each be trillion dollar companies.
If I ignore the words, and instead observe behaviour, all of the actions I observe indicate the opposite;potential competitors are treated as very credible threats, even existential ones; and actions indicate that 'maintaining special access to hardware' and 'vying for regulatory capture to shut out competition' are major strategic goals.
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.)
If the anti-corruption revolution is going to focus on some dude's sex life rather than the extensive and obvious whoring of political office, I want none of it.
She could have been his chess partner, and if he'd acted the same way on her behalf it would have been fireable. The sex is immaterial and anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't read up on this or is selling something.
The sex is just the icing on top of the poor judgement.
When some dude's sex life quashes an investigation into Megaspeed, yeah, it becomes germane. (There are serious questions around Lutnick, for example [1].)
This looks like a major indictment of Lutnick, not Huang.
I don't get it. Huang doesn't get to decide who chips can't be sold to. Presumably Huang wants to sell chips to everyone whether or not he's fucking them. Nvidia will always say yes to another billion dollars. It's up to the state department to say no.
If Lutnick was sleeping with a Chinese spy and approved the sale, sure throw him in jail. If Huang secretly bribed Lutnick to approve the sale, sure throw them both in jail. But that's not what we're seeing?
You’re absolutely correct that we have no smoking gun in the public record. What we have, instead, is smoke. Lots of it.
> What am I missing?
"Investigators at the Commerce Department were deep into a monthslong investigation of a Singaporean company that they suspected of smuggling Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips into China when their work came to a sudden halt late last year.
The investigation centered on Megaspeed, a data center company led by an executive who U.S. officials now believe to be a Chinese spy who had a relationship with Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang.
But the case was abruptly transferred to the Justice Department last year. The shift came after Commerce Department investigators working on the case received an email from Nvidia’s general counsel seeking information about the inquiry into Megaspeed.
It is not necessarily unusual for Commerce Department agents working on a case to speak with a company’s representatives about issues involving their firm. But what was unusual was the content of the message. Tim Teter, Nvidia’s general counsel, said that Jeff Kessler, a top official at the department, had given Nvidia permission to reach out about the case.
The agents were alarmed that Nvidia had invoked the name of Mr. Kessler, their superior, who was nominated to his role by President Trump. Some viewed Mr. Kessler’s interaction with Nvidia as violating government procedure and potentially tainting the case, according to current and former government officials and others familiar with the incident” [1].
> so far it looks mostly terrible for the commerce department. Huang? I don't know
He caused Nvidia to violate export-control law. To help a Chinese intelligence asset’s company. He then corruptly quashed the investigation using Nvidia’s resources. Those are crimes.
> I don't have money in NVDA but if I did I would certainly want him to stay at his desk
I do have money in Nvidia. I want Huang gone. If he stays, there is a real chance the hammer about to fall on him destroys Nvidia as well.
That’s before the shareholder and supplier lawsuits extract billions from the company. Before states’ AGs extract more. Before the Congress lobs a grenade at a Silicon Valley that honestly doesn’t seem to get why this behaviour is contemptible.
When the "some dude" is Jensen Huang and involves sleeping with Chinese spies while advocating for relaxed export controls, then obviously it's gonna pay him some attention.
Those of us foolish enough to vote Trump in 2016 weren't convinced he was going to leave the swamp drained, rather that it was so bad he couldn't do worse. A lesser of two evils kind of choice.
Within weeks I saw the naked racism and left the whole party behind. Having learned more about Trump and Republicans since has been ... humiliating after decades of voting 'R'.
Trying to engage in good faith here. What did you see in the first few weeks after your 2016 vote that were materially different from how he ran his 2016 campaign (and I mean the hits - "they're sending rapists, ...", "grab her by the pussy", ...)?
I can imagine people souring over lack of follow through on economic promises, or the naked corruption with your $coins, but from a racism/xenophobia/morals perspective, I'd feel like most of the signal was there in the 2016 campaign was it not?
For me personally it was trying to ban travel from whole countries based on race. Morally I didn't expect him to personally be a paragon of virtue. My hope was that the vile parts of his retoric were mostly campaign bluster and "locker room talk", and that he'd defer to experts once in office.
The mask-off racism was just beyond the pale, and lead me to look deeper into his past and how he was starting to govern. It became obvious that he'd mostly cheated or lucked his way into fortune and fame.
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.
More like: whats up with people being utterly fucking stupid and devoid of even the bare minimum of critical thinking skills. Being pro (or at least unbothered by) corruption is just one of the ways that manifests.
Money talks. Shareholders didn't seem to mind when Tim Cook gave Trump a golden trophy. They certainly didn't mind Jensen Huang's dialog with Trump when sanctions were ill-defined. It seems like cronyism is in, and all the cool kids are doing it.
This scandal has felt like a litmus test for free market idealists vs realpolitik thinkers. Nvidia's board and Trump both knew about the spying allegations for over a year, allegedly. This is not a situation you can navigate with strong principles or a moral compass, you just have to follow the money.
Reminds me of the meme that WorldCom went down because their CEO bravely stood up to NSA pressure. Instead of, you know, running an elaborate shell game of financial fraud to enrich executives and dupe shareholders after the Dot Com bubble burst.
> What is up with people who seem to love corruption?
Paraphrasing the apocryphal quote:
Anti-corruption never took root in America because the commoners see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed future CEOs.
And worse yet, he seemed to be influence by her to violate export restrictions and was probably responsible to a substantial "donation" to the presidential "ballroom fund" to change squash an investigation into the matter.
This is up there with the most fireable things that have ever happened.
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.
You don’t have to be a conspiracy theory to realized someone leaked these stories in fairly rapid succession and it’s not a leap to suggest that person has an agenda. Not everything is a conspiracy but when it only has to involve a few people the odds go up.
When one story comes out, other related stories that have been around are a lot easier to get limelight. And it's much easier to surface new dirt in those situations too. So I wouldn't use rapid succession of multiple stories as indicative of anything.
> When one story comes out, other related stories that have been around are a lot easier to get limelight
I've already heard stories in social circles in Silicon Valley from senior folks in the industry that they didn't share before. Not because they were hiding anything. But because it wasn't topical. There are a lot of scumbags, and there is a lot of corruption to go around right now.
You’ve already made an assumption there that both stories were leaked by the same person. What’s the evidence to back that up?
The first story came from sources close to the White House, or something along those lines. Makes sense since it was a national security issue. The second story is internal to the company.
Very plausible non conspiracy explanation: after the first story came out the exec he was having an affair with was pissed to discover she was in fact the other other woman and went to a reporter.
I am pretty sure under normal circumstances, a person with 160 billion dollars that leads a 4 trillion dollar company is able to cause these stories to never materialize.
If someone thinks there is not a lot of sex going on in the c-suite maybe you need to get out more.
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.
I don't care who it is as long as they give us open kernel drivers that can match amds offering. Preferably also someone who's not hostile toward consumers would also be nice.
Yes, all of this crazy would have been somewhat easier to take if Nvidia also hadn't been laser focused on screwing the consumer over the last few years. He didn't seem to be very concerned about building a constituency for his position. The shareholders have lots of reasons to love him, but customers? Not so much.
> During the conference, Nvidia executives were at a nearby hotel for meetings. Mr. Huang and Ms. Powell were seen being affectionate at the hotel. One bystander captured the interaction on their phone, three people briefed on the incident said.
> Mr. Huang’s security witnessed the bystander with their phone and sequestered them, the people said. They made the person an offer to sign a nondisclosure agreement.
Well, at least there will be one way to make money after AI takes my job...
Jokes aside, I would expect we will soon learn there is more. Given that Nvidia was vouching for Megaspeed while exporting those chips, I still think there's a reasonable chance Jensen ends up in jail over this. Not large, but possible.
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.
Goodbye, money! Who is seriously considering sabotaging their portfolio and precipitating a huge SP500 drop for months to come? Who, remembering the board of directors is making this decision, would want that?
I like the guy, he's funny. I would say to keep him (on a leash), but if I could get endless 10/10 Chinese spy pussy I too would betray the AI race. I wouldn't cheat on my wife though, that's pretty low.
Did you hear about the container of gpus that was lost between california and texas?
I heard that if it's not found, someone is going to get REALLY F... a spy type F one lol.
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.
I suppose that's one reason. But Musk has formed basically pyramid schemes to keep his debtors from calling and to move his debt out from under him. Without that, he likely would have to sell shares to cover the debt of his Twitter purchase.
They could lose control through a substantial shareholder lawsuit. A minority shareholder suit against Musk could prove tremendous damages repaid in stock and the judge might not let the special classes of shares with extra voting power protect his control.
It would have to be a very good cause though, disliking him or ordinary bad business decisions won't cut it.
Musk, Zuckerberg, and Altman and their companies have zero history of sketchy stuff that would, in a normal world, lead to CEOs being ousted? Affairs are enough to do it to Huang? The whole Chinese spy thing is not confirmed is it? And the three people I've listed have had documented cases of endangering national security through either their actions or their company's actions.
"Okay, when I introduce you, I'm gonna say, 'This is a friend of mine.' That means you're a connected guy. Now if I were to say, this is a friend of ours—that would mean you're a made guy. Capiche?"
Good riddance. All these csuite people think they are so uniquely capable but if he gets kicked out nothing will change except we'll, hopefully, hear less about jackets at tech presentations.
Also to all the people saying how terrible this will be, would you really want someone running your company who can't keep his word to his wife? Maybe it is a quaint idea in 2026 but I think people who break their word shouldn't be trusted, particularly to be in positions of power.
My armchair analysis is that going forward with this will most likely make the AI bubble pop.
Depending on how Jensen takes it, this could be the catalyst to steer AI in a new direction. Companies will line up to scoop him up, if not fight each other to get him. He is the head of the most valuable company, he has the tightest connection to the US government, it won't take a minute before Mudita* becomes a new company being fast-tracked to the top.
It's easy to blame a person like dumb Jensen who slept with the Chinese spy.
I don't see anyone accusing China of setting up such a trap. China always denies ofc, though all these scummy things eventaully comes out to be true, and by then everyone forgets.
If the big boys can fly to LSJ to eat "beef jerky" and fully avoid prosecution, then this is a CIA coup, because virtually nobody really cares about how he warmed his stick. They are probably mad at him for moving product to the Chinese, who they can't control as easily. They are going to install a puppet they can properly control. And "pace the frontier" by sucking the oxygen out of the room for open source and local models.
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.
Maybe now Apple and nvidia can rekindle their relationship after the bubble pops. Apple could come to the rescue, secure a heavy investment and enter into the cloud computing business.
As soon as they baited Huang, it was all win-win for them. China would be able to either get access to secrets and/or chips they wouldn't have before, or they'd decapitate one of the most important companies in the U.S. The public outcry to this is exactly as planned.
Truly ridiculous and anyone with their pitchforks out needs to get a clue.
My tinfoil hat theory is that this is all orchestrated. They knew about the affair for months, but withheld it. My theory is that with the midterms results, rather than risk facing accountability as things unravel "naturally", they have this big bombshell as a "get out of blame free" card. That way everyone can collectively say "It wasn't _my_ fault things fell apart. I was doing my best, honest!"
Any ousting will probably be for having an affair with a direct report. At many companies, having an 'inappropriate relationship with a customer' isn't a policy violation unless there's also evidence of undue influence, so it's more conditional and complicated. Whereas just the existence of an inappropriate relationship with a direct report is a serious violation.
From an HR and legal perspective, if Alice was a spy, Jensen was arguably the targeted 'victim' of a foreign intelligence operation. While it was certainly very dumb and negligent, it may not have been a policy violation or may only have been a violation of company policies like mishandling confidential information or not following IT security policies. Those aren't usually "Fire the CEO Now" things, while slamming the sheets with a direct report absolutely requires some kind of immediate action.
The real question is who wants Jensen gone? Because the first leak was clearly intentional and reportedly placed by 'senior White House sources', citing a confidential NSC report. Now the second leak of the inappropriate affair happens immediately after. This was a designed sequence. Both of the underlying events are several months old. Given the facts, I think the most likely source is 'China Trade/AI Hawks' in the White House (possibly the NSC). The reasoning being that Jensen has generally been trying to minimize restrictions on selling AI to China (which is, arguably, part of his job).
Infidelity with a Chinese spy. Quite a different beast.
I do agree with anyone saying that this feels fishy as fuck. They can punish Jensen without firing the man who made the company. I'm sensing fuckery afoot or that the board is operating with a lot more information.
The reports that he had a second affair with a subordinate, if true, are disgusting and would lead to termination at any other company. He should not get a pass. How someone who has had so much success could have such poor judgement is a mystery to me. It’s sad, he accomplished so much.
Why are all the tech overlords scum people? Do they become that way with power, money and fame, or is it a certain kind of person from the start that achieves these things?
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.
Why did you have to "quote" something no one said to make your point? That's a huge tell you're arguing against a straw man. This post was after a second affair, to me that's a moral flaw, not just someone exploiting him.
And that "scum also exist outside tech" is just a whataboutism. It'd be a better discussion if you actually interacted with my arguments.
> Why did you have to "quote" something no one said to make your point?
> Why did you have to "quote" something no one said to make your point?
Was not trying to be dishonest but was meant to be what I felt you comment boiled down to, I will revise my comment to change the '>'.
> And that "scum also exist outside tech" is just a whataboutism.
What I was saying is not just that scum exists outside tech but that the society that created this tech culture and space is the curruption it's self and it's not worth thinking about as something to save but to replace entirely.
> This post was after a second affair, to me that's a moral flaw, not just someone exploiting him.
I am not saying it's not a moral flaw but compared what Trump has done Epstein, wars, etc. He looks like a Saint. It's pointless even talking about morality in the way you do when Trump and his weak cronies are in power. (and yes I know Nvidia under Jesen no doubt has benefit from this corruption). Infidelity is so common in are time but if only that was the worst of it.
What I was saying is not just that scum exists outside tech
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).
The question is are the 'good' people you know actually good.
A human being is so unlikely to be good on their own, pretty much all cultures practiced infanticide and child sacrifice and pederasty and only changed because a few hated these practices and forced them to stop.
You're mixing individuals and groups in a way that I can't really say much about it. I was talking exclusively about individuals that I've known personally beyond sitting at the same table or working for them with three layers of indirection.
Fair enough, for me I suppose for me the vast majority of people are
deep down terrible and only made good because they have been made to
be. I can imagine what you say is very true and no doubt the vast
majority of billionaires are horrible and their untouchableness no
doubt makes that so.
But a lot of people the only moment they get to act in an
unaccountable manor will act very badly. This is not all people but
probably above 90%.
I think there is a level where you are no longer accountable in the way that ordinary people are accountable and I suspect that this is the reason why it happens, but my suspicions are worth absolutely nothing and given that these people are - in spite of the vast amount of information we seem to have about them - so in control of the narratives of their lives that it is impossible to make a diagnosis that will stick. So I will revert to the default: I don't know, but the sample I've seen makes me suspect that there is more to this than just coincidence.
Unless there’s an evidence of him being compromised, this is crazy. I’m total outsider and don’t know Nvidia copropare rule machinery, but from perceived perspective that feels like significant blow to the company.
I expect shit show funnier than when OpenAI tried to put Altman with same result.
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 shift leaders at McDonalds need to sign various workplace policies, including policies about relations with their direct reports.
Does Nvidia have such a policy? Unless laws have changed, this isn't an issue as far as the law is concerned.
(Googling - seems they may actually have this policy...)
From what I've heard: Nvidia's operations is heavily reliant on Jensen. He's embedded in everything. Early in the pandemic, I interviewed with them. The recruiter said that pretty much every engineer at the company will, at some point, be in a meeting that includes Jensen. I spoke to a friend who worked there and he confirmed it.
(Probably no longer true as they've grown a lot since then).
The NYT reports that Huang was caught on video with this second affair when they were together in San Jose.
Seems like this video and the first affair with the spy was a classic blackmail operation used against him as I said before [0] and Huang likely said no to the wrong person.
If we ban open weights models (read: Chinese models), we are truly fucked as a country. That is a dead end for our tech sector.
We cannot glue ourselves to the backs of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. We need to be anti-fragile and support a robust spectrum of AI inference being developed from all angles.
This would permanently wed us to a handful of vendors that will soak American businesses and innovators dry while their own products fail to reach the peak of what an open weights inclusive environment could lead to.
US labs have been releasing increasingly capable open weights models lately. If open weights models are a viable business, US companies will provide them.
You don't think it's because of his extramarital affair with Alice Huang—a Chinese businesswoman identified by U.S. intelligence officials as a Chinese intelligence asset—as well as a newly reported relationship with Nvidia executive Kimberly Powell? It's all democrats-doing? This sounds a bit red-tin-foil-hat-ish.
It's insulting, even as a non-American; the idea that we're all stupid enough to believe that oh, well, yes of course we should fire this brilliant tech leader because he slept with some attractive person (who may or may not have been planted for exactly this kind of bullshit "leverage"); that just logically follows, doesn't it?
People don't seem to understand what the actual issue is. Nvidia seem to have circumvented export controls to at least one of his mistresses companies, who had more stock purchased than could physically fit in their dataceblnter. Nvidia didn't ask or ignored what was happening to make sure their profit earnings were still growing, defrauding investors. The salacious part is minor.
I get that for the (possible?) Chinese spy lady, but this new one?
If the Chinese spy lady really were a spy, all the govt agencies would have known about it long ago, but chosen not to reveal it. The whole business stinks of manipulation and "don't interrupt your enemy while they're making a mistake", and the salacious headlines are what's selling this Manufactured Consent.
Regarding the new person it's more the normal conflicts of interest with personal relationships with management that are in the code of conduct to prevent exactly that kind of relationship.
Regarding the original person, whatever conspiracy may or may not have occured doesn't resolve the original problem.
Wow, that’s an incredibly obtuse way of describing his situation. He’s still breathing, and he’s one of the richest people in the world. Doesn’t sound too dead to me. Also this has nothing to do with anyone wanting him gone, it started with a national security investigation because he was fucking a Chinese spy and evading export controls. And that kinda makes everyone not working for the PRC want him gone
From the public sphere, as a "noble" in our society being a business-leader, his public career persona has been shot twice in a week by affair allegations and a foreign spy campaign and it doesn't seem like he'll be able to maintain his title.
It is also subject to our laws. Regardless of what shareholders want, it is illegal to fire Jensen. If they don't like it, they can sell their stock and buy some other stock.
Hmm, though Nvidia would like to sell their chips to China, surely this would be bad for the US overall to remove a man who has only said positive things about selling to china not broken trade embargo as far as I know. This makes American business look bad and compromised.
Getting rid of Jesen might be useful for the US AI labs, but what exactly would be the plan their. I can not see a benefit to them with this move, though I can not see any thing particularly negative for them.
Well Jensen has been the one guy who's saying we shouldn't ban Chinese open source models atleast he's made rational statements on the matter. I'd say Chinese open source models are the single biggest threat to Anthropic and OpenAI.
That does make sense but I would have though Anthropic and OpenAI would just keep lobbying the government to do so and something like a demonstration of how 'bad' people having access to open models can be and how 'dangerous' it is would be the best thing for them to further their cause.
But he hasnt done that, it seems. They're allegeding the company the lady was associated with has been doing this, they deny it. It all seems like he said/she said hearsay.
The only evidence we have is Jensen drinking wine with this lady, I dont think him having drinks with someone is evidence he was participating in a conspiracy to circumvent export controls.
I dont really care if he jad an affair or not, but I think its crazy how easy it is to manufacture consent around the idea that he's a double agent by just posting picture of him being in the same room as someone.
Maybe more will come out, but there's no texts, emails or anything. Its just WSJ articles that had three pieces of legislation introduced alongside to ban Chinese access to GPUs.
Its also wild how people think having GPUs is dangerous. China isnt going to harm us with matrix multiplication lol. Now Huawei will build better platforms, constraints are the seeds of innovation. If I was the US I would much rather flood their market with cheep back-doored GPUs. Which leads me to believe these actions are all on anti-competitive measures on behalf of Anthropic, who's spent a boatload on political lobbying.
- His board setup is ... odd. He isn't Chairman of the Board (a role over 50% of Fortune 100 CEOs apparently hold). He seems to be responsible for Nvidia having a wierdly more egalitarian structure (all directors including him, are equal, with a designated lead independent director)
- His compensation (~$35M, primarily stock) is ... not up there with other tech CEOs
- He doesn't seem to have ever pushed for super-voting rights (he only has like ~3.5% of the company), but I guess that's hard to change once you IPO
I kinda wonder if this ends with him taking a month off, spending 12-18 months transitioning to a successor and ending as the chairman of the board or some such. He really does seem vital to the company (and thus the stock price).
Also having been more capital intensive and founded further back, Jensen had less sway in the early days of the company and may have put off using the growth to his advantage.
Well, bigger than that, but yeah. The early 2020 market cap for NVDA was ~150B, vs. ~1.3T for AAPL. They were the dominant semiconductor design house in an important but still fairly niche area of the PC marketplace.
Honestly this arrangement (total comp aside) is how it should be for all these companies. When Facebook went public the dual class structure (and Zuck retaining voting control) was a big point of contention.
> Honestly this arrangement (total comp aside) is how it should be for all these companies.
It's difficult to say based on the actual data in the past 10 years. The companies with dual shares seem to do well if we look at the companies of the same sizes.
I love Taco Bell though, so she is probably doing a good job.
When big changes happen, it's because multiple vectors have aligned. One isn't enough.
Nvidia benefited from the AI boom by being right place, right time. And just yesterday, Mythos ported itself to AMD cards, showing there's no moat.
He's been behaving like a sugar hyped child over the last 15-20 years imho.
Huang's net worth is over $200B, high enough to be in the world top-ten. He has been very well compensated by Nvidia. Either he decided he has enough money at some point or his current compensation numbers are just marketing. The real numbers were clearly much higher in the past, if not presently.
I suspect he's going quietly because the scandals haven't finished emerging yet[1]. At this point, it wouldn't surprise me if somebody has photos of secret Nvidia bunga bunga parties. I do find it interesting that Americans will tolerate lies, murder, and all sorts of other things from their highest elected officials but, if a CEO is revealed to be overly randy, he's got to go.
______________
[1]https://www.businessinsider.com/kimberly-powell-nvidia-exec-...
Maybe his idea of asserting control is less about voting rights and more about family allegiance.
I think nepotism is toxic behaviour when you are talking about publicly quoted firms and especially one the size of nv.
Fiddling whilst Rome burns is not a good look and should be punished.
He could've gave us seamless private cloud GPUs (basically let you run anything on any device, rent out your GPU to earn money, let you play GTA-6 on your phone...)
Could've had the true AI App Store
Could've bought OpenRouter (instead Stripe bought them):
Have not just cloud gaming but the true cloud App Store where Claude and ChatGPT are just apps
This way no terrorist can smuggle Jensen's physical shovels aka GPUs in a potato bag ;-)
Between losing tens of millions in future salary and hundreds of millions in stock while simultaneously putting his kids’ jobs at risk, she’s likely to cash in on her half and walk the fuck away.
Without Jensen Huang's vision, Nvidia might have remained primarily a graphics chip maker, and the deep learning revolution would not have arrived when it did. Long before deep neural networks took off, Huang backed the use of Nvidia GPUs for scientific and general-purpose computing, including the development of CUDA. In 2012, Krizhevsky, Sutskever, and Hinton used Nvidia GPUs and CUDA to train AlexNet, whose breakthrough performance helped ignite the modern deep learning boom. Nvidia's investment in programmable GPUs helped make that breakthrough possible.
The critical vision was that GPUs could become a platform for computing beyond graphics—and that Nvidia should invest in making them programmable before a large market for that use existed.
The board should punish Huang without punishing the industry and the nation. For example by cutting his salary and stock to 0 for 2 years.
Poor judgement is the kind of shit Zuckerberg or Musk do, and their poor judgement actually impacts the whole world in big ways, but they can't be fired because they don't give their board any control.
Jensen's management of NVIDIA has been good, and NVIDIA has generally been a great force for real innovation without much rent-seeking or corruption like the others. They haven't started messing with politics or trying to buy elections. It's kind of sad to see Jensen be the one we topple at a time of rage against corporate power when he's probably one of the better stewards.
In fact sleeping with a subordinate (look up Kimberly Powell) creates substantial legal risk for the company on its own, even without all the other stuff.
> We don't even know what arrangements him and his wife may have.
He apologized to his wife and said that his actions hurt her and that there was no excuse for what he did, soooooo, yeah we kinda do.
jfc she was a spy and the new administration is going to smash nvidia for this
There are solid arguments for treason here... "doesn't affect the company", how blind are you?
If NVIDIA doesn’t fire him, I have a feeling a lot more women from a lot of other companies may be showing up with various proposals.
Was it driven by this, as opposed to what everyone thought at the time: pure shortsighted profit-seeking? We don't know. But no one likes that it's even a thing to be concerned about.
> For Ms. Huang, there was reason to celebrate. Backed by wealthy investors in Shanghai, she had just restructured a company that would soon buy billions of dollars in Nvidia artificial intelligence chips. The U.S. government had barred Chinese companies from buying the advanced chips, but Ms. Huang had sidestepped this prohibition by creating a firm, Megaspeed, through a Singaporean shell company.
> Her close relationship with Nvidia’s leader also appeared to smooth the way. Four days after the ownership change Megaspeed was named a Nvidia cloud partner, giving it access to the coveted components.
If China was a national security threat, you’d think at least TEMU would be banned in the US. Instead most things in any store in the US are made in China. The restrictions are entirely political theater to score cheap political points as long as it has no impact on the day to day lives of people. Actually impose sanctions or tariffs or ban trade with China, and you’ll see how the “national security threat” angle immediately changes.
If China is the enemy then why do we have entire stores selling nothing but Chinese made goods in the US? Why is everyone running to China to manufacture anything? If China is the enemy the whole world is in bed with them.
All that talk about competition being good for the market goes out the window when it comes to China seemingly.
China adopted an intentional strategy where western companies for benign reasons of profit leveraged China’s immense human capital to produce products and lower costs for everyone across the planet. This was a win for many. China got to industrialize and lift citizens out of poverty, and companies across the world were able to deliver mass produced good (eventually high quality) for cheap. The United States for example was the champion of China joining the WTO.
But China because it’s a communist dictatorship restricted its market and began doing things that were long-term oriented toward depriving others of power and manufacturing capability for their regime’s private gain. For example today we see that China has over-built its manufacturing capacity (like it did with housing) and has used artificially cheap labor, unjust laws, and currency manipulation (among many other things) to prevent entry into their market while running companies from other countries out of business leaving them dependent on Chinese manufacturing. Prominently you can look at Germany today where sales in China have collapsed, and at home their vaunted manufacturing industry is going through what happened in the US in the so-called “rust belt”. The US has smartly enacted tariffs and other measures to protect its market to some extent from China’s strategy here.
So when someone says something like “all this talk goes out the window about competition when it comes to China” you’ve got to understand a bit more about how China has behaved toward other nations and the egregiously unfair trade practices it has enacted to understand why many countries ranging from the US, to Mexico, to Australia and of course the EU have enacted various restrictions and industrial policy to combat China’s embarrassing and poor behavior on the global stage with respect to trade.
Because geopolitics is a lot more complicated than leaving a group chat? This is like the inverse fallacy of Trump's take on trade deficits. Trade volume isn't the sum total of foreign policy.
> All that talk about competition being good for the market goes out the window when it comes to China seemingly.
I'm no fan of the "but muh free market" arguments, but generally competition is seen as good for the market only when it's "fair"...
Violation sanctions, and likely knowingly, is not good for Nvidia.
Except, it happens frequently and most of the time people ignore it. In practice, it is accepted most of the time.
Who cares?
Wasn't it Anthropic or OpenAI that sent a warning about this exact possibility to regular employees?
Why do you think we always have to do those trainings every year about not taking supplier to strip clubs?
If you break the rules but bring in business you get to stick around. That's the actual rule.
Whether you think that outweighs everything else is a distinct argument, but the two things aren't mutually exclusive.
Was anything confidential leaked?
I'm not sure why Jensen is getting this kind of treatment.. did he treat people worse than Steve Jobs?
Would there be others who might benefit from Jensen not being at Nvidia?
But a Steve Jobs
https://www.reddit.com/r/agi/comments/1s7sgg0/nvidias_jensen...
And almost all of big CEOs sleep with stuff or not-their-wives. Many do worse, think certain private islands...
Doesn't matter if he is. He presents it as some kind of big issue that "No one of character can respect or trust him anymore", which even if true had almost zero impact for all other CEOs doing the same and worse.
Secondly, no one sane defends our pedophile president so not sure why you bring that up as supporting fact.
That's less than a slap on the wrist.
I dont like this crummy idea that you can do no wrong as long as stock price increases.
Oh no he will no longer be able to afford anything and everything he wants and only be able to afford anything and everything he wants.
Great punishment. /s
Why not just sell to not-sanctioned entities, ensure compliance to the best of your abilities and otherwise keep your head down? Again, wasn't like they struggled to find buyers for their chips.
Considering Megaspeed, I now see this in a very different light. Him cheating is personal and I wish the affected members of any family of a cheater the best, but not relevant for us outsiders.
Being honey trapped very bad securities wise, but he'd be a victim (and evidence for why we shouldn't discount Mistral in the frontier lab race [1]). If sanctions avoidance went all the way to the top, that is hard to negate even for a board that is interested in keeping him. At that stage he was neither honey trapped nor "merely horny"...
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H3xQaf7BFI
[1] https://time.com/archive/7146565/hollandes-popularity-goes-u...
I don't think it's good for Nvidia if everyone has to go through a few labs APIs to get access to AI inference.
It makes sense to me why they would benefit from chinese labs having more compute.
That is something they simply cannot do with Chinese entities. Allegedly smuggling GPUs may be feasible, but that'd probably ruffle to many feathers in both the US and Mainland China, especially as we know they will pop a bubble to their own (temporary) detriment if it gets out of control as seen with Evergrande a few years ago.
Beyond all of that, would that juice be worth the squeeze? Bypass massive sanctions, risk your companies future and standing on the global stage just to provide foreign labs with your GPUs illegally and create a comparatively negligible added demand for your accelerators when compared with the (predominantly) closed-model-labs? That seems very high risk, very low reward in my eyes.
Their P/E ratio is lower than in 2020 (before AI got rolling, and way below their 2023 peak.
If anything - based on current sales alone - NVDA is undervalued.
Those statements sound different today, but I think they are both commercially reasonable desires and follow naturally from his very successful playbook over the last twenty years: CUDA built that company. Or at least got it to its first trillion.
I think the real story is not the affair, which was already reported in asian media in 2024, but what specific catalyst broke that protective shield and made continued containment untenable.
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.
I figured there will be quite a lot of people taking actions like this ... but nVidia was a surprise for sure.
But "whatever" happened to make them count.
E.g. Jensen angers some important people. Or someone decides NVIDIA has too much market control. Etc.
If not exporting to Singapore, it will be exported to more countries that have more opaque business practices.
Kneecapping Nvidia in this case is absolutely a windfall to China, by allowing them time to catch up in semiconductor technologies
I can't believe everyone is not focusing on that part of the story, and the stories just can't seem to rise to the top of the page for one of the biggest tech stories in years.
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?
Dual-class share structures have become the defacto standard for founder led companies, giving founders disproportionate (even majority) voting power.
Someone like Zuckerberg effectively controls the board and would be extraordinarily difficult to oust against his wishes (absent some exceptional legal intervention or a decision to step aside)
1 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anthropic%27s_corpor...
2 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:OpenAI_corporate_str...
So much for theory!
Remember all men are created equal.. except in reality they werent, just ask the Blacks, natives, Chinese and all the others.
Even today how many average Americans can call the President and have a chat even once ?
That figure raises to about half if you include all officers/directors.
[1] https://www.law.nyu.edu/sites/default/files/Lowry%20-%20Buck...
Humans need someone to be accountable to, even if it’s just some guy walking behind you saying “memento mori” twice a day.
One of the greatest failures of Nvidia's Board was in failing to push for a successor. (Musks' companies face a similar risk.)
SpaceX has Shotwell to cushion the blow. Tesla will obviously crash into the cellar the moment he OD's or gets thrown in jail for pedo shit.
It’s not like Jensen predicted it
Ok AMD had some financial woes, but it also has made a lot of less optimal technical and business decisions that were entirely unforced errors.
Tim Nvidia.
He's great on logistics, has experience replacing a cult of personality CEO and knows how to placate Trump with glass trophies.
Are you implying that Tim Cook should single-handedly run the worlds largest, highest throughput global supply chain? Like the screws of the Mac mini, the walk throughs of thousands of factories all over the planet, the coordination of fedex and UPS shipments of 100M units in a single day for just ONE of their products? Coordinating the DHL shipments to Germany? Sourcing the supply of the sapphire crystal glass? Coordination of mass producing the 3nm silicon at TSMC and the C1 modem in Shenzen? All Tim Cook. All by himself.
Seriously, i hope this was just a joke that landed badly. Cause oh my god, man.
I'm just parroting what is typically said about him in the business press as part of a non-serious joke here.
I'm not an Apple fan and don't really follow his career.
That said, Apple makes almost 3 million dollars of revenue per employee, so I don't know if suggesting they hire too many employees really lands?
At the time I didn't think it would happen because of impact on Nvidia's stock price, but at that point we didn't know about his second affair - with Kimberly Powell.
I'd suggest this latest revelation makes his position untenable, especially if the board found out about the second affair via a source other than Huang himself. He should have spilled the beans on that when the first affair came out, not that it would necessarily have saved him, but withholding the information - if that's what he did - should condemn him. It's another serious lapse in judgement and a failure of integrity that is not befitting of one of the most powerful corporate leaders on earth.
Goodness knows how his wife is feeling at this point. Certainly makes his apology from a couple of days back ring rather hollow.
EDIT: The fact that someone like Jensen Huang - who I'd previously considered to be an incredibly smart guy as opposed to a nitwit - can somehow completely implode his life in almost the most ridiculous way imaginable does give me some hope that at least some of the troublemaker ne'er do wells that have wielded so much power over us all over the past decade or so might also experience some just desserts in the not too distant future.
As bad as cheating is morally, we don't really know how his wife feels or if they had some open relationship type arrangement, and it's not really material to his running the company because it's been doing very well during all of that. I don't think it makes much sense to fire someone over this, it's more like a power struggle with other parties vying for control.
As a large shareholder and world's 7th [now 12th] richest person he would certainly retain a lot of power, even with a new CEO. Time to start his own personal VC firm or something.
There is some nepotism at Nvidia, those people are likely going to be very annoyed with him since their positions may not now be tenable.
TSLA's board also needs to do its job.
failure of integrity is the operating mode for the most powerful corporate leaders on earth.
We were already into personal liability for board members territory (and possibly GC) BEFORE the latest allegations.
I do think that "eventually" AI will be open-(source, weight, something) and most people will run at least some of their workload on their own hardware; but his leaving might delay that day considerably.
He risked his future, the value of his company and shareholders to commit adultery.
What else is he doing? How can his word be trusted? Who else is influencing him? Do people have blackmail from such encounters?
All fair questions to ask now.
There needs to be an else?
The fact that he slept with a suspected Chinese spy is not a crime either. Now, if he has enabled industrial espionage, helped circumvent sanctions or broke other laws it is a different matter. But marital infidelity seems insufficient as a cause to fire a CEO of a highly successful company.
I did not follow the story much, so might be missing some important information.
He's not being prosecuted; the legality or not of his actions is meaningless.
> His wife may divorce
Which could be awkward for NVDA if there is no prenup as I've seen reported.
> But marital infidelity seems insufficient as a cause to fire a CEO
If that infidelity opens you up to blackmail, it definitely gets up there as a fireable reason.
Who cares? Consequences have actions, and hopefully that's not just based on which choice is gonna make someone the most money.
While there's nothing inherently incorrect about this position, the affair with an alleged spy means that he, personally and uniquely, cannot advocate for this policy without seeming compromised. Ironically, if nVidia agrees with him, they have to fire him.
He's out as CEO but he'll continue to be a force at Nvidia. If the new CEO is smart, he'll keep him in the company, but it will be hard since Huang will be seen as the company's leader and it will be very hard for Huang to act any other way.
Recent trend is quite the opposite. What's Tesla without Musk selling pipe dreams ? Pretty sure there is 0 plan for replacement.
The bigger issue is the conflict of interest stuff, but until that’s proven this is a horrible look for NVIDIA if they actually go through with it.
The no-going-back issue is the corruption. Jensen corruptly quashed an investigation into Megaspeed. He then quite clearly expected Republicans in Congress to back him, which is why he only came clean when forced to.
His board must think he's a lunatic. They have every right to know if he's having an affair with anyone (because marital infidelity is a personal corruption issue that is rarely not a problem when it's a CEO, since carrying off an affair usually involves suborning staff in some way). But this? Madness.
I don't care about it. But I do understand folks who are dismayed to see someone who many of us–myself included–saw as a bit of a paragon until a few weeks ago turning out to be a total shithead.
He was never a paragon.
https://mustsharenews.com/jensen-huang-signs-woman-chest/
I'm disappointed in him as a business person, not in a some moralistic sense but because he's clearly very smart and capable yet made himself vulnerable with these two dumb mistakes. In his position there are a lot of external interests who want leverage or control over you.
Don’t look to billionaires if you’re looking for paragons. They all fail basic ethical checks. It’s very easy and convenient to not look for these failures. But, inevitably, when somebody starts looking hard, they find them.
Stepping outside of your marriage behind your spouse’s back is still scummy behavior.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jensen_Huang_spying_scandal
one was a direct report, one was a spy
Considering the current administration and the amount of corruption by trump and co, I feel like not following the rules is too simplistic an explanation for being targeted like this.
The second one will get you fired just about anywhere.
Affair of a CEO with a direct report and member of senior leadership? Kind of a big deal
Affair with a Chinese intelligence agent? Quite a big deal
One affair was a mistake. Two, with a spy and an employee, are a real failure of responsibility -- and those are just the ones we know about.
I don’t understand you Americans; you live in a disproportionately violent society, tolerate all sort of abuse and manipulation, then will scream hysterically at anyone having an unconventional sex life.
It's nothing to do with prudishness about his sex life and everything to do with his actions endangering the company.
Give me a fucking break.
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.
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
Might have worked if they did it suddenly and all at once a decade ago.
I don't think anyone thinking that is possible has thoroughly understood how much soft power the US has lost in the last decade.
no biggie if their valuation will deflate a bit just like Cisco did in 2000.
pure-software business like openai/ant, will be protected and their global market will be protected
Not because they care about the rest of the world, they care about their own domestic market/sales though.
They successfully re-invented half of modern consumer tech inside China already, the the US closes a market, it hurts them for a few years then they close that gap.
For decades it's been "Yeah they closed the Gap on X but we have Y" then "Yeah they closed the gap on Y but we have Z" and Z starts to look pretty uncertain.
At a certain point you have to realise that with enough capital and people you can do the things that the other people with enough capital and people are doing, there isn't really any secret special "America has to be the tech leader" sauce, there wasn't when the British where the world leaders or when the Italians where or the Middle East and back through history.
Exceptionalism eventually kills your lead.
the rest of the world will be starved of GPUs and chipmaking equipment and chemical supplies for chip making
Is this actually technically possible?
Such a move would also be transparently dystopian... though, in fairness, I suppose that makes it more plausible than it would otherwise be...
if Uncle Sam has not approved your model, it will be illegal to run it as a AI risk.
Americans have swallowed even worse limitations on their freedoms, so nobody will even notice that, because all notices will be sent to hyperscalers, neoclouds, and other large operators of GPU farms
He's had the job since before GTA 1 started development.
[1] https://principus.si/2024/12/28/tae-kim-the-nvidia-way-jense...
We could certainly do with more competition in the space!
next move is navigating polycules.
I even wonder whether some elements within the Chinese government has a hand in it -- not (only) the mistress part but the ousting part.
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?
Maybe?
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.
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NVDA/
Should the board replace him or not?
It's easy to judge when you have no skin in the game. What would you think if you did?
Any Nvidia employees out there?
To me, he had the good fortune of standing in the right place at the right time. He is no Steve Jobs, who almost single-handedly started the PC revolution and the iPhone revolution. This is not to deny his brilliance and business acumen, but I think too many people overstate his contribution to both the company and the United States. Of course I could be wrong so I welcome correction or alternative viewpoints.
Speaking of the US, Jensen has indeed become a liability. A compromised CEO is, of course, a liability to a national asset, and a politically toxic one at that. Nvidia is a business with sensitive political ties now. It can't afford to appear compromised in the eyes of Washington. Therefore, Nvidia's stakeholders must let Jensen go; otherwise, it will affect the company as a whole.
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.
by being ousted from his own company and using his golden parachute while * being bought back*?
I’m not deep into this story, but my initial reaction is that marital infidelity doesn’t seem like a strong reason to oust him, aside from him possibly being compromised by an international spy. Haven’t other successful leaders continued to lead after having their affairs exposed?
(And no, I don’t believe what he did is morally excusable for the record.)
Not really that complicated of a scheme! The main thing is that the sales people... they "know" this is likely export control circumvention but choose to not make a stink about it. Willful ignorance.
Often times these export control issues play out like:
- big deals made with shell companies
- most people involved are incentivised to play along and pretend to not notice the shell-ness of the company
- one person doesn't get the memo and is like "uhh... wait isn't this bad?"
- now that the phrase has been uttered, either cover ups happen or a bunch of other nasty shit happens
...which may or may not be a violation of the export controls but it violates the intent.
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".
you answered your own question.
[1] https://www.facebook.com/ChinainAus/videos/nvidia-ceo-jensen...
Ousting him is pretty much the worst case scenario for the company.
Did he circumvent export restrictions?
If not, replacing him would be a mistake for Nvidia. I also fear that it would endanger open weight models in America.
I hope he's allowed to do so. He now knows how not to get trapped into a tactically targeted honeypot, he knows the ins and outs of a GPU fab business plus he has all the connections.
This minus all the cruft and legacy overhead of a company as old as Nvidia. I'm now hoping he gets fired.
Because he can start a new company knowing everything that he got wrong the first time around, be able to hire absolute badass engineers who got fired from Nvidia because some Manager or HR thought they smelled wrong and was a hygiene risk, or quit Nvidia because they didn't like the work they were being assigned, be able to raise capital from investors who currently won't invest in Nvidia because of reasons, be able to strike new deals that hasn't happened because someone at Nvidia isn't letting them happen.
Nvidia is a very old company, not as old as Intel but close. Old companies build their own internal overhead you just cannot get rid of that would just kill a new company
And what do you mean by "the things he did wrong the first time"? NVIDIA was the most valuable company in the world at one point either this year or last year, and it's still in the top three. He did everything right from business perspective.
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.
> Jensen Huang... also had an extramarital relationship with an executive who reports to him, according to five people who worked at the company.
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.
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.
Does he? Plenty of serial cheaters out there getting caught repeatedly.
Those lawyers were hired by Jensen.
Second, yeah long term this might set Nvidia back, but are we going to say that not only are there companies which are too big to fail, but now individuals can be too? They can violate international trade sanctions and get scott free because it might harm their company? What CEO wouldn’t then be incentivized against setting up a succession plan? Why wouldn’t adversarial governments target critical CEOs even more, knowing they are effectively untouchable?
Jensen objectively fucked up royally. I saw someone describe him as a victim in all of this. I’m sorry but I don’t see how it’s unreasonable to hold CEO’s in these key positions to very high standards. They’re rewarded with extraordinary wealth and influence, yet some seem eager to excuse them from the accountability that should come with that power.
I'm not even sure he'd be able to threaten to sink the stock price by dumping all of his shares on the market at once.
I do wonder if Megaspeed and other shell companies have been monitored for over a year by the Feds where they broke export rules, failed to report to the Govt with the knowledge of several in the Administration... Everyone was making money on the side by allowing Jensen, Megaspeed and others profit off of bypassing export controls. Just recently a shipment of GPUs randomly disappeared as well.
If this all turns out to be true then removing him is a lot stronger than it seems and maybe in the long run fixing the bus factor problem will have been a good change.
Or, since nVidia is the central bank of the AI bubble, forcing him out kicks off a chain reaction that pops the bubble.
You can also argue that he wasn't aware n as far as he knew this was just a company in Singapore. It will be interesting how it plays out based on the facts.
The thing is, this is just what's been reported. There's almost certainly more going on if 2 affairs are public disclosure. If there is a sexual harassment angle here as well, he's toast.
That's a tautology, of course. And the board should have been doing its job handling the key man in question
It's most obvious in hindsight, obviously. Across the history of such governance debacles.
It all unwound a few months later, much to my chagrin (and my lost stock options, obviously).
Recall that most bubbles do not pop due to one, key material cause. Instead, they pop due to adjacent troubles that, in turn, lead to cascading effects.
That was true of:
- LTCM failure (1998; Thailand and other SE Asian countries defaulted);
- 2000 market crash (dot-coms crash, then telecom crash of 2001);
- 2008-2010 financial crisis (mortgage backed securities); ... and so many others before these.
It's entirely possible that NVDA, despite earning $$$$, could unwind the circular funding within the ecosystem (the very crux of telecom market crash of 2001)
TPUs and AWS's Trainium seem to be at least in the ballpark of being competitive but does that matter at all?
2, China isolating Taiwan with an ongoing military drill https://www.reuters.com/world/china/taiwan-says-china-is-con... https://maritime-executive.com/article/analysis-china-s-nava...
3, Trump meeting Xi next week on the 18th https://www.euronews.com/2026/11/09/donald-trump-plans-to-me...
well, they do this like 6 times a year, it just usually doesn't make the news
Did he know she was a spy?
Did he give her any secrets?
Did he break up with her after finding out she's a spy?
Was she trained as a spy and sent to entrap him specifically? Or did she form a relationship with him, then get told by the Chinese Communist Party "Xi wants you to steal him some secrets from your boyfriend. This is an offer you can't refuse; spy for us or your family in China will be beaten, jailed or worse"?
Is he a victim or an asset? Is she a willing patriotic spy for China, or a victim of blackmail from the Chinese Communist Party? Has she been arrested as a spy, or did she make it to the Chinese embassy before the story broke?
My feeling is he shouldn't be ousted if he took the honey but didn't fall for the trap. OTOH if he passed her company secrets, that's presumably a fireable offense for anyone lower on the totem pole; it's only fair for a CEO to get fired for the same.
Hopefully this teaches the market to migrate away from proprietary CUDA and NVIDIA and their proprietary drivers.
Honeytrap.
Reveal the information to a trusted journalist.
Destroy Huang's credibility.
Force his resignation.
Damage Nvidia.
China moves further in the AI game.
Game set and match. Sounds like this might have been China's real goal.
There's a different angle here worth listening to: https://youtu.be/IC3Kh40dEQY
It's often the Board of Directors that goes and the CEO retains control in the end.
Dorsey resigned himself, wasn't fired.
Going only on the one day point, I wouldn't recommend it for Nvidia.
2. Ian Buck as CEO (Inventor of CUDA, PhD, vice president of hyperscale and high-performance computing).
Right replacement could jump the stock 20%, mediocre replacement can drop it 20% from the current lows.
"Our kingdom for a shadow", or something. https://shakespeare.mit.edu/richardiii/richardiii.5.4.html
He knowingly helped advance China’s AI ambitions against the direction of congress. He got caught selling 7.5 Billion dollars of restricted chips to china.
Also he cheated on his wife with some Chinese woman, which is a totally separate and unrelated fuck up.
If you seriously think he got tricked by some random woman who batted her eyes, you are out of your mind. He founded the fucking company, he isn’t some clueless executive. He’s also not senile and he doesn’t have dementia. This is the only viable excuse for him to use, but it’s complete bullshit.
Think about it: He betrayed his longtime wife, who by all accounts supported him from the beginning. He betrayed his company and its shareholders. And he betrayed his country (BOTH of his countries?) who specifically forbid the chips to be sold to china. He’s fucked
Its best to not assume anything in regards to their relationship.
That’s a stretch. He’s the CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world. Hearing that he had an affair, or multiple affairs, shouldn’t come as a surprise. The only person here who’s humiliated himself is Jensen, for having an affair with a spy. He was too high and mighty to take the simple route and pay for high end escorts who make you feel good for a couple of hours, and then move on with your life. No, he decided he needed to have a whole relationship on the side.
Nobody would have cared if he simply had a harem of mistresses.
I guess what I'm saying is, I'd be happy to be publicly cucked in exchange for at least a billion dollars.
A billionaire being fired is not that much of a big deal. There’s nothing in the world that’ll make them worry about what will be their next business jet.
As for him being good friends with Trump, it doesn’t say much. Epstein was one of his besties and he’s still dead.
(all sourced from [0])
Well, they had a spat in 2000 because Epstein was poaching Trump's staff but he remained a member until 2007 (or possibly longer, depending on who you believe.)
> They famously hated each other
In 2002, Trump said "I've known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with." I don't know, it doesn't sound very "hatey" to me.
In 2003, he sent his birthday message of "A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret." Still not getting much "hate" from this relationship.
I'll give you, maybe, from 2007 onwards they fell out of friendship but even then it's not clear what actually went on.
Maybe once we get a fuller release of the Epstein Files we'll know more.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_of_Donald_Trump_a...
Obviously, the affairs are a very serious issue, but the investigation needs to determine whether there were any security conflict of interest breaches
Let’s be clear: any abuse of power involving related-party relationships is wrong. Jensen should not get a “free pass” just because he’s Jensen. This is very serious.
Jensen’s leadership of the broader company is unparalleled, and replacing him would be nearly impossible. That step should only be taken when it’s extremely clear there is no other option. Even if the board does replace him, that brings significant risk, not just to NVIDIA but to all the other businesses connected to it. I hope a warning shot across the bow is enough for him to clean things up so everyone can get back to focusing on the work.
As for which way the board rules, the details are all that matter. When boards react emotionally, before a thorough investigation and before they have the full picture, they make bad decisions. They shouldn’t rush. They should investigate and dig into every detail.
Then make a decision. These decisions will carry enormous weight.
None of us really know the details. NVIDIA board: do your job and take it very seriously. Deliberately measure three times, cut once. Don’t spectate. The public likes/wants Hollywood drama, but what we really need is good corporate governance.
The Board–correctly–fears for themselves personally in a case involving Jensen's public and multinational corruption scheme.
This is going to be easy political win. Jensen's only saving grace is that he is in bed with Trump so he won't be sitting behind in prison cell.
There is a real corruption angle here that a lot of folks out west are missing [1].
[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2026/11/11/answer-in-front-of-...
It’s just sex mate, it’s really not a big deal unless he giving favourable deals to his mistress’s company.
The investigation centered on Megaspeed, a data center company led by an executive who U.S. officials now believe to be a Chinese spy who had a relationship with Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang.
But the case was abruptly transferred to the Justice Department last year. The shift came after Commerce Department investigators working on the case received an email from Nvidia’s general counsel seeking information about the inquiry into Megaspeed" [1].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/09/business/economy/nvidia-m...
https://x.com/ChinaSelect/status/2120253050845593723
What they care about is the US leading China on every militarily and economically relevant technology.
The hawks have long chafed at Huang’s position that we need to sell our best chips to China to keep them on the US tech stack. It’s very obviously giving them the ability to catch up.
Energy is the hard part, and US is deeply behind on that.
If I ignore the words, and instead observe behaviour, all of the actions I observe indicate the opposite;potential competitors are treated as very credible threats, even existential ones; and actions indicate that 'maintaining special access to hardware' and 'vying for regulatory capture to shut out competition' are major strategic goals.
(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...
She could have been his chess partner, and if he'd acted the same way on her behalf it would have been fireable. The sex is immaterial and anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't read up on this or is selling something.
The sex is just the icing on top of the poor judgement.
When some dude's sex life quashes an investigation into Megaspeed, yeah, it becomes germane. (There are serious questions around Lutnick, for example [1].)
[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2026/11/11/answer-in-front-of-...
I don't get it. Huang doesn't get to decide who chips can't be sold to. Presumably Huang wants to sell chips to everyone whether or not he's fucking them. Nvidia will always say yes to another billion dollars. It's up to the state department to say no.
If Lutnick was sleeping with a Chinese spy and approved the sale, sure throw him in jail. If Huang secretly bribed Lutnick to approve the sale, sure throw them both in jail. But that's not what we're seeing?
What am I missing? Seriously, ELI5.
You’re absolutely correct that we have no smoking gun in the public record. What we have, instead, is smoke. Lots of it.
> What am I missing?
"Investigators at the Commerce Department were deep into a monthslong investigation of a Singaporean company that they suspected of smuggling Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips into China when their work came to a sudden halt late last year.
The investigation centered on Megaspeed, a data center company led by an executive who U.S. officials now believe to be a Chinese spy who had a relationship with Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang.
But the case was abruptly transferred to the Justice Department last year. The shift came after Commerce Department investigators working on the case received an email from Nvidia’s general counsel seeking information about the inquiry into Megaspeed.
It is not necessarily unusual for Commerce Department agents working on a case to speak with a company’s representatives about issues involving their firm. But what was unusual was the content of the message. Tim Teter, Nvidia’s general counsel, said that Jeff Kessler, a top official at the department, had given Nvidia permission to reach out about the case.
The agents were alarmed that Nvidia had invoked the name of Mr. Kessler, their superior, who was nominated to his role by President Trump. Some viewed Mr. Kessler’s interaction with Nvidia as violating government procedure and potentially tainting the case, according to current and former government officials and others familiar with the incident” [1].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/09/business/economy/nvidia-m...
Maybe the board knows more, and that's why they are "preparing to oust" him. Or maybe it's about the sex scandal.
I don't have money in NVDA but if I did I would certainly want him to stay at his desk until we have the actual gun.
He caused Nvidia to violate export-control law. To help a Chinese intelligence asset’s company. He then corruptly quashed the investigation using Nvidia’s resources. Those are crimes.
> I don't have money in NVDA but if I did I would certainly want him to stay at his desk
I do have money in Nvidia. I want Huang gone. If he stays, there is a real chance the hammer about to fall on him destroys Nvidia as well.
That’s before the shareholder and supplier lawsuits extract billions from the company. Before states’ AGs extract more. Before the Congress lobs a grenade at a Silicon Valley that honestly doesn’t seem to get why this behaviour is contemptible.
That's why Huang doesn't get to decide whether chips should be sold to China. He can advocate all he wants, speech is cheap.
Wasn’t the swap drained in 2016 too?
Within weeks I saw the naked racism and left the whole party behind. Having learned more about Trump and Republicans since has been ... humiliating after decades of voting 'R'.
Wherever you land on your views in the future, being willing to question everything is a superpower.
Onward!
I can imagine people souring over lack of follow through on economic promises, or the naked corruption with your $coins, but from a racism/xenophobia/morals perspective, I'd feel like most of the signal was there in the 2016 campaign was it not?
The mask-off racism was just beyond the pale, and lead me to look deeper into his past and how he was starting to govern. It became obvious that he'd mostly cheated or lucked his way into fortune and fame.
Now that's something I'd like everyone to believe, if I was the CIA.
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.
This scandal has felt like a litmus test for free market idealists vs realpolitik thinkers. Nvidia's board and Trump both knew about the spying allegations for over a year, allegedly. This is not a situation you can navigate with strong principles or a moral compass, you just have to follow the money.
Paraphrasing the apocryphal quote:
Anti-corruption never took root in America because the commoners see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed future CEOs.
This is up there with the most fireable things that have ever happened.
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.
I've already heard stories in social circles in Silicon Valley from senior folks in the industry that they didn't share before. Not because they were hiding anything. But because it wasn't topical. There are a lot of scumbags, and there is a lot of corruption to go around right now.
The first story came from sources close to the White House, or something along those lines. Makes sense since it was a national security issue. The second story is internal to the company.
Very plausible non conspiracy explanation: after the first story came out the exec he was having an affair with was pissed to discover she was in fact the other other woman and went to a reporter.
If someone thinks there is not a lot of sex going on in the c-suite maybe you need to get out more.
Nvidia has a large market share, but AMD, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, OpenAI, Qualcomm all produce AI chips... these are all American companies.
EDIT: I assume the bubble will collapse into correction eventually, sooner is better than later.
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.
I think this is one of those " the question is the answer" moments.
They wouldn't be able to for anti-trust concerns.
Admittedly they might be able to get some people in the US to look the other way with sufficient beak-wetting but the EU would never allow it.
Who else is there who knows chips, knows GPUs and has an exceptional track record?
> During the conference, Nvidia executives were at a nearby hotel for meetings. Mr. Huang and Ms. Powell were seen being affectionate at the hotel. One bystander captured the interaction on their phone, three people briefed on the incident said.
> Mr. Huang’s security witnessed the bystander with their phone and sequestered them, the people said. They made the person an offer to sign a nondisclosure agreement.
Well, at least there will be one way to make money after AI takes my job...
Jokes aside, I would expect we will soon learn there is more. Given that Nvidia was vouching for Megaspeed while exporting those chips, I still think there's a reasonable chance Jensen ends up in jail over this. Not large, but possible.
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.
Some folks get a thrill from getting caught, too.
Do they offer $20k? $200k? $2M? He stands to potentially lose tens of billions over this.
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 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.
It would have to be a very good cause though, disliking him or ordinary bad business decisions won't cut it.
The board decides who is CEO. Zuck controls the board. Zuck cannot be fired unless he wants to be.
Why does he support Putin?
Also to all the people saying how terrible this will be, would you really want someone running your company who can't keep his word to his wife? Maybe it is a quaint idea in 2026 but I think people who break their word shouldn't be trusted, particularly to be in positions of power.
Looks like both Nvidia GPUs and Nvidia CEO have Single Instruction Multiple Threads (SIMT) architecture.
It's NVIDIA being sued because they defrauded investors by including illicit chip sales in their Q3 figures
Depending on how Jensen takes it, this could be the catalyst to steer AI in a new direction. Companies will line up to scoop him up, if not fight each other to get him. He is the head of the most valuable company, he has the tightest connection to the US government, it won't take a minute before Mudita* becomes a new company being fast-tracked to the top.
* Opposite of Envy (nvidia)
I don't see anyone accusing China of setting up such a trap. China always denies ofc, though all these scummy things eventaully comes out to be true, and by then everyone forgets.
It’s the Dot Bomb days all over again.
What is it about a Jensen.
Was anything stolen?
Is he like a Steve Jobs?
As soon as they baited Huang, it was all win-win for them. China would be able to either get access to secrets and/or chips they wouldn't have before, or they'd decapitate one of the most important companies in the U.S. The public outcry to this is exactly as planned.
Truly ridiculous and anyone with their pitchforks out needs to get a clue.
But there's no real competitors still? Even for the medium term?
So AMD, Google are not "real" competitors?
Conspiracy theory, the affair news came out to bury this story lol
I mean, that's acceptable these days isn't it?
SMH
Irattional things continue to be irrational i guess
From an HR and legal perspective, if Alice was a spy, Jensen was arguably the targeted 'victim' of a foreign intelligence operation. While it was certainly very dumb and negligent, it may not have been a policy violation or may only have been a violation of company policies like mishandling confidential information or not following IT security policies. Those aren't usually "Fire the CEO Now" things, while slamming the sheets with a direct report absolutely requires some kind of immediate action.
The real question is who wants Jensen gone? Because the first leak was clearly intentional and reportedly placed by 'senior White House sources', citing a confidential NSC report. Now the second leak of the inappropriate affair happens immediately after. This was a designed sequence. Both of the underlying events are several months old. Given the facts, I think the most likely source is 'China Trade/AI Hawks' in the White House (possibly the NSC). The reasoning being that Jensen has generally been trying to minimize restrictions on selling AI to China (which is, arguably, part of his job).
moralism blocking progress once again
I do agree with anyone saying that this feels fishy as fuck. They can punish Jensen without firing the man who made the company. I'm sensing fuckery afoot or that the board is operating with a lot more information.
I'm scared about how this in turn shapes society.
You would do well to look at the history beyond the modern era.
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.
And that "scum also exist outside tech" is just a whataboutism. It'd be a better discussion if you actually interacted with my arguments.
> Why did you have to "quote" something no one said to make your point?
Was not trying to be dishonest but was meant to be what I felt you comment boiled down to, I will revise my comment to change the '>'.
> And that "scum also exist outside tech" is just a whataboutism.
What I was saying is not just that scum exists outside tech but that the society that created this tech culture and space is the curruption it's self and it's not worth thinking about as something to save but to replace entirely.
> This post was after a second affair, to me that's a moral flaw, not just someone exploiting him.
I am not saying it's not a moral flaw but compared what Trump has done Epstein, wars, etc. He looks like a Saint. It's pointless even talking about morality in the way you do when Trump and his weak cronies are in power. (and yes I know Nvidia under Jesen no doubt has benefit from this corruption). Infidelity is so common in are time but if only that was the worst of it.
What I was saying is not just that scum exists outside tech
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/
A human being is so unlikely to be good on their own, pretty much all cultures practiced infanticide and child sacrifice and pederasty and only changed because a few hated these practices and forced them to stop.
But a lot of people the only moment they get to act in an unaccountable manor will act very badly. This is not all people but probably above 90%.
I expect shit show funnier than when OpenAI tried to put Altman with same result.
"Having sex with a direct report" is not on that list of prohibited reasons.
Does Nvidia have such a policy? Unless laws have changed, this isn't an issue as far as the law is concerned.
(Googling - seems they may actually have this policy...)
From what I've heard: Nvidia's operations is heavily reliant on Jensen. He's embedded in everything. Early in the pandemic, I interviewed with them. The recruiter said that pretty much every engineer at the company will, at some point, be in a meeting that includes Jensen. I spoke to a friend who worked there and he confirmed it.
(Probably no longer true as they've grown a lot since then).
Seems like this video and the first affair with the spy was a classic blackmail operation used against him as I said before [0] and Huang likely said no to the wrong person.
It is over.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50417105
jfc
We cannot glue ourselves to the backs of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. We need to be anti-fragile and support a robust spectrum of AI inference being developed from all angles.
This would permanently wed us to a handful of vendors that will soak American businesses and innovators dry while their own products fail to reach the peak of what an open weights inclusive environment could lead to.
Source?
If the Chinese spy lady really were a spy, all the govt agencies would have known about it long ago, but chosen not to reveal it. The whole business stinks of manipulation and "don't interrupt your enemy while they're making a mistake", and the salacious headlines are what's selling this Manufactured Consent.
Regarding the original person, whatever conspiracy may or may not have occured doesn't resolve the original problem.
Training must not be allowed by normal people. The resulting models may work stuff out that they're not supposed to and that would be bad and wrong.
> The State of Utopia is an AI-governed nation with goals that include acting in the best interests of all our citizens.
Getting rid of Jesen might be useful for the US AI labs, but what exactly would be the plan their. I can not see a benefit to them with this move, though I can not see any thing particularly negative for them.
The only evidence we have is Jensen drinking wine with this lady, I dont think him having drinks with someone is evidence he was participating in a conspiracy to circumvent export controls.
I dont really care if he jad an affair or not, but I think its crazy how easy it is to manufacture consent around the idea that he's a double agent by just posting picture of him being in the same room as someone.
Maybe more will come out, but there's no texts, emails or anything. Its just WSJ articles that had three pieces of legislation introduced alongside to ban Chinese access to GPUs.
Its also wild how people think having GPUs is dangerous. China isnt going to harm us with matrix multiplication lol. Now Huawei will build better platforms, constraints are the seeds of innovation. If I was the US I would much rather flood their market with cheep back-doored GPUs. Which leads me to believe these actions are all on anti-competitive measures on behalf of Anthropic, who's spent a boatload on political lobbying.