(DCNF)—The CEO of Nvidia resigned Thursday following allegations of an affair with a suspected Chinese spy.
Jensen Huang announced he is stepping down immediately and leaving the company’s board following a board meeting to determine his status with the company, Reuters reported Thursday. Huang’s departure follows his Sunday confession to the company that he had a romantic relationship with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based tech firm Megaspeed and an alleged Chinese asset.
“Jensen’s contributions to NVIDIA are profound. NVIDIA is one of the most consequential technology companies in the world,” Harvey Jones, a chair on Nvidia’s Board of directors, said in a memo to company employees, Reuters reported.
“The Board takes seriously our duty as stewards of this great company,” Jones told the company.
Colette Kress, Nvidia’s chief financial officer, will fill in for Huang as the company searches for a new CEO, Reuters reported.
Nvidia did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Meanwhile, Huang is also accused of having a second affair with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care, the New York Times (NYT) reported Wednesday. A video reportedly identified the pair engaging romantically at a hotel in San Jose, California.
Kress is listed No. 32 for Forbes’ list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women, worth approximately $1.2 billion. She has worked as executive vice president and CFO at Nvidia since 2013, and previously worked for Microsoft for 13 years, according to her Nvidia executive biography page.
Alice Huang used her relationship with the chipmaker CEO to access export-restricted Nvidia chips and help ship them to China, and Reuters reported. Nvidia established a verbal agreement with clients to limit Chinese customer sales to 49 percent, according to Financial Times.
“I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry,” Huang said in his Sunday confession in a company-wide email, according to Axios.
“The risk is not that Nvidia suddenly loses its technology roadmap … that roadmap is largely visible for the next several years. The risk is execution,” Michael Feldman, portfolio manager at ClearBridge Investments, told Reuters. “Jensen has been the chief conductor of an extraordinarily complex system.”
“I don’t think you should be talking to me directly,” Huang said on the phone to the NYT on Wednesday, when questioned about the alleged affair with Powell.
President Donald Trump was informed of Alice Huang’s ties to China in 2025 but took no actions at the time, the NYT reported. U.S. officials thought Huang was unaware of her connection to China at the time.
The Department of Justice overtook the criminal investigation into Megaspeed following an email from Nvidia’s lawyer, Tim Teter, to the Commerce Department, the NYT reported Monday.
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