Nvidia's board is reportedly preparing to remove Jensen Huang, the co-founder who has led the company for 33 years, after a second reported affair surfaced this week. The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday evening, 11 November, that directors were set to meet as soon as that day to decide his future. Reuters later reported the board did meet late on Wednesday — and no decision had been announced at the time of writing.
This is a fast-moving story built on reports, not on a board announcement. Here is what has actually been reported, in order.
The timeline so far
- 29 October: Reports emerge that Huang developed a close relationship with Alice Huang, an executive at Singapore-based technology company Megaspeed, whom US intelligence reportedly suspects of spying for China.
- 8 November: Huang writes to Nvidia employees admitting he cheated on his wife. The same day, Nvidia's board opens an independent investigation and retains former acting US Attorney Joon H. Kim and his firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to run it. Nvidia says it has no reason to believe company secrets or national security were compromised. President Trump calls Huang a "fine person" and says he thinks he should remain CEO.
- 10 November: Nvidia's independent directors confirm the investigation covers whether Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort.
- 11 November: The New York Times reports a second affair — with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of healthcare, who reports directly to Huang. The same day, reports say Congress plans to subpoena Huang, and three Republican House committee chairs have asked him for a closed-door briefing on 18 November.
- 11 November evening: The Wall Street Journal reports the board is preparing to oust Huang. Nvidia shares fell about 8% in after-hours trading and are down roughly 11% over the past five days.
Why there is no obvious next CEO
Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and is the only chief executive the company has ever had. He has around 60 direct reports and the company has no public succession plan. Bloomberg reports the board is already working with an outside firm to identify possible replacements, and Semafor reports some directors favour CFO Colette Kress as an interim chief. Under Nvidia's bylaws, a simple majority of its 11 directors can remove the CEO, with or without cause.
What this means for AI
Nvidia makes the chips that power almost all serious AI work — its GPUs sit inside the data centres of OpenAI, Google, Meta, Anthropic and every major cloud provider. A leadership fight at the top of that company is not gossip; it is a stability question for the whole AI industry. Two dates matter this week: Nvidia reports quarterly earnings on 17 November, and the House briefing request is set for 18 November.
For now, nothing about Nvidia's products, roadmap or chip supply has changed. The investigation is still running, the board has announced no decision, and the allegations about spying remain reported suspicions, not proven facts. The honest position is to watch what the board does next — not to assume the outcome.
Key takeaways
- The WSJ reports Nvidia's board is preparing to oust Jensen Huang; the board met late on 11 November and announced no decision.
- The trigger was a second reported affair, this time with an Nvidia executive who reports to him, reported by the NYT on 11 November.
- An independent investigation into the earlier reported relationship with a suspected Chinese intelligence-linked executive is still running.
- Nvidia stock fell about 8% after hours and is down roughly 11% in five days.
- Nvidia has no public succession plan and no obvious successor — the hardest part of any change at the top.
Sources: TechCrunch — Nvidia's stock drops as board reportedly preps to oust CEO Jensen Huang (11 November 2026) and TechCrunch — The unfolding Jensen Huang scandal: a timeline. Hero photo: Jensen Huang at Computex Taipei, 2016 — file photo by NVIDIA Taiwan, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
