Nvidia's Board Moves to Oust Jensen Huang as Second Affair Surfaces

Nvidia's board is preparing to remove CEO Jensen Huang, the Wall Street Journal reports, days after a second affair allegation turned a governance problem into a succession crisis. The board had already been planning an investigation into Huang, and that process has now escalated toward an ouster, according to the Journal.

The trigger: a New York Times report on Wednesday, citing five company sources, that Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of healthcare, had an extramarital relationship with Huang — one of his direct reports. It's the second such report involving Huang, who has been married to his wife Lori for over 40 years. The first involved Alice Huang, an executive at Megaspeed, an Nvidia customer. The Times reported last month that US intelligence officials believed she was passing information to Beijing.

What does this change for Nvidia?

Prediction markets tell you how fast sentiment flipped. Early this week, odds of Huang leaving before the end of 2026 sat below 20%. Now traders on Kalshi are betting less on if he goes and more on when.

Brian Mulberry, chief market strategist at Zacks Investment Management, put the probability of a complete removal at 5-10% when we spoke Wednesday morning. "You have to handicap stuff that's really hard to handicap, right?" Mulberry said. "But he is such a big part of whatever happens next with Nvidia, just like Elon is with Tesla and SpaceX, that it could be incredibly disruptive."

The disruption starts with the stock. Dan Ives, the tech bull, previously said Huang's departure would shave 30% off Nvidia's share price. That's not just about Huang's profile in the AI ecosystem — there's no clear successor waiting in the wings, which could force the board to look outside its own ranks for the first time in the company's modern history.

The wider fallout

The blast radius extends well beyond Nvidia's campus:

• China. Chaos at a key US strategic asset is a chance for China to close the gap in the AI race. In a race, sometimes it's less about speeding up and more about the leader stumbling.
• The AI trade. The broader market actually rose on Monday after the initial affair and spy reports. That leaves an open question: did investors believe Huang would survive, or is the market's resilience genuinely greater than that of one larger-than-life CEO?
• Anthropic's IPO. Going public in choppy water is hard enough. One of the world's largest companies unexpectedly replacing its CEO makes it harder — especially when that company is also participating in the $26 billion private placement running alongside the IPO.
• Huang himself. Three decades building Nvidia into the king of the AI trade has earned him goodwill in some quarters. Elon Musk said it would be "an honor" to hire Huang if he's pushed out.

A honeypot scare for the industry

The alleged espionage angle may prove the most consequential subplot. If Huang was potentially caught in a honeypot involving a woman tied to Beijing, expect everyone else in tech to start second-guessing their romantic partners and their security protocols. For executives with access to GPUs and the US chip supply chain, this is now a counterintelligence story, not just a tabloid one.

For Nvidia holders and AI-trade investors, the practical question is succession: with no internal heir apparent, a boardroom scramble for an outside CEO would land at the exact moment the company anchors both the AI hardware market and a $26 billion placement in Anthropic's IPO. Whatever the board decides, the era of betting on Nvidia as a one-man story looks to be closing.