Nvidia boss resigns after reports of second affair

Was this inevitable, Chris? I think so. From about last night, really, once the news of that second affair broke, I think his fate was sealed. I think really he was likely to go eventually after the first one, because of course you say with the spy scandal, it probably was inevitable once Congress got involved. But of course, company rules being what they are, if you have an affair with someone who's a direct report, that's a breach of company guidelines. So it is a bit of a slam dunk. So just to be clear, the second name is somebody within the company? Yes, it's the president of the healthcare division. So. So it seems like it's odd to go after this one and not the first one. But I think because it's an obvious, sackable offence, essentially, he's been made to go. He's resigned, but essentially made to go, really. Just with corporate protection of the company's brand and value in mind, even the first affair, particularly with the potential Chinese spy element of it, could that have finished him off with NVIDIA as well? Very much so. The board was going to launch an investigation, and I think it was almost inevitable, given NVIDIA's size and importance to AI and indeed US national security, that Congress would get involved. Of course, he's been quite close to the Trump administration. There's a new team coming in Washington. I think it was going to happen anyway. It probably is, if you're an NVIDIA shareholder, it's probably a good thing in the long run, because it avoids that long, drawn-out will-he-won't-he discussion. Get it over with, move on, find somebody else. Tell us a bit more about the company in just a moment, but it's worth people knowing that NVIDIA stocks have fallen 10%. Put that into some kind of context for those of us who aren't on the stock markets all the time. There's hundreds of billions of dollars wiped off the value of the company. The shares are actually down about a third from where they were a month ago when they sat at a record high, and they're down about 20% in the past week on the back of this news. Unprecedented or rarely precedented is hundreds of billions coming off your value. Well, of course, NVIDIA is the largest company in the world. It's worth about $4 trillion, slightly less than it was, of course, but about $4 trillion. So as percentage moves, it obviously is one of the largest in history, potentially one of the largest in the short space of time. We have seen it fall by this kind of amount in previous years. Tech companies are quite volatile anyway in terms of their share price because they turn on such high valuations. So in percentage terms, it's nothing new, but certainly for the reasons we're seeing now, it's perhaps the most unprecedented we've seen in quite some time. And apart from the, you know, the soap opera at the heart of it, why should we care? Why should ordinary Brits care about this? Well, because it's the largest in the world, it takes up a big chunk of the U.S. stock market, indeed the global stock market, and it kind of sets the weather for everything else. I think if the largest company in the world endures a much bigger sell-off than this one, it will probably drag everything else with it. So there is that concern. It is also at the heart of the AI boom. NVIDIA manufactures these high-performance chips that are used in all these AI programs. They supply chips to a whole host of other companies. So if they begin to struggle, and of course, Jensen. Huang was the founder of the company, so he's driven so much of this success. If they really struggle, that's not good news for their share price and, by definition, not good news for everything else because it's going to question how long can this tech boom that's been so important for stock markets over the last couple of years, how long can that go on? And most of us are familiar with the idea that the boss doesn't go out with somebody further down the food chain in a business, if you can use that term. But... Give me a sense of, because I've never really moved in a corporate, in a financial corporate world like this. So give me a sense of how, when your company, perhaps not even on this scale, but you know, when you lead an incredibly valuable company, how much conversation would there be at board level about the rigor of your CEO, your CFO, your COO, including sexual rigor? Obviously, he's a global figure, really, certainly financial markets and quite a lot beyond that, really. In a company, if you have someone who has a direct report, you tend to say you can't have a relationship with that person. It has to be you have to be no longer their manager because obviously there's an element of closeness and indeed impropriety. And that's I think certainly is banned in most companies. Yeah, that one's easy to understand. But just in terms of, you know, if you're at some point the most valuable company in the world, yeah, in the world at one point, then presumably all kinds of forces are looking at you and potentially coming at you that you would have hoped that both employees and very senior people would be alive to that. And if this turns out to be a Chinese spy in the first affair that we learnt of. um That's a, it's a massive misstep, isn't it, to say the least? It is on the part of the board. And I think this is the key thing that NVIDIA is so integral to the U.S. board And part of the board, essentially, that you have to look at the CEO. What's he doing? Where's he going? very Because we know he has security. We know it has to be questioned. Who is he meeting? The board will have to do their best to try and say, much. well, we were doing all that we could and he didn't tell us the whole truth. But the sad fact of it is that these things, when you're in a position like Jensen Huang, these things have to be very closely monitored. And he's failed the test himself for propriety in terms of who he deals with, who is an alleged Chinese spy. And that brings into major question. So I expect to see him hauled in front of Congress at some point anyway, and probably the rest of the board as well. If people have stocks and shares in NVIDIA, Waking up, looking at hundreds of billions of pounds coming off the value of that company. What would you say to them? Stay calm, sit back, wait and see. It's happened before or something like it has happened before. The Nvidia endures sell-offs. We were looking at this. Back in the beginning of 2025 until about March 2025, the stock had dropped 45% in the space of three months. So as I said, tech companies tend to see volatile share prices. So when you get, Nvidia, of course, has gone up hugely in the last four years. Indeed, from March 25 until October of this year, it had more than doubled. And so you have to sort of take the rough with the smooth. That's understandable if you've been holding it for a long time. If you bought it, say, a month ago, it's not going to be much fun. But NVIDIA itself is a much, even though he is the founder, NVIDIA is much bigger than just one man. And it's unlikely that this is the end of the company's importance to global stock market. It's not comfortable for anybody holding these shares. But there should be a succession plan in place. And I think the best thing for it is the fact that it's happened now. So there isn't this long drawn out speculation because now they can move on. And anything he says now, not entirely dismissed because he's no longer in charge, But there's a chance for them to just. Put a marker on this and say, now we move on, we'll find a new CEO and it's a much bigger company than just one man. I mean, look, there are huge political implications of what is taking place here at the moment with this news that Jensen Huang is departing NVIDIA because the Trump administration clearly was aware of the espionage aspect, allegedly, to his relationship with that Singapore-based Chinese businesswoman. We have heard President Trump... Trump. I'm obfuscating, I think it is fair to say, over the last week about precisely when he knew that Jensen Huang and NVIDIA may well have been compromised as a result of that friendship. And of course, Democrats who will be taking control on Capitol Hill in January will now urgently be wanting to hear from Mr. Huang himself, from the Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and from the president's lawyers about precisely what the. The Trump administration knew about the nature of the exposure that Jensen Huang and NVIDIA may have had to Chinese intelligence. There are, I mean, to put this into perspective, Jensen Huang is NVIDIA and NVIDIA is far and away the manufacturer of the chips. upon which the AI industry here in the United States and globally relies. And the Trump administration had been choking off the ability of China to gain access to those NVIDIA chips as part of President Trump's efforts to try and make sure that American companies win the AI war, if, as seems entirely possible. Jensen Huang was seduced by a coordinated Chinese espionage operation, and the Chinese government denies this. But if this is what happened via that Singaporean front company, Megaspeed, and they were able to acquire millions of NVIDIA chips through that kind of backdoor, that is going to have huge repercussions for the Trump administration, particularly for Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, given that questions were first raised about the nature of Mr. Wang's friendship with that Chinese national. A year ago, it's been a year since the New York Times back in October of 2025 first published a report revealing that there was something odd going on at NVIDIA. They didn't allege the affair and they didn't allege that she was a Chinese spy, but they certainly pointed at oddities in the relationship between the two of them. And the Trump administration over the last week has been very slow at responding to questions about what did they know. So... And when did they know it? And that's because there are massive repercussions potentially for them and for the American AI industry. Remember that the midterm elections last week didn't just deliver a massive win for Democrats. It was a massive rejection, particularly of data centers and the AI industry more broadly. The industry lost $3.4 trillion on the markets here last week alone because of the midterm election results. and China will see this is a major opportunity now to leapfrog the United States in the battle to become the dominant AI player on the world stage. Right. So there's a business and political reason, reasons plural, for steadying that NVIDIA ship, that AI ship more broadly beyond it. Thank Are we, can we expect Congress to call him? Mr. Jensen, Mr. Huang I should say, oh absolutely call him and challenge him on what he knew about this woman and challenge him you very on how much she was saying to him, do not restrict Chinese access to these chips. Oh, absolutely. He is going to be questioned, much. I would suspect, by multiple committees of Congress once we get into the new year about every jot of the nature of his relationship with the Chinese Alice Wang, the Chinese head of Megaspeed, this purportedly Singaporean company. I mean, they will immediately be moving here today to warn NVIDIA. corporately to preserve all records internally relating to this. There is no question. I mean, Democrats were already salivating at the possibility of bringing Elon Musk to town to testify about his various involvements with the Trump administration. Absolutely no question that they will want to question Jensen Wang. And the other point worth making, and I think you may have made it earlier with with your previous guest, Sheila, is You know, this is just the beginning of the story, really. And the concerns will be that with a potential AI bubble already being widely... Suspected of existing within the industry, so much money pouring into it, limitless millions and millions and trillions of dollars going into this industry so rapidly over the course, particularly of the last 18 months, that if the biggest manufacturer of these chips. ...is now being taken over on a temporary basis, we're told, by its chief financial officer. Jensen Wang had no succession plan. He was NVIDIA personified. I mean, this is Steve Jobs and the role that he played at Apple. to the max in the form of Jensen Wang at NVIDIA. So there is a real possibility that if financial market confidence is lost in NVIDIA, that is going to infect the rest of the AI industry. And if that bubble does burst, it's going to impact every economy all around the world, not just the American one. And briefly, before we come on to that second story I want to talk about, which is a shooting in D.C., I read that there is no prenup. In his marriage to his wife of 40 years, and that she could get as much as 72.6 billion, even more than Jeff Bezos had to give his now ex-wife. Oh, absolutely. I mean, we don't obviously know the nature of what is taking place within Jensen Wang's marriage, but clearly this has been a very difficult time for his family, two of his adult children, work for NVIDIA in senior positions, one of them cancelled a trip to Asia, I believe she was planning to head to last weekend, citing family issues. And if Lori Wong were... ...to go ahead and seek separation and a divorce from Jensen Huang. It is reported widely here that there was no prenuptial agreement. They met at the University of Oregon when they were youngsters. She put money into NVIDIA at various stages as well. And you would clearly be looking here at... Potentially the largest divorce settlement in history by a mile, given the amount of money that Jensen Huang is worth. I mean, it's incalculable really at this point as to how much cash he's got and what his net worth is. But yes, if she were to want to take him to the cleaners, she would absolutely be more than able to do that.