Jensen Huang's extramarital affair, the biggest crisis: losing NVIDIA

Jensen Huang has admitted to having an extramarital affair.

On November 8 local time in the United States, 63-year-old Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, sent an apology letter to all employees, admitting that he was unfaithful to his wife.

"My actions have hurt her and our children, and there are no excuses," Jensen Huang wrote. He apologized to his family, employees, the board of directors, partners and shareholders, stating that he is willing to take full responsibility.

On the very same day, NVIDIA's board of directors announced the launch of an independent investigation. Jensen Huang has temporarily kept his position as CEO, but the matter is far from over.

Jensen Huang is facing a crisis of losing his family, and the most serious consequence is losing control of NVIDIA.

- 01 - If it is only an extramarital affair, Wall Street will be relieved

When Wall Street first heard about this extramarital affair, it was definitely a little panicked — on the one hand, there is the stock price, and more importantly, "NVIDIA equals Jensen Huang". If he leaves the company, can NVIDIA remain stable?

On November 9, after Jensen Huang admitted the extramarital affair, NVIDIA's stock price plummeted by more than 6% in the Frankfurt market in Europe. According to the estimate of the price at that time, its market value may have evaporated by about 270 billion US dollars compared with the close of the US stock market last Friday, equivalent to more than 1.9 trillion RMB.

What the market sees is not just a celebrity sex scandal. It also sees that almost at the same time, NVIDIA's board of directors announced the launch of an independent investigation to review whether he has become a target of foreign intelligence activities.

Because Jensen Huang is not an ordinary old man selling graphics cards. For the AI leadership of the United States, he is almost irreplaceable.

At this moment, Wall Street very much hopes that this is really just that old Huang cannot control his impulses.

Chris Weston, head of research at Pepperstone, said that if the market really believes that Jensen Huang will step down, NVIDIA's stock price will probably face a bloodbath.

First of all, the public fact is: Jensen Huang does not have as solid equity control as the outside world imagines.

According to the document NVIDIA submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2026, as of March 23, Jensen Huang holds about 871 million shares of the company, with a shareholding ratio of only 3.58%.

In contrast, BlackRock holds 7.43% and Vanguard holds 7.31%. The shareholding ratios of these two large asset management institutions are both higher than that of Jensen Huang. Moreover, unlike Meta, NVIDIA does not have a dual-class share structure, and Jensen Huang does not have super voting rights.

These figures reveal a fact: he does not run NVIDIA by virtue of absolute controlling stake.

What really supports his power is the business achievements he has created in the past 33 years, the company's management structure, and the trust of shareholders and the board of directors in him.

He controls NVIDIA by relying on his dominant power over the actual operation of the company. Since he founded NVIDIA in 1993, he has not only determined the company's technical route, but also been NVIDIA's most important salesman and spokesperson.

His management style is also extremely special. Jensen Huang once revealed that as many as about 60 executives report directly to him. He deliberately compresses management levels to let information flow directly to the CEO, so as to improve decision-making speed. In other words, there is no second-in-command in the company, and naturally there is no third or fourth person to share power.

A stable family life is also an important factor for shareholders and the board of directors to trust Jensen Huang.

He met his wife Lori at Oregon State University. The two were originally lab partners in electronic engineering courses, and later got married and had a son and a daughter.

In 1993, Jensen Huang was 30 years old and founded NVIDIA. Since then, no matter whether the company experienced early operational crises or later bet on CUDA and AI, Lori has always been one of the most important family members in his public life.

According to the disclosure document in 2026, his daughter and son both work at NVIDIA. The document also discloses that a considerable part of the shares under Jensen Huang's name are held through family trusts. He and his wife Lori jointly serve as trustees of multiple trusts and share voting and investment decision-making rights on the relevant shares.

Now all of this is suddenly being put to the test.

- 02 - A Southeast Asian cloud computing service provider for computing power

The person involved in Jensen Huang's extramarital affair has led to the emergence of a mysterious AI company.

This woman is named Huang Le. According to the disclosure of some investment websites, she once worked as a journalist at Hunan TV and CCTV, then joined HSBC Private Bank and CITIC Securities, and later turned to equity investment.

Of course, no public records have been found to confirm all of these yet.

According to the sorting out by "Golden Angle Finance", in the 2016 public member directory of the Asset Management Association of China, the name "Huang Le" is written in the column of executive director of Shanghai Hexi Investment Management Co., Ltd.

A holding company founded by Huang Le once held 48% equity of Shanghai Hexi. The business of this investment institution has a lot of intersections with data centers and technology enterprises. In its past investment records, there is also a Chinese game company: 7Road.

In September 2015, 7Road registered an overseas business company in Singapore named 7Road International. This company later developed into a company called Megaspeed.

Megaspeed is a new type of AI computing power cloud service provider (Neocloud), which builds or rents data centers, purchases NVIDIA GPU servers, and then leases computing power to AI enterprises.

And Huang Le once served as the managing director of Megaspeed. In November 2023, she had stepped down from her position in the company.

Reports in 2025 said that Megaspeed planned to purchase NVIDIA chips worth about 2 billion US dollars. From June 2024 to February 2026, an affiliated enterprise of Megaspeed in Malaysia purchased at least 4.8 billion US dollars of advanced AI equipment, including NVIDIA chips and technologies.

Although Megaspeed has purchased a large number of GPUs (hundreds of thousands of units), there is currently no evidence showing that it has committed any illegal or irregular acts.

U.S. media disclosed the relationship between Megaspeed and Jensen Huang as early as October 2025, including the details of the social gathering between Jensen Huang and clients including Huang Le in Taipei in June 2024 (note that Huang Le had already stepped down at this time). But Huang told the media that it was just normal business communication.

Until these two days, Jensen Huang admitted to having an affair with Huang Le.

On November 4, three chairmen of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee jointly sent a letter to Jensen Huang, asking him to attend a closed-door briefing on November 18, to find out exactly what contacts Jensen Huang had with Huang Le.

For an ordinary listed company, the CEO's extramarital affair may only be a reputational crisis. But NVIDIA is different, it masters the world's most important AI computing technology.

- 03 - Jensen Huang's position is temporarily stable

Inside NVIDIA, the board of directors has announced the establishment of a committee composed of independent directors, hiring external lawyers to investigate relevant situations. But at the same time, it also stated that there is no reason to believe that the company's confidential information or U.S. national security has been compromised, and it still supports Jensen Huang and his management team.

NVIDIA also made it clear that Jensen Huang will continue to serve as CEO.

But from a procedural perspective, the board of directors has incorporated national security issues into the formal review of Jensen Huang's personal behavior. And NVIDIA's articles of association grant the board of directors considerable power.

According to Article 32 of the articles of association revised in March 2024, more than half of the current directors of the board of directors voting in favor can remove the company's executives at any time, regardless of whether there are legal reasons. This of course includes the CEO.

That means, if the board of directors finally believes that he has made serious misjudgments in sensitive business relationships, or has not fully fulfilled relevant disclosure and compliance obligations, even without criminal conviction, it may decide to replace the CEO.

Before the market opened on November 9, NVIDIA had fallen by 5%.

What investors are also worried about is how long this investigation may last.

Yoo Yong-ho, senior analyst at NH Investment & Securities in South Korea, pointed out that if the investigation lasts for a long time, it may delay NVIDIA's investment decisions and new product releases, thereby affecting the entire semiconductor industry. If NVIDIA's investigation lasts for a long time, AMD may gain more attention as a result. But he also pointed out that NVIDIA's products are difficult to be easily replaced.

Jensen Huang's daughter, Huang Minshan, an executive at NVIDIA, originally planned to go to South Korea to participate in NVIDIA's AI event and meet with local enterprises. After the incident was exposed, she canceled the relevant trip. South Korean AI chip company Rebellions confirmed that the originally scheduled meeting was canceled due to unavoidable circumstances inside NVIDIA.

However, the AI event held by NVIDIA in Seoul proceeded as planned. The South Korean government also stated that it does not believe that the supply of GPUs under signed contracts will be affected for the time being.

Although Jensen Huang's personal crisis has impacted the capital market, it has not yet evolved into an operational crisis for NVIDIA.

This article does not constitute any investment advice.

This article comes from the WeChat official account "Pencil News" (ID: pencilnews), author: Pencil News, published by 36Kr with authorization.