Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang resigns after his affair raises national security concerns

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang re­signed Thurs­day af­ter his ex­tra­mar­i­tal af­fair raised na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns, in a spec­tac­u­lar down­fall for the long­time head of the chip­mak­er, a vi­tal play­er in the ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence boom.

The com­pa­ny named Co­lette Kress as in­ter­im chief ex­ec­u­tive. She is the cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent and chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer.

Huang faced grow­ing calls to re­sign af­ter his af­fair with a Chi­nese busi­ness­woman who re­port­ed­ly was al­so act­ing as a spy for Bei­jing. His trou­bles com­pound­ed late Wednes­day af­ter me­dia re­ports said Huang had an­oth­er ex­tra­mar­i­tal af­fair with an Nvidia em­ploy­ee who re­port­ed to him.

Kress took over the role as Nvidia’s chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer in 2013, over­see­ing the com­pa­ny’s glob­al fi­nance op­er­a­tions. Be­fore that, she worked for three years at Cis­co and spent 13 years at Mi­crosoft.

In a state­ment Thurs­day, Kress said that Nvidia’s “strength has al­ways come from its peo­ple” and that she was “com­mit­ted to build­ing on the ex­tra­or­di­nary foun­da­tion Jensen cre­at­ed over the last 33 years.”

The board of di­rec­tors said Thurs­day it had al­so named its first-ever chair­man, Har­vey C. Jones, an en­tre­pre­neur and ven­ture in­vestor.

Shares of Nvidia tum­bled 14% at the open­ing bell Thurs­day, while the tech-heavy Nas­daq slid 1.5%

Nvidia’s board had gath­ered to dis­cuss Huang’s fu­ture af­ter rev­e­la­tions about his af­fair with Al­ice Huang, a for­mer ex­ec­u­tive at Sin­ga­pore-based Megaspeed In­ter­na­tion­al sus­pect­ed of be­ing a Chi­nese gov­ern­ment agent. The two are not re­lat­ed.

In its first state­ment since the scan­dal broke, Megaspeed said Thurs­day that it takes its oblig­a­tion to com­ply with U.S. ex­port con­trol laws “ex­treme­ly se­ri­ous­ly.” The com­pa­ny promi­nent­ly touts a part­ner­ship with Nvidia on its web­site. The two are not re­lat­ed.

De­tails about Huang’s af­fair with the for­mer Megaspeed ex­ec­u­tive are un­clear.

“Megaspeed is com­mit­ted to work­ing con­struc­tive­ly and trans­par­ent­ly with the U.S. gov­ern­ment,” said the state­ment signed by its chair­man and CEO, Tan Yong Pong, who al­so goes by James Tan.

Nvidia has said it had “no rea­son to be­lieve” that ei­ther na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty or its se­crets were com­pro­mised, but that its in­quiry would ex­am­ine all avail­able in­for­ma­tion.

Last month, the Times re­port­ed that U.S. in­tel­li­gence agen­cies dis­cov­ered that Huang had de­vel­oped a close re­la­tion­ship with Al­ice Huang — and de­ter­mined that she was feed­ing in­for­ma­tion di­rect­ly to Bei­jing. On Sun­day, U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump an­nounced that the FBI was in­ves­ti­gat­ing.

Megaspeed faced al­le­ga­tions last year that it was il­lic­it­ly ship­ping ad­vanced Nvidia com­put­er chips in­to Chi­na, but in De­cem­ber said there was “no ev­i­dence” of such ex­ports.

Sin­ga­pore­an au­thor­i­ties said Thurs­day that they ques­tioned Al­ice Huang and con­fis­cat­ed her pass­port last year as part of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Megaspeed. They con­clud­ed last year that there wasn’t enough ev­i­dence that she had com­mit­ted a crime but barred her from re­turn­ing to the coun­try.

Chi­na has de­nied that it en­gaged in an at­tempt to en­snare Huang, who heads one of the world’s most valu­able com­pa­nies. Nvidia has be­come a leader in mak­ing chips that pow­er AI and Huang has lob­bied Wash­ing­ton to loosen lim­its on sales of Nvidia chips to Chi­na. In Jan­u­ary, he won Trump’s ap­proval to sell its H200 chips to Chi­na.

Megaspeed said Thurs­day that it has co­op­er­at­ed with the U.S. De­part­ment of Com­merce’s Bu­reau of In­dus­try and Se­cu­ri­ty (BIS), which han­dles en­force­ment of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty re­stric­tions on tech­nol­o­gy ex­ports, and was ready to “co­op­er­ate ful­ly with any oth­er rel­e­vant U.S. gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ty.”

It said it has hired a U.S. law firm to con­duct a “com­pre­hen­sive cen­sus” of its com­put­er chips and to ver­i­fy its ex­port con­trols.

“Megaspeed wel­comes ap­pro­pri­ate gov­ern­ment scruti­ny and is com­mit­ted to demon­strat­ing through con­crete ac­tions that it op­er­ates re­spon­si­bly, trans­par­ent­ly, and in ac­cor­dance with ap­plic­a­ble U.S. laws,” it said.

Apart from ques­tions over na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, Megaspeed’s fi­nances al­so have drawn at­ten­tion. Its to­tal as­sets soared rough­ly 90-fold from late 2023 to 2024, to al­most US$3 bil­lion, ac­cord­ing to Sin­ga­pore cor­po­rate records.

Rev­enue surged to over US$294 mil­lion in 2024 from none in 2023. —(AP)

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Sto­ry by KELVIN CHAN | As­so­ci­at­ed Press
AP Busi­ness Writer Chan Ho-him in Hong Kong con­tributed.