// THE VERGE — INTELLIGENZA ARTIFICIALE
Jensen Huang and the decline of the visionary showman founder CEO
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On January 6th, 2025, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang got his rockstar moment at last. He strode triumphantly onstage, hand raised in the air, to the claps and cheers of a 14,000-person arena absolutely packed with influencers and fans, their faces awash in blue glow, as he made his entrance in a black leather jacket that shimmered in the stadium’s lights.
Few are cheering for Jensen Huang now. He has left Nvidia after seemingly enabling two chip smuggling scandals and allegedly having three extramarital affairs, including one with an alleged Chinese spy at the same time he was mingling with President Donald Trump.
The world is watching to see if this scandal might disrupt the entire US AI industry and perhaps destabilize the stock market along with it. That’s because Huang wasn’t merely running the first $5 trillion company, he was the visionary leader in control of the must-have GPUs powering the worldwide AI boom, part of a company that represents around 6 percent of the S&P 500 stock market index all by itself. And he didn’t plan for succession if he ever stepped down.
The 63-year-old once said he preferred to die on the job; he once suggested he’d work until he was 90 or 100, then carry on leading the company as a robot.
It’s not easy to replace Huang, partly because he had no deputies. Around 60 employees reported directly to the CEO. “He built the company around himself, and everything that happened there flowed through him,” says IDC analyst and former computing journalist Tom Mainelli.