Nvidia's board is reportedly preparing to oust co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang, according to the Wall Street Journal, just days after the company launched an internal investigation into his relationship with an alleged Chinese spy. Huang, the company's only CEO to date, has never appointed a successor. He admitted on Sunday, 8 November, to a relationship with Chinese businessperson Alice Huang, who is unrelated to him and is reportedly a former executive of the Singapore-based AI cloud provider Megaspeed.

Megaspeed secured preferred cloud partner status with Nvidia in 2023, giving it access to the company's advanced AI chips, and had been under investigation by US authorities for more than a year over concerns it had been steering advanced Nvidia chips into China in violation of US national security regulations. The relationship between the two was discovered during that probe. The neocloud company has reportedly purchased more than $4.8bn worth of Nvidia chips since 2024. Alice Huang was reportedly introduced to Jensen Huang by her husband, Kang, who is in his early 50s and was once a star fund manager in China before founding Shanghai Hexi in 2010.S1S2

A new report from The New York Times, published on 11 November, alleges Huang had a second extramarital relationship, this time with Nvidia's vice-president of healthcare, Kimberly Powell. The incident has sent shockwaves through the industry, highlighting governance concerns at the centre of one of the world's biggest companies and a key figure in the US race for AI leadership. The company has reportedly lost more than $450bn in value since Huang admitted to the affair, and stocks fell a further nearly 7% in overnight trading.S2

Reporting also suggests Megaspeed is potentially one of several Chinese companies with access to Nvidia chips. Reuters reported that a Chinese university bought Nvidia's powerful H200 AI chips last month, while the New York Times found that the US administration may have cleared some of these chip exports itself. If Huang is ousted, the company's chief financial officer, Colette Kress, or vice-president of cloud Ian Buck could take over, at least in the interim, according to Reuters.S2