// TECHCRUNCH — INTELLIGENZA ARTIFICIALE
The unfolding Jensen Huang scandal: a timeline
Nvidia co-founder and now former CEO Jensen Huang has never been as prone to controversy as AI leaders like OpenAI’s Sam Altman or SpaceXAI’s Elon Musk. But the 63-year-old industry kingpin recently admitted that he cheated on his wife of 40 years in affairs that could have ramifications beyond Huang’s personal life and U.S. national security.
U.S. officials believe that one of Huang’s likely romantic interests, Megaspeed executive Alice Huang, is a Chinese spy who has been feeding information back to Beijing. (Alice Huang, a Chinese citizen, is of no relation to Jensen Huang.)
Megaspeed is a Singapore-based AI infrastructure company that reportedly purchased $4.8 billion worth of Nvidia chips over the last two years. The U.S. and Singapore have both previously investigated Megaspeed over suspicions that the firm was illegally sharing chips with China. The Justice Department has since taken over the federal investigation into the company, The New York Times has reported.
The story took a sudden turn on Wednesday. Citing five people who worked at Nvidia, the Times reported that Huang also had an extramarital relationship with Kimberly Powell, the company’s vice president of healthcare, who reports directly to him. Nvidia, Huang and Powell have not confirmed the report. Reached by a Times reporter, Huang reportedly said, “I don’t think you should be talking to me directly,” before hanging up.
By early Thursday morning, Huang was no longer CEO of the company he co-founded 33 years ago. Then, Thursday afternoon, Reuters dropped another bombshell, publishing a report alleging that Huang had yet another extramarital affair with another unnamed Nvidia employee.
The U.S. and China are embroiled in a fierce technological arms race to build the most advanced AI infrastructure, which could shape each country’s economic future, military prowess, and capacity for innovation. Nvidia is valuable in this competition as one of the world’s largest makers of AI chips, which are essential for accelerating AI development. But as an American company, Nvidia faces government restrictions on the sale of its most powerful chips to Chinese entities.
As the controversy unfolds, we are organizing the most relevant events into a reverse-chronological timeline to keep you up to date.
More reports continue to roll out that illustrate the shock and severity of Huang’s resignation from Nvidia.
Bloomberg reported that Huang looked “broken and shattered, his legendary energy depleted” by the time he surrendered his role on Wednesday night, uttering phrases like “whatever” and “I don’t care.”
Separately, the Wall Street Journal reported that Huang had been critical of his CFO and current interim CEO, Colette Kress. Huang is said to have described Kress as “a deer in the headlights” during a presentation this summer, and he had described Kress as someone who could not help him steer strategy or decision-making.