> "We are all humans and can make mistakes. Jensen did so many good things and he needs a second chance,” wrote another.
I think if it was one affair, this would hold. It is allegedly 3 and counting, and includes a likely spy from a rival nation, and likely knowledge of selling to the rival nation despite the current laws.
You can think he is amazing at many parts of this job, but at this point it is less of a mistake, and more a pattern of behavior that he knew was hugely risky and decided to cover up.
This is a terrible time for Nvidia employees. But the solution is not to invite the cause of the terrible time back in.
There is disagreement among US officials about the strength of the evidence that Alice Huang was recruited by the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS), the Chinese equivalent of the CIA, to spy on Jensen Huang — and, by extension, on US policymakers.:
> The FBI has been investigating Huang’s affair for at least a year. But Attorney General Todd Blanche said on Thursday that there are still “no conclusions reached by the Department of Justice, or by me, or by [FBI] Director Patel around who she is or is not.
Just for context:
> In April 2023, Trump hired [Todd] Blanche to defend him for concealed hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels and he led Trump's defense in the 2024 criminal trial. Blanche later defended Trump in cases involving federal classified documents and election obstruction. In November 2024, following his victory in the 2024 presidential election, President-elect Donald Trump announced Blanche as his nominee for deputy attorney general. Blanche was confirmed by the Senate in March 2025.[1]
He defended Trump's White House media ban[2] and most recently threatened to prosecute Democrats planning oversight probes into the administration[3].
FBI Director Kash Patel, for anyone who doesn't already know, is a Trump loyalist who was a director of Trump Media & Technology Group and reportedly made over $500,000 from Trump's political campaign. It is literally insane that he is the director of anything in the government[4].
Bottom line: time will tell who Alice Huang really was, but given the reports that Trump was informed she might have been a spy a year ago and didn't act on it, you can't expect honesty from loyalists he put in law enforcement positions.
If there's any concern that his inaction was a mistake, you can expect all of the people he put in positions of power to do whatever it takes to defend him, and that includes fudge the truth about the intelligence they had on Alice Huang.
Is there any evidence export laws were being violated and Jensen knew about it. If so did he act single handedly within Nvidia? I find the timing of all this very suspicious and feel like we are only being told a small part of the story.
do we really care that much about affairs? It's highly likely you are interacting with a bunch of people who are having affairs, its likely quite a few CEOs are, only difference is you don't know about it. As far as I can tell there is no terrible times happening other than the current news cycle having found a sensational news piece.
Some were allegedly with direct reports. One was allegeldy with an individual who posed a security risk. In each instance, there significant risk to the board, the company and shareholders.
He's obviously been very succesful in many elements of his role but this is very poor decision making. He could have just had affairs outside of work and been fine.
I agree, but even so it’s all minor. A manager fucking his direct report(s) is extremely common. It’s all Pennies compared to the value Henson brings to the company.
These weren't vulnerable people who had no capacity to make their own mature decisions and financial insecurity that trapped them into a situation. People who make it into these positions at a place like Nvidia are not idiots. I do think there are situations and approaches to getting into a relationship with someone who works for you that can be legitimately wrong, but it's highly unlikely that this is one of them outside of the fact he was married.
you are right, power dynamics only come into play on poor ppl. CEOs should be allowed have atleast single digit mistresses in the office who they promote beyond the poverty threshold to have an affair with them.
It's certainly a false equivalence to suggest that someone rich and smart, probably with alternative options and something to gain, is in a similarly vulnerable space as someone for whom losing their job means they're on the street by the end of the month.
Yes. I don't want someone with that lack of moral character leading multi-trillion dollar companies. You can forgive Jensen, maybe even some of the people Jensen harmed will forgive Jensen, but I separate individuals forgiving the man from letting him remain the public face of Nvidia. I wouldn't want to work for him at this point.
> its likely quite a few CEOs are, only difference is you don't know about it
I hope more CEOs get caught so they can be held accountable, too.
Relations between bosses and workers are likely against company rules. They are in many companies at least. So at least two affairs are against business guidelines and one with a CCP associate.
One affair, shame on him. Three affairs, and wanting him to stay as CEO shame on them.
The problem was not that he was having affairs. The problem wasn’t even that he got got by a spy.
The problem was that he was having affairs with employees who reported to him. That by itself is disqualifying, and then possibly he lied about the board to it?
Anyone who was passed up for promotion now has a credible lawsuit
- Avoid actual or potential conflicts between personal interests and their obligations to Nvidia.
- Remove themselves from decision-making when such conflicts arise.
- Contact Employment Legal when there is a perceived or actual conflict.
Do you know if these were followed or not? do you know he lied? It feels everything is "maybe this, maybe that" with no actual substance.
Given Jensen is one of the two founders that still has stock (the other being Chris Malachowsky) I suppose there could be some room for interpretation.
Please observe the substantial difference between "an affair", "an affair with a spy who may or may not have been part of a plan to illegally sell billions of dollars of GPUs against export controls", and "an affair with one of your direct reports"
One of these things is a mostly private matter between you and your spouse. One of them involves congressional hearings and may land you and your company in serious deep poop. And one of them is widely recognized as an abuse of power in the workplace.
only if he knew right? otherwise he's just having an affair.... that the government knew about..... and didn't tell him.... because there's no evidence of anything untoward....
This is the part people discount. Any actual attempt to go after Jensen will run into the public reporting that the government was suspicious of the maybe spy’s relationship with Jensen, and it chose not to tell him about it. Jensen has ignorance handed to him on a silver platter.
Everyone is subordinate to the CEO. That doesn't really make any sense. Unless it can be shown that it was coerced or led to favoritism. I admit it's a dangerous line to walk.
I imagine there's a lot of mixed emotions at Nvidia. Jensen seemed to have a very likable persona about him and he truly was a great CEO of the company. I imagine many looked up to him and are left to make sense of the past week.
They've also taken a pretty big pay cut this week and potentially into the future.
At least the more women that appears the less any single one of them can feel guilty of shareholder value destruction. At the beginning it was all on the shoulders of Alice, the poor girl, hundreds and hundreds of billions of guilt, now it must be on double digits already, way more manageable.
I see where they’re coming from. Is the CEO in the position to be an upstanding moral citizen and flawless in his person life or is his job to increase the size of the business and returns to shareholders? If it’s not actually damaging to the company’s reputation and it will lose value without him…
On the other hand the potential spy stuff and corruption is quite worrying.
A lot of people became millionaires during his tenure, suppose it’s not surprising that brings a lot of loyalty. Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right move for the company though.
Are these Chinese employees? If it's true Huang betrayed America for China it would make sense why they wouldn't be as upset. I doubt the employees have as full of a story like the board does so they may not know the extent of his misdeeds.
Theres zero evidence that this lady was a spy, zero evidence for any of the claims.
I dont even like Jensen but this is ridiculous. We need more media literacy in this country, we can't just hop on whatever narrative the NYT, WSJ and CNN push onto us.
This whole thing is clearly a political hit job on behalf of the AI lab lobby. Wild everyone fell for this garbage.
They literally trickled out leaks about random affairs, this was highky coordinated and hard to tell who was exactly responsible. But the journalist at the NYT responsible for these initial leaks has tons of past scoops with sources at the highest levels of Anthropic.
Edit: This got downvoted literally instantly. This is a new account and my karma instantly went to zero... Bots much.
Getting whiplash from which side of the issues people are angry about on the current administration's party on either social or economic/geopolitical impacts, and this other matter with Jensen and his sexual affairs vs. the economic/geopolitical issues of NVIDIA exports since this was with a Chinese spy.
Confused on whether people are actually upset about both or even understand the issue, or are just upset about one thing while using the other as ammunition.
It's one of those news stories that ends up being a good Rorschach test. There are a lot of different possible angles and takes, which means someone's opinion ends up saying something about themselves.
Yeah... What I meant with this was I'm hearing the anger and outrage in the responses to this story, and then I'm surprised to hear at the very end of someone's tirade that their objection seems to be solely about the sexual affair, and not everything else about this. It almost feels like satire.
Are they petitioning to bring back the Chinese spy too or is it just Jensen? Whatever international espionage the man wishes to dabble in in his own private time should be his own damn business. Are they willing to take them on as a job lot? Questions need to be answered
I wish the employees well but there's blood in the water and the sharks are circling. NVIDIA is one hell of a whalefall and there's lots of hungry scavengers out there.
Jensen should start a new company and hire them. California's ban on non-competes is one of the few good laws it has and made Silicon Valley what it is. Time for another traitorous eight.
That company would suck because it wouldn't own any NVidia patents nor the copyright to their software and it wouldn't have the contractual relationship with TSMC that NVidia has. Nor their customers.
> He may be a thief, he may be a robber of temples, he may he the very chief man in every sort of vice and criminality; but he is a gallant general and a fortunate one, and he must be preserved for the critical emergencies of the republic.
I am amazed to see how easy it is for some people to forget (or rather not acknowledge) that almost no one gives two flying f’s about what happens to the billionaire spouses, his (pretty sure) millionnaire colleagues he slept with, and that spy (all of them alleged, right?) – or anyone esle he would have sex with. Well, maybe a bit of jealousy (mostly for the billions because that’s what seems to have done the trick). We are in it for the entertainment of it all. But then you’d come across comments trying too hard to sound philosophical and “deep”. I mean ffs, this is one of most basic and banal human urges.
Because no one else can fill the shoes. The best that the next CEO can do is either:
a) make improvements on what exists, or
b) cut staff (which Nvidia has only done twice in its history: 1996 (near-bankruptcy), and around 2008 (360 / 6.5%), right in the middle of ironing out the Tesla architecture).
The moment their CFO took over, they already announced layoffs.
I don't like him or Nvidia but you can't deny he was the CEO while they achieved exraordinary things. He is just very successful no matter which way you put it.
I don't just mean making money successful like polymarket etc. but he was the head of a company that created multiple huge technical achievements in past decades. He made huge bets on multiple things and the bets actually worked in the end.
And they will very likely replace him with a bunch of accountants. It is not hard to understand why someone would want to have him as a leader instead of an accountant.
Why would you take an RSU from a company that "licenses" hardware they design from the ground up to lock you out of doing what you want with it? You're rewarding the parasite. Don't reward parasites.
At the point you've accepted RSUs you're already working for the company. If you hate your employer enough to turn down a significant portion of your total comp package, you really need to question how you got in that position.
That's a pretty subtle and uncommon critique of Nvidia. Reminds me of this YouTube comment I saw on a Valve video once where someone made a huge post about how half life: alyx isn't a real videogame you can own because it isn't available as a physical disc.
Like you aren't technically wrong but, idk, are you expecting anyone to agree?
The forces at work answer your question. Why would someone take RSUs from Nvidia? Obviously because that means they're getting hired at Nvidia which is one of the highest valued companies in the world, and the RSUs represent a lot of more money on top of your high salary and permanent resume clout.
In Taiwan, Nvidia and tsmc are the two highest salary payers in the country. It's frankly funny to think of a Taiwanese engineer hesitating at a Nvidia offer letter because of niche FOSS/right to repair/IP liberation ideological qualms when the alternative is sweatshopping it at some no name chip industry side company that pays 30k/year at the high end.
Anyone senior signing such a petition should get a very close eye from the new HR and outside counsel. (We don't need to cancel anyone. But a person in management minimizing a boss sleeping with his reports merits a second look.)
Infidelity, possibly violating US law, and Nvidia’s own HR policies that open the company up to huge liability is okay because you took a look at a photo of his wife? Really?
I really hope you take some time to reevaluate this extremely misogynist take.
At the end of the day he hasn't been accused of harassment. The two employees he banged didn't complain that he pressured them into banging him. It is still wrong to bang your employees, and there should be penalties for that. But can't he be punished in a way that doesn't also punish the industry, the economy and US competitiveness?
He isn't being punished for "banging" anyone he's being punished because it hurts "US competitiveness" to send chips to China via the export smuggling operation that spy he was "banging" operates. It would not surprise anyone to found out he broke several federal laws. That's the point, no one actually cares about his sex life.
The guy was smuggling material deemed by US law to have export controls for national security reasons to the very country "US competitiveness" has been hyperventilating about for over a decade now. Resigning is the least of his concerns he will have to worry about being prosecuted for years to come.
“In facilities across the region, Megaspeed rents Nvidia chips to Chinese tech giants such as Alibaba, an arrangement that does not violate current US export control regulations.”
If Alibaba is allowed to remotely access Nvidia hardware physically located in Singapore, what purpose does the export control serve?
Also, it has not been established that any export control laws have been violated.
assuming the offshore GPU use is ok, the main issues are that the buyer companies' addresses turned out to be empty locations (shell companies?), and megaspeed's supposed "data center" was just a warehouse stacked with boxed GPUs on pallets.
this "data center" was one of those locations that Alibaba was supposed to remotely use, assuming the terms were that they had to. the implication is that this "data center" was fake and that GPUs were physically routed to China still.
It seems Nvidia's board which had every reason to try to keep him has not reached your conclusion.
Do you simply take them to be fools?
Instead of playing lawyer with you it's quite obviously reasonable to assume the board recognizes his actions open up a Pandora's box of severe legal liability. And quite frankly, I'm not really impressed by your pedestrian analysis of export law. If it was that clear cut he would still be there, and the modus operandi of the Chinese spy wouldn't even make any sense.
For your analysis to have any credibility Nvidia would have to disregard its own self interest. Is that really how you think the world works?
Yes, and the US government should investigate that and make a determination as to whether export control laws were violated and how serious the violation was. That hasn't happened yet.
The US was investigating it and Nvidia (aka Jensen) name-dropped a Trump appointee to get it to go away. That alone is resignation-worthy in any political era in our lifetimes before Trump.
> Yes, and the US government should investigate that
Well, there is also a problem in that the US government agencies tasked with investigating such things are currently very compromised.
Todd Blanche, the Attorney General/head of DOJ, constantly says that his job is to protect the Trump administration. And Trump is linked to this whole story in various ways.
So there will be no fair investigation for the foreseeable future, other than potential congressional oversight hearings next year after the Democrats take control of Congress.
Yes they should, but this does not preclude the board and the public from concluding based on the available information that his judgement in this area seemed extremely poor, even if it may not end up illegal. It sure doesn't look like a situation where people are surprised that Alice Huang was a spy ...
I think it's odd the amount of flak this guy took for relationships with adult women, while those involved with Epstein remain mosly undisturbed. If the AI bubble bursts soon, I wonder if people will try to blame Huang's extramarital affairs for it, instead of the rampant misallocation of resources.
These weren’t random women. They were both involved in his business. One was an employee. You can never be say confidently that an employee consented. It’s the nature of the power dynamic. That’s why this is so serious.
I don’t know if billionaire pedophiles raping trafficked teenagers is a better power dynamic than affairs with consenting adults that you employ.
What do I know, I’ve never done either? I would say that the pedophiles are a more serious power dynamic issue, but you are entitled to pick the other side of the issue, I guess.
If Jenson used his power to pressure them to consent then there is an issue. The board should ask them rather than speculate. If the issue is that no one can consent if there is an imbalance of power, then most heterosexual relationships are a problem just from sexual dimorphism, because implications.
It isn't so much the morality of it. CEOs as a group aren't known for excessive scruples. It's the piss-poor judgment he exhibited. Even if everything was consensual, this is a blatant violation of corporate standards and inevitably diminishes his reputation and therefore his effectiveness at his job. He's not only borked his own career, he's lost a ton of money for everyone connected with Nvidia. The question really is, why was he so stupid to think that he wouldn't get caught or that it wouldn't matter?
I think if it was one affair, this would hold. It is allegedly 3 and counting, and includes a likely spy from a rival nation, and likely knowledge of selling to the rival nation despite the current laws.
You can think he is amazing at many parts of this job, but at this point it is less of a mistake, and more a pattern of behavior that he knew was hugely risky and decided to cover up.
This is a terrible time for Nvidia employees. But the solution is not to invite the cause of the terrible time back in.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/11/12/politics/alice-huang-us-intel...
Just for context:
> In April 2023, Trump hired [Todd] Blanche to defend him for concealed hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels and he led Trump's defense in the 2024 criminal trial. Blanche later defended Trump in cases involving federal classified documents and election obstruction. In November 2024, following his victory in the 2024 presidential election, President-elect Donald Trump announced Blanche as his nominee for deputy attorney general. Blanche was confirmed by the Senate in March 2025.[1]
He defended Trump's White House media ban[2] and most recently threatened to prosecute Democrats planning oversight probes into the administration[3].
FBI Director Kash Patel, for anyone who doesn't already know, is a Trump loyalist who was a director of Trump Media & Technology Group and reportedly made over $500,000 from Trump's political campaign. It is literally insane that he is the director of anything in the government[4].
Bottom line: time will tell who Alice Huang really was, but given the reports that Trump was informed she might have been a spy a year ago and didn't act on it, you can't expect honesty from loyalists he put in law enforcement positions.
If there's any concern that his inaction was a mistake, you can expect all of the people he put in positions of power to do whatever it takes to defend him, and that includes fudge the truth about the intelligence they had on Alice Huang.
Sources:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Blanche
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/27/todd-blanche...
[3] https://www.ms.now/news/todd-blanche-threat-prosecution-demo...
[4] https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/the-fbis-controversial-...
this is what the parent is saying is the problem. How is her not being spy change that?
Some were allegedly with direct reports. One was allegeldy with an individual who posed a security risk. In each instance, there significant risk to the board, the company and shareholders.
He's obviously been very succesful in many elements of his role but this is very poor decision making. He could have just had affairs outside of work and been fine.
Yes. I don't want someone with that lack of moral character leading multi-trillion dollar companies. You can forgive Jensen, maybe even some of the people Jensen harmed will forgive Jensen, but I separate individuals forgiving the man from letting him remain the public face of Nvidia. I wouldn't want to work for him at this point.
> its likely quite a few CEOs are, only difference is you don't know about it
I hope more CEOs get caught so they can be held accountable, too.
One affair, shame on him. Three affairs, and wanting him to stay as CEO shame on them.
The problem was that he was having affairs with employees who reported to him. That by itself is disqualifying, and then possibly he lied about the board to it?
Anyone who was passed up for promotion now has a credible lawsuit
Do the numbers. Let's say 5 people sue and are awarded 10 million each. Or even 50 million each.
Given Jensen is one of the two founders that still has stock (the other being Chris Malachowsky) I suppose there could be some room for interpretation.
One of these things is a mostly private matter between you and your spouse. One of them involves congressional hearings and may land you and your company in serious deep poop. And one of them is widely recognized as an abuse of power in the workplace.
How can he not know he was sleeping with a customer and a direct report?
> he's just having an affair
Interesting use of the word "an" and "just."
> that the government knew about
Because of an investigation into illegal smuggling.
> and didn't tell him
Is that a judgement of whether he's a good steward of a multi-trillion dollar monopoly?
> because there's no evidence of anything untoward
Right, because the current administration only acts upon evidence and definitely not self-enrichment and cronyism.
Wow, how can every single word be such complete bs?
this is clearly not just an affair. Why are you reducing it to that despite that line in parent comment. you obviously read that.
I see this "just a innocent affair" on twitter. Whats going on. Who are these ppl.
I don’t think an affair or ten matters in the US.
They've also taken a pretty big pay cut this week and potentially into the future.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/former-nvidia-ceo-huang-h...
https://polymarket.com/event/how-many-jensen-huang-affairs-w...
On the other hand the potential spy stuff and corruption is quite worrying.
You could have the exact same situation with a different company/CEO and the HN comments would be completely different
This is just how people work.
I dont even like Jensen but this is ridiculous. We need more media literacy in this country, we can't just hop on whatever narrative the NYT, WSJ and CNN push onto us.
This whole thing is clearly a political hit job on behalf of the AI lab lobby. Wild everyone fell for this garbage.
They literally trickled out leaks about random affairs, this was highky coordinated and hard to tell who was exactly responsible. But the journalist at the NYT responsible for these initial leaks has tons of past scoops with sources at the highest levels of Anthropic.
Edit: This got downvoted literally instantly. This is a new account and my karma instantly went to zero... Bots much.
Confused on whether people are actually upset about both or even understand the issue, or are just upset about one thing while using the other as ammunition.
Its not the only way to support his ousting. But its one way.
Cicero, Against Verres 2.5.4 (tr. Yonge, 1903), http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...
(strawmanning a hypothetical defence of the person he was accusing)
Because no one else can fill the shoes. The best that the next CEO can do is either:
a) make improvements on what exists, or
b) cut staff (which Nvidia has only done twice in its history: 1996 (near-bankruptcy), and around 2008 (360 / 6.5%), right in the middle of ironing out the Tesla architecture).
The moment their CFO took over, they already announced layoffs.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BayAreaTalk/comments/1xu5wzy/nvidia...
I don't just mean making money successful like polymarket etc. but he was the head of a company that created multiple huge technical achievements in past decades. He made huge bets on multiple things and the bets actually worked in the end.
And they will very likely replace him with a bunch of accountants. It is not hard to understand why someone would want to have him as a leader instead of an accountant.
It’s easy to say you don’t have a price when no one is offering to buy you.
At the point you've accepted RSUs you're already working for the company. If you hate your employer enough to turn down a significant portion of your total comp package, you really need to question how you got in that position.
Like you aren't technically wrong but, idk, are you expecting anyone to agree?
The forces at work answer your question. Why would someone take RSUs from Nvidia? Obviously because that means they're getting hired at Nvidia which is one of the highest valued companies in the world, and the RSUs represent a lot of more money on top of your high salary and permanent resume clout.
In Taiwan, Nvidia and tsmc are the two highest salary payers in the country. It's frankly funny to think of a Taiwanese engineer hesitating at a Nvidia offer letter because of niche FOSS/right to repair/IP liberation ideological qualms when the alternative is sweatshopping it at some no name chip industry side company that pays 30k/year at the high end.
Silicon Valley culture jumped the shark.
Anyone senior signing such a petition should get a very close eye from the new HR and outside counsel. (We don't need to cancel anyone. But a person in management minimizing a boss sleeping with his reports merits a second look.)
I really hope you take some time to reevaluate this extremely misogynist take.
He isn't being punished for "banging" anyone he's being punished because it hurts "US competitiveness" to send chips to China via the export smuggling operation that spy he was "banging" operates. It would not surprise anyone to found out he broke several federal laws. That's the point, no one actually cares about his sex life.
The guy was smuggling material deemed by US law to have export controls for national security reasons to the very country "US competitiveness" has been hyperventilating about for over a decade now. Resigning is the least of his concerns he will have to worry about being prosecuted for years to come.
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/dispatches/beyond-the-spy-sc...
“In facilities across the region, Megaspeed rents Nvidia chips to Chinese tech giants such as Alibaba, an arrangement that does not violate current US export control regulations.”
If Alibaba is allowed to remotely access Nvidia hardware physically located in Singapore, what purpose does the export control serve?
Also, it has not been established that any export control laws have been violated.
this "data center" was one of those locations that Alibaba was supposed to remotely use, assuming the terms were that they had to. the implication is that this "data center" was fake and that GPUs were physically routed to China still.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/megaspeed-nvidia-china-ties/
The board and Jensen himself probably don't want to test that in court, so they preemptively step down so the prosecutors would rather not pursue.
Do you simply take them to be fools?
Instead of playing lawyer with you it's quite obviously reasonable to assume the board recognizes his actions open up a Pandora's box of severe legal liability. And quite frankly, I'm not really impressed by your pedestrian analysis of export law. If it was that clear cut he would still be there, and the modus operandi of the Chinese spy wouldn't even make any sense.
For your analysis to have any credibility Nvidia would have to disregard its own self interest. Is that really how you think the world works?
How would you know this?
Well, there is also a problem in that the US government agencies tasked with investigating such things are currently very compromised.
Todd Blanche, the Attorney General/head of DOJ, constantly says that his job is to protect the Trump administration. And Trump is linked to this whole story in various ways.
So there will be no fair investigation for the foreseeable future, other than potential congressional oversight hearings next year after the Democrats take control of Congress.
What do I know, I’ve never done either? I would say that the pedophiles are a more serious power dynamic issue, but you are entitled to pick the other side of the issue, I guess.
Don't fuck subordinates. He did this in his company and a partner company. I'm sure we've all had the opportunity- just don't.
Not to derail your point, but, huh?