Nvidia shares tank 8% amid reports of board preparing to oust CEO Jensen Huang

Nvidia’s board of directors is preparing to oust Jensen Huang soon following allegations that the company and co-founder and CEO had an extramarital affair with a woman US intelligence agencies believe was a Chinese asset, said reports, citing two sources familiar with the matter. The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the Nvidia board’s moves.

The Trump administration is aware of the matter, the sources said.

Nvidia’s share price slid more than 8% in after-hours trading on Wednesday after the WSJ report, extending a multi-day sell-off for one of the world’s most valuable publicly traded companies.

Nvidia was co-founded by Huang in 1993 and was best-known for designing graphics cards widely used for gaming, but it now designs the powerful semiconductors that fuel many of the world’s leading AI firms.

Jensen Huang had a close relationship with Alice Huang, who previously worked for a Singapore-based firm called Megaspeed International that bought Nvidia chips and hardware worth billions of dollars.

US intelligence agencies believe that Alice Huang was recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security, the NYT report said.

In a message to Nvidia employees over the weekend, Jensen Huang wrote that he was unfaithful to his wife and apologised for hurting her and their children but did not name the woman involved.

Nvidia’s board said on Sunday that it had launched an independent investigation into allegations that the CEO “has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort.”

The board said it had no reason to believe the company's secrets or national security were compromised. Nvidia spokesperson John Rizzo said, “We trust that if we were the target of a genuine threat, the US government would have notified us.”

The Justice Department is also investigating Megaspeed over potential violations of US export restrictions on advanced AI chips. Megaspeed has denied any involvement in illegal chip transfers.

Beyond the national security concerns, Nvidia is facing a securities lawsuit accusing the company of failing to disclose information to shareholders about Jensen Huang's relationship with the alleged spy.