San Francisco (United States) (AFP) – Jensen Huang, the leather-jacketed architect of the artificial intelligence boom, resigned as chief executive of Nvidia on Thursday after revelations of two extramarital affairs, including one with a woman accused of spying for China. Chief financial officer Colette Kress will serve as interim CEO while the board searches for a successor, the company said, ending Huang’s 33 years at the helm of the global juggernaut he co-founded. Huang, 63, also gave up his seat on the board. The company did not give a reason for his departure.
The scandal sent shares of the multi-trillion-dollar company plunging, and the exit of Huang — a close informal adviser to President Donald Trump on AI — leaves Nvidia without its longtime leader at a crucial time for the sector. Huang was a central figure in the revolution set off by the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, with Nvidia’s powerful processors, once intended for video game graphics, becoming the crucial ingredient for building the AI models now spreading across the world. Huang remains Nvidia’s largest individual shareholder, with a stake of about 3.6 percent, according to the company’s most recent filing.
For many in Silicon Valley, the dramatic departure recalls that of Steve Jobs, who was pushed out of Apple by its board in 1985 and returned 12 years later to take the company to new heights. At the heart of the spy allegations is the race between the United States and China, with both superpowers trying to get ahead in an industry widely seen as the next industrial revolution. Nvidia shares were down as much as 13 percent on Wall Street following the announcement, but recovered to half that, with about $800 billion wiped off the company’s valuation since the weekend.
Dan Ives of investment bank Yorkville Ives called it “a dark day for Nvidia and the US tech industry,” but said the board had done what it needed to: “rip off the band-aid and take Nvidia into its next chapter without him.” The board said it had appointed Harvey Jones, a former chief executive of chip design software firm Synopsys, as chair. “The Board has full confidence in Colette and the leadership team, and we expect the company’s operations, customer commitments and product roadmap to continue without interruption,” Jones said in a statement.
Trump, who had stood by Huang throughout the scandal, said former Apple chief executive Tim Cook should take over. “Now that Nvidia CEO JENSEN HUANG, who has done a fantastic job, has resigned, there is only one man to take his place — TIM COOK of Apple. A Legend replaces a Legend!” Trump said on his Truth Social network.
The scandal began with reports that Huang, who has been married to his wife Lori Huang for more than 40 years, was involved in an extramarital relationship. Jensen Huang admitted on Sunday to having an affair, reportedly with Alice Huang, who was a senior executive at Singapore-based data center company Megaspeed. The two are not related. US intelligence reportedly circulated a memo this spring alleging Alice Huang was an asset of China’s Ministry of State Security. Beijing has rejected the spying allegations.
On Sunday, Nvidia’s board announced a probe into what it called reporting that Jensen Huang had been the target of a “foreign intelligence effort,” while saying it retained confidence in him. However, on Wednesday, The New York Times reported that Huang had a second extramarital affair, citing video evidence of him being affectionate with Nvidia’s vice president of health care, Kimberly Powell. Powell, 48, has been a public face of Nvidia’s efforts to expand its technology into higher education and health care. She was speaking at a conference in San Jose, California, where the two “were seen being affectionate at the hotel” by bystanders, the Times reported.
Interim CEO Kress joined Nvidia as finance chief in 2013 after nearly 25 years in financial roles at companies including Cisco and Microsoft. Nvidia said it would release its quarterly results as scheduled on November 17.
© 2024 AFP
