Jensen Huang has resigned as CEO and board member of Nvidia, the chipmaking giant he co-founded in 1993.
Huang, 63, stepped down Thursday as photos surfaced showing him embracing Alice Huang, 49, in Taipei, Taiwan, on June 2, 2024. The images were captured shortly after he delivered the keynote address at COMPUTEX 2024. In the photos, Jensen Huang places his hands on Alice Huang’s hip while she wraps her arm around his shoulders.
“I want to speak to you in Chinese, but I have so much to tell you. I have to think too hard to speak Chinese. So I have to speak to you in English,” the Taipei-born CEO joked during his speech that day.
Alice Huang is identified as an alleged operative for China’s Ministry of State Security and a former executive at Singapore-based data center company Megaspeed International. Jensen Huang first began socializing with her in December 2023, and their affair is believed to have begun in 2024.
The married billionaire also faces accusations of cheating on Lori Huang, his college sweetheart and wife, with Kimberly Powell, an Nvidia vice president, and another unnamed Nvidia employee.
The scandal has erased roughly $200 billion from Nvidia’s market value this week. The $3.92 trillion company now confronts additional legal exposure due to an unusual gap in its corporate liability coverage.
Nvidia lacks common types of directors and officers (D&O) liability insurance that typically protect companies against legal costs and damages arising from claims involving their executives, the Financial Times reported. D&O insurance is purchased in three parts: Side A covers personal assets and legal defense costs of directors and officers; Side B reimburses the company when it pays for executive legal fees; Side C protects the business itself when named alongside officers in a lawsuit.
Nvidia only carries Side A insurance, leaving the company vulnerable to lawsuits naming both the company and Jensen Huang together.
“For a public company, it’s normal to have Side A and Side B coverage — it’s almost regarded as compulsory. And in the US, most large public companies would have Side C as well, because the exposure is so serious. Everyone gets sued all the time,” Aaron Le Marquer of Stewarts law firm told the newspaper.
Nvidia already faces a federal class-action lawsuit filed in California accusing the company and Jensen Huang of violating federal securities laws by failing to disclose significant national security and regulatory risks.
The leather jacket-wearing executive built Nvidia from a 1993 startup into the world’s dominant chipmaker, capitalizing on the artificial intelligence boom to make it one of the most valuable companies globally. His resignation marks a stunning end to a three-decade tenure that transformed the semiconductor industry.
