Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Resigns Amid Affair With Alleged Chinese Spy, FBI Probe Continues

Nvidia co-founder and longtime Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang resigned as president, chief executive officer, and a member of the board effective immediately, the company announced on November 12, 2026. The board accepted the resignation the prior day. Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress was named interim CEO while retaining her finance role, and longtime director Harvey C. Jones was appointed the company’s first board chair. The board said it would search for a permanent successor among internal and external candidates.

In its official statement, Nvidia thanked Huang for his “immeasurable contributions to the company and the industry” and stated that it expected operations, customer commitments, and the product roadmap to continue without interruption under Kress. Kress, who joined Nvidia in 2013 after roles at Cisco and Microsoft, said she was committed to building on the foundation Huang created over 33 years. Jones, a director since the company’s founding in 1993 and a former Synopsys CEO and executive chairman, will oversee the board during the transition.

The resignation followed a rapid sequence of events. On November 8, Huang emailed Nvidia employees stating, “I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did.” The board that day announced an independent investigation into reports that Huang had been the target of a foreign intelligence effort and said it had no reason to believe national security or company secrets had been compromised, while pledging to examine all available information. It later retained former acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim and the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to lead the inquiry.

Reports linked the admitted relationship to Alice Huang (no relation), a Chinese national and former senior executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based data center and AI infrastructure company that has been a major Nvidia customer in Southeast Asia. U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that Alice Huang is an asset of China’s Ministry of State Security, according to reporting by The New York Times and subsequent coverage. Surveillance reportedly identified communications between her and Jensen Huang. Megaspeed has purchased billions of dollars in Nvidia chips; U.S. authorities have investigated whether the company diverted restricted advanced AI processors to China in violation of export controls. Megaspeed has denied wrongdoing, stated that it takes U.S. export-control obligations “extremely seriously,” and pledged full cooperation with any relevant U.S. investigations. Beijing has rejected the spying allegations as groundless.

A second relationship was reported on November 11 by The New York Times. Citing multiple people who worked at Nvidia, the paper said Huang had an extramarital relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of healthcare, who reported directly to him. Sources described the pair being filmed in an affectionate interaction at a San Jose hotel during the company’s GTC developer conference in March; Huang’s security team was said to have sequestered a bystander who recorded it and offered a nondisclosure agreement. The Times stated it had not viewed the video. Nvidia’s code of conduct directs employees to avoid personal relationships that create conflicts. Huang did not address the Powell reports when contacted by the paper.

President Donald Trump said the FBI was investigating the matter. He stated that he had spoken with Huang, who told him he had no idea Alice Huang was a spy, and that he believed Huang. House committee chairs had previously requested a closed-door briefing from Huang on his interactions with the Megaspeed executive and related national security issues. A shareholder lawsuit was also filed alleging that investors were misled.

Nvidia shares fell sharply on the news. Reports indicated drops of as much as 12–14 percent in early or premarket trading on November 12, with the stock later paring some losses; the company had already declined substantially since the board investigation was announced. The moves reduced Nvidia’s market capitalization by hundreds of billions of dollars and briefly pushed it below $4 trillion in some sessions. Related AI and cloud stocks also declined.

Huang, 63, co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and led its transformation from a graphics-chip maker into the dominant supplier of accelerated computing hardware used to train and run large AI models. Under his leadership the company’s market value rose from the low tens of billions to multitrillions as demand for its GPUs exploded. He holds roughly 3.5–3.6 percent of the shares and has no super-voting rights. He has publicly advocated for maintaining or expanding U.S. chip sales to China while complying with export controls, arguing that overly strict limits accelerate Chinese domestic alternatives.

Megaspeed, spun out of a Chinese gaming-related enterprise, grew rapidly as an Nvidia customer while facing Commerce Department scrutiny beginning in late 2024; that probe was later transferred to the Justice Department. Alice Huang resigned from director and managing-director roles at related entities around the same time the board investigation began. Singaporean authorities have previously questioned her in connection with Megaspeed matters, according to reports.

The board’s investigation, the FBI probe referenced by Trump, congressional interest, and the Justice Department’s inquiry into Megaspeed remain ongoing. Nvidia has scheduled its third-quarter fiscal 2027 earnings report for November 17. No charges have been filed in connection with the personal relationships or the intelligence allegations as of the announcement of Huang’s resignation.