Well, this got a lot messier. Nvidia employees seem to love Jensen Huang. A Blind survey of 232 employees found 88% want him to stay, 11% want him to resign voluntarily and only 1% want the board to remove him. But the people who work for him don’t get the final say. The WSJ says the board is preparing to push him out, potentially after a meeting Wednesday. Nvidia hasn’t announced a final decision.
And there’s now a second woman in the story. The first controversy involved Alice Huang, a business executive U.S. intelligence reportedly suspects of having ties to Chinese intelligence. Huang admitted to being unfaithful to his wife, but the alleged espionage angle is a separate matter and hasn’t been proven. Investigators are looking at whether he was unknowingly caught up in an intelligence operation involving access to Nvidia’s technology.
Now the New York Times has reported another alleged affair, this time with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care. She reportedly reports directly to Huang. Five people who worked at Nvidia spoke to the Times about the relationship. Nacionale has now published a photo identifying Powell in connection with the story. So this isn’t just another rumor about someone outside the company. It’s raising questions about Huang’s relationship with a senior executive who works under him.
There’s also an awkward detail from the Times report: Nvidia security personnel allegedly confronted someone who recorded Huang and Powell being affectionate at a San Jose hotel during the company’s developer conference. The person was reportedly asked to sign an NDA. That’s the sort of detail that makes people wonder what else was happening behind the scenes.
The board initially said it had confidence in Huang and saw no reason to believe company secrets or national security had been compromised. It then hired outside law firm Wachtell Lipton to investigate. Now the WSJ is reporting that the board is preparing to remove him. That’s quite a turnaround in just a few days.
And the company is worth roughly $4 trillion. Huang has been running Nvidia since he co-founded it in 1993. There isn’t an obvious successor ready to step in. Employees may want him to stay, but investors have to think about what happens if the person who built the company suddenly disappears from the top job.
Nvidia shares dropped around 8% in after-hours trading. The market now has to digest two reported relationships, a possible foreign intelligence connection, questions about company security and a potential CEO removal. That’s a lot to land on one company in a single week.
The funny part is that 88% of employees want him to stay, but the board may be getting ready to show him the door. That’s a pretty uncomfortable employee survey result for a company facing a leadership crisis.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/11/11/nvidia-jensen-huang-affair-employee.html
https://www.reuters.com/technology/nvidia-is-preparing-oust-ceo-jensen-huang-wsj-reports-2026-11-11/
https://www.nacionale.com/en/articles/who-is-kimberly-powell-nvidia-executive-jensen-huang-report
https://www.wsj.com/business/the-spy-scandal-that-lays-bare-nvidias-governance-vacuum-44f8c786
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