Washington(National Times)- Jensen Huang resigned as chief executive of Nvidia on Thursday, ending his 33-year run at the helm of the AI giant he co-founded after revelations that he had two extramarital affairs, including with a woman accused of spying for China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The company\u2019s board said Huang had stepped down as president, chief executive and board member, effective immediately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chief financial officer Colette Kress will serve as interim CEO while keeping her finance role, and the board will consider internal and external candidates for a permanent replacement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It named former Synopsys CEO and board member Harvey Jones as its first-ever board chairman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Huang, who co-founded Nvidia and is its fourth-largest investor with a stake of about 3.61 per cent, will exit the board as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nvidia shares fell more than 10pc in premarket trading, and weighed on the broader market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pressure had been mounting on Huang in recent days after reports said the 63-year-old, who is married, had an affair with a Chinese businesswoman who US authorities suspect of spying for Beijing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nvidia\u2019s board met on Wednesday to consider his ouster, a person familiar with the matter said, after reports earlier in the day that Huang also had an extramarital affair with a senior company executive who reported to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Huang\u2019s exit plunges the $4 trillion company into uncertainty and threatens to disrupt an AI ecosystem that he helped bankroll by pouring Nvidia\u2019s swelling cash pile back into cloud providers, suppliers and the industry\u2019s biggest labs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe risk is not that Nvidia suddenly loses its technology roadmap \u2026 that roadmap is largely visible for the next several years. The risk is execution. Jensen has been the chief conductor of an extraordinarily complex system,\u201d said Michael Feldman, portfolio manager at ClearBridge Investments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn a world with real bottlenecks, that coordination is a competitive advantage in itself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Investor sentiment toward AI stocks has already been shaky as soaring cash burn and rising debt at traditionally cash-rich tech giants fuel doubts over whether the AI boom will pay off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The departure could also have far-reaching consequences for US chip export policy, given Huang\u2019s push to preserve access to the Chinese market and his close ties with US President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump said on Sunday that Huang had \u201cdone an amazing job for our country\u201d and that the Nvidia chief had told him he had no idea the Chinese woman he had an affair with was a spy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Huang\u2019s rockstar status
For years, Nvidia was best known to gamers chasing top-tier graphics. But its chips\u2019 ability to perform many calculations at once has made them the oil of the AI boom and a strategic prize in the US-China race to dominate the technology. It also made Nvidia the world\u2019s most valuable company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That turned Huang into a rockstar CEO, mobbed by fans in Taiwan and South Korea who ask him to sign books, posters and sometimes even their bodies. Such is his pull that stocks moved at his mere mention of company names at events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But scrutiny of his conduct has intensified in recent days after reports of his relationship with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based cloud company Megaspeed, who US authorities have concluded was a Chinese intelligence asset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The two, who have been photographed together in Taiwan, Singapore and California, are not related.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Washington has also investigated Megaspeed, a coveted official Nvidia cloud partner with priority access to its chips, over suspicions it helped China obtain advanced AI chips restricted under US export controls, according to media reports. Beijing has denied Alice Huang is a spy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Earlier this month, Nvidia\u2019s board launched a probe, led by independent directors with outside legal counsel, into whether Jensen Huang had been targeted by a foreign intelligence operation. It also expressed confidence in him at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The controversy escalated on Wednesday when the New York Times reported Huang also had an affair with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia\u2019s vice president of healthcare, who reported to him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington(National Times)- Jensen Huang resigned as chief executive of Nvidia on Thursday, ending his 33-year run at the helm of the AI giant he co-founded after revelations that he had two extramarital affairs, including with a woman accused of spying for China. The company\u2019s board said Huang had stepped down as president, chief executive and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136335,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest_news","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n