Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang likely out, says WSJ

Nvidia's board of directors is meeting about CEO Jensen Huang's future and likely to oust him.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Nvidia's board is preparing to oust Huang after an affair with Alice Huang, the CEO of Megaspeed who is alleged to be a spy. In addition, The New York Times reported that Jensen Huang had another affair with a Nvidia employee.

Add it up and Nvidia will be a distracted company without much of a succession plan. Huang isn't only the face of Nvidia as much as he is the lead singer of the AI economy.

The board is meeting as Nvidia preps its earnings report for next week.

Here's the timeline from the last four days.

• Nov. 8: Nvidia's board said it was "initiating an independent investigation in light of recent reporting that founder and CEO Jensen Huang has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort."
• Nov. 8: Huang sent an email to the company that apologized for the affair and said he'd cooperate with any investigation.
• Nov. 10: Nvidia said it has retained U.S. Attorney of the Southern District of New York Joon H. Kim and his firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to conduct the independent investigation.
• Nov. 11: The New York Times reported that Huang had an affair with Nvidia's VP of healthcare Kimberly Powell. Bloomberg reported that Nvidia's board is working with an outside firm to find possible replacements and weighs a temporary CEO.

Now this is playing out, here are some things to watch going forward.

How will the succession be handled? Nvidia doesn’t appear to have a solid succession plan. It remains to be seen who Nvidia can land to stop the bleeding. CFO Colette Kress is a natural interim CEO or perhaps Chris Malachowsky, Founder and Nvidia Fellow, could be a fit.

Will Nvidia be distracted? Nvidia has enjoyed a massive lead in AI infrastructure, but the competition has only ramped. Google TPUs, Amazon Trainium, AMD’s AI accelerators and racks and Broadcom’s XPUs are just some of the competition. Without its CEO, it’s unclear Nvidia can keep its momentum.

What revelations are next? This Huang saga extends into politics as well as the US vs China AI race. There won’t be a one-and-done reveal. The big question is how long it will take to reveal everything.