Jensen Huang’s Crisis: When Wealth and Power Cross the Line

Over the past few days, I have discussed Jensen Huang from several angles, including biological instincts, national security and technological competition between China and the United States. People have desires, and success, power and their surroundings can influence them. There is nothing unusual about that. The question worth asking is whether someone with immense wealth and corporate power still has enough self-restraint to keep personal desires within limits that protect other people and uphold public responsibilities. The succession of recent reports has made that question concrete.

On 8 November, Huang acknowledged in a letter to NVIDIA employees that he had been unfaithful to his wife, apologising to his family and colleagues. On 11 November, The New York Times, citing five people who had worked at NVIDIA, reported that he had also had an extramarital relationship with Kimberly Powell, the company’s vice president of healthcare, who reports directly to him. According to the report, the two were seen behaving affectionately at a hotel in San Jose in March this year. That allegation remains a media disclosure, and those involved have not publicly confirmed its specific details. Huang’s own admission of marital infidelity, however, is a fact that cannot be set aside.

In my view, infidelity is first a matter of personal character and responsibility. Marriage involves a commitment, and breaking that commitment carries consequences. Someone can achieve extraordinary success in technology and business while showing a serious lack of self-restraint in intimate relationships. Commercial achievement does not cancel out the harm done to a family.

When a direct report is involved, the issue extends further. If the reported relationship is substantiated, an investigation must establish whether it was disclosed to the company and whether it affected work assignments, promotion decisions or the allocation of resources. It must also examine whether the subordinate was placed in an unequal power relationship. What appears to be a private matter between two adults may therefore involve the governance responsibilities of a listed company.

Huang has long favoured a flat management structure, at one point having fifty or sixty senior executives report directly to him. This can reduce hierarchy and improve communication, but it also concentrates considerable authority over personnel in the chief executive’s hands. When someone with final decision-making authority enters an intimate relationship with a direct report, other employees can struggle to know whether decisions are entirely fair. The subordinate may also face pressures that make it difficult to refuse or question the superior openly. Even a consensual relationship does not remove the manager’s greater responsibility.

I believe that if the investigation ultimately establishes concealment, conflicts of interest or an abuse of power, Huang should not remain chief executive by invoking his personal contribution to the company.

His relationship with a business executive suspected of involvement in Chinese intelligence activities had already prompted NVIDIA’s board to launch an independent investigation. A private relationship that may create a security vulnerability for someone at the heart of America’s AI industry is a serious matter. Of course, suspicion of involvement in intelligence activities does not mean that the person’s alleged role or any unlawful conduct has been established in court. Nor can the disclosure of trade secrets currently be treated as a proven fact. The greater the potential risk, the greater the need for evidence from an independent investigation.

The Wall Street Journal reported on 11 November that NVIDIA’s board was considering replacing Huang. At the time of writing, his removal had not been announced. I believe the board must explain to shareholders what it investigated, what it found and why it reached its eventual decision.

NVIDIA’s position in the AI industry owes much to Huang’s long-standing technical judgement and business leadership. Yet the more a company depends on its founder, the more it needs institutions capable of holding that founder accountable. Otherwise, flat management can end up meaning that everyone answers to one person while no one can effectively oversee him.

The crisis is equally painful for his family. Huang and his wife, Lori, have been married for more than forty years, sharing the experience of his early business ventures and the company’s growth. Trust in such a long relationship cannot be restored by an apology letter alone after a publicly acknowledged betrayal.

An audio recording circulated online purporting to be Lori’s public response. The Taiwan FactCheck Center subsequently assessed it as highly likely to have been generated by AI, so it cannot be used to judge whether she is willing to forgive her husband. Whether she chooses to repair the marriage, separate or divorce remains her decision. What is clear is that Huang has brought the consequences of his private conduct into the whole family, and he is not the only person bearing the hurt.

The question of assets is also complicated. NVIDIA’s 2026 filings put Huang’s beneficial ownership at approximately 3.58 per cent, including shares held in trusts for which the couple serve jointly as trustees, as well as shares held by the family foundation. These assets do not all have the same legal character. Foundation shares, in particular, cannot simply be treated as private marital property available for division.

Even if a divorce occurs, marital misconduct alone does not justify the claim that he would lose the vast majority of his wealth. California’s divorce property rules generally distinguish community property from separate property and do not treat an affair, by itself, as grounds for depriving one spouse of most of their assets. But the legal division of property is only one aspect of the matter. Once damaged, the trust built over decades of marriage and a founder’s public credibility may be beyond what money can repair.

Some of Huang’s public behaviour had made me uncomfortable well before this.

In 2025, while dining with the heads of Samsung and Hyundai Motor at a fried chicken restaurant in Seoul, he offered to cover the other customers’ bills. Samsung’s Lee Jae-yong ultimately paid. This year, while buying grilled corn at a Taiwanese night market, Huang offered to pay for those waiting in the queue in the hope of receiving his own corn first.

Such scenes are often interpreted as generous and approachable: a wealthy man without airs. I see another tendency that deserves scrutiny. Someone with a great deal of money can easily come to believe that money gives them the initiative in any situation, even allowing them to change arrangements that other people have already made.

Paying for others can certainly be a kind gesture, but kindness should also respect their choices. People who intended to pay for themselves, or to wait their turn, may not wish to accept a wealthy person’s spontaneous arrangement. Offering to pay for everyone in exchange for priority, in particular, already carries, in my view, an element of using wealth to alter the rules of a shared public setting.

There is no evidence here that he forced customers to accept his offer, and conduct in a restaurant cannot substantiate allegations about conduct in the workplace. My concern is the value expressed in these public gestures. In his understanding, is wealth a resource to share with others, or a form of power that continually expands his own freedom of action?

This difference also leads me to consider cultural background.

In some Chinese social settings familiar to me, competing to pay the bill is often regarded as generous, prestigious and a sign of loyalty or affection. In settings that place greater emphasis on individual independence and choice, making a decision for others without asking may instead be seen as overstepping a boundary.

This is not, of course, an innate opposition between Chinese and Western people. Both ways of behaving exist in many societies. The question is whether an entrepreneur who has lived in the United States for decades and leads a global technology company fully understands that respecting other people’s wishes extends beyond politeness to refraining from using wealth and status to obtain special treatment.

I have also followed accounts of his early life. He has spoken about the hardships of working in restaurants and doing cleaning jobs when he was young. Those experiences may have helped develop his diligence and resilience. They may also have made the wealth, status and public attention that followed success especially attractive to him. The latter explanation is only a suspicion of mine, not a diagnosis of his inner life.

It does, however, draw my attention to a broader phenomenon. Having suffered setbacks does not necessarily make someone more restrained after achieving success. Some people become more attentive to others’ dignity; others may become eager to use wealth and power to demonstrate how far they have moved beyond their past.

Whether Huang will leave NVIDIA, and whether his marriage will end, remain open questions. I do not wish to decide in advance for the board, a court or his wife.

But I do have a clear judgement. Human desires can be understood without excusing the consequences of acting on them. An ordinary person’s breach of trust primarily hurts those close to them. A breach by someone who controls immense wealth, business resources and influence across an industry can also harm a company, its employees, its shareholders and public trust.

The saying that things reverse when pushed to an extreme need not describe some mysterious working of fate. When power keeps growing without a corresponding growth in restraint, problems once obscured by success may eventually emerge at a much greater cost.