Nvidia board preparing to oust founder and CEO Jensen Huang
The Wall Street Journal reported on November 11 that Nvidia's board is preparing to oust founder and Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang. Citing people familiar with the matter, the report said the board plans to meet as soon as that day to decide whether he will stay or go. The move to oust him comes after Huang was accused of involvement in two extramarital affairs, one with a person whom U.S. officials viewed as a Chinese intelligence asset, and the other with a subordinate inside the company.
On November 8, Huang acknowledged in a letter to all employees that he had been unfaithful to his wife and said that he apologized to his family and to all employees, that he was unfaithful to his wife, that his actions hurt her and their children, that there was no excuse for what he did, and that he was deeply sorry. On the same day, Nvidia's board announced an independent investigation to determine whether Huang had become the target of a foreign intelligence operation. The board said at the time that it had no reason to believe company secrets or U.S. national security had been harmed, and said it had confidence in Huang and his leadership team. The report said Huang had a close relationship with former Megaspeed executive Alice Huang, with whom he is not related, and U.S. authorities had previously determined that Alice Huang may have passed information to China; Megaspeed is an important Nvidia customer in Southeast Asia and is under U.S. scrutiny for possible chip transshipment.
The New York Times also reported on November 11 that Huang had an extramarital relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of healthcare, who reported directly to him, based on information provided by five people who had worked at the company. The report said the two were photographed behaving intimately at a San Jose hotel during a meeting in March. When Huang received a reporter's call asking about it, he said that he did not think the reporter should talk to him directly, and then hung up. Nvidia shares fell about 8% in after-hours trading. The company has not announced a clear succession plan; Huang has served as the sole CEO since co-founding the company in 1993, using a flat management structure with about 60 direct reports and holding about 3.6% of the shares.
Original source:
Title: Nvidia Is Preparing to Oust CEO Jensen Huang
Publisher: The Wall Street Journal (Robbie Whelan, Josh Dawsey, Amrith Ramkumar)
Publication date: 2026-11-11
URL: wsj.com/business/nvidia-is-preparing-to-oust-nvidia-ceo-jensen-huang-30f421ad
Source type: media report
Verification status: consistent with this reading of the page summary and multiple English media paraphrases (2026-11-11)
Supporting content: core reporting that the board is preparing to oust Huang, plans to meet as soon as Wednesday to decide his future, and that the reports involve two extramarital affairs, one involving a person alleged to be linked to Chinese intelligence and the other involving an employee
ABAB AI Insight
Jensen Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 with Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem, and for more than three decades he has served as the sole chief executive officer. He transformed the company from a graphics chip maker into a core supplier of hardware for AI training and inference, and its market value once exceeded $4 trillion. Over the past two years, Huang has made direct contact with the Trump administration to push for easing restrictions on exports of high-end chips to China, including products such as H200, in order to maintain Nvidia's share of the global data center market. The company has long had no chairman position, and the tenure of several directors dates back to the 1990s, leaving governance highly dependent on Huang personally.
On the capital side, Huang himself holds about 3.6% of the shares, with no special voting rights. The company's growth depends mainly on capital spending on AI infrastructure, and its customers include Microsoft, Amazon, Google and many cloud providers. Its customer relationship with Megaspeed involves large chip purchases; U.S. authorities have been investigating whether Megaspeed transshipped restricted chips to China. Huang's lobbying in Washington directly affects the looseness or tightness of export license policy, and therefore whether Nvidia can continue selling to China. The second extramarital affair involved a direct subordinate, touching on the company's code of conduct regarding personal relationships between superiors and subordinates, and further binding personal conduct to corporate governance risk.
Compared with other large technology companies, Nvidia's statements on succession arrangements in its annual reports are notably weak; recent filings did not even include the word “succession” (by contrast, Microsoft and Alphabet mention it repeatedly). Huang has publicly said that he does not believe in traditional succession planning and advocates cultivating the next generation through the continuous transfer of knowledge. This model can maintain flat efficiency while he is in charge, but it lacks an actionable transition mechanism in the event of a sudden personnel crisis. In similar cases, when hardware or platform companies dependent on a single founder face key-person risk, the market usually expects the board to quickly clarify control arrangements rather than wait until all investigations are finished.
This incident directly changes the stability of Nvidia's control and its bargaining position on China policy. If the board completes the ouster, the company would need to bring in transitional leadership without a public candidate, which could delay execution of the product roadmap and customer commitments; at the same time, the more accommodative export policy Huang had pushed would lose its main internal champion, and U.S. restrictions on chips for China could tighten again. Even if Huang remains in place for the time being, the independent investigation and disclosure of the second relationship with a subordinate have already made public the board's tolerance boundary for his personal conduct, and any future policy lobbying or customer relationships will face a higher compliance-review threshold.
ABAB News · Laws of cognition
For companies with concentrated founder decision-making, when personal conduct touches national security, the board must make a choice in the absence of a succession plan.
The policy window for looser chip exports to China depends on a single CEO's Washington channel; once that channel is obstructed, the policy position is reassessed.
When an extramarital relationship with a direct subordinate overlaps with an intelligence suspicion involving a customer executive, the scope of the investigation expands from personal conduct to company secrets and export compliance.