Nvidia Board Prepares to Oust Founder Jensen Huang After Second Affair Revealed and Spy Scandal Deepens

Nvidia's board is preparing to remove Jensen Huang as chief executive and has engaged an outside firm to find a possible successor, with a board meeting called for as soon as Wednesday evening to decide his future, the Wall Street Journal reported. The move follows two separate affair revelations in a single day: the New York Times reported, citing five current and former employees, that Huang had an extramarital relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of healthcare and a direct report, with the two seen together at Nvidia's March conference. That disclosure compounded the ongoing national-security scandal over Huang's earlier admitted affair with Alice Huang, a Singaporean chip executive whom US intelligence agencies believe is a Chinese spy. Nvidia declined to comment on both reports. Shares fell as much as 10 percent in after-hours trading, extending a two-day regular-session loss of roughly $430 billion to $480 billion in market value. Prediction markets priced the odds of Huang's departure before the end of 2026 at above 70 percent following the WSJ report, and Nvidia was weighing a temporary chief executive before conducting a broader search.

The espionage dimension of the crisis widened on multiple fronts during the day. Reuters reported that a Chinese university with deep ties to the People's Liberation Army purchased approximately $123,000 worth of Nvidia H200 chips last month despite being on a US export blacklist, exposing gaps in Washington's export-control regime. Axios separately reported that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick repeatedly stalled implementation of a Trump-approved crackdown on Megaspeed, the Singapore-based firm linked to Alice Huang, even after Trump authorized action three times following an Oval Office meeting where Elon Musk, Marco Rubio, Scott Bessent and Pete Hegseth backed tighter controls. Lutnick warned the move would start a trade war with China; Trump ultimately ordered it done, but the restrictions remain unimplemented. Treasury Secretary Bessent had separately confronted Lutnick in a White House Situation Room meeting, asking why Megaspeed was not on the Commerce Department entity list. The New York Times also reported that Trump was briefed about intelligence concerns involving Huang and Alice Huang aboard Air Force One before the May China summit, contradicting his public claim that he was "amazed" by the allegations.

In Washington, Republican Senator Kevin Cramer of the Senate Banking Committee formally called for Huang's resignation, citing extortion risk. House China Committee chair John Moolenaar gave Huang a same-day deadline to respond voluntarily and said subpoenas were likely if he did not. House Republicans were also floating broader congressional hearings. Former US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns said Congress would push for a complete ban on the sale of advanced semiconductors to China. Democrats and Republicans united in calling for a federal probe, though they diverged on whether the Trump administration bore responsibility for the delayed response.

During regular trading on Wednesday, Nvidia shares recovered roughly 4 to 5 percent, lifted partly by CoreWeave's stronger-than-expected third-quarter results. CoreWeave reported Q3 revenue of $3.66 billion, beating estimates of $3.56 billion, and raised its full-year guidance to $13 billion to $13.3 billion from a prior range of $12 billion to $13 billion. CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator said Nvidia "is not one person" and that he saw "no reason" the partnership would change, providing a brief lift to the broader AI trade. The rebound proved short-lived after the evening's disclosures, with CoreWeave shares following Nvidia lower by about 6 percent in after-hours trading.

On the analyst side, Baird downgraded Nvidia to Neutral from Outperform and cut its price target 60 percent to $200 from $500 in a note titled "Icarus: Rise and Fall; Company Will Be Fine," warning that 2027 data-center spending could slow to 40 percent growth or less, that 10 to 30 percent of channel orders could face preemptive cuts, and that leadership uncertainty represented a material risk. Morgan Stanley removed Nvidia as its top semiconductor pick. Bank of America removed Nvidia, Micron and Lam Research from its US top picks list while maintaining buy ratings on all three. Goldman Sachs, by contrast, designated semiconductors as "clearly in oversold territory" and named Nvidia and Broadcom as high-conviction buys at 12 and 13 times baseline estimates, respectively. Microsoft briefly surpassed Nvidia in market capitalization to become the world's second most valuable company, with Apple retaining the top spot. Nvidia also disclosed a $10 billion investment in Anthropic at the company's IPO price, joining Alphabet, AMD, Broadcom, Micron, Microsoft and TSMC in a combined $26 billion private placement alongside an IPO targeting a valuation of $1.25 trillion to $1.4 trillion.