**Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Faces Ouster Threat

Amid Extramarital Affair and Alleged Chinese Spy Scandal**

Jensen Huang, the visionary co-founder and chief executive officer of Nvidia, is facing the unprecedented prospect of being ousted from the tech giant he has led for over three decades. The leadership crisis comes in the wake of a turbulent week that saw the world’s leading artificial intelligence chipmaker shed more than $600 billion in market value. The staggering financial decline follows explosive reports detailing Huang’s extramarital affairs with two women, including a businesswoman suspected by United States officials of operating as a spy for the Chinese government.

Nvidia’s board of directors convened late Wednesday evening to deliberate on whether to remove Huang from his post at the helm of the $4.2 trillion enterprise. The company supplies the vast majority of specialized processors that power the global artificial intelligence boom, making its leadership stability a matter of critical international economic and technological importance.

The crisis erupted publicly on Sunday when Huang, 63, issued a candid memo to Nvidia staff admitting that he had been unfaithful to his wife. The confession followed investigative reports regarding a relationship with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed. United States intelligence officials have raised suspicions that Alice Huang was working for Chinese intelligence—an allegation that the Chinese government has firmly denied.

The situation intensified dramatically on Wednesday when The New York Times reported that Huang had engaged in a second extramarital relationship, this time with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of healthcare, who directly reported to him. The newspaper’s reporting was corroborated by five individuals with direct knowledge of the company’s internal operations.

Following reports that the board was actively preparing to strip him of his executive duties, Nvidia’s shares plunged by more than 8 percent in after-hours trading on Wednesday. Investors and market analysts are now anxiously weighing the future of the technological titan as it navigates the gravest leadership crisis in its corporate history.

Can Nvidia’s Board Remove Huang?

The question of whether Nvidia’s board possesses the authority to remove its iconic leader has a straightforward answer under corporate governance rules: Yes.

According to Nvidia’s corporate bylaws, Huang can be removed from his position "with or without cause" by a simple majority vote of the board of directors. The board currently consists of 11 members, with Huang being the sole internal director; all other members are classified as independent.

Unlike many other prominent figures in the modern technology sector—such as the leadership at Meta or SpaceX—Huang does not possess majority voting control over the company. LSEG data indicates that Huang owns approximately 3.6 percent of Nvidia, leaving him vulnerable to a unified board decision. Furthermore, Nvidia stands out among its tech industry peers for not having a designated board chair, a structural reality that Steve Okun, a Singapore-based geopolitical analyst, described as "pretty astounding."

"What this certainly shows is the utter lack of appropriate governance at Nvidia," Okun told Al Jazeera. "This should never have been allowed to happen."

What Is Nvidia Doing?

In response to the cascading scandals, Nvidia’s board moved quickly over the weekend to initiate an independent investigation to determine whether Huang had been "the target of a foreign intelligence effort." At the same time, the board issued a statement expressing "confidence in Jensen and his leadership team."

Behind the scenes, however, corporate preparations are well underway. Bloomberg reported that the board has engaged an outside advisory firm to help identify potential executive replacements in the event that Huang is forced out.

Although Huang has never formally designated a successor during his tenure, industry observers and analysts have pointed to potential internal candidates. According to Reuters, analysts are closely watching Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress and high-ranking engineer Ian Buck as logical successors.

Lian Jye Su, a chief analyst at the technology research group Omdia, described Buck as "a highly regarded industry veteran," but cautioned against premature certainty. "This remains a speculation until the final decision," Su noted.

What Would His Departure Mean for Nvidia?

Jensen Huang cofounded Nvidia in 1993, steering it from a niche designer of graphics processing units for video gaming into the undisputed powerhouse of the artificial intelligence revolution. Today, Nvidia controls an estimated 80 to 90 percent of the global market for the advanced chips required to train and run complex AI models, making it the second-most valuable publicly traded company in the world, trailing only Apple.

"Jensen is no doubt the de facto leader of Nvidia," Su told Al Jazeera, highlighting Huang’s "willingness to make early bets, identify major technological shifts, and steer the company in the right direction."

While Su suggested that the immediate operational continuity of the firm would face minimal disruption in the short term, a change in leadership could profoundly alter Nvidia’s trajectory over the years to come. "A different CEO may have a different view of the future," Su added.

Financial markets have already begun factoring in this monumental shift. "The market is starting to price Nvidia without its founder as the likely outcome, not a tail risk," said Armina Rosenberg, cofounder of Minotaur Capital, an investment firm holding Nvidia shares.

For analysts like Okun, the overarching question is whether Huang has become synonymous with Nvidia’s success, or whether the company’s technological dominance has rendered it self-sustaining. "That’s the question everybody’s going to try and figure out from a business perspective," he said.

What Trouble Is Huang Facing?

The alleged connection to a foreign intelligence operation has compounded the pressure on the CEO. While Okun noted that the espionage allegations "spice up the story quite a bit," he emphasized that Nvidia was already confronting a deeply damaging business inquiry: Why Megaspeed received such a massive allocation of advanced chips, and where those processors ultimately ended up.

According to The New York Times, Megaspeed purchased approximately $4.8 billion worth of high-end equipment from Nvidia. Since 2024, United States authorities have been actively investigating whether the Singapore-based firm acted as a conduit to help China acquire restricted advanced technology in violation of strict US export controls. Megaspeed has consistently denied these allegations.

Despite the gravity of the national security concerns, some trade and economic experts suggest the direct transfer of classified technical information via Huang was unlikely. Carsten Holz, an expert on the Chinese economy at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, told Al Jazeera that the likelihood that Huang "could pass on significant technical information to another person, whether a spy or not, would seem extremely low."

Political fallout has also been swift. Speaking to reporters on Monday, US President Donald Trump stated that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was actively looking into the situation. Trump added that Huang had personally assured him he had "absolutely no idea" that the woman in question was an alleged spy.

The legislative branch is likewise demanding answers. Three Republican House committee chairs have formally requested that Huang appear before a closed-door congressional briefing scheduled for November 18. Reuters reported that Huang could face a formal subpoena should he fail to respond.

Okun suggested that the mounting pressure means Huang "certainly has to take a leave of absence" while the investigations unfold.

Further complicating matters is the status of Huang’s upcoming diplomatic and industry engagements. His participation alongside President Trump at the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit—slated for November 18–19 in the Chinese city of Shenzhen—has been thrown into doubt, according to the South China Morning Post. Huang had previously traveled with Trump to Beijing in May, a diplomatic mission that yielded an agreement permitting Nvidia to sell its H200 AI chips to specific approved Chinese corporations.

When asked on Sunday if Huang would join him at the upcoming summit, Trump remarked, "I don’t know, but I’d certainly take him."

Huang had previously invested considerable lobbying efforts urging the Trump administration to roll back portions of the strict semiconductor export restrictions originally implemented by President Joe Biden, given that mainland China remains one of the largest and most lucrative markets for Nvidia’s hardware. With his future as CEO hanging in the balance, the outcome of the board’s deliberations will determine not only the governance of Silicon Valley’s most valuable enterprise, but also the future landscape of the global artificial intelligence supply chain.