News of Jensen Huang’s affair with an alleged asset of China’s Ministry of State Security was first met with a muted response in Silicon Valley—including inside Nvidia itself. Huang’s resignation, after news of two other alleged romantic relationships with Nvidia staffers, has left both the company and the broader AI industry stunned.
As revelations about Huang’s initial affair came out earlier this week, rank-and-file Nvidia employees at first pursued business as usual, according to two current and three former employees at the chipmaker, speaking anonymously to protect relationships at the company. They trusted the board to investigate and act accordingly, but few workers thought Huang would actually leave.
Nvidia’s roughly 60,000 employees are loyal to the point that its global turnover rate is reportedly among the lowest in tech. Workers say they have heard it called having “green in your blood” or being “green-pilled” or on “team green,” referring to the company’s signature color. Huang was the company’s soul and the founder who stuck with it through challenges for 33 years. Employees appreciated that he kept layoffs rare and red tape sparing.
“In just three days we went from superhero cape to ‘Oops, I forgot my pants,’ and nobody’s quite sure how to swallow that,” one employee said. One former employee insisted in Huang’s defense that something “more sinister” must have been in play, and that affairs alone shouldn’t have led to his departure.
Huang’s peers in Silicon Valley echoed that sentiment, remaining vocal in their support of the embattled CEO even after his ouster. “One mistake does not erase a lifetime of leadership and contribution in building NVDA,” venture capitalist Antonio Gracias wrote on X earlier this week, using the company’s ticker symbol.
The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Huang has also had an extramarital affair with a vice president at Nvidia, and Reuters revealed on Thursday a second “intimate relationship” with an employee. Before those alleged affairs became public, multiple industry executives told WIRED that Huang is “irreplaceable” and that his biggest mistake, aside from his relationship with Alice Huang, was admitting the affair in writing to the whole company.
That appears to still be the prevailing sentiment. “A founder who has spent 30 years building such a unique company so capably has earned the presumption that he should keep leading it,” venture capitalist Sarah Guo wrote on X after Huang resigned, and a few hours before the Reuters report.
Authorities and Nvidia’s board have yet to formally accuse Huang of wrongdoing in his interactions with the businesswoman and suspected intelligence asset Alice Huang, and China has denied that she’s a spy. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the FBI “is looking into it.” Nvidia’s board has stated that it doesn’t believe Huang compromised any secrets, but it has hired the law firm Wachtell Lipton to investigate.
Add to all that, some corners of Nvidia had already been whispering about the relationship with Alice Huang; one venture capitalist who declined to be named recalled a recent dinner where an Nvidia executive claimed there had been rumors about Jensen’s romantic relationship with a young Asian woman.
On Monday, the venture capitalist had estimated a “less than 10 percent” chance Huang would lose his job at the top of the world’s most valuable company. “The wind’s going to blow over on this,” they said. “People are going to hate him for three months, and forget this ever happened.”
Huang’s resignation left them in shock.
The big anxiety in Silicon Valley remains the possibility that instability at Nvidia will burst an AI bubble, but analysts aren’t so sure.
The chief executive of one AI company, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to affect business relationships, says Nvidia’s recent bankrolling of AI startups and even buying companies such as model-hosting provider Hugging Face has helped prop up the need for chips. A “new professional CEO won’t do any of that,” meaning “systemic risk for the AI trade and AI bubble increases substantially,” the entrepreneur says.
Between bubble talk and Huang rumors, Nvidia shares in recent days have sunk to their lowest point in more than a year. Nvidia reports its latest quarterly earnings next week.
Inside Nvidia, meetings, projects, and the company’s aggressive culture are rapidly pressing ahead with what’s left of Huang’s vision.
Additional reporting by Will Knight and Zoë Schiffer.
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