Nvidia Board Investigates CEO Jensen Huang Over Foreign Intelligence Report

Nvidia’s board announced on Sunday at 2:59 PM ET that it is opening an independent investigation into reports that founder and CEO Jensen Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort. The board said it has no reason to believe national security or company secrets were compromised, and that it retains confidence in Huang and his leadership team.

Huang admitted in a letter to employees that he was unfaithful to his wife and that his actions hurt his family. He said he takes full responsibility and will cooperate fully with the review. U.S. intelligence officials suspect the woman involved works for a Chinese spy agency.

“I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did.”

The woman is identified as Alice Huang, an executive at Singapore-based Nvidia customer Megaspeed. The investigation will be overseen by a committee of independent directors with outside counsel, and no date has been set for its conclusion.

Legally, a simple board majority can remove Huang, but he remains chief executive for now. Nvidia is a Delaware corporation with a single class of shares, and Huang owns 3.56 percent of the company, worth about $150 billion, making him the largest individual shareholder but not a majority owner.

The stock fell about 5 percent in premarket trading after the news. Historical precedent shows that when a board reviewed a chief executive’s personal conduct and the executive left, shares fell the next trading day every time, by 2.4 percent to 10.1 percent.

The eleven-member board includes directors with long ties to Huang. Tench Coxe and Harvey Jones have served since Nvidia’s founding in 1993, Mark Stevens served from 1993 to 2006 and returned in 2008, Brooke Seawell has been a member since 1997, and Stephen Neal is the 77-year-old lead independent director.

Past cases include Intel’s Brian Krzanich, who left in 2018 after failing to disclose an employee relationship, and McDonald’s Steve Easterbrook, fired in 2019 for similar reasons. Neither had founded his company or built it into the world’s most valuable corporation.