Nvidia’s board is preparing to remove CEO Jensen Huang, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. If it happens, the AI boom will lose its best-known leader. It would also leave one of the world’s most valuable companies without a clear successor. That’s a big deal for banks, payments firms and FinTechs, which are spending heavily on AI tools that run on Nvidia’s chips.
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The board planned to meet as soon as Wednesday to decide Huang’s future, people familiar with the matter told the WSJ. The move follows a company investigation into Huang’s affair with Alice Huang. She’s an executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based data company and major Nvidia customer. U.S. intelligence officials believe she works for China’s intelligence services. Huang admitted the affair in a letter to staff on Sunday and apologized. The WSJ also reported that he had a second affair with Kimberly Powell, who runs Nvidia’s healthcare business. Nvidia shares fell about 8% in after-hours trading.
It isn’t clear who would take over. Huang has roughly 60 direct reports. He has said he doesn’t believe in succession planning. According to the WSJ, Nvidia’s own proxy statement warns that the company is “highly dependent on the services of our longstanding executive team” and that failing to plan for succession could “hinder our strategic planning, execution, and long-term success.”
The scandal has been building for more than a year, as a WSJ timeline shows.
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