Eh, NVDA could be in for some trouble if he's dismissed. He's very much a command & control CEO - his deputies are largely tasked with implementing his decisions, leaving no obvious successor - and the recent history of NVidia is one of Huang continually finding or creating new use-cases for its GPUs that has it keep attaining new heights even after the previous one crashes. There was a time, after the crypto crash of 2021, where NVDA was down about 66%; likewise after the crypto crash of 2018. If nobody finds the next great application of GPUs, we could see NVDA down 90% or more.
It's on point and honest for what the Board is actually doing. A lot of people seem upset by that, which I guess tracks–it's been a popular meme stock. And everyone's e.g. an aircraft investigator on here when tragedy strikes.
I personally hold no stock in Nvidia, nor do I consider Jensen beyond reproach. The title is blatantly misleading.
The top comment is correct to question the title, as it leads to more interesting HN comments than the driveby CEO pugilism that many bottom-barrel commentators participate in. Your response to the top comment is condescending and speculative instead of curious or informative. It seems to me like people are fulminating on both sides, and clearly Nvidia's board doesn't know the whole story either.
To be clear, I never accused you of shilling. But when a large group chooses to be ignorant of what a headlining corporate-governance action means, and starts pretending the Board isn't doing what the Board is obviously doing, it does make one curious for what the finance influencers are up to now.
It’s not speculative to say a Board launching this sort of investigation is investigating its CEO. It’s borderline absurd to suggest otherwise, given the law and precedent of such announcements. I admit I was condescending, but not intentionally—folks who don’t have any domain expertise really want this to be something it’s not.
“U.S. officials last year concluded that Chinese citizen Alice Huang, then a top executive at Megaspeed International, was sharing information with the Chinese government while working with Nvidia to build data centers in Asia” [1].
It could be as simple as getting the CEO to override controls when signing a deal. It could be any of the perks one gets with physical access to a person and their devices.
And we know there are police reports and investigations in multiple countries. We also know this administration has been, corruptly or negligently, quashing them.
If the woman was in fact a CCP spy, and I have no idea if that is actually the case, it would absolutely not have been a plan only for humiliation.
If a country successfully compromises a foreign asset in such a major way they'd lean on that as hard as they can, and that'd mean carefully planning various strategies to extract information from the asset.
Equally confused by the people who grovel at their feet and quicky jump to their defense. Jensen is in the class of people who could run you over with their car, not stop, and barely be inconvenienced by the outcome. Why should society defend someone whose money does that job better?
it is not a coincidence that maybe some faction of the CIA that feels threatened because Trump takes Huang's advice over theirs would leak this to try to blackmail or destroy him.
But so far the only criminal act and threat to national security that has been proven to have occurred is the leaking of this information.
In your words, this guy[1] was also selling as well "to one of the largest markets for GPUs in the world". So, his actions should be legal, and the arrest was wrong?
The US has recently shown itself to be no friend of the west either, and the reasonable reaction for the rest of the west is to keep to their own interests.
Meanwhile Trump, Moscow Mitch, and all their friends seem to be ridiculously pro-Russia... With one of them having an 'open for business' policy, where he receives large sums of crypto, airplanes, and other considerations from anyone who is willing to pay (and has received loans and cash injections in the past).
Pardon me if I find it difficult to get worked up about an accusation of treason and disloyalty from an openly corrupt and treasonous executive.
Does Nvidia want to investigate its own illegal shipments of GPUs to China via Singapore? Because that's exactly what pulling on this thread will uncover.
If you have a day to spare: try finding out how many companies have been launched in .sg, .uk that just so happen to have Chinese nationals as their founders and who (1) want to buy large numbers of GPUS and (2) have seen their turnover skyrocket around the time of the block of Chinese companies direct access to frontier level models.
Even if the alleged spy didn’t gain anything directly over Jensen from this, she had enormous leverage over him. Jensen stands to lose $80-$90B in a divorce resulting from this affair
The Saudis tried to blackmail Bezos with his affair similarly over WaPo’s coverage of the Khasshogi assassination
On one hand, huge moral failing for him. On another, huge Chinese inflicted damage to the U.S. economy when they directly target the CEO of our largest company. Does this count as a grey zone action? When does it elevate to an outright act of economic sabotage?
I obviously don't know why the Chinese would have done this, assuming she was a spy at all, but I have to assume it was more related to information and access rather than economic sabotage.
Compromising Jensen like this, again if she was a spy, would be extremely difficult to pull off. If I were the CCP, I'd much rather use that leverage and access to try to extract information and have a spy close to him to push Nvidia's future decisions, whether he knows he's being manipulated or not at that point would come down to whether they believed they had sufficient leverage to keep him compliant.
China targets everyone of consequence, of course they targeted Jensen.
This may be a 'game of thrones' nefarious move by hostile foreign or domestic parties who want to wrest defacto control, perhaps angle to put their puppet in control, or otherwise leverage Nvidia by taking down its Founder and CEO.
It is completely unproven and should not be assumed that Jensen nor Nvidia took part in anything untoward at all. Historically, Jensen doesn't do stupid. So whether you like him or not, I do not believe he would be that stupid.
Also imagine an intelligence agency is designing cover for someone to seduce YOU.
It is not just having an affair with some random person and using poor judgement. It is a person what was crafted with you as a target. The whole thing is weaponized.
I have never cheated in a relationship and it is not something I would ever consider. It is easy to say this though knowing I am not going to be the target of an intelligence agency honey pot.
I wouldn't expect his wife to excuse the infidelity just because the mistress was intentionally trying to seduce him. As an Nvidia investor, I don't excuse him for lying about it and opening himself up to blackmail even though I can understand how it came about.
> A strong desire to keep an affair secret is more dangerous.
I'm no expert on having affairs, but isn't secrecy key to the whole thing? At least secrecy from the spouse.
If you have no strong desire for secrecy, then is it even an affair at that point? Either the spouse tacitly supports the extramarital fornication, or the relationship is already in tatters.
I am not a puritan, so that's not the angle of concern for me at all.
I believe the actual larger concern here is "in case Jensen didn't want this to become public (whether it was due to the divorce potential or whatever other reason; that's not relevant), what lengths would he be willing to go to keep it under wraps?".
If it gets confirmed that Jensen simply had an affair (without a "shared/did things he wasn't supposed to share/do" component), then it is a nothingburger (for anyone except him and his family).
But until we have that confirmed, the US government is concerned about what critical info he might have shared/done to avoid being blackmailed by an agent acting on behalf of PRC.
The affair itself is not the problem. The problem is if his wife doesn't like it, that secret is worth billions of dollars to keep. What would Jensen do to keep it secret?
unless he's absolutely open with his partner and other people in his life, doesn't care or even wants them to know, this provides leverage that can influence his actions. It's almost like you're the one pretending to be out of touch to make a your point...
Bedding an adversarial entity's agent in a regulated field is a serious matter (for the company) with potentially serious consequences. It can lead to executive decapitation, it can even lead to / criminal investigations if the operative bypassed export controls using executive proximity.. the fallout can be great and widespread. It can also be a nothingburger and an amusing page six divorce story in the end where we all read how rich cry as well. Time will tell. What's telling of where this might lead and how serious it is, is that it was US federal government that warned about this.
Yeah, 50 years ago this was a big deal; nowadays... meh. There are tons of people who have survived this and even worse. The public has become inured to infidelity, but so have the media and the various industry gatekeepers (it’s not bad enough to get someone blacklisted or made persona non grata). Except Epstein... those involved with him probably won’t recover. So there are lines that cannot be crossed, but cheating is not one of them. Hell, even beloved Patrick Stewart cheated on both of his first two wives, admitted it in his memoir, and no one cared.
> Except Epstein... those involved with him probably won’t recover.
What? Nobody involved with Epstein has gone to prison yet. One of them was even re-elected president. If I had to list the terrible things you could do when you're rich and not face consequences, trafficking and raping children would sadly be high up on the list.
This is completely false and there are numerous public examples to pull from. If anything, it is worse now than it was in the past with how the mob can dogpile.
Case and point, caught at a coldplay? cheating? Both fired? Lives destroyed?
As for the actor, really? Totally dif industries and people do care. Execs make a company look bad and when actors do too, cheating or not, they also get smacked.
You may not care but most people do and if a tiny spark hits Patrick, his legacy will be destroyed. There are many actors that the public is well aware of how gross they are and are hated for it regardless of ability.
> should not be assumed that Jensen nor Nvidia took part in anything untoward at all
The punishment for the cover-up often exceeds that for the crime.
We don’t have evidence around whether Huang is compromised with China. We do have compelling evidence that he tried to minimize fall-out, or potentially even sweep under the rug the problem, after finding out the true identity of this woman. If he did it with Trump, that’s corruption in service of a national-security compromise.
Isn't everyone having an affair part of a cover-up? I wouldn't consider it an affair if it was known and out in the open, affair implies keeping it secret in my opinion at least.
> Isn't everyone having an affair part of a cover-up?
You're right. The problem is how he involved Nvidia in covering up for him.
Huang had an affair with a customer. He then had spokespeople say "the company that employed Ms. Huang, Megaspeed, was like any other regional customer" [1]. Just this Friday he had Nvidia lie for him: "Mr. Huang’s interactions with Ms. Huang were 'not unusual' and consistent with the kinds of meetings he has with any of Nvidia’s many customers" [2]. If that were the whole story this would be a massive breach of fiduciary duty.
Then we learn Ms. Huang was a Chinese spy. While Jensen was advocating for looser restrictions on selling AI chips to China. While Jensen was selling chips to Megaspeed that were being publicly investigated for re-shipping to China.
And he decides to come clean about this after control of the Congress flips in a way that guarantees his secrets will come out.
Well I'm certainly not saying what he may have done okay, my point was simply that I'd see all affairs as involving cover-ups.
With regards to whether others in the company helped hide it, though, that's on them. Your boss can tell you to do something, you still have to agree and then actually choose to do it.
> China targets everyone of consequence, of course they targeted Jensen.
Yes, but they aren't investing him because he was "targetted" in the abstract. They're investigating him because the operation was extremely successful.
…for possibly being the target of a foreign intelligence operation. I don’t think they are trying to say he himself was intentionally doing something bad.
Is the problem that he had an affair, or that he was targeted by a spy? If he were single, would it have been OK? Or if he had an affair with a non-spy?
> the problem that he had an affair, or that he was targeted by a spy?
The problem is he was close to a Chinese spy while advocating for increasing exports to China. Then, when public reports emerged about Alice Huang’s true identity, he tried to ignore it. As did the White House. All the way until electoral reality made it clear the cover-up was over.
That's a problem with his wife. Not with shareholders or the company. I don't even understand why these people accept to excuse themselves publicly about personal matters.
Totally shocked that he had an affair. Not saying its OK, but, men have affairs every day. It does not prove that he was compromised by the Chinese spy.
Because "guilty until proven innocent" applies to courts. You can get fired from your job even without evidence that meets a specific legal threshold.
Moreover, he's already been proven to be both unethical enough and stupid enough to cheat on his wife with a foreign agent. That's not the kind of person that the board would want to run a multi-billion dollar company.
Let's be fair.. If you invested in nvidia ever you probably aren't the sharpest crayon in the toolbox, and the likelihood of having morals is basically none existent.
It's a mostly anonymous public forum. The topics covered here aren't anywhere near "wealthy people hobbies" either. It's no porsche forum. It's not even a woodworking forum. Programming is an extremely affordable hobby.
Not intentionally, but falling for a honey trap while cosplaying as a playboy is not a good look for an exec. Huang just showing he's a bit of a child at the wheel.
At the same time it’s easy to say he’s “a bit of a child at the wheel” when the wheel is of a $5 trillion company leading the biggest boom of the 21st century. It’s hard for anyone to keep their head and their ego in check in such an unprecedented circumstance. If one thinks it’s easy it’s because one hasn’t been there. Like how everyone is courageous until the bullets start flying. Jensen has rockstar-like adulation and I can only imagine how many finance bro tongues up his ass. Having the tongue of a Chinese spy in there too isn’t much of a surprise.
The idea that we can prevent Chinese espionage in AI is laughable. Like half the researchers are Chinese. If I as an American started working in Russia and came back to the United States the US government would not have that hard of a time getting me to talk about my work in Russia.
Jensen Huang has cultural ties to China and it made it that much easier for him to decide to have an affair with a Chinese woman.
So many people downplay this in a weird way of almost saying cheating isnt bad or is acceptable rather than the obv line, other peoples personal lives are none of our business unless they run countries or trillion dollar companies
which have a material impact on millions of lives.
It’s interesting one sees so many cases of intelligence services using female agents to target men in this way.
Why doesn’t it happen the other way around as much? Why don’t you see intelligence services using male agents to target powerful women in a similar way as much?
Almost all the CEOs of top companies by marketcap are straight men.
But even if that wasn't the case I think men and women are wired differently when it comes to pursuing after sex so your strategy would have to be different.
The audience who pays for porn is almost exclusively male for example. Male porn stars usually cater to a gay male audience even though straight women outnumber gay men by a huge margin.
If you look at literotica however, it flips and it's more of a female audience.
Innate female hypergamy. It makes no sense to use a high-positioned male spy in order to catch a way less valuable woman. The whole point of spying is to use less to get more.
I mean, one reason for why we don't hear about male agents targeting powerful women is the sad fact that there aren't that many powerful women around, when compared to powerful men.
Patriarchal social structure makes this sort of an attack more common against men than women.
You just don't hear it as often because there are far fewer females in such positions. But they try to go for all tiers of power and use honeypots of both sexes. It's well documented if you do a basic google search, look up Romeo Project, KGB swallows and ravens concept. Male honeypotters are under-representation in mainstream culture due to the sexist notion that only men can be seduced by sex and women somehow do not.
Surely it takes character to get through it? It takes character to admit to human failings and weaknesses, especially when it’s extremely publicly. It’s not a mark of character to collapse and disappear out of contrition under such circumstances. Poor character would say “it never happened and I don’t even care anyway if it did or what you think”.
We don’t actually know that wasn’t the case here. And nobody goes around shouting “I’m having an affair everybody!” - affairs by their nature are somewhat discreet.
I'm confident it occurred to Jensen almost immediately that she might be a spy - so I think he banged her but also never leaked any info or left her alone with his unlocked phone or laptop. While he may not have known for sure if she was a Chinese spy, he did know she was a board director and, until recently, the COO of a major Nvidia customer anxious to gain favorable business terms and glean insight on Nvidia GPU allocations for their data centers (and before that she was a journalist(!)).
Jensen isn't dumb, and in his position, nearly everyone he meets wants something from him; whether info, insight or a favor. Many of them dutifully report back to someone, whether an employer, government or just their social media friends, their impressions of which way Nvidia might be leaning, when the next product allocations might be released, etc. So it's unlikely Jensen ever fully trusted her, because it's been well over a decade since he could fully trust anyone not in his immediate family or an old friend. It's hard to appreciate just how much daily life is different for someone like Jensen but I once got a peek. For several years I was a skip level below the CEO of a high-profile F500 valley tech company. I've been part of the core team on the jet with the CEO during an Asia trip packed with keynotes, key customer/govt mtgs, media and analyst interviews. Everyone wants something from the CEO (including every employee on his team). And Jensen is CEO of the most valuable company on earth, so all that's on steroids. He's learned to be guarded to some extent with everyone outside his immediate family and old friends.
And I had a first-hand experience which makes me think Jensen suspected her almost immediately. Over a decade ago, back when I had a C-level title at a well-known F500 valley company. We had operations in China then and before going there the first time, I got a mandatory in-person briefing from actual FBI MiBs all about the incredibly subtle long-games that intelligence agencies run on foreign execs, not just in China but in other countries too. They had concrete case studies of real execs like me getting played (and not just by honeypots). It was very persuasive. On my trips to China I took all the common sense precautions they recommended but, sadly, I never detected Mata Hari making a play for me. :-) Probably not quite a big enough fish to warrant my own heat-seeking hottie.
BUT... a few years later, I did a fair number of high-profile keynote speeches at major business conferences. Unlike pure tech conferences, these often had audiences of a couple thousand people, big 50 foot screens, etc. The company started sending me to these because, unlike our CEO, I was unusually good at public speaking, despite actually being an introvert off-stage. After one such conference for C-level execs of public corps held in a major European capital, I ended up hanging out overnight before meetings elsewhere in Europe the next day. That evening there was an off-site banquet dinner and magic show. I went since I had no plans and dig magic. It was open seating and I grabbed seat at a table for 8 filling with random attendees, a VP from Unilever, a C-something from Airbus, etc. When I finished chatting with the Airbus guy about the A300, I turned to see the open seat next to me now had a rather tall and attractive early 30s blonde. She introduced herself as the marketing director for a St. Petersburg tech company, raved about how much she loved my keynote and proceeded to ask a lot of pretty insightful questions about it (note: this was before the Ukraine war).
Over dinner she continued to inquire about my work, background, etc and was overall quite charming. I didn't mind as I'm partial to blondes anyway and if someone who looks like Margot Robbie's sister has interesting questions about my area of expertise, who am I to complain? As dinner progressed to the show, she grew increasingly friendly, asking a long question just as we adjourned to the hotel buses, so ended up taking the seat next to mine. Back in the hotel lobby she asked if I wanted to grab a drink in the bar but I was already starting to think this level of attention was a bit much. Sure, I was 'stage famous' that day due to being the center of attention at the conference for an hour but... yeah, women as good looking as her aren't exactly common at 2,000 euro business conferences and the ones who are there tend to get a fair amount of unwanted attention, so they've learned how to project a professional demeanor that keeps things focused on business. I understand this dynamic from my wife - who's a tech executive with an MBA (at another valley company), a decade younger than me and also a quite attractive blonde. So, I very politely told my new Russian friend I had an early flight and was going upstairs to call my wife back in the US before my daughter left for school.
When I told my wife this amusing story, including my suspicion that my lovely new friend may have been a Russian honeypot on a random troll for relationships with C-level execs in global tech companies making widely used tech products - either for access, info or blackmail leverage - my wife dutifully disagreed insisting that I'm "totally hot enough to still 'pull'." I replied "Please never stop believing that... but when I first introduced you to my friends they all agreed you were 'way out of my league', so I'm under no illusions." :-)
Sadly, I'll never know the truth about my Soviet Sweetie (the nickname my wife kidded me with for weeks after). I'm sure she wasn't a high-end call girl, since you can't get into that conference without company creds and 2K euro. Bottom line, if I immediately suspected that maybe her interest wasn't purely in slammin' the sheets with my hot self", that thought surely occurred to Jensen because he's certainly had much more extensive counter-intelligence briefings and has had a far bigger target on his back every single day. Even if she wasn't a Chinese government spy, he knew part of her interest in their relationship was power, access and business advantage for her company. But Jensen bleeds green. I can totally imagine him privately telling a friend, "Bro, hot side-pussy's one thing, but business is business." Like many of Jensen's transactions lately, I'm pretty sure he got a lot more than he gave. :-)
I also have some very close to low fortune number / FAANNG tech CEO experience and was thinking the same thing. He was stupid to engage at all IMO - you did the right thing, Jensen did not. But, it's implausible that he isn't smart enough keep his lip zipped, if nothing else was.
It is not at all misleading. Huang's conduct as the CEO of arguably the most influential AI firm in the world, having an extra-marital affair with a Chinese spy, is obviously going to be a central part of any investigation into this.
"XXX is being investigated" implies there's some kind of possible wrongdoing here.
There might be some of that, but this is not likely the focus of the investigation.
They're investigating a potential influence operation involving the CEO, which may overlap with investigating some kind of culpability on his part.
It's an unfair editorial headline.
- edit -
Here is the literal source:
"" initiating an independent investigation in light of recent reporting that founder and CEO Jensen Huang has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort.""
Jensen is not specifically under investigation, if anything the language is sympathetic to him being the target of a foreign Op.
The US government is investigating Alice Huang (not Jensen) for obvious reasons.
Obviously the 'bar' is different for the CEO than for someone acting with criminal intent, but it's not far to say that Jensen is under investigation.
> "XXX is being investigated" implies there's some kind of possible wrongdoing here.
There clearly is some "possible wrongdoing here", hence the investigation which has been launched if for no other purpose than to rule that out.
> They're investigating a potential influence operation involving the CEO
They're not investigating what we already know. The presence of a spy leaves no doubt that Huang was the target of an influence operation, the primary concern now are the details of Huang's conduct with respect to being targeted.
‘Nvidia said on Sunday that it was opening an investigation into Jensen Huang, its chief executive and co-founder, after he acknowledged to the company’s board that he had been intimate with a business executive who U.S. intelligence determined was a Chinese spy.’
> "XXX is being investigated" implies there's some kind of possible wrongdoing here
A Board independently investigating its CEO with outside counsel absolutely communicates they think he may have fucked up. You don't do that in the normal course of affairs.
What experience or reporting are you basing this on?
> They are not 'investigating the CEO' - they are investigating the situation
This is how all independent investigations by a Board are phrased. Because half the time, you don't fire the CEO. Would you say walking into a meeting where you have a 50% chance of being fired is a nothing burger?
> the misrepresentative nature of your comment proves my point
I think I'm pretty clearly representing what a lot of folks on this thread are misunderstanding, willfully or ignorantly, about the nature of this sort of a Board action.
The board of directors have no jurisdiction to investigate an "influence operation on their CEO", and even if they did, they have no power to do anything about it. Their jurisdiction is within the business.
If this was primarily an investigation of the external actors, this would be talking about what law enforcement are doing.
The wording of the announcement is pretty neutral but I think it's clear what is within and without their bailiwick. The title is a much more informative description than "Statement from the board".
> board of directors have no jurisdiction to investigate an "influence operation on their CEO", and even if they did, they have no power to do anything about it
They don't need to, but of course they can. You hire investigators and an outside law firm to dig stuff up.
"initiating an independent investigation in light of recent reporting that founder and CEO Jensen Huang has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort."
They are investigating a situation where their CEO was the target of an Op - that's totally reasonable and doesn't remotely hint that he has done something wrong.
This is the right thing for the board to do: "We are investigating the situation because we have been informed that foreign actors may have targeted our staff".
Unless he has been up front with the board from the beginning about his affair, he has done something wrong.
This is Jensen Huang we are talking about. One of the most significantly influential people on earth right now, one of the planet’s most obvious espionage and blackmail targets, someone who both companies and nations will be spying on, and he is shagging a foreign national — a Chinese citizen! — in secret.
Even if he has enlisted no company employees or resources in his deception of his wife, this is remarkably negligent behaviour on a professional level. Just enormous.
Be serious: this is a huge deal and they are for sure looking at his conduct.
To defend him: he should be able to "shag" anyone he likes in secret, no matter the nationality. The question is whether he offered any confidential information in the process. To me this rather looks like some finance and law bros are attempting to oust him now that his company is the most valuable in the world.
I, as a shareholder, do not care if the CEO is having an affair so long as the business is not affected. If you can establish the latter, then his personal conduct is between him and his partner.
What I am extra curious about is why is Alice Huang not being rigorously investigated prior to or alongside all of this? If these allegations are true then what she did amounts to treason and a variety of other things. Failing to register as a foreign agent is another. She, at the very least, should be held by the US the same way we hold other foreign nationals charged with treason.
> I, as a shareholder, do not care if the CEO is having an affair so long as the business is not affected. If you can establish the latter, then his personal conduct is between him and his partner.
If you read the second sentence then you and I agree. I care if the business is affected, I don't if it is not and then the rest of this is a personal matter that doesn't need to be a news story because it is gossip.
Perhaps there should be an investigation? Perhaps the existing awareness of this relationship of his is cause for the board announcing publicly this investigation?
Sure? I didn't disagree with doing an investigation. I simply stated what I was curious to understand and what I cared about. It seems like a lot of people replying particularly care about the fact that he cheated on his wife and would like others to. I simply stated that only matters if the affair, in itself, actually resulted in nvidia being compromised.
> It seems like a lot of people replying particularly care about the fact that he cheated on his wife
People care because the cheating puts him in a potentially compromising situation, especially in the context of corporate espionage. It's not that complicated.
I think if you actually read this thread and others you'd find a laundry list of invented reasons people think his cheating is significant to the business. So, I think it is somewhat complicated, and I think it very much is up for debate. The consequential part isn't the affair, imo, it's what was shared during or as a result of the affair. The affair itself being the main attraction is a distraction. At this stage we don't know if Jensen reflected these beliefs because of Alice or if he already had them. Frankly, as the top chip maker in the US, much less the globe, he stands to benefit quite a bit by being able to serve China.
This isn't some hypothetical situation. The woman Huang admitted having an affair with was an executive at a data center company that bought billions of dollars of Nvidia chips and is suspected of having smuggled them to China.
She was allegedly recruited by China's Ministry of State Security to not only gather intelligence from Huang but to try to influence him to lobby for relaxed chip exports to China. We don't know how "influential" she was but pushing for less stringent export controls on Nvidia's chips is exactly what Huang has been doing.
Less stringent export controls are also what he would and should have been arguing for both as a business executive and, paradoxically, probably even even if he was lobbying for US interests. US leadership keeps making the same dumb mistake. When you restrict access to some advanced technology to another technologically advanced country, it's not like the other country just cries and beg you to give it back. Nothing is so advanced that it can't be replicated.
So you going from the other country being fully dependent upon you (putting you at an economic/geopolitical edge) to urgently incentivizing them to make their own advances in the restricted industry, which may eventually surpass your own achievements. For instance the Wolf Amendment [1] is the reason China was never allowed on the 'international' ISS. [1] The idea is that they'd just steal all of our tech or something. So it simply led to the Chinese creating their own space station while the ISS continues to deteriorate with no replacement in sight.
Same thing with chips. Come back to this post in ~15 years.
> Less stringent export controls are also what he would and should have been arguing for both as a business executive and, paradoxically, probably even even if he was lobbying for US interests.
You're missing the point, which is that once you've been compromised by a foreign intelligence service, it doesn't matter whether or not what you were lobbying for was logical or "right". What matters is that your relevant actions have been tainted and motivations can no longer be fully trusted, so you lose your credibility.
Nvidia's board is probably going to try to do what it can to look like it's taking this matter seriously without terminating Huang, but that's because there's no succession plan at Nvidia.
Huang's political clout is gone, and he may never get it back.
I'm not missing that at all and I fully agree with you. I'm just saying his actions don't condemn him in any way which would also mean it was likely a bad play by China. Ostensibly it's understandable wanting to get an inside with him, but if his natural path forward aligns with your interest then there's not much to be gained, and a potentially significant amount to lose, because now it will predictably result in knee-jerk reactions.
> I'm just saying his actions don't condemn him in any way...
He has lost all credibility. He might remain as CEO of Nvidia, especially because the company doesn't have a succession plan, but this is going to be the end of his political clout for a good long time, perhaps forever.
> ...which would also mean it was likely a bad play by China.
I don't really think this is the case. China will continue to smuggle chips and work on its own technology regardless.
The bottom line is China's MSS successfully compromised one of the world's most powerful executives and the price that will be paid is mostly on the US side. Given that this was disclosed to Trump a while back and he sat on it, don't be surprised if this becomes another big problem for Trump, who is in a horribly vulnerable spot right now after the midterms.
Let me rephrase that - his business actions don't condemn him. Obviously his indiscretions have ruined him, and those were certainly his actions, so you're right - but I'd classify those as his personal actions.
I don't agree this will harm the US in any way, shape, or fashion. It'll be used to justify even more stringent efforts at tech control and greater surveillance efforts of key technological players. All of this fits into US desires to a t. And while none of this will directly harm China, and may even paradoxically benefit them (for reasons mentioned previously), I can't imagine this is something they would directly aim for relative to a more favorable prior status quo.
> Obviously his indiscretions have ruined him, and those were certainly his actions, so you're right - but I'd classify those as his personal actions.
Putting aside how strategically important Nvidia is as a company, and the access and influence Huang has on policymakers including the president of the US, he had an affair with an executive at a customer that has purchased billions of dollars of Nvidia chips and may have been smuggling them to China.
The minute you mix your infidelity with the business you run, it's no longer "personal".
> I don't agree this will harm the US in any way, shape, or fashion. It'll be used to justify even more stringent efforts at tech control and greater surveillance efforts of key technological players.
No country is a monolith. The US isn't. China isn't. This is a real mess for the Trump administration and his allies/sycophants, ammunition for Democrats, a potential boon for China hawks, a setback for China doves, etc.
As for "even more stringent efforts at tech control and greater surveillance efforts of key technological players", I don't think this is a simple subject but let's be honest: the oversize influence and power of tech companies today is probably something that does need oversight and regulation. Nothing about the billionaires running these companies suggests they are interested in what's best for average working-class Americans.
> ...I can't imagine this is something they would directly aim for relative to a more favorable prior status quo.
As I stated, China will continue to smuggle Nvidia chips and work on its own technology. This won't affect that. This woman is not the only honeypot in corporate America (or Washington DC) and the Chinese espionage apparatus is very well established and won't be dismantled by this one discovery.
As for the status quo, what status quo are you referring to? The one where China was under peak effective bilateral tariffs of ~150%?
China is biding its time and preparing for conflict, which it knows could very well be kinetic. It has been working very hard to sanctions-proof its supply chain and, more importantly, financial system. It is expanding its nuclear arsenal at the fastest rate globally. And so on.
Do you think that's at competition with what I said? I don't think so. I simply stated that his affair either has the power to be demonstrably important here or not at all. I am responding to threads and threads full of people that seem to mostly care about the fact that he had an affair.
You stated "...so long as the business is not affected."
Let's be clear, again: Huang has admitted an affair with a woman who was an executive at a company that bought billions of dollars of Nvidia chips that may have been smuggled to China, and it turns out she was allegedly a Chinese spy. Her apparent mission: gather intelligence and influence Huang, who has a close relationship with the US president, to lobby for relaxed chip exports to China. Which is what he has been doing.
Huang admitted the affair in an email to company employees, and the Nvidia board of directors has launched an investigation.
By any reasonable definition, the business is clearly affected.
Yeah, I don't believe we've established that beyond the fact that the US is kind of moralist and it's important to onlookers. We don't really know whether it's materially affected the business yet.
> I, as a shareholder, do not care if the CEO is having an affair so long as the business is not affected.
This is actually a pretty challenging standard, because the moment the CEO tries to gaslight their spouse/partner that it's not an affair, they are already at risk of bringing the company into a deception: working late is almost always the cover, for one thing. But at that moment you have a substantially compromised person as a CEO.
This might seem a silly place to draw the line, but consider what the escalations are — the CEO's PA being asked to mislead the spouse, inventing a meeting they were at, inventing an away trip, etc. etc.; they always mount up. There is no executive who has an affair who doesn't pretend they are at work, and there's no pretence that doesn't ultimately put an employee in a difficult position.
It's entirely reasonable for a board to say that if the CEO or the chairman is having an affair it is their business.
And this is before you even consider that the affair is ordinarily likely to be with an employee.
Now, if a CEO at Huang's level of geopolitical importance is having an affair with anyone, it's the government's business, and the shareholders', because it makes them a (local and international, commercial and state-level) blackmail and espionage target even if they are not literally boffing a spy, which in this case he evidently is.
"If you can't eat their food, drink their booze, screw their women, take their money and then vote against them in the morning, you've got no business being up here."
Jesse M. Unruh, a powerful former Speaker of the California State Assembly.
CEOs should be at least as resistant to influence as politicians.
I'm sorry, but how can a Chinese national living in Singapore be charged for treason in US? Doesn't the concept of treason presume some kind of loyalty to the state in question, usually through citizenship?
> I, as a shareholder, do not care if the CEO is having an affair so long as the business is not affected.
This is really naive. And I bet other people could do other questionable things that you'd consider to color their entire character and render them untrustworthy.
I, as a shareholder, do care. It isnt about moralism. Sony america lost their ceo because he was banging some 20yo as a perk to sign a contract with another media company and she got mad about it when her side didnt pan out (no acting roles).
It is bad for business. Thats all. Him doing this is bad for Nvidia and bad for shareholders.
What is wrong with these VIPs? I always thought when you become a big, important CEO or politician, they gave you The Book and the first chapter says "Just bang your hot Chinese mistress. Don't tell her any secrets." Jeez, how dumb are these guys?
I think you'll be rather disappointed. This is a view I've held since college that's stayed with me to this day. The same logic I see on display in this thread is what I heard when Republicans were going after Bill Clinton. The fact that he lied was the cherry on top, they were very eager to charge him with some kind of moral crime. The fact that the moral crime existed was a giant distraction to the actual risks, and the risks largely didn't exist if the moral crime did not exist.
I certainly don't condone it but nonetheless the underlying motivations as well as the potential consequences of those behaviors seem almost entirely unrelated to me.
It speaks more to not having entered into a compatible relationship than anything else. I've been in a situationship where effectively if my state still had common law marriage, we'd be married, but there's no cheating in the relationship because frankly we're on the same page that these labels are a form of control to begin with. One can only get blackmailed by something one is embarrassed about. I don't believe in vice as a concept that anything but artificially created low-hanging fruit by authorities to create leverage out of normal human activities, so feel free to blackmail me on who I sleep with or not sleep with, I... don't care. Once the statute of limitation passes, same goes for drug use or other victimless crimes that are "against society". The state created the situation that opens one up to blackmail for no reason besides the enforcement of one particular set of perceived norms. As an individual, I call bullshit on the coercion. If societal pressure is all that is responsible to create the rationale and reason for deception, how can it not be fundamentally a crock of shit.
There's no indication that there's nonconsent involved, nor any actual espionage. this is a way to impress upon someone a set of moral code that is arbitrary and capricious with extreme social coercion. To judge by that standard is pretty close to the anti-gay hysteria of the McCarthyist era. Enough is enough.
No little kid whose dad cheated on their mom thinks "vice" is an artificial construct designed to control people.
And it's not like "McCarthyists" invented the concept of adultery being bad. Almost every major culture developed the concept independently. The Abrahamic religions, Chinese confucianism, Buddhism, and Hinduism had little contact with each other 2,000 years ago, but all developed the notion of adultery as a major moral transgression.
I mean, the last 3 paragraphs of NVidia's statement are:
> While the Board has no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised, the Board's inquiry will examine all available information.
> Jensen fully supports the review and has committed to cooperating with it.
> The Board has confidence in Jensen and his leadership team and will provide further updates as appropriate.
My interpretation of this is simply this is what you do when you are the board of a public company and the U.S. government has accused your CEO of being the target of espionage. You need to get the facts, if only to cover your own asses. If it turns out the accusations are hogwash, then you have facts of your own that you can release to counter whatever hogwash the government puts out. If it turns out your CEO committed a crime or otherwise did something improper, then you need to dismiss the CEO to prevent your complicity in the crime. If it turns out there holes in your security protocols around top executives, you need to plug those holes.
But until you have the facts, coming from an independent investigation, neither they nor us have any clue what the right response is.
> this is what you do when you are the board of a public company
No, it's not. In a majority of cases where a public-company Board independently investigates its CEO, the CEO gets removed [1]. (And they're all announced like this. If you're in that 40% where you don't remove the CEO, you don't want to have burned them.)
If the Board still unconditionally trusted Jensen, they'd have him hire outside counsel to conduct an independent investigation of NVIDIA's security apparatus.
There's some kind of a cognitive bias here similar to the base rate fallacy but not quite the same.
Yes, 40% is pretty high in the abstract. But a 60% chance of getting removed is insanely high compared to the base rate for this concrete case! Before this news broke, what were the odds of Huang not being a CEO of Nvidia a year from now for any reason. I'd definitely have taken the under at 1%, and the over maybe at 0.1%?
Like, what other risks were on the horizon? Him getting bored or tired? Not that man. A terminal illness that was diagnosed too late to treat? That happens very rarely for the ultra rich with their access to infinite high quality health care. A freak accident, e.g. airplane crash? Possible, but the rates are <<1%. Targeted violence? Unlikely, Nvidia is too far removed to be hated that strongly by anyone. The board firing him for some other reason? It'd have to be something that can't be papered over with hush money (e.g. any standard sex scandal almost certainly could; it's only the national security aspects that make it impossible here). A hostile takeover or similar that leads to him being ousted? Logistically and financially impossible.
Going from so rare it's not worth planning for to even odds is a pretty darn big shift from a single event!
> 40% is a pretty high percentage where they don't get removed
It's very low for a CYA exercise.
Boards don't independently investigate their CEOs as a matter of routine or to cover their asses. That's what an independent investigation by outside counsel is for. The Board taking the reins on this is absolutely substantial to anyone who understands how corporate Boards work.
Another way to put this is "Do you feel comfortable shorting NVDA tomorrow morning based on this news?" Because if Huang is removed it's very likely they will face challenges finding and reacting the next big use-case for GPUs, not to mention capitalizing on AI (which already is seeming shaky for other reasons). If you're completely confident that this will result in his removal, it seems like there's easy money to be made here.
Personally I don't feel comfortable enough to put my money where my mouth is. I'd give it even odds, but even odds, to me, is not enough to say it'll go one way or another.
> Because if Huang is removed it's very likely they will face challenges finding and reacting the next big use-case for GPUs
Huang has done a fine job managing NVidia, but he's also the poster child for "better lucky than good."
It's not like he led NVidia out of dire straits to pivot into the cryptocurrency/blockchain, and then AI, bubbles. They were making hardware for computer graphics, and that just so happened to be the same foundational hardware for the two biggest technology bubbles of the 21st century, twice in a row.
I find it hard to believe NVidia's incredible success can be attributed exclusively to him. Sometimes you're just in the right place at the right time.
They’ve been in the right place at the right time too many times.
It’s a bit like when you watch a fantastic FPS player play, they just always seem to be in the right place to catch the other guy off guard.
Huang didn’t know exactly what was coming - but he knew enough and managed to put NV into a position where it could quickly exploit whatever did emerge.
If I ever hit a home run in baseball, it would be blind luck. If I did it twice, nah, that would be incredibly unlikely, as I have zero talent at any ball sports.
Gates, Jobs, and Musk - each had a home run 3 times. That is so unlikely to be happenstance, ya gotta admit they had talent.
I'm not a fan of Jensen by any means, but he did start the CUDA program some eight years before it was actually useful (the alexnet moment). He called the need for high performance linear algebra for scientific computing, it just took a while for it to find its first killer app.
CUDA was well-used in HPC and other compute-intensive spaces long before neural nets were in style.
If you look at the evolution of GPGPU computing, at least from an HPC perspective, CUDA is almost an obvious step. What’s perplexing is that AMD and Intel let it get so far ahead in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
That was becoming a hot topic at the time prior to DL getting on the map but it was smart to recognize the latent demand for GPGPU. Was still going to lead to solid growth with AI was just not going to be the exponential growth we saw if it didn't happen.
Meanwhile intel (as but one prominent example) was also researching and manufacturing GPUs for most (all?) of that timeline yet somehow managed to fumble it. Quite often IMO simply not screwing up while already holding all of the necessary cards is a lot harder than it looks.
> Another way to put this is "Do you feel comfortable shorting NVDA tomorrow morning based on this news?"
This is a silly way to read corporate governance. There exist finer levers for tuning up and down exposure than going long or short.
> If you're completely confident that this will result in his removal
Straw man. Nobody argued this.
What's being argued is that the top comment's implication–that this is par for the course–is bullshit. The Board is signaling a partial loss of confidence in their CEO. There is also substantial risk, though no assurance, that Jensen will step down.
A percentage is a pretty meaningless if there underlying factors that separate those who dont.
I image a large portion of those investigations start with the board or shareholders seriously displeased with the CEO and wanting to mount a case for removal.
The title implies he is the target of the investigation — that is because he is indeed the target of the investigation.
That is different from the fact that the allegation is that a malicious actor targeted him.
Those aren’t mutually exclusive things.
They need to complete the investigation to decide whether he was an active participant.
Its like you’re assuming an investigation is done after someone is determined to be guilty, rather than being done as a means to make the determination.
> suspect they will be investigating how easy it is to honeypot him
The Board should be investigating two things: if Jensen knowingly lied to the Board and if he corruptly colluded to suppress any government’s investigation into Alice Huang.
If the answer to both is no, he is a man who got duped and compromised America and Taiwan’s national security. Still, perhaps, a great founder and CEO. Send him to marriage counseling and have his security detail report to the Board.
If the answer to either is yes, he should resign, personally indemnify the company against shareholder lawsuits, and switch focus to defending himself against criminal charges (and working on his marriage or divorce, as it might be).
I disagree. A lack of candor or active deception are certainly disqualifying, but dangerous naïveté or a lack of discretion with respect to company secrets and devices is just as bad.
> compromised America and Taiwan’s national security in the process
absurd claim with zero evidence to support it. if there was any evidence that he actually compromised US national security he would already be gone. there isn't even any evidence that the woman is a Chinese asset. that is just speculation from whatever felons leaked their illegal surveillance of a US citizen's private life.
> if there was any evidence that he actually compromised US national security he would already be gone.
It's likely the story coming out like this is the best mitigation they can come up with, if AI is a national security interest of the US and he's granting a Chinese asset access to said interests. He's already conspiring with a foreign government against the interests of the US.
That he's extremely visible in his role is probably the only reason he's still around, until next week or whenever. The US doesn't vanish prominent CEOs like that, that's more a China thing.
> That he's extremely visible in his role is probably the only reason he's still around
The stock is massively up under his leadership. Firing Jensen would cause a massive loss of personal wealth to everyone on that Board. You don't even want to announce an investigation like this unless you're personally scared of getting implicated in a potential cover-up.
>if there was any evidence that he actually compromised US national security he would already be gone
okay that's a joke in this administration right, the sitting American president is a threat to American national security and they made a woman who took private trips to Assad the Director of National Intelligence. If you're capable of selling out American national interests to foreign autocrats chances are that'll you'll be appointed special envoy and get a promotion rather than the opposite
The same Assad government that Trump and allies then helped to overthrow and replace with a group that was officially designated as an alias of Al Qaeda?
The admin definitely stinks but Tulsi is one of the cleaner ones.
Nobody needs to be told twice they are going to be victim of a honey pot.
They are 1) covering their butts 2) placating external influences (probably state dept) 3) trying to find out what happened, but not have it be exposed 4) Avoiding risk of their Goose laying Golden Eggs at all costs.
The man is bringing them gazillions, they are not going to flip him over like a cheezeburger.
He's replacable but it comes with gigantic risk.
Board's tend to enable thing that fill their coffers with money and protect that over everything else.
One of the most important (of many) questions the board will have is "did Jensen give her any privileged information?" which means it is also an investigation of him.
Yeah, but the "intelligence operation" was that his girlfriend was a spy. Inevitably, that's going to involve asking questions like "did he give his girlfriend sensitive stuff?".
The headline is indeed misleading, but so is your reinterpretation. It's not like the guy got his phone hacked.
What's with this passive language, as if he didn't have agency in cheating on his wife with a spy? Oopsie-daisy, it just happened TO him, like an unexpected rainstorm. Come on.
This has to be the most "well, akchually..." comment I've read on HN in a long time.
Yes, Huang was targeted, as obviously he knew he would be. But "ie, an investigation of something that happened to him." Are you for real with that one? Perhaps Huang should try that with his wife: "You see honey, the fact that my penis ended up in the vagina of a Chinese spy was just something that happened to me."
> Nvidia is doing an investigation of Jensen Huang being targeted in an intelligence operation
The Board has launched an investigation of its CEO. This is how it’s being branded.
If you’re just coöperating with law enforcement, all assuredly on one team, you don’t launch a Board investigation, you let your CEO and an outside law firm handle it.
> The NVIDIA Board is initiating an independent investigation in light of recent reporting that founder and CEO Jensen Huang has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort.
This is the exact wording. Nowhere do they say they are investigating the CEO. They are investigating an incident, and the CEO is part of it.
Both are based on the linked statement, the primary source. A Board forming an independent committee with outside counsel means it’s considering implicating the CEO. You don’t say that. But you also don’t do this if you have full trust and confidence in your executive.
If you are one of the most powerful man on earth you are going to be the target of all the secret services of all powerful countries. Period.
It is their job. You take decisions that are worth billions, you influence people that take decisions that are worth billions, and affect their countries.
They are going to study you for years. Your personality type and that of the people around you. Your weaknesses. Your problems and that of your family.
They will employ the most sweet and the most pleasurable and gorgeous honey that there is in the world to create the perfect Honey trap.
Normal people just can not imagine how sweet, specially when it has been customised around your needs and desires.
It is not just a woman wanting to have sex with you. It will be the woman in your dreams.
What's interesting to me is how the chineese got so close to him, because this is all about knowing exactly his soft spots and how he kicks when someone tickles him in different ways. No pun intended.
On a spy level this is great story.
On a personal level, I hope the chineese spy will come forward and tell us if Jensen also sleeps with that leather jacket.
If the AI boom takes a massive nosedive because someone couldn't keep their dick in their pants, then there was no substance behind the boom. There might be some speculative volatility as a result of this sideshow, but if this is the pin that pops the bubble, then it was still a bubble.
One thing I find difficult to understand about Nvidia's and Jensen Huang's position on China is that they keep stressing that the "Chinese government has strictly limited imports of the H200 in favor of its own chip companies," as though any sale of H200 chips should be seen as a win against those restrictions.
Does anyone believe the Chinese government really wants to "strictly limit" imports of Nvidia chips? Of course they want the chips. No one is buying the act. We are smart enough to see through China's attempt to portray these purchases as favors to the US. Except Nvidia, apparently--though playing along conveniently serves its business interests.
How much of the recent decline in AI stocks was due to insider trading on this news? The previous explanation of it all being due to datacenter-hating dems taking power in the US seemed credible last week but in light of this one has to wonder.
okay, so jensen is gonna get sacked, right? i mean if federal employees serve very long sentences in prison for the same "mistake," he's gotta face some kind of music, right?
lol this feels like an attempt to put a nepo-baby in charge of nvidia because there's already ones in charge of every other company and PE doesn't like that they don't have one of their friends kids ruining nvidia like they do every other company.
Plot twist: the Chinese honeypot's goal was only to attract Huang into adultery- and the puritanism of Americans would do the rest and sabotage the company that is instrumental in the US leadership in AI.
What a sticky situation to be in. it was strange to see the Nvidia spokespeople so outwardly supportive of the arrangement between them at first. I remember reading that they said the US government would have let them know if she was a threat. Also probably doesn't feel the best to be his wife or family right now. Hope this doesn't spell more problems for them politically. But if it does, it's probably warranted ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Him banging a Chinese intelligence asset was already reported in the news last month, and that story broke on a Thursday. What's new today is his apology letter/admission, and the board investigation. The timing of those announcements was up to Nvidia, so it being outside of trading hours is not at all suspicious.
US politicians are all suddenly going to become anti AI in the coming weeks and months.
Them leaking this isn't surprising, they have to show the public after those midterm results that they're going to start holding the trumpian technocrats accountable.
Huh thats an extermely simplistic read no offense.
Polticians say what makes them popular, most Americans are not concerned about AI fueled gains in the markets atm. Politicians are already reversing course this week in droves. Have you paid attention to the last few days? Polticians are absolutely switching up on everything.
AI doesn't provide companies economic value either, other than through speculation on stock prices. Its just cost companies a lot of money and contributes nothing to actual revenue. You'll see a lot of people playing musical chairs around this issue, nobody wants to be the person who rides that sinking ship to the bottom.
The smart money in the markets also seem to recognize this. Theres no point in continuing to die on a hill for AI for the sake of stock market gains, when its clear that its not going to continue to fuel those gains for much longer.. The mean reversion has already begun, these AI stocks are down 50% this month...
Politicans will chase that trend in either direction, its not about if number goes up, you dont want to be the person screaming about how great something is after its clearly started to die/rejected by the public.
Or memory prices deflate and China enters the market in significant way for both memory and GPUs.
People wake up and realize LLMs are a dead end and a year from now we plateau, and people start to understand its not worth paying for unless it cost the equivalent of a jetbrains subscription (yearly).
People are out here spending 50k a year on employee AI usage, those same employees are destprying the product, making their offerings mediocre compared to the competition, and off shoring their job to agents in such a way that its basically fraudulent.
Imagine spending 50k a year on tools ypur employees use to lose you a 100k, imagine soending 50k a year on tools that your employees use to work 2hrs a day and then watch youtube/pretend work the remainder od the day.
Llms are a massive net negative contribution to 90% of businesses.
"He didn't voluntarily give it up. It was part of a settlement. "
That's what I meant with my earlier comment. You wrote, "Does his board investigate him for his many egregious acts.", his demotion resulted from the Board's and the SEC's investigation.
they’re setting in motion a plan to get a divorce judge to order the selling of their shares before the bubble bursts
making an otherwise prohibited transaction to be legal
I don’t think that was totally planned during the affair, but the opportunity arised with the election and created a reason for Jensen to admit it so decisively after everyone knows she was a spy
The better question would be who is leaking classified US intelligence in an attempt to blackmail Jensen Huang and/or destroy the US's most valuable AI infrastructure asset?
The attack isn't coming from China. It is coming from the NY Times, FT, and presumably some employees of the CIA who are committing felonies.
I think it is more likely that US Intelligence leaked this because Huang was already being actively compromised. By leaking it you remove the leverage the CCP had.
Side question but how do hot female spies convince themselves to sleep with aged billionaires (or bug eyed government high ups for that matter), what is in it for them?
Are you that naive? Since chimps females have been genetically programmed to seek the Alpha of the species. Jensen is smart, resourceful, made a fortune, he's actually a great dude, he'd be a catch for most Chinese women. Aged or not, he can still exert influence, father offspring that will be generously looked after. He has many stories that would thrill most younger women, especially with traditional family values like the Chinese.
Also reported by Bloomberg:
"Nvidia Board to Probe Spying Case After CEO Admits Infidelity"
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-11-08/nvidia-bo...
https://archive.is/VfRdl
They say any man can be seduced by one of these three: money, drugs or sex.
Or as Charlie Munger put it: There are only three ways a smart person can go broke: Liquor, ladies, and leverage.“
Munger also didn't mean this in the context of an intelligence operation.
This is not just a lapse of judgement from some random encounter on a business trip.
Surely a whole team would be dedicated to this operation with whatever resources needed since it will be a tiny investment for the possible payoff.
Similarly, one would assume that an equally sized team is in charge to protect such a crucial asset.
I don't think he's at any risk of going broke. At worst he will lose his job and NVDA stock will suffer a brief setback.
Eh, NVDA could be in for some trouble if he's dismissed. He's very much a command & control CEO - his deputies are largely tasked with implementing his decisions, leaving no obvious successor - and the recent history of NVidia is one of Huang continually finding or creating new use-cases for its GPUs that has it keep attaining new heights even after the previous one crashes. There was a time, after the crypto crash of 2021, where NVDA was down about 66%; likewise after the crypto crash of 2018. If nobody finds the next great application of GPUs, we could see NVDA down 90% or more.
I hope he lands on his feet after the dust settles. This job market sucks. Hope his $160 billion net worth will keep him afloat between gigs
Even more amazing he is worth so much despite owning so little of the company . Goes to show just how big NVDA is
Smart person and liquor are not to be put in the same sentence. Perhaps depends on the definition of "smart".
My buddy took a wine tasting class at MIT.
Related: "Alleged Chinese spy had 'close relationship' with Nvidia boss Jensen Huang" 29.oct.2026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50293047 248 comments
I do like how the people who expressed skepticism at the media then aren't talking now in this thread.
The top comment is attempting to trivialize the news...
...because HN's title is editorialized, and exacerbates the linked statement.
It’s really not for anyone with a modicum of experience and knowledge around corporate boards.
It is editorialized, and doesn't match the title or contents of the statement.
HN has a rule about titles to avoid derailed threads like this.
Eh, the original title is meaningless. “A Statement” isn’t a title. It’s common for functionally untitled works to get a title here.
All of which distracts from the misinformation that Huang is not being investigated by his Board.
It's not wrong that Jensen is being investigated, it's just not the scope of the stated investigation.
HN's title, as the top comment alleges, is extremely misleading as to what the board's goals are.
It's on point and honest for what the Board is actually doing. A lot of people seem upset by that, which I guess tracks–it's been a popular meme stock. And everyone's e.g. an aircraft investigator on here when tragedy strikes.
I personally hold no stock in Nvidia, nor do I consider Jensen beyond reproach. The title is blatantly misleading.
The top comment is correct to question the title, as it leads to more interesting HN comments than the driveby CEO pugilism that many bottom-barrel commentators participate in. Your response to the top comment is condescending and speculative instead of curious or informative. It seems to me like people are fulminating on both sides, and clearly Nvidia's board doesn't know the whole story either.
To be clear, I never accused you of shilling. But when a large group chooses to be ignorant of what a headlining corporate-governance action means, and starts pretending the Board isn't doing what the Board is obviously doing, it does make one curious for what the finance influencers are up to now.
It’s not speculative to say a Board launching this sort of investigation is investigating its CEO. It’s borderline absurd to suggest otherwise, given the law and precedent of such announcements. I admit I was condescending, but not intentionally—folks who don’t have any domain expertise really want this to be something it’s not.
There's no explanation of whether he got sextorted, or what the plan was to get sensitive information from him.
Or was the plan just to publicly humiliate him in hopes he'd get replaced by someone less capable?
> no explanation
“U.S. officials last year concluded that Chinese citizen Alice Huang, then a top executive at Megaspeed International, was sharing information with the Chinese government while working with Nvidia to build data centers in Asia” [1].
It could be as simple as getting the CEO to override controls when signing a deal. It could be any of the perks one gets with physical access to a person and their devices.
And we know there are police reports and investigations in multiple countries. We also know this administration has been, corruptly or negligently, quashing them.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/tech/chinese-executive-close-to-nvidia-c...
That's the point of an investigation. We don't know, but will find out.
Assuming the investigation is good and they (really) make it public.
If the woman was in fact a CCP spy, and I have no idea if that is actually the case, it would absolutely not have been a plan only for humiliation.
If a country successfully compromises a foreign asset in such a major way they'd lean on that as hard as they can, and that'd mean carefully planning various strategies to extract information from the asset.
A lot of this sort of espionage is carried out without a specific end goal.
The purpose is just to cultivate a relationship that can be exploited if the opportunity to do so presents itself.
Watch him enter his PIN and extract mails while he's in the shower.
Suck information out of him with years of military academy training.
Just listen in on phone calls when you happen to be nearby.
The possibilities are endless.
what is with the set of people who will just glaze powerful people constantly, no matter the circumstance?
Jensen is gonna be ok without you trolls. relax.
The admiration of people who contribute to society is much more understandable than the ever-present seething about the fact that they are admired.
Equally confused by the people who grovel at their feet and quicky jump to their defense. Jensen is in the class of people who could run you over with their car, not stop, and barely be inconvenienced by the outcome. Why should society defend someone whose money does that job better?
>sextorted
Cute, but don't we already have a term for when lies are used to obtain sexual consent?
Definitely blackmailed, sextorted for sensitive information about Nvidia.
Either he was going to admit it or the other side would have leaked it. Jensen ruined it for himself regardless.
The plan from the other side (spies) was likely to leak this, and get Lori Huang to file a divorce to take half of Jensen's NVDA shares.
So it is all up to her now.
I hope bossman sees your uncritical support!
Huang most public statements were ridiculously pro-China in the last few years. Coincident? I do not think so.
https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/nvidia-ceo-...
https://www.facebook.com/Benzinga/posts/nvidia-ceo-jensen-hu...
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/nvidia-says-us-export-co...
https://archive.ph/TkBwb (Nvidia chief Jensen Huang condemns US chip curbs on China as ‘a failure’)
it is not a coincidence that maybe some faction of the CIA that feels threatened because Trump takes Huang's advice over theirs would leak this to try to blackmail or destroy him.
But so far the only criminal act and threat to national security that has been proven to have occurred is the leaking of this information.
Alternatively, NVIDIA simply benefits tremendously from enabling sales of new generation chips to China.
Also from domestic sales, most of which will be running open-weight models, most of which are from China.
You think there needs to be a conspiracy for a GPU company to be in favour of selling GPUs into one of the largest markets for GPUs in the world?
In your words, this guy[1] was also selling as well "to one of the largest markets for GPUs in the world". So, his actions should be legal, and the arrest was wrong?
[1] - https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/three-charged-conspiring-unla...
Going to repeat the words of another commenter here: "Crazy how naive HN is about foreign intelligence. "
Crazy of you to assume that every HN user is an American and supports Trump's interests in confronting China.
You don't need to like Trump to see China with more than a little suspicion. China it not a friend of the west.
The US has recently shown itself to be no friend of the west either, and the reasonable reaction for the rest of the west is to keep to their own interests.
Meanwhile Trump, Moscow Mitch, and all their friends seem to be ridiculously pro-Russia... With one of them having an 'open for business' policy, where he receives large sums of crypto, airplanes, and other considerations from anyone who is willing to pay (and has received loans and cash injections in the past).
Pardon me if I find it difficult to get worked up about an accusation of treason and disloyalty from an openly corrupt and treasonous executive.
Does Nvidia want to investigate its own illegal shipments of GPUs to China via Singapore? Because that's exactly what pulling on this thread will uncover.
> Does Nvidia want to investigate its own illegal shipments of GPUs to China via Singapore?
They do if they want to avoid looking like criminals in front of the Congress!
If you have a day to spare: try finding out how many companies have been launched in .sg, .uk that just so happen to have Chinese nationals as their founders and who (1) want to buy large numbers of GPUS and (2) have seen their turnover skyrocket around the time of the block of Chinese companies direct access to frontier level models.
I guess people are wondering why this is such a big deal...
If Jensen knew this Singapore company was really a Chinese front then he's complicit in evading US export controls which is jail time.
Sleeping with their executive causes lots of questions to be asked. Did he override company due diligence on export controls to China, etc.
At the very least it gives the US government a reason to look into nvidia's export controls processes which are probably severely lacking.
He's not going to jail. Even if he hypothetically does, Trump will just pardon him.
Even if the alleged spy didn’t gain anything directly over Jensen from this, she had enormous leverage over him. Jensen stands to lose $80-$90B in a divorce resulting from this affair
The Saudis tried to blackmail Bezos with his affair similarly over WaPo’s coverage of the Khasshogi assassination
On one hand, huge moral failing for him. On another, huge Chinese inflicted damage to the U.S. economy when they directly target the CEO of our largest company. Does this count as a grey zone action? When does it elevate to an outright act of economic sabotage?
I obviously don't know why the Chinese would have done this, assuming she was a spy at all, but I have to assume it was more related to information and access rather than economic sabotage.
Compromising Jensen like this, again if she was a spy, would be extremely difficult to pull off. If I were the CCP, I'd much rather use that leverage and access to try to extract information and have a spy close to him to push Nvidia's future decisions, whether he knows he's being manipulated or not at that point would come down to whether they believed they had sufficient leverage to keep him compliant.
Will probably see a settlement Musk-style:
Under the settlement:
- Chairmanship: Musk was required to resign and was prohibited from serving as chairman for three years.
- CEO position: He was allowed to remain CEO.
- Financial penalty: Musk personally paid a $20 million penalty, and Tesla paid another $20 million.
- Corporate oversight: Tesla was required to strengthen its board oversight and controls over Musk's public communications.
NVIDIA does not have a board chair but an independent lead director. Not sure how this incident will affect the future structure.
Human after all
Those Who Would Be Our Betters.
China targets everyone of consequence, of course they targeted Jensen. This may be a 'game of thrones' nefarious move by hostile foreign or domestic parties who want to wrest defacto control, perhaps angle to put their puppet in control, or otherwise leverage Nvidia by taking down its Founder and CEO. It is completely unproven and should not be assumed that Jensen nor Nvidia took part in anything untoward at all. Historically, Jensen doesn't do stupid. So whether you like him or not, I do not believe he would be that stupid.
Not necessarily untoward from a national security point of view - but he’s admitted to the affair. (Gift link: https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/d8a218...)
Wow, this is big news. I feel this should be its own submission.
Regrettably this share link is not letting me read the article.
Sorry, the link only works for a limited number of views. Seems like other outlets have picked up the story now: https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/article/nvidias-jensen-hua...
No, Jensen has admitted in a memo to employees he had an affair.
Oh no, an affair! We are all puritans now who go to church every Sunday and stone adulterers. What planet are you living on?
Cheating per se is not a problem other than showing a concerning lack of judgement. A strong desire to keep an affair secret is more dangerous.
Also imagine an intelligence agency is designing cover for someone to seduce YOU.
It is not just having an affair with some random person and using poor judgement. It is a person what was crafted with you as a target. The whole thing is weaponized.
I have never cheated in a relationship and it is not something I would ever consider. It is easy to say this though knowing I am not going to be the target of an intelligence agency honey pot.
I wouldn't expect his wife to excuse the infidelity just because the mistress was intentionally trying to seduce him. As an Nvidia investor, I don't excuse him for lying about it and opening himself up to blackmail even though I can understand how it came about.
> A strong desire to keep an affair secret is more dangerous.
I'm no expert on having affairs, but isn't secrecy key to the whole thing? At least secrecy from the spouse.
If you have no strong desire for secrecy, then is it even an affair at that point? Either the spouse tacitly supports the extramarital fornication, or the relationship is already in tatters.
I am not a puritan, so that's not the angle of concern for me at all.
I believe the actual larger concern here is "in case Jensen didn't want this to become public (whether it was due to the divorce potential or whatever other reason; that's not relevant), what lengths would he be willing to go to keep it under wraps?".
If it gets confirmed that Jensen simply had an affair (without a "shared/did things he wasn't supposed to share/do" component), then it is a nothingburger (for anyone except him and his family).
But until we have that confirmed, the US government is concerned about what critical info he might have shared/done to avoid being blackmailed by an agent acting on behalf of PRC.
This could be seen as lack of integrity, which is a problem
He lied about it to Bloomberg as a representative of Nvidia, so it goes beyond his personal life.
The affair itself is not the problem. The problem is if his wife doesn't like it, that secret is worth billions of dollars to keep. What would Jensen do to keep it secret?
Well, when the NY Times floated the first blackmail attempt, he obviously didn't play ball, so I guess we already know the answer?
unless he's absolutely open with his partner and other people in his life, doesn't care or even wants them to know, this provides leverage that can influence his actions. It's almost like you're the one pretending to be out of touch to make a your point...
Bedding an adversarial entity's agent in a regulated field is a serious matter (for the company) with potentially serious consequences. It can lead to executive decapitation, it can even lead to / criminal investigations if the operative bypassed export controls using executive proximity.. the fallout can be great and widespread. It can also be a nothingburger and an amusing page six divorce story in the end where we all read how rich cry as well. Time will tell. What's telling of where this might lead and how serious it is, is that it was US federal government that warned about this.
Yeah, 50 years ago this was a big deal; nowadays... meh. There are tons of people who have survived this and even worse. The public has become inured to infidelity, but so have the media and the various industry gatekeepers (it’s not bad enough to get someone blacklisted or made persona non grata). Except Epstein... those involved with him probably won’t recover. So there are lines that cannot be crossed, but cheating is not one of them. Hell, even beloved Patrick Stewart cheated on both of his first two wives, admitted it in his memoir, and no one cared.
> Except Epstein... those involved with him probably won’t recover.
What? Nobody involved with Epstein has gone to prison yet. One of them was even re-elected president. If I had to list the terrible things you could do when you're rich and not face consequences, trafficking and raping children would sadly be high up on the list.
This is completely false and there are numerous public examples to pull from. If anything, it is worse now than it was in the past with how the mob can dogpile.
Case and point, caught at a coldplay? cheating? Both fired? Lives destroyed?
As for the actor, really? Totally dif industries and people do care. Execs make a company look bad and when actors do too, cheating or not, they also get smacked.
You may not care but most people do and if a tiny spark hits Patrick, his legacy will be destroyed. There are many actors that the public is well aware of how gross they are and are hated for it regardless of ability.
Maybe I’m old but it doesn’t seem that long ago that Clinton got impeached for infidelity.
He got impeached over Perjury and Obstruction of Justice. For the coverup (a crime), not "the crime" (not a crime).
> Clinton got impeached for infidelity.
This is just blatantly false.
He wasn't impeached for infidelity, he was impeached for lying under oath and obstruction of justice[0].
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Bill_Clinton
> should not be assumed that Jensen nor Nvidia took part in anything untoward at all
The punishment for the cover-up often exceeds that for the crime.
We don’t have evidence around whether Huang is compromised with China. We do have compelling evidence that he tried to minimize fall-out, or potentially even sweep under the rug the problem, after finding out the true identity of this woman. If he did it with Trump, that’s corruption in service of a national-security compromise.
Isn't everyone having an affair part of a cover-up? I wouldn't consider it an affair if it was known and out in the open, affair implies keeping it secret in my opinion at least.
> Isn't everyone having an affair part of a cover-up?
You're right. The problem is how he involved Nvidia in covering up for him.
Huang had an affair with a customer. He then had spokespeople say "the company that employed Ms. Huang, Megaspeed, was like any other regional customer" [1]. Just this Friday he had Nvidia lie for him: "Mr. Huang’s interactions with Ms. Huang were 'not unusual' and consistent with the kinds of meetings he has with any of Nvidia’s many customers" [2]. If that were the whole story this would be a massive breach of fiduciary duty.
Then we learn Ms. Huang was a Chinese spy. While Jensen was advocating for looser restrictions on selling AI chips to China. While Jensen was selling chips to Megaspeed that were being publicly investigated for re-shipping to China.
And he decides to come clean about this after control of the Congress flips in a way that guarantees his secrets will come out.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/29/us/politics/nvidia-china-...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/06/us/politics/chinese-spy-a...
Well I'm certainly not saying what he may have done okay, my point was simply that I'd see all affairs as involving cover-ups.
With regards to whether others in the company helped hide it, though, that's on them. Your boss can tell you to do something, you still have to agree and then actually choose to do it.
> China targets everyone of consequence, of course they targeted Jensen.
Yes, but they aren't investing him because he was "targetted" in the abstract. They're investigating him because the operation was extremely successful.
Dude was literally fucking a spy. As it were.
Successful at what?
https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/a-message-to-our-company
...guys?
…for possibly being the target of a foreign intelligence operation. I don’t think they are trying to say he himself was intentionally doing something bad.
Maybe the title should be changed?
Foreign intelligence didn't force him to have an affair. He should be smart enough to spot a honey trap.
Honey trap.
Yes thanks. Changed.
Is the problem that he had an affair, or that he was targeted by a spy? If he were single, would it have been OK? Or if he had an affair with a non-spy?
> the problem that he had an affair, or that he was targeted by a spy?
The problem is he was close to a Chinese spy while advocating for increasing exports to China. Then, when public reports emerged about Alice Huang’s true identity, he tried to ignore it. As did the White House. All the way until electoral reality made it clear the cover-up was over.
Of course he's advocating for increasing exports to China. Why wouldn't he want to sell more?
I mean, it's not like he's in intelligence.
He runs a graphics card firm. Surely he is allowed to do what he likes.
So guilty until proven innocent?
> In his own memo to staff, Huang said he was “deeply sorry” for the affair.
> “I was unfaithful to my wife,” he said. “My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did.”
That's a problem with his wife. Not with shareholders or the company. I don't even understand why these people accept to excuse themselves publicly about personal matters.
Totally shocked that he had an affair. Not saying its OK, but, men have affairs every day. It does not prove that he was compromised by the Chinese spy.
The spy had control of information damaging to Jensen. This is the definition of "compromised".
You find it hard to believe that a man would cheat on his wife?
It was a clear /s
The GP edited their comment. The original version said only "I find that hard to believe." In that context, my response made a lot more sense.
aigalaxiome: thanks for making me look like a jerk.
Poe's law strikes again!
This is not a court.
why would that matter?
Because "guilty until proven innocent" applies to courts. You can get fired from your job even without evidence that meets a specific legal threshold.
Moreover, he's already been proven to be both unethical enough and stupid enough to cheat on his wife with a foreign agent. That's not the kind of person that the board would want to run a multi-billion dollar company.
> You can get fired from your job even without evidence that meets a specific legal threshold
if your country provides adequate legal protections, no you cannot be
presumption of innocence is general approach that morally must be applied everywhere
Guilty of having an affair?
Nobody cares about affairs my brother, unless it was with a child.
If anything having an affair with an of-age consenting female would probably boost his stock in 2026.
Seems like there are a lot of NVDA shareholders/fanboys in the comments rushing in to defend a billionaire.
I'm more shocked by the people here finding it normal to cheat on your wife.
It's definitely not unusual.
Affairs sound so last century when you spend your weekends doing ayahuasca trips with your polycule who all work in AI and love effective alturism.
Let's be fair.. If you invested in nvidia ever you probably aren't the sharpest crayon in the toolbox, and the likelihood of having morals is basically none existent.
They probably live in the same data center as the Musk fanboys.
This is HackerNews. Folks here simp for billionaires all the time, and the userbase skews ultra-wealthy.
> the userbase skews ultra-wealthy.
It's a mostly anonymous public forum. The topics covered here aren't anywhere near "wealthy people hobbies" either. It's no porsche forum. It's not even a woodworking forum. Programming is an extremely affordable hobby.
i like to think of the people here as "aspirational"
Is he? Billionaires being sexually desirable is not exactly uncommon occurrence.
Not intentionally, but falling for a honey trap while cosplaying as a playboy is not a good look for an exec. Huang just showing he's a bit of a child at the wheel.
At the same time it’s easy to say he’s “a bit of a child at the wheel” when the wheel is of a $5 trillion company leading the biggest boom of the 21st century. It’s hard for anyone to keep their head and their ego in check in such an unprecedented circumstance. If one thinks it’s easy it’s because one hasn’t been there. Like how everyone is courageous until the bullets start flying. Jensen has rockstar-like adulation and I can only imagine how many finance bro tongues up his ass. Having the tongue of a Chinese spy in there too isn’t much of a surprise.
The idea that we can prevent Chinese espionage in AI is laughable. Like half the researchers are Chinese. If I as an American started working in Russia and came back to the United States the US government would not have that hard of a time getting me to talk about my work in Russia.
Jensen Huang has cultural ties to China and it made it that much easier for him to decide to have an affair with a Chinese woman.
> Jensen Huang has cultural ties to China
Wasnt this family from Taiwan?
Taiwan, the official name Republic of China (ROC).
Yea you're right, I just looked it up. I'm in over my head speculating about what that means for his feelings and ties towards China.
Misleading title
So many people downplay this in a weird way of almost saying cheating isnt bad or is acceptable rather than the obv line, other peoples personal lives are none of our business unless they run countries or trillion dollar companies which have a material impact on millions of lives.
It’s interesting one sees so many cases of intelligence services using female agents to target men in this way.
Why doesn’t it happen the other way around as much? Why don’t you see intelligence services using male agents to target powerful women in a similar way as much?
Almost all the CEOs of top companies by marketcap are straight men. But even if that wasn't the case I think men and women are wired differently when it comes to pursuing after sex so your strategy would have to be different.
The audience who pays for porn is almost exclusively male for example. Male porn stars usually cater to a gay male audience even though straight women outnumber gay men by a huge margin.
If you look at literotica however, it flips and it's more of a female audience.
Innate female hypergamy. It makes no sense to use a high-positioned male spy in order to catch a way less valuable woman. The whole point of spying is to use less to get more.
if you google it you will see its not true other than men holding the majority of positions of power
I mean, one reason for why we don't hear about male agents targeting powerful women is the sad fact that there aren't that many powerful women around, when compared to powerful men.
Patriarchal social structure makes this sort of an attack more common against men than women.
You just don't hear it as often because there are far fewer females in such positions. But they try to go for all tiers of power and use honeypots of both sexes. It's well documented if you do a basic google search, look up Romeo Project, KGB swallows and ravens concept. Male honeypotters are under-representation in mainstream culture due to the sexist notion that only men can be seduced by sex and women somehow do not.
Newsflash: men and women are different
Which woman do you think would make a valuable target?
Any national politician or major CEO.
Name a few candidates that are worth being targets.
For politicians, it's quite rare they fall for it - men or women. I can't off the top of my head recall any American one in the last few decades.
For CEOs ... My question stands.
Uh, Lisa Su? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Su
OK. Honest question: What is the value of targeting her? What could they get from her about AMD that's so important?
She's CEO of the #2 GPU maker.
They targeted the CEO of the #1 GPU maker.
i believe he also admitted that she knew he was a spy as well
Silicon Valley was prescient
Sadly, there's too much money at stake for the cheating to be of any consequence.
I'm seeing this as a final moral failing of society. If Jensen gets through this, as he will, it means that character doesn't matter.
Surely it takes character to get through it? It takes character to admit to human failings and weaknesses, especially when it’s extremely publicly. It’s not a mark of character to collapse and disappear out of contrition under such circumstances. Poor character would say “it never happened and I don’t even care anyway if it did or what you think”.
Isn’t that what’s been happening? These rumors have been circulating for quite a while. His hand is definitely forced here, by the board.
Character is admitting you stole from the cookie jar before mom and dad discover the cookie crumbs all over your hands, not after.
We don’t actually know that wasn’t the case here. And nobody goes around shouting “I’m having an affair everybody!” - affairs by their nature are somewhat discreet.
Down 3% on XYZ platform, which is a tokenized proxy for NVDA. Maybe I will be buying the dip. It's close to the long-term $180 support...
I'm confident it occurred to Jensen almost immediately that she might be a spy - so I think he banged her but also never leaked any info or left her alone with his unlocked phone or laptop. While he may not have known for sure if she was a Chinese spy, he did know she was a board director and, until recently, the COO of a major Nvidia customer anxious to gain favorable business terms and glean insight on Nvidia GPU allocations for their data centers (and before that she was a journalist(!)).
Jensen isn't dumb, and in his position, nearly everyone he meets wants something from him; whether info, insight or a favor. Many of them dutifully report back to someone, whether an employer, government or just their social media friends, their impressions of which way Nvidia might be leaning, when the next product allocations might be released, etc. So it's unlikely Jensen ever fully trusted her, because it's been well over a decade since he could fully trust anyone not in his immediate family or an old friend. It's hard to appreciate just how much daily life is different for someone like Jensen but I once got a peek. For several years I was a skip level below the CEO of a high-profile F500 valley tech company. I've been part of the core team on the jet with the CEO during an Asia trip packed with keynotes, key customer/govt mtgs, media and analyst interviews. Everyone wants something from the CEO (including every employee on his team). And Jensen is CEO of the most valuable company on earth, so all that's on steroids. He's learned to be guarded to some extent with everyone outside his immediate family and old friends.
And I had a first-hand experience which makes me think Jensen suspected her almost immediately. Over a decade ago, back when I had a C-level title at a well-known F500 valley company. We had operations in China then and before going there the first time, I got a mandatory in-person briefing from actual FBI MiBs all about the incredibly subtle long-games that intelligence agencies run on foreign execs, not just in China but in other countries too. They had concrete case studies of real execs like me getting played (and not just by honeypots). It was very persuasive. On my trips to China I took all the common sense precautions they recommended but, sadly, I never detected Mata Hari making a play for me. :-) Probably not quite a big enough fish to warrant my own heat-seeking hottie.
BUT... a few years later, I did a fair number of high-profile keynote speeches at major business conferences. Unlike pure tech conferences, these often had audiences of a couple thousand people, big 50 foot screens, etc. The company started sending me to these because, unlike our CEO, I was unusually good at public speaking, despite actually being an introvert off-stage. After one such conference for C-level execs of public corps held in a major European capital, I ended up hanging out overnight before meetings elsewhere in Europe the next day. That evening there was an off-site banquet dinner and magic show. I went since I had no plans and dig magic. It was open seating and I grabbed seat at a table for 8 filling with random attendees, a VP from Unilever, a C-something from Airbus, etc. When I finished chatting with the Airbus guy about the A300, I turned to see the open seat next to me now had a rather tall and attractive early 30s blonde. She introduced herself as the marketing director for a St. Petersburg tech company, raved about how much she loved my keynote and proceeded to ask a lot of pretty insightful questions about it (note: this was before the Ukraine war).
Over dinner she continued to inquire about my work, background, etc and was overall quite charming. I didn't mind as I'm partial to blondes anyway and if someone who looks like Margot Robbie's sister has interesting questions about my area of expertise, who am I to complain? As dinner progressed to the show, she grew increasingly friendly, asking a long question just as we adjourned to the hotel buses, so ended up taking the seat next to mine. Back in the hotel lobby she asked if I wanted to grab a drink in the bar but I was already starting to think this level of attention was a bit much. Sure, I was 'stage famous' that day due to being the center of attention at the conference for an hour but... yeah, women as good looking as her aren't exactly common at 2,000 euro business conferences and the ones who are there tend to get a fair amount of unwanted attention, so they've learned how to project a professional demeanor that keeps things focused on business. I understand this dynamic from my wife - who's a tech executive with an MBA (at another valley company), a decade younger than me and also a quite attractive blonde. So, I very politely told my new Russian friend I had an early flight and was going upstairs to call my wife back in the US before my daughter left for school.
When I told my wife this amusing story, including my suspicion that my lovely new friend may have been a Russian honeypot on a random troll for relationships with C-level execs in global tech companies making widely used tech products - either for access, info or blackmail leverage - my wife dutifully disagreed insisting that I'm "totally hot enough to still 'pull'." I replied "Please never stop believing that... but when I first introduced you to my friends they all agreed you were 'way out of my league', so I'm under no illusions." :-)
Sadly, I'll never know the truth about my Soviet Sweetie (the nickname my wife kidded me with for weeks after). I'm sure she wasn't a high-end call girl, since you can't get into that conference without company creds and 2K euro. Bottom line, if I immediately suspected that maybe her interest wasn't purely in slammin' the sheets with my hot self", that thought surely occurred to Jensen because he's certainly had much more extensive counter-intelligence briefings and has had a far bigger target on his back every single day. Even if she wasn't a Chinese government spy, he knew part of her interest in their relationship was power, access and business advantage for her company. But Jensen bleeds green. I can totally imagine him privately telling a friend, "Bro, hot side-pussy's one thing, but business is business." Like many of Jensen's transactions lately, I'm pretty sure he got a lot more than he gave. :-)
I also have some very close to low fortune number / FAANNG tech CEO experience and was thinking the same thing. He was stupid to engage at all IMO - you did the right thing, Jensen did not. But, it's implausible that he isn't smart enough keep his lip zipped, if nothing else was.
The whole point of affair is leverage and blackmail opportunities. Like Bezos, Jensen stands to lose half his wealth if his wife divorces him now
The title on this is just extremely misleading.
Nvidia is doing an investigation of Jensen Huang being targeted in an intelligence operation; ie, an investigation of something that happened to him.
The title implies that Jensen Huang is the target of Nvidia's investigation.
It is not at all misleading. Huang's conduct as the CEO of arguably the most influential AI firm in the world, having an extra-marital affair with a Chinese spy, is obviously going to be a central part of any investigation into this.
Language matters.
"XXX is being investigated" implies there's some kind of possible wrongdoing here.
There might be some of that, but this is not likely the focus of the investigation.
They're investigating a potential influence operation involving the CEO, which may overlap with investigating some kind of culpability on his part.
It's an unfair editorial headline.
- edit -
Here is the literal source:
"" initiating an independent investigation in light of recent reporting that founder and CEO Jensen Huang has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort.""
Jensen is not specifically under investigation, if anything the language is sympathetic to him being the target of a foreign Op.
The US government is investigating Alice Huang (not Jensen) for obvious reasons.
Obviously the 'bar' is different for the CEO than for someone acting with criminal intent, but it's not far to say that Jensen is under investigation.
> "XXX is being investigated" implies there's some kind of possible wrongdoing here.
There clearly is some "possible wrongdoing here", hence the investigation which has been launched if for no other purpose than to rule that out.
> They're investigating a potential influence operation involving the CEO
They're not investigating what we already know. The presence of a spy leaves no doubt that Huang was the target of an influence operation, the primary concern now are the details of Huang's conduct with respect to being targeted.
" has been launched if for no other purpose than to rule that out.
This is false and basically slander.
The statement from Nvidia indicates no such thing.
They are investigating the fact that Jensen was the target of a Foreign Intelligence Operation - literally those are the words.
The target of the government's investigation is her (Alice Huang) not him.
They are not 'investigating Jensen', it's an unfair misrepresentation.
‘Nvidia said on Sunday that it was opening an investigation into Jensen Huang, its chief executive and co-founder, after he acknowledged to the company’s board that he had been intimate with a business executive who U.S. intelligence determined was a Chinese spy.’
New York Times (paywalled) is happy to call it an investigation into the CEOs conduct. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/08/technology/nvidia-investi...
> "XXX is being investigated" implies there's some kind of possible wrongdoing here
A Board independently investigating its CEO with outside counsel absolutely communicates they think he may have fucked up. You don't do that in the normal course of affairs.
No - this is not true.
They are not 'investigating the CEO' - they are investigating the situation.
In the press release they are investigating the fat that Jensen 'was the target of an operation'.
I think the misrepresentative nature of your comment proves my point.
> this is not true
What experience or reporting are you basing this on?
> They are not 'investigating the CEO' - they are investigating the situation
This is how all independent investigations by a Board are phrased. Because half the time, you don't fire the CEO. Would you say walking into a meeting where you have a 50% chance of being fired is a nothing burger?
> the misrepresentative nature of your comment proves my point
I think I'm pretty clearly representing what a lot of folks on this thread are misunderstanding, willfully or ignorantly, about the nature of this sort of a Board action.
The board of directors have no jurisdiction to investigate an "influence operation on their CEO", and even if they did, they have no power to do anything about it. Their jurisdiction is within the business.
If this was primarily an investigation of the external actors, this would be talking about what law enforcement are doing.
The wording of the announcement is pretty neutral but I think it's clear what is within and without their bailiwick. The title is a much more informative description than "Statement from the board".
Nvidia is a Delaware company. Under Delaware law a board can remove its CEO by majority vote, for any reason or for no reason.
The board can't remove him from the board. That would take a shareholder vote, but Jensen also doesn't own enough shares to block a vote.
> board of directors have no jurisdiction to investigate an "influence operation on their CEO", and even if they did, they have no power to do anything about it
They don't need to, but of course they can. You hire investigators and an outside law firm to dig stuff up.
It's not an editorial headline when it's straight from the source lol. This is the official NVidia press release.
Do you seriously think NVidia wants to have more eyeballs on this scandal?
It is literally not straight from the source.
Source:
"initiating an independent investigation in light of recent reporting that founder and CEO Jensen Huang has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort."
They are investigating a situation where their CEO was the target of an Op - that's totally reasonable and doesn't remotely hint that he has done something wrong.
This is the right thing for the board to do: "We are investigating the situation because we have been informed that foreign actors may have targeted our staff".
Unless he has been up front with the board from the beginning about his affair, he has done something wrong.
This is Jensen Huang we are talking about. One of the most significantly influential people on earth right now, one of the planet’s most obvious espionage and blackmail targets, someone who both companies and nations will be spying on, and he is shagging a foreign national — a Chinese citizen! — in secret.
Even if he has enlisted no company employees or resources in his deception of his wife, this is remarkably negligent behaviour on a professional level. Just enormous.
Be serious: this is a huge deal and they are for sure looking at his conduct.
To defend him: he should be able to "shag" anyone he likes in secret, no matter the nationality. The question is whether he offered any confidential information in the process. To me this rather looks like some finance and law bros are attempting to oust him now that his company is the most valuable in the world.
I, as a shareholder, do not care if the CEO is having an affair so long as the business is not affected. If you can establish the latter, then his personal conduct is between him and his partner.
What I am extra curious about is why is Alice Huang not being rigorously investigated prior to or alongside all of this? If these allegations are true then what she did amounts to treason and a variety of other things. Failing to register as a foreign agent is another. She, at the very least, should be held by the US the same way we hold other foreign nationals charged with treason.
> I, as a shareholder, do not care if the CEO is having an affair so long as the business is not affected
There are 100 different ways that the CEO falling victim to an espionage plot could impact the business.
Please use the whole quote:
> I, as a shareholder, do not care if the CEO is having an affair so long as the business is not affected. If you can establish the latter, then his personal conduct is between him and his partner.
If you read the second sentence then you and I agree. I care if the business is affected, I don't if it is not and then the rest of this is a personal matter that doesn't need to be a news story because it is gossip.
Perhaps there should be an investigation? Perhaps the existing awareness of this relationship of his is cause for the board announcing publicly this investigation?
Sure? I didn't disagree with doing an investigation. I simply stated what I was curious to understand and what I cared about. It seems like a lot of people replying particularly care about the fact that he cheated on his wife and would like others to. I simply stated that only matters if the affair, in itself, actually resulted in nvidia being compromised.
> It seems like a lot of people replying particularly care about the fact that he cheated on his wife
People care because the cheating puts him in a potentially compromising situation, especially in the context of corporate espionage. It's not that complicated.
I think if you actually read this thread and others you'd find a laundry list of invented reasons people think his cheating is significant to the business. So, I think it is somewhat complicated, and I think it very much is up for debate. The consequential part isn't the affair, imo, it's what was shared during or as a result of the affair. The affair itself being the main attraction is a distraction. At this stage we don't know if Jensen reflected these beliefs because of Alice or if he already had them. Frankly, as the top chip maker in the US, much less the globe, he stands to benefit quite a bit by being able to serve China.
Yes. For one, it makes them vulnerable to blackmail, so their decisions can no longer be trusted.
But the cat is out of the bag, so the blackmail won't work anymore.
> ...so long as the business is not affected.
This isn't some hypothetical situation. The woman Huang admitted having an affair with was an executive at a data center company that bought billions of dollars of Nvidia chips and is suspected of having smuggled them to China.
She was allegedly recruited by China's Ministry of State Security to not only gather intelligence from Huang but to try to influence him to lobby for relaxed chip exports to China. We don't know how "influential" she was but pushing for less stringent export controls on Nvidia's chips is exactly what Huang has been doing.
Less stringent export controls are also what he would and should have been arguing for both as a business executive and, paradoxically, probably even even if he was lobbying for US interests. US leadership keeps making the same dumb mistake. When you restrict access to some advanced technology to another technologically advanced country, it's not like the other country just cries and beg you to give it back. Nothing is so advanced that it can't be replicated.
So you going from the other country being fully dependent upon you (putting you at an economic/geopolitical edge) to urgently incentivizing them to make their own advances in the restricted industry, which may eventually surpass your own achievements. For instance the Wolf Amendment [1] is the reason China was never allowed on the 'international' ISS. [1] The idea is that they'd just steal all of our tech or something. So it simply led to the Chinese creating their own space station while the ISS continues to deteriorate with no replacement in sight.
Same thing with chips. Come back to this post in ~15 years.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Amendment
> Less stringent export controls are also what he would and should have been arguing for both as a business executive and, paradoxically, probably even even if he was lobbying for US interests.
You're missing the point, which is that once you've been compromised by a foreign intelligence service, it doesn't matter whether or not what you were lobbying for was logical or "right". What matters is that your relevant actions have been tainted and motivations can no longer be fully trusted, so you lose your credibility.
Nvidia's board is probably going to try to do what it can to look like it's taking this matter seriously without terminating Huang, but that's because there's no succession plan at Nvidia.
Huang's political clout is gone, and he may never get it back.
I'm not missing that at all and I fully agree with you. I'm just saying his actions don't condemn him in any way which would also mean it was likely a bad play by China. Ostensibly it's understandable wanting to get an inside with him, but if his natural path forward aligns with your interest then there's not much to be gained, and a potentially significant amount to lose, because now it will predictably result in knee-jerk reactions.
> I'm just saying his actions don't condemn him in any way...
He has lost all credibility. He might remain as CEO of Nvidia, especially because the company doesn't have a succession plan, but this is going to be the end of his political clout for a good long time, perhaps forever.
> ...which would also mean it was likely a bad play by China.
I don't really think this is the case. China will continue to smuggle chips and work on its own technology regardless.
The bottom line is China's MSS successfully compromised one of the world's most powerful executives and the price that will be paid is mostly on the US side. Given that this was disclosed to Trump a while back and he sat on it, don't be surprised if this becomes another big problem for Trump, who is in a horribly vulnerable spot right now after the midterms.
Let me rephrase that - his business actions don't condemn him. Obviously his indiscretions have ruined him, and those were certainly his actions, so you're right - but I'd classify those as his personal actions.
I don't agree this will harm the US in any way, shape, or fashion. It'll be used to justify even more stringent efforts at tech control and greater surveillance efforts of key technological players. All of this fits into US desires to a t. And while none of this will directly harm China, and may even paradoxically benefit them (for reasons mentioned previously), I can't imagine this is something they would directly aim for relative to a more favorable prior status quo.
> Obviously his indiscretions have ruined him, and those were certainly his actions, so you're right - but I'd classify those as his personal actions.
Putting aside how strategically important Nvidia is as a company, and the access and influence Huang has on policymakers including the president of the US, he had an affair with an executive at a customer that has purchased billions of dollars of Nvidia chips and may have been smuggling them to China.
The minute you mix your infidelity with the business you run, it's no longer "personal".
> I don't agree this will harm the US in any way, shape, or fashion. It'll be used to justify even more stringent efforts at tech control and greater surveillance efforts of key technological players.
No country is a monolith. The US isn't. China isn't. This is a real mess for the Trump administration and his allies/sycophants, ammunition for Democrats, a potential boon for China hawks, a setback for China doves, etc.
As for "even more stringent efforts at tech control and greater surveillance efforts of key technological players", I don't think this is a simple subject but let's be honest: the oversize influence and power of tech companies today is probably something that does need oversight and regulation. Nothing about the billionaires running these companies suggests they are interested in what's best for average working-class Americans.
> ...I can't imagine this is something they would directly aim for relative to a more favorable prior status quo.
As I stated, China will continue to smuggle Nvidia chips and work on its own technology. This won't affect that. This woman is not the only honeypot in corporate America (or Washington DC) and the Chinese espionage apparatus is very well established and won't be dismantled by this one discovery.
As for the status quo, what status quo are you referring to? The one where China was under peak effective bilateral tariffs of ~150%?
China is biding its time and preparing for conflict, which it knows could very well be kinetic. It has been working very hard to sanctions-proof its supply chain and, more importantly, financial system. It is expanding its nuclear arsenal at the fastest rate globally. And so on.
Do you think that's at competition with what I said? I don't think so. I simply stated that his affair either has the power to be demonstrably important here or not at all. I am responding to threads and threads full of people that seem to mostly care about the fact that he had an affair.
You stated "...so long as the business is not affected."
Let's be clear, again: Huang has admitted an affair with a woman who was an executive at a company that bought billions of dollars of Nvidia chips that may have been smuggled to China, and it turns out she was allegedly a Chinese spy. Her apparent mission: gather intelligence and influence Huang, who has a close relationship with the US president, to lobby for relaxed chip exports to China. Which is what he has been doing.
Huang admitted the affair in an email to company employees, and the Nvidia board of directors has launched an investigation.
By any reasonable definition, the business is clearly affected.
Yeah, I don't believe we've established that beyond the fact that the US is kind of moralist and it's important to onlookers. We don't really know whether it's materially affected the business yet.
> I, as a shareholder, do not care if the CEO is having an affair so long as the business is not affected.
This is actually a pretty challenging standard, because the moment the CEO tries to gaslight their spouse/partner that it's not an affair, they are already at risk of bringing the company into a deception: working late is almost always the cover, for one thing. But at that moment you have a substantially compromised person as a CEO.
This might seem a silly place to draw the line, but consider what the escalations are — the CEO's PA being asked to mislead the spouse, inventing a meeting they were at, inventing an away trip, etc. etc.; they always mount up. There is no executive who has an affair who doesn't pretend they are at work, and there's no pretence that doesn't ultimately put an employee in a difficult position.
It's entirely reasonable for a board to say that if the CEO or the chairman is having an affair it is their business.
And this is before you even consider that the affair is ordinarily likely to be with an employee.
Now, if a CEO at Huang's level of geopolitical importance is having an affair with anyone, it's the government's business, and the shareholders', because it makes them a (local and international, commercial and state-level) blackmail and espionage target even if they are not literally boffing a spy, which in this case he evidently is.
So yeah, it matters.
And, as politician Jesse Unruh famously said -
"If you can't eat their food, drink their booze, screw their women, take their money and then vote against them in the morning, you've got no business being up here."
Jesse M. Unruh, a powerful former Speaker of the California State Assembly.
CEOs should be at least as resistant to influence as politicians.
I'm sorry, but how can a Chinese national living in Singapore be charged for treason in US? Doesn't the concept of treason presume some kind of loyalty to the state in question, usually through citizenship?
Right. Nothing much that can be done here, though she might not want to visit relatives on holiday.
Yup treason is the correct term if Alice Huang were a US Citizen. But they're not.
> I, as a shareholder, do not care if the CEO is having an affair so long as the business is not affected.
This is really naive. And I bet other people could do other questionable things that you'd consider to color their entire character and render them untrustworthy.
I, as a shareholder, do care. It isnt about moralism. Sony america lost their ceo because he was banging some 20yo as a perk to sign a contract with another media company and she got mad about it when her side didnt pan out (no acting roles).
It is bad for business. Thats all. Him doing this is bad for Nvidia and bad for shareholders.
If nothing else, it's a distraction. And it tarnishes the street's golden image of NVIDIA.
That is a quid pro quo, that is not the same as simply having an affair with another powerful executive.
What is wrong with these VIPs? I always thought when you become a big, important CEO or politician, they gave you The Book and the first chapter says "Just bang your hot Chinese mistress. Don't tell her any secrets." Jeez, how dumb are these guys?
Have you tried having sex with someone for an extended time and not catching some emotions? It's tough.
You in a few years time: "I can't believe this person who lied and cheated, lied and cheated to ME."
I think you'll be rather disappointed. This is a view I've held since college that's stayed with me to this day. The same logic I see on display in this thread is what I heard when Republicans were going after Bill Clinton. The fact that he lied was the cherry on top, they were very eager to charge him with some kind of moral crime. The fact that the moral crime existed was a giant distraction to the actual risks, and the risks largely didn't exist if the moral crime did not exist.
If someone is willing to cheat on their spouse, do you think they'll have any compunction about cheating their employees and shareholders?
Cheating employees is practically entry level stakes for being a CEO. Not only is it tolerated, it's celebrated(at least in the United States).
Cheating shareholders, esp large ones is a big no no since there are real consequences for CEOs engaging in such behaviour.
I certainly don't condone it but nonetheless the underlying motivations as well as the potential consequences of those behaviors seem almost entirely unrelated to me.
In both cases, someone breaches a confidential trust in order to pursue a self-serving motivation, and lies in order to avoid potential consequences.
It's myopic of you to assume that every marriage is the same and that having mistress would constitute a breach of confidential trust.
I made no such assumption. My post was about “cheating,” because that is what Huang did.
It speaks more to not having entered into a compatible relationship than anything else. I've been in a situationship where effectively if my state still had common law marriage, we'd be married, but there's no cheating in the relationship because frankly we're on the same page that these labels are a form of control to begin with. One can only get blackmailed by something one is embarrassed about. I don't believe in vice as a concept that anything but artificially created low-hanging fruit by authorities to create leverage out of normal human activities, so feel free to blackmail me on who I sleep with or not sleep with, I... don't care. Once the statute of limitation passes, same goes for drug use or other victimless crimes that are "against society". The state created the situation that opens one up to blackmail for no reason besides the enforcement of one particular set of perceived norms. As an individual, I call bullshit on the coercion. If societal pressure is all that is responsible to create the rationale and reason for deception, how can it not be fundamentally a crock of shit.
There's no indication that there's nonconsent involved, nor any actual espionage. this is a way to impress upon someone a set of moral code that is arbitrary and capricious with extreme social coercion. To judge by that standard is pretty close to the anti-gay hysteria of the McCarthyist era. Enough is enough.
No little kid whose dad cheated on their mom thinks "vice" is an artificial construct designed to control people.
And it's not like "McCarthyists" invented the concept of adultery being bad. Almost every major culture developed the concept independently. The Abrahamic religions, Chinese confucianism, Buddhism, and Hinduism had little contact with each other 2,000 years ago, but all developed the notion of adultery as a major moral transgression.
Well he wrote that he was deeply sorry to his family, so presumably his relationship is not as libertine as yours.
I mean, the last 3 paragraphs of NVidia's statement are:
> While the Board has no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised, the Board's inquiry will examine all available information.
> Jensen fully supports the review and has committed to cooperating with it.
> The Board has confidence in Jensen and his leadership team and will provide further updates as appropriate.
My interpretation of this is simply this is what you do when you are the board of a public company and the U.S. government has accused your CEO of being the target of espionage. You need to get the facts, if only to cover your own asses. If it turns out the accusations are hogwash, then you have facts of your own that you can release to counter whatever hogwash the government puts out. If it turns out your CEO committed a crime or otherwise did something improper, then you need to dismiss the CEO to prevent your complicity in the crime. If it turns out there holes in your security protocols around top executives, you need to plug those holes.
But until you have the facts, coming from an independent investigation, neither they nor us have any clue what the right response is.
> this is what you do when you are the board of a public company
No, it's not. In a majority of cases where a public-company Board independently investigates its CEO, the CEO gets removed [1]. (And they're all announced like this. If you're in that 40% where you don't remove the CEO, you don't want to have burned them.)
If the Board still unconditionally trusted Jensen, they'd have him hire outside counsel to conduct an independent investigation of NVIDIA's security apparatus.
[1] https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/s...
40% is a pretty high percentage where they don't get removed.
There's some kind of a cognitive bias here similar to the base rate fallacy but not quite the same.
Yes, 40% is pretty high in the abstract. But a 60% chance of getting removed is insanely high compared to the base rate for this concrete case! Before this news broke, what were the odds of Huang not being a CEO of Nvidia a year from now for any reason. I'd definitely have taken the under at 1%, and the over maybe at 0.1%?
Like, what other risks were on the horizon? Him getting bored or tired? Not that man. A terminal illness that was diagnosed too late to treat? That happens very rarely for the ultra rich with their access to infinite high quality health care. A freak accident, e.g. airplane crash? Possible, but the rates are <<1%. Targeted violence? Unlikely, Nvidia is too far removed to be hated that strongly by anyone. The board firing him for some other reason? It'd have to be something that can't be papered over with hush money (e.g. any standard sex scandal almost certainly could; it's only the national security aspects that make it impossible here). A hostile takeover or similar that leads to him being ousted? Logistically and financially impossible.
Going from so rare it's not worth planning for to even odds is a pretty darn big shift from a single event!
> 40% is a pretty high percentage where they don't get removed
It's very low for a CYA exercise.
Boards don't independently investigate their CEOs as a matter of routine or to cover their asses. That's what an independent investigation by outside counsel is for. The Board taking the reins on this is absolutely substantial to anyone who understands how corporate Boards work.
We'll see.
Another way to put this is "Do you feel comfortable shorting NVDA tomorrow morning based on this news?" Because if Huang is removed it's very likely they will face challenges finding and reacting the next big use-case for GPUs, not to mention capitalizing on AI (which already is seeming shaky for other reasons). If you're completely confident that this will result in his removal, it seems like there's easy money to be made here.
Personally I don't feel comfortable enough to put my money where my mouth is. I'd give it even odds, but even odds, to me, is not enough to say it'll go one way or another.
> Because if Huang is removed it's very likely they will face challenges finding and reacting the next big use-case for GPUs
Huang has done a fine job managing NVidia, but he's also the poster child for "better lucky than good."
It's not like he led NVidia out of dire straits to pivot into the cryptocurrency/blockchain, and then AI, bubbles. They were making hardware for computer graphics, and that just so happened to be the same foundational hardware for the two biggest technology bubbles of the 21st century, twice in a row.
I find it hard to believe NVidia's incredible success can be attributed exclusively to him. Sometimes you're just in the right place at the right time.
They’ve been in the right place at the right time too many times.
It’s a bit like when you watch a fantastic FPS player play, they just always seem to be in the right place to catch the other guy off guard.
Huang didn’t know exactly what was coming - but he knew enough and managed to put NV into a position where it could quickly exploit whatever did emerge.
> twice in a row
If I ever hit a home run in baseball, it would be blind luck. If I did it twice, nah, that would be incredibly unlikely, as I have zero talent at any ball sports.
Gates, Jobs, and Musk - each had a home run 3 times. That is so unlikely to be happenstance, ya gotta admit they had talent.
I'm not a fan of Jensen by any means, but he did start the CUDA program some eight years before it was actually useful (the alexnet moment). He called the need for high performance linear algebra for scientific computing, it just took a while for it to find its first killer app.
CUDA was well-used in HPC and other compute-intensive spaces long before neural nets were in style.
If you look at the evolution of GPGPU computing, at least from an HPC perspective, CUDA is almost an obvious step. What’s perplexing is that AMD and Intel let it get so far ahead in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
CUDA was a formalization of what happened outside of NV.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUDA#History
That was becoming a hot topic at the time prior to DL getting on the map but it was smart to recognize the latent demand for GPGPU. Was still going to lead to solid growth with AI was just not going to be the exponential growth we saw if it didn't happen.
Meanwhile intel (as but one prominent example) was also researching and manufacturing GPUs for most (all?) of that timeline yet somehow managed to fumble it. Quite often IMO simply not screwing up while already holding all of the necessary cards is a lot harder than it looks.
> Another way to put this is "Do you feel comfortable shorting NVDA tomorrow morning based on this news?"
This is a silly way to read corporate governance. There exist finer levers for tuning up and down exposure than going long or short.
> If you're completely confident that this will result in his removal
Straw man. Nobody argued this.
What's being argued is that the top comment's implication–that this is par for the course–is bullshit. The Board is signaling a partial loss of confidence in their CEO. There is also substantial risk, though no assurance, that Jensen will step down.
> I'd give it even odds
That's what about 50% chances mean.
A percentage is a pretty meaningless if there underlying factors that separate those who dont.
I image a large portion of those investigations start with the board or shareholders seriously displeased with the CEO and wanting to mount a case for removal.
Sure, but everything you're describing here accurately falls under the label of "investigating the CEO".
Accurate literally, but misleading to anyone who speaks English.
The title implies he is the target of the investigation — that is because he is indeed the target of the investigation.
That is different from the fact that the allegation is that a malicious actor targeted him.
Those aren’t mutually exclusive things.
They need to complete the investigation to decide whether he was an active participant.
Its like you’re assuming an investigation is done after someone is determined to be guilty, rather than being done as a means to make the determination.
Yes he could have been targeted by a foreign intelligence agency. That's a government problem to investigate.
The board would be more concerned with his conduct as a CEO and whether he's still best to lead the company.
Having an affair didn't happen to him, he presumably was fully aware of what he was doing there.
I would suspect they will be investigating how easy it is to honeypot him.
> suspect they will be investigating how easy it is to honeypot him
The Board should be investigating two things: if Jensen knowingly lied to the Board and if he corruptly colluded to suppress any government’s investigation into Alice Huang.
If the answer to both is no, he is a man who got duped and compromised America and Taiwan’s national security. Still, perhaps, a great founder and CEO. Send him to marriage counseling and have his security detail report to the Board.
If the answer to either is yes, he should resign, personally indemnify the company against shareholder lawsuits, and switch focus to defending himself against criminal charges (and working on his marriage or divorce, as it might be).
I disagree. A lack of candor or active deception are certainly disqualifying, but dangerous naïveté or a lack of discretion with respect to company secrets and devices is just as bad.
> dangerous naïveté or a lack of discretion with respect to company secrets and devices is just as bad
It can be mitigated. Lying cannot.
In case you don't remember we had a US President who lied under oath about having an affair and it was no big deal.
It would've have been a bigger deal if Monica Lewinsky was a Russian spy.
> Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang said the chipmaker’s dealings with Megaspeed International were “normal and not unusual”
https://archive.is/ljGPF
No lie here.
> compromised America and Taiwan’s national security in the process
absurd claim with zero evidence to support it. if there was any evidence that he actually compromised US national security he would already be gone. there isn't even any evidence that the woman is a Chinese asset. that is just speculation from whatever felons leaked their illegal surveillance of a US citizen's private life.
> if there was any evidence that he actually compromised US national security he would already be gone.
It's likely the story coming out like this is the best mitigation they can come up with, if AI is a national security interest of the US and he's granting a Chinese asset access to said interests. He's already conspiring with a foreign government against the interests of the US.
That he's extremely visible in his role is probably the only reason he's still around, until next week or whenever. The US doesn't vanish prominent CEOs like that, that's more a China thing.
> That he's extremely visible in his role is probably the only reason he's still around
The stock is massively up under his leadership. Firing Jensen would cause a massive loss of personal wealth to everyone on that Board. You don't even want to announce an investigation like this unless you're personally scared of getting implicated in a potential cover-up.
Oh my, that’s quite the confident response. Do you have any particular info on this that I’m missing?
> if there was any evidence that he actually compromised US national security he would already be gone
Seriously? Our intelligence community and corporate governance is just operating in perfect shape right now?
> there isn't even any evidence that the woman is a Chinese asset
Lol got it.
>if there was any evidence that he actually compromised US national security he would already be gone
okay that's a joke in this administration right, the sitting American president is a threat to American national security and they made a woman who took private trips to Assad the Director of National Intelligence. If you're capable of selling out American national interests to foreign autocrats chances are that'll you'll be appointed special envoy and get a promotion rather than the opposite
The same Assad government that Trump and allies then helped to overthrow and replace with a group that was officially designated as an alias of Al Qaeda?
The admin definitely stinks but Tulsi is one of the cleaner ones.
https://2017-2021.state.gov/amendments-to-the-terrorist-desi...
Nobody needs to be told twice they are going to be victim of a honey pot.
They are 1) covering their butts 2) placating external influences (probably state dept) 3) trying to find out what happened, but not have it be exposed 4) Avoiding risk of their Goose laying Golden Eggs at all costs.
The man is bringing them gazillions, they are not going to flip him over like a cheezeburger.
He's replacable but it comes with gigantic risk.
Board's tend to enable thing that fill their coffers with money and protect that over everything else.
How is it misleading? He cheated with a Chinese spy. That didn't just happen to him, he did that.
Cheating isn’t itself culpable outside of an eventual civil case for divorce.
Whether he abused his executive powers is a different problem.
The US has a no-fault divorce, so cheating wouldn't matter here either.
Also a Chinese spy who worked with Chinese companies who had been flagged as violating import/export rules.
One of the most important (of many) questions the board will have is "did Jensen give her any privileged information?" which means it is also an investigation of him.
> of something that happened to him.
That's not accurate either, and it isn't that simple. Both him and the spy consciously made the decisions that led to this ordeal.
Title is not incorrect, at least by 2026 standards where engagement bait is accepted as long as it's not a complete fabrication.
Feels like they mean hes become an asset for a foreign intelligence service
Something didn't "happen to him." He voluntarily did something that created an (allegedly inadvertent) security problem.
Yeah, but the "intelligence operation" was that his girlfriend was a spy. Inevitably, that's going to involve asking questions like "did he give his girlfriend sensitive stuff?".
The headline is indeed misleading, but so is your reinterpretation. It's not like the guy got his phone hacked.
> but the "intelligence operation" was that his girlfriend was a spy
It's worse than that - his mistress was a spy. This carries additional concerns since it opens the possibility of blackmail or extortion.
They’ll do what? Go public with it? Hard to do when it’s already public.
It's public now - the concern is obviously regarding the period of time when it wasn't public.
They can go public with more information that we don't know yet, but the man does.
> "did he give his girlfriend sensitive stuff?"
Usually those body parts you share are quite sensitive. That's the point.
> of something that happened to him.
Oh no, not again, I just cheated on my wife with a chinese spy, it just "happened to me"
He is the target of the investigation: "Nvidia launches investigation into CEO's affair with suspected Chinese spy" - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3dxw10rjn9no
They better check the firmware on his laptops.
> something that happened to him
What's with this passive language, as if he didn't have agency in cheating on his wife with a spy? Oopsie-daisy, it just happened TO him, like an unexpected rainstorm. Come on.
Right. But the overall feel of the communication is puzzling. I know it is PR, short, concise and on purpose, but I _read_ something's on the way.
This has to be the most "well, akchually..." comment I've read on HN in a long time.
Yes, Huang was targeted, as obviously he knew he would be. But "ie, an investigation of something that happened to him." Are you for real with that one? Perhaps Huang should try that with his wife: "You see honey, the fact that my penis ended up in the vagina of a Chinese spy was just something that happened to me."
Good grief.
> Nvidia is doing an investigation of Jensen Huang being targeted in an intelligence operation
The Board has launched an investigation of its CEO. This is how it’s being branded.
If you’re just coöperating with law enforcement, all assuredly on one team, you don’t launch a Board investigation, you let your CEO and an outside law firm handle it.
This is completely false. The board has a fiduciary duty to conduct an independent investigation. It is completely routine.
> board has a fiduciary duty to conduct an independent investigation
What are you basing this on?
> It is completely routine
This is bullshit. In a majority of cases where the Board independently investigates a public-company CEO, the CEO gets removed [1].
[1] https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/s...
> The NVIDIA Board is initiating an independent investigation in light of recent reporting that founder and CEO Jensen Huang has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort.
This is the exact wording. Nowhere do they say they are investigating the CEO. They are investigating an incident, and the CEO is part of it.
> Nowhere do they say they are investigating the CEO
They don’t have to. If you know anything about how Boards work, you know what this means.
Boards don’t independently investigate anything with outside counsel as a regular matter of course. They have their CEO do it.
To round this out, CEOs survive independent Board investigations about half the time. But it points to a diminishment of their power and trust.
Here's the vastly more sensible title from WSJ: "Nvidia’s Board to Investigate Reports That Jensen Huang Was Spying Target"
Both are based on the linked statement, the primary source. A Board forming an independent committee with outside counsel means it’s considering implicating the CEO. You don’t say that. But you also don’t do this if you have full trust and confidence in your executive.
Really disappointing.
Insightful comment from the other thread:
If you are one of the most powerful man on earth you are going to be the target of all the secret services of all powerful countries. Period.
It is their job. You take decisions that are worth billions, you influence people that take decisions that are worth billions, and affect their countries.
They are going to study you for years. Your personality type and that of the people around you. Your weaknesses. Your problems and that of your family.
They will employ the most sweet and the most pleasurable and gorgeous honey that there is in the world to create the perfect Honey trap.
Normal people just can not imagine how sweet, specially when it has been customised around your needs and desires.
It is not just a woman wanting to have sex with you. It will be the woman in your dreams.
Honeypot. Oldest trick in the book.
What's interesting to me is how the chineese got so close to him, because this is all about knowing exactly his soft spots and how he kicks when someone tickles him in different ways. No pun intended.
On a spy level this is great story.
On a personal level, I hope the chineese spy will come forward and tell us if Jensen also sleeps with that leather jacket.
It would be sad if the AI boom took a huge nosedive because someone couldn't keep their dick in their pants.
> It would be sad if the AI boom took a huge nosedive because someone couldn't keep their dick in their pants.
One CEO with a chinese spy and another CEO with an obvious Mossad asset.
Would be sad indeed.
If the AI boom takes a massive nosedive because someone couldn't keep their dick in their pants, then there was no substance behind the boom. There might be some speculative volatility as a result of this sideshow, but if this is the pin that pops the bubble, then it was still a bubble.
AI will be fine.
Nvidia supplies the top end hardware for training the best models. If Nvidia falls on hard time, it would affect training.
One thing I find difficult to understand about Nvidia's and Jensen Huang's position on China is that they keep stressing that the "Chinese government has strictly limited imports of the H200 in favor of its own chip companies," as though any sale of H200 chips should be seen as a win against those restrictions.
Does anyone believe the Chinese government really wants to "strictly limit" imports of Nvidia chips? Of course they want the chips. No one is buying the act. We are smart enough to see through China's attempt to portray these purchases as favors to the US. Except Nvidia, apparently--though playing along conveniently serves its business interests.
This whole Jensen Arc is weird in many ways.
1. Too many overlook the plain economic explanation for Jensen to cooperate with China.
2. Too many assume this is bad for america.
3. There seems to be a presumption that he crossed a line, other than in his marriage.
Seems like the anti-AI movement is very hungry for a scalp to me.
The leather jacket went to his head thought he was God, ripe for the picking by Chinese honeypot operation.
Well said.
Proverbs 16:18 "Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall."
How much of the recent decline in AI stocks was due to insider trading on this news? The previous explanation of it all being due to datacenter-hating dems taking power in the US seemed credible last week but in light of this one has to wonder.
Sending women to spy on powerful man, oldest trick in the book...
Companies need to go back to providing hot secretary/mistress (of preferred gender) for key personnel.
okay, so jensen is gonna get sacked, right? i mean if federal employees serve very long sentences in prison for the same "mistake," he's gotta face some kind of music, right?
Hmm, looks like maybe he was "not consistently candid in his communications with the board"... Now where have I heard this before?
Nerds in power need to remember that if a gorgeous women is coming on to you then she’s probably a spy. Imagine how many don’t get caught!
lol this feels like an attempt to put a nepo-baby in charge of nvidia because there's already ones in charge of every other company and PE doesn't like that they don't have one of their friends kids ruining nvidia like they do every other company.
totally one of the possible scenarios
Plot twist: the Chinese honeypot's goal was only to attract Huang into adultery- and the puritanism of Americans would do the rest and sabotage the company that is instrumental in the US leadership in AI.
What a sticky situation to be in. it was strange to see the Nvidia spokespeople so outwardly supportive of the arrangement between them at first. I remember reading that they said the US government would have let them know if she was a threat. Also probably doesn't feel the best to be his wife or family right now. Hope this doesn't spell more problems for them politically. But if it does, it's probably warranted ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I don’t buy the story folks, timing seems very weird.
The fact that Trump was briefed a year ago and did not say a word. The fact that the story erupts in the weekend and not during a trade day.
We are missing big part of the story.
Him banging a Chinese intelligence asset was already reported in the news last month, and that story broke on a Thursday. What's new today is his apology letter/admission, and the board investigation. The timing of those announcements was up to Nvidia, so it being outside of trading hours is not at all suspicious.
> I don’t buy the story folks, timing seems very weird.
> The fact that Trump was briefed a year ago and did not say a word.
Easiest thing in the world to believe.
Why would Trump comment on it to the public?
The very last thing Trump wants people to spend any time thinking about is wealthy and powerful people engaging in sexual impropriety.
Sure, but why release it now?
I don’t see who wins by orchestrating the release these news. It was not a random leak.
And here I thought all the self dealing financials would take him down (it will).
A little surprised the govt found out so late. They are supposed to be on top of high profile spy targets.
Crazy how naive HN is about foreign intelligence. There seems to be disbelief that this is a thing that can happen.
US politicians are all suddenly going to become anti AI in the coming weeks and months.
Them leaking this isn't surprising, they have to show the public after those midterm results that they're going to start holding the trumpian technocrats accountable.
“Let’s destroy the only driver of revenue growth in the S&P500!!! Yaaaay!”
Said no politician ever.
Huh thats an extermely simplistic read no offense.
Polticians say what makes them popular, most Americans are not concerned about AI fueled gains in the markets atm. Politicians are already reversing course this week in droves. Have you paid attention to the last few days? Polticians are absolutely switching up on everything.
AI doesn't provide companies economic value either, other than through speculation on stock prices. Its just cost companies a lot of money and contributes nothing to actual revenue. You'll see a lot of people playing musical chairs around this issue, nobody wants to be the person who rides that sinking ship to the bottom.
The smart money in the markets also seem to recognize this. Theres no point in continuing to die on a hill for AI for the sake of stock market gains, when its clear that its not going to continue to fuel those gains for much longer.. The mean reversion has already begun, these AI stocks are down 50% this month...
Politicans will chase that trend in either direction, its not about if number goes up, you dont want to be the person screaming about how great something is after its clearly started to die/rejected by the public.
The AI gravy train is over.
Did micron or Nvidia stop making money overnight or something?
Are you going to be using more or less AI in five or ten years time?
Tickets for the train are on sale.
Or memory prices deflate and China enters the market in significant way for both memory and GPUs.
People wake up and realize LLMs are a dead end and a year from now we plateau, and people start to understand its not worth paying for unless it cost the equivalent of a jetbrains subscription (yearly).
People are out here spending 50k a year on employee AI usage, those same employees are destprying the product, making their offerings mediocre compared to the competition, and off shoring their job to agents in such a way that its basically fraudulent.
Imagine spending 50k a year on tools ypur employees use to lose you a 100k, imagine soending 50k a year on tools that your employees use to work 2hrs a day and then watch youtube/pretend work the remainder od the day.
Llms are a massive net negative contribution to 90% of businesses.
So are meetings but 90% of businesses have them.
Will remain CEO and suffer no consequences.
I mean look at Musk. Does his board investigate him for his many egregious acts.
No, but I think investigations into Musk are going to increase with the recent changes to the US congress.
Musk had to give up his Tesla chairmanship and some other control. Although the latter part is debatable.
He didn't voluntarily give it up. It was part of a settlement. And who's on the token chair now? Don't confuse chairmanship with operational control.
"He didn't voluntarily give it up. It was part of a settlement. "
That's what I meant with my earlier comment. You wrote, "Does his board investigate him for his many egregious acts.", his demotion resulted from the Board's and the SEC's investigation.
Literally a B serie plot
National security for what? Gate keeping ai? lol. Theater.
wtf is this misleading title?
obvious Lou Pai style play here
they’re setting in motion a plan to get a divorce judge to order the selling of their shares before the bubble bursts
making an otherwise prohibited transaction to be legal
I don’t think that was totally planned during the affair, but the opportunity arised with the election and created a reason for Jensen to admit it so decisively after everyone knows she was a spy
I don't think it is a big deal it's a personal matter and it shouldn't have any bearing on the company's business.
Oh, come on. If the mistress is indeed a spy, it certainly might have bearing on the company’s business.
Yeah, but some people seem to focus more on the infidelity than the spying.
The better question would be who is leaking classified US intelligence in an attempt to blackmail Jensen Huang and/or destroy the US's most valuable AI infrastructure asset?
The attack isn't coming from China. It is coming from the NY Times, FT, and presumably some employees of the CIA who are committing felonies.
I think it is more likely that US Intelligence leaked this because Huang was already being actively compromised. By leaking it you remove the leverage the CCP had.
100%!!!
I wouldn't be surprised if we see some polymarket or kalshi bet about nVidia... Or some put option...
Why is the press release from the board of directors on a first name basis? Shouldn't it use "Mr Huang" or something of the sorts?
Side question but how do hot female spies convince themselves to sleep with aged billionaires (or bug eyed government high ups for that matter), what is in it for them?
Are you that naive? Since chimps females have been genetically programmed to seek the Alpha of the species. Jensen is smart, resourceful, made a fortune, he's actually a great dude, he'd be a catch for most Chinese women. Aged or not, he can still exert influence, father offspring that will be generously looked after. He has many stories that would thrill most younger women, especially with traditional family values like the Chinese.
Everything to gain and nothing to lose.
What’s the easiest way for a woman to get into 10 Downing Street?
Suck Boris’ Johnson.