Inside the Downfall of the Most Powerful Man in A.I. | Hard Fork

Jensen Huang is no longer the CEO of Nvidia. I don't usually stay up past midnight trying to ascertain the fate of chip company CEOs, but that's what I did last night because Nvidia is not a normal company and Jensen Huang is not a normal CEO. In a huge surprise this morning, Huang announced his resignation after an emergency meeting of Nvidia's board called after Huang admitted to an affair with a woman alleged to be a Chinese spy. In a lot of circumstances, that would be enough. But every good spy story needs a twist, and the Huang saga already has several. Just last night, the Times reported that Huang had also been carrying on an affair with one of his direct reports, another executive at Nvidia, and that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had a direct confrontation over Megaspeed, the Singaporean company at the heart of the Huang affair, as the Trump administration debated what to do.

There's no question in my mind that this is the biggest tech news of the year. Huang is one of the towering figures and big personalities of the AI boom. He's the co-founder and leader of Nvidia, the company at the center of this strange new world we're living in. He's maybe the most prominent AI optimist and a strong advocate of loosening restrictions on chip sales to China. He's a singularly powerful CEO who's also made a lot of people very, very rich. All of which is why this story is so shocking and why we have so many questions. How could the judgment of someone so powerful have been so bad? Why didn't the White House do anything if a major American CEO was involved with a Chinese spy? And maybe most importantly, what happens now? The AI sector has lost the hands-on leader of its lynchpin company. AI optimists lost their loudest voice. Nvidia shareholders have lost many millions of dollars of value. And all this is happening just one week before the first frontier lab goes public. What could go wrong? I'm Max Read. This is Hard Fork.

Hello and welcome to the first Hard Fork from the post-Jensen Huang era. For a momentous occasion like this, we've got a killer panel. We have technology reporter Ryan Mac, who just broke the story that Jensen Huang was having an affair with one of his reports at Nvidia. We've got reporter Ana Swanson, who's been breaking news all across this story for a week, whose scoops are too numerous to mention. And once again from Singapore, we're joined by contributing writer for The New York Times opinion, Stephen Witt, author of The Thinking Machine, a biography of Huang and Nvidia. Welcome to Hard Fork, everybody.

Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Yeah. So, we're recording this around 10 a.m. here in New York City. It's been around an hour since we first learned the news that Jensen Huang had resigned as CEO of Nvidia. Ryan, what do we know about how this decision was made?

So, this played out last night and this morning. Last night, we published a story about a second relationship that he had, an extramarital relationship with an executive at Nvidia, this vice president of healthcare, Kimberly Powell. And you know, Jensen was already kind of teetering given some of the early reporting from Ana and others about his first relationship. And that kind of seemed to set the wheels in motion even more. And so the board met and you know, this morning before the market opened, they put out the announcement. Jensen resigns, and here we are.

It seemed from where I was sitting like the board meeting was taking forever. Like, you know, there was an announcement this was going to happen. There was a sense that probably the outcome was that he was going to be forced out. Stephen, what do you think the board's perspective on this was?

One aspect of this story that's been interesting is the extent to which the Trump administration has been aware of this affair, and there seems to have been some internal conflict about it. I'm wondering if anything has changed this week within the White House and within the administration that would tip the scales against Jensen in a situation like this.

I definitely think there is this sense in Washington that the tide has kind of turned against Jensen Huang. For a long time, you know, Jensen had this very close friendship with President Trump that, at least for Republicans, made him hard to touch. That's something that wasn't there initially at the beginning of President Trump's second term, but something that the two men kind of cultivated and that grew over time. And I think it became very difficult for a lot of people in the president's party to advocate for tougher restrictions on chip sales to China just because they might go crosswise with that very close relationship, right? But now that Jensen is on the outs, you really do see these much more kind of aggressive calls, particularly from Congress, but also people in the administration, about advancing chip restrictions. Elizabeth Warren today issuing a statement saying that Jensen's resignation doesn't absolve him or the company for any responsibility for putting national security at risk or potential violations of laws. So there really is this kind of sense that efforts are heating up in Washington to scrutinize the company's sales to China a lot more closely.

I mean, you reported on a confrontation between Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Can you walk us through that story a little bit and tell us what you think it means in a broader sense about what's happening inside the White House?

Yeah, absolutely. So the thing to know is that the Commerce Department is responsible for American technology export restrictions, and so it plays this really important role in setting the boundaries kind of of Nvidia's global business, how much they've been able to sell to China in recent years. And so President Trump, you know, has obviously grown closer with Jensen Huang. Jensen Huang has also cultivated a closer friendship with Howard Lutnick, the Secretary of Commerce. And increasingly, in internal discussions, Howard Lutnick has been seen as kind of the person pushing back or delaying various export control measures, whether it's putting Megaspeed on the entity list to kind of trade blacklist, or broader restrictions that would stop Chinese companies from remotely dialing into data centers in Southeast Asia. And so there's an awful lot of finger-pointing going on right now in this situation, but a lot of those fingers are pointed at Howard Lutnick. And it remains to be seen kind of how that evolves for the Commerce Department. Is there some fallout, you know, in terms of personnel there too, or maybe, you know, they start to move much more aggressively on advancing some of the rules that people have been asking for.

Ryan, I want to turn to the story that you reported out yesterday. So we're recording this on Thursday morning. On Wednesday afternoon, sort of towards the end of the day around 5:00 p.m., the Times reported that Huang had, in addition to the affair with the CEO of Megaspeed, Alice Wong, who's allegedly a Chinese spy, he was also having an affair with an Nvidia executive who reports to him. Ryan, what can you tell us about how you came across this story? I understand it started with a tip.

Yeah, we had been reporting on it for a couple weeks, kind of on this kind of separate reporting line to the Megaspeed story. And you know, it kind of picked up steam in the last couple days, obviously with everything playing out. You know, when I think there's this drumbeat of stories that happens, what happens as reporters is you get more and more people getting the confidence to talk. And so we had a few more people reaching out, some people that maybe didn't want to talk initially come back to us and say, hey, actually I do know about this thing. And you know, we got to a point where we're confident in our reporting and confident in the original tip that Jensen had this affair with this vice president, Kimberly Powell, who oversaw healthcare at the company. Kimberly Powell has been at the company since 2008. She has kind of worked her way up through the healthcare kind of initiatives at the company to become this quite powerful executive in her own right at the company. She gives talks about applying the company's AI products to health and science. She's often by Jensen's side at big events. We understand them to have traveled together around the world. And this is something that had been talked about for a long time within the company. You know, people raised eyebrows at this kind of relationship, and you know, we got it to a point yesterday where we were comfortable in publishing it, and you know, we did.

Stephen, was this second wave of the story surprising to you as somebody who's been reporting on Huang and Nvidia for a long time now?

Yeah, Ryan, there's a specific detail I want to ask you about this story. I'm just going to read it. It says, 'When reached by phone Wednesday and asked about his relationship with Ms. Powell, Mr. Huang said, I don't think you should be talking to me directly.' He then hung up. I have to ask, why is the CEO of Nvidia in the middle of probably the worst week of his life picking up the phone at all?

Good question. I'm not going to take credit for that one. Trip is the one, Trip Mickle, our colleague who has been doing amazing reporting, made that call. And frankly, when he told us what happened, we were stunned. I mean, I honestly don't know why he picked up the phone, why he even said anything. But you know, as reporters, we have to put these tough questions in front of the people we're going to report on. And so just kind of doing our due diligence in that process. He made that call, and like most calls and most email reachouts, we expected, you know, them not to say anything or a press person to come back to us. And in this case, he picked up. So it was, yeah, just kind of an insane moment in this very bizarre and upside-down story.

I want to ask you about another detail. The Times story included a report that they were at a conference together and a bystander saw them, and I'm quoting, being affectionate, and documented it on their phone. So it seems like a lot of people were around. There was a kind of maybe an understanding or a sense that the affair was being carried out in view of other Nvidia executives and employees. You know, this seems to comport with what Stephen was saying before about there having been tips or ideas. Was that your sense too, Ryan?

I think there were just a lot of suspicions out there, and yeah, the anecdote that's in our story came from GTC, this Nvidia developer conference that happens every year. This year was in San Jose. Yeah, they were, I don't believe they thought they were in a place that could be seen, but someone did take out their camera and, you know, capture some of that. And as we understand it, the security team then sequestered them in that process. And it was kind of a surreal anecdote for us to hear, and something we definitely fact-checked along the way because it was just so, you know, bizarre to us.

Okay. So about an hour after this story breaks, the Journal reports that Nvidia is getting ready to oust Jensen. Does that mean it's the second relationship that did him in? Stephen, what do you know about this? You know, in my interviews with him, Jensen went to such great lengths to present himself as a family man. It was something he really, really emphasized. He talked about his wife all the time. Every time I talked to him, he started talking about his wife, the sacrifices she had made to make Nvidia possible. She'd stepped away from her own career to raise her kids, and then bringing his own kids into the company even as he's openly consorting with another executive. It's almost hard to imagine that that would happen.

Yeah, if I can just jump in on something Stephen and Ryan are saying. You know, I've had very limited interactions with Jensen Huang, but I always got the feeling that he had created this incredible company just through sheer force of will, you know. I mean, this is his personal project that he has created over three decades, something that has just transformed global technology and the economy. And you know, he just seems like the person who kind of, you know, wills things into being. And you know, that's always the feeling I got with his attitude toward, for example, chip smuggling concerns. He has, you know, very consistently denied over years that chip smuggling is just not occurring, even in the face of, you know, big smuggling busts by the US government or, you know, reporting that I and others had carried out, to sort of consistently deny that it was happening. And so I think, you know, that just might be sort of one of his strengths, but also his weaknesses, that, you know, if I were to kind of analyze the man, that, you know, he sees the world in the way that he would like it to be, and you know, that has largely been a success for him. But in this episode, maybe it was his downfall.

I'd also say, you know, this is someone who hasn't been viewed as kind of this rockstar CEO until very recently, right? He, of course, he's run his company for more than 30 years, but this kind of global fame he's experiencing is relatively new. And I guess the ascent of Nvidia to this kind of stratosphere is relatively new. And you know, as reporters, we see what his public persona changed, you know, to a point where he is, you know, famously signed someone's chest, a woman, a female fan's chest at an event. He, you know, is pictured with the CEO of Megaspeed openly. And part of me thinks like, you know, if that's happening in front of us, like what's going on that we aren't seeing? And now we're starting to see some of that reported out now.

I will say also, just a little more than a week ago, Jensen did give an interview to Bloomberg in which he said that his interactions with the woman, Alice Wong, were, you know, just very normal and just usual operations, right? And then in a week, we saw that narrative change just so dramatically.

Yeah. I would say reading... Keep going. Yeah, reading the tea leaves. I love it. Just to be clear, I really love it when you guys are all talking to each other. I don't have to do anything. Yeah.

I'm just reading the tea leaves with the statement they put out about the resignation. I mean, they said glowing things about him, or, you know, they give their nice things they said about him. But Jensen is not quoted in that anywhere. You know, he doesn't give a statement. So that kind of feels very telling to me.

I mean, one of the reasons I've been waiting to see if Jensen could retain power is because it has felt, as we've sort of talked about, like the Trump administration has this vested interest in Nvidia as a sort of lynchpin company for the stock market and for the AI industry. Obviously, as we've talked about, Trump and Jensen have a friendship. And it felt maybe a little bit like at some point the Trump administration would put its finger on the scales or kind of swing in and continue to protect him. Seems like that didn't happen last night, Ana.

Yeah, I'm not sure what conversations may have taken place. If there were calls going back and forth, that was definitely something that, you know, we had been asking about and very curious about. But yeah, it seems like President Trump's powers don't extend that far to save someone like Jensen Huang in this situation. And we have to see, you know, whether this has an impact on US policy when it comes to Nvidia, whether that remains more favorable. You know, of course, Nvidia, as you say, is a very important part of the stock market, really important to US data center construction, the American edge in AI, just a, you know, systemically important company at this point. So there's certainly a lot of motivation to keep them intact and doing well, but we'll have to see where it goes from here.