Eleven directors sat down Wednesday evening to decide the fate of one man, and the market answered before they'd finished. Nvidia's board met to weigh the future of CEO Jensen Huang, two sources told CNN and NBC News, and shares fell almost 9% in after-hours trading. The company has shed more than $300 billion in market value this week alone. If the drop holds through Thursday's opening bell, NBC reported, it would erase more than $350 billion.
The White House knew about the meeting. One source told NBC News so. Trump administration insiders expected Huang to be ousted, the sources told CNN. Think about what that means: a private company's board deliberates over its chief executive, and the executive branch of the United States is reading along.
Who Has the Power
The board has 11 directors, including Huang himself, and no board chair. Four have been with the company since the 1990s. Reuters reported that the directors' long history with Huang has raised questions about whether they can make objective decisions. So the people sitting in judgment are his longtime colleagues, assembled in a room where the accused is also a member.
The trigger was a New York Times report, citing five people who worked at Nvidia, that Huang had been involved in a relationship with a woman who reported to him, in addition to a woman suspected of being a Chinese spy. CNN reported, citing the Times, that the first woman is Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of healthcare, who has been at the company since 2008. NBC News has not confirmed that report. Nvidia did not respond to multiple requests for comment Wednesday.
A subordinate, a boss, and a relationship between them. That's the part the board is now weighing, after the story broke in the press instead of inside the building.
What They're Calling National Security
The other woman is Alice Huang, no relation to the CEO, whom U.S. officials believe to be a Chinese spy. NBC News reported that U.S. intelligence agencies had determined she was a Chinese intelligence operative. The FBI raised concerns to lawmakers nearly a year ago that she might be feeding information to China, two people familiar with the matter told CNN. Her whereabouts are unclear, and she has made no public statement since last year.
Peter Mattis, a former CIA counterintelligence analyst, offered a caveat: "No one seems to have suggested that she herself was an MSS (China's Ministry of State Security) officer." China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning called the claims fabricated: "The U.S. side should stop fabricating so-called espionage narratives as a pretext for implementing technological blockades."
In 2023, Alice Huang was a director at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based cloud computing and data center provider that Trump officials have long suspected of funneling advanced chips into China. Analyst estimates put its purchases of Nvidia semiconductors at more than $4 billion. Megaspeed says it is a "compliant and legal company." Former SEC chairman Gary Gensler called it "a cardboard cut-out of a company."
Here's where the apparatus shows its seams. Two people familiar with the matter told CNN that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent challenged Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in a Situation Room confrontation last Thursday over Commerce's reluctance to put Megaspeed on its entity list. Senior Trump officials, including Lutnick, were briefed months ago about Huang's relationship with Alice Huang. A source told CNN that in May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio briefed Trump on the intelligence as they traveled to China. Trump publicly denied knowing about the allegations at that time. About six months later, he says he spoke with Huang, who denied knowing the woman was allegedly a spy. Asked whether Huang could join his Asia trip, Trump said: "I don't know, but I'd certainly take him."
The Oversight Ritual
Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Chris Coons wrote to Lutnick, Rubio and White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, asking them to preserve all documents on the export of Nvidia's advanced AI chips to China and all materials on the reported intelligence operation. They wrote that the incident "raises significant concerns about the federal government's ability to effectively enforce our export controls and protect our national security." They asked for a briefing. NBC noted Democrats will hold both chambers in the coming months and will have subpoena power.
A letter. A document-preservation request. A briefing. The institutions that were briefed months ago now ask to be briefed again.
Who Pays
Analysts spoke plainly about what the king's fall means for the people who hold the paper. Mike O'Rourke of JonesTrading said an ouster would make "an already challenging environment for Nvidia investors and employees" considerably more difficult. Dan Ives of Yorkville Ives & Co. wrote that with Huang in charge Nvidia is worth $300 per share, compared with $225 without him. Stacy Rasgon wrote: "NVIDIA is not an ordinary company and Jensen is not an ordinary CEO; he IS NVIDIA." Michael Monaghan of the Founders 100 ETF mused that without "Jensen the kingmaker," it "could really become a more free-for-all playing field."
A company founded at a Denny's in San Jose in 1993, 33 years ago, now rises and falls on one man's standing. The analysts' own words describe a firm with no clear public succession plan and a valuation that depends on a single throne.
The last word belongs to Huang, from his Sunday note to employees, where he wrote that he had been "unfaithful to his wife," naming no one and giving no details. The statement came four days before the board met, and it explained nothing to the workers whose jobs now hang on the outcome.
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- jensen huang
- chinese espionage
- megaspeed
- nvidia board
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