Forrester researcher calls Huang’s resignation a test for the AI boom
President Donald Trump was reportedly briefed about intelligence findings involving Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, well before the scandal erupted publicly. Asked over the weekend whether he wished he had acted sooner on that information, Trump said, “I don’t think so,” and maintained that Nvidia’s CEO was an “honorable guy.” Nvidia announced Huang’s resignation on Thursday, effective immediately, and said Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress will step into the role of interim CEO.
The resignation capped a week in which reporting on Huang’s personal life overtook the company he co-founded in 1993 with Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem. Huang had led Nvidia ever since, with no clear successor in sight, and the company said it is now considering both “internal and external candidates” for the permanent job. The company’s board of directors also said Thursday that it had named its first-ever chairman, Harvey C. Jones.
Kress has been Nvidia’s chief financial officer and an executive vice president since 2013. Before joining the company more than 13 years ago, she worked at Cisco, Microsoft and Texas Instruments. In a statement on her new post Thursday, Kress said Nvidia’s “strength has always come from its people” and that she is “committed to building on the extraordinary foundation Jensen created over the last 33 years.”
The resignation followed a weekend apology. After news reports of Huang’s relationship with a woman identified as former Megaspeed executive Alice Huang, the then-CEO wrote a Sunday email to employees apologizing for being “unfaithful to my wife.”
“My actions hurt her and our children,” Huang wrote, adding that his colleagues also “deserve better” from him.
Neither Huang nor Nvidia identified by name who he had been intimate with, but the apology arrived shortly after Nvidia said it was investigating whether Huang had been “the target of a foreign intelligence effort.”
The New York Times reported last month that U.S. intelligence agencies had examined Huang’s close relationship with Alice Huang, who also goes by the name Huang Le, and determined she was feeding information directly to Beijing. Huang is a common surname and the two are not related. Beijing denies the allegation.
Nvidia initially maintained that Huang would stay on as CEO while the company conducted its investigation. Scrutiny grew late Wednesday after reports emerged that Huang had a separate affair with an Nvidia executive who reported to him directly. His resignation arrived shortly after. The company did not address either relationship in its Thursday announcement. Later on Thursday, Reuters reported that Huang had an intimate relationship with a second employee, citing unidentified sources.
Nvidia has not provided notable new updates on the internal review it announced Sunday. At the time, the company said it had “no reason to believe” that either national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised, but that its inquiry would examine all available information.
Attention has also focused on Nvidia’s ties to Singapore-based Megaspeed International, which prominently touts the companies’ partnership on its website. Last year, Megaspeed was accused of illicitly shipping advanced Nvidia computer chips into China, but in December it said there was “no evidence” of such exports. On Thursday, Megaspeed said it takes its obligation to comply with American export control laws “extremely seriously” and that it was committed to working “constructively and transparently” with the U.S. government.
Singaporean authorities said they questioned Alice Huang and confiscated her passport last year as part of an investigation into Megaspeed. They concluded there was not enough evidence that she had committed a crime, but suspected she provided “inaccurate information” to downplay her role at the company and barred her from returning to the country.
China has denied that it attempted to ensnare Jensen Huang. Its Foreign Ministry earlier this week called the spying allegations “unsubstantiated” and said they amount to a smear campaign against Beijing.
Trump later said the FBI is looking into Huang’s affair with Alice Huang, though the status of that probe is unclear. Lawmakers from both parties on Capitol Hill are calling for further investigations.
Trump has called Huang “smart” and “amazing,” repeatedly insisting he join him on foreign trips. After news of his resignation broke on Thursday, the president maintained that Huang had “done a fantastic job” and floated former Apple chief executive Tim Cook, who has similarly remained in Trump’s orbit over recent years, for the CEO seat. “There is only one man to take his place,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “Legend replaces a Legend!”
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries criticized the president’s intervention, saying the Republican administration had “repeatedly undermined the free market economy” and that Thursday marked the latest example of “Donald Trump weighing in on behalf of his views connected to corporate America, as opposed to focusing on working class America.”
Huang had maintained a close relationship with Trump through the president’s second term, lobbying successfully for looser AI regulation overall, including less strict limits on sales of Nvidia chips to China. He is among the tech CEOs who have dined at the White House and traveled on Air Force One.
Nvidia shares fell more than 4% by market close Thursday, after plummeting earlier in the day. Some analysts suspect the foreign intelligence allegations will strengthen calls in Washington for stricter export controls with China, which could in turn renew trade strains overall. Others have called it a watershed moment for Nvidia, the chipmaker that has long been seen as the crown jewel for powering AI. And questions of security risks facing the companies at the forefront of this technology are piling up.
The shockwaves of Huang’s exit stress how few figures hold so much power in the AI race. Nvidia, whose high-end chips have emerged as the leading building blocks for artificial intelligence, is one of the world’s most valuable companies today, and Huang himself, often wearing his signature leather jacket, has risen to fame across the tech world.
Stephanie Balaouras, group research director for Forrester, said Huang’s resignation from Nvidia isn’t just a test for the company but the AI boom as a whole.
“If Nvidia stabilizes quickly under new leadership, the AI infrastructure boom will have demonstrated resilience,” she said. “If its stock, financing relationships, or ecosystem commitments remain under sustained pressure, that would add evidence to the fragile side of the AI bubble ledger.”
AP writers Kelvin Chan, Chan Ho-him, Mae Anderson and Lisa Mascaro contributed.