Nvidia's Board Is Preparing to Oust Jensen Huang: The Second Affair, the Subpoena Threat, and What Happens Next

AI-generated illustration of an empty chair at the head of a boardroom table, a glowing green AI chip on the table, and a falling red stock chart on the wall screen.

Nvidia's board is preparing to oust Jensen Huang, the founder and chief executive who has run the company for 33 years, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal published late on Wednesday. The board is preparing to meet as soon as Wednesday to determine his future, people familiar with the matter told the Journal, and Nvidia's shares fell about 8 percent in after-hours trading after the report landed. The report comes just hours after The New York Times reported that Huang had a second extramarital affair, this time with a company executive who reported to him. It is the sharpest escalation yet in a scandal that, in the space of two weeks, has gone from a board investigation into whether a chief executive was targeted by a foreign intelligence operation to a live question about who will run the most valuable company in the world. Two things need to be said plainly at the start. First, the ouster report is attributed to unnamed people familiar with the matter, and Reuters, in reporting the Journal's account, said it could not immediately verify it and that Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The board has not announced a decision, and Huang has not resigned. Second, the underlying allegations — that Huang's affairs created a national-security and export-control risk — remain reported but unproven, and Nvidia has not been accused of knowingly breaking export controls. What has changed is not the evidence, but the board's apparent posture: the same board that on Sunday said it had confidence in Huang and his leadership team is now, according to the Journal, preparing to decide whether he stays.

The story reached this point in two steps on Wednesday, and both matter. Earlier in the day, The New York Times reported, citing five people who worked at the company, that Huang had an extramarital affair with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of healthcare, who reported to him. That was the second affair to become public in four days. On Sunday 8 November, Huang had told employees in a message that he had been unfaithful to his wife, without disclosing details, after The New York Times reported in late October that United States intelligence officials were concerned that Alice Huang, a business executive at the Singapore-based data-centre company Megaspeed, was acting on behalf of Chinese intelligence and had a close relationship with Jensen Huang. The board responded that day by opening an independent investigation into whether Huang had been targeted by a foreign intelligence effort, while saying it had no reason to believe that national security or Nvidia's secrets were compromised. Then, on Tuesday 10 November, The Information reported that the affair with Alice Huang had helped facilitate shipments of at least 7.5 billion dollars' worth of Nvidia chips to Chinese firms — a report we covered in detail yesterday, including the roughly 430 billion dollars of market value Nvidia lost in two trading sessions and the resignation call from a Republican senator. Wednesday's two reports added a second affair inside the company and, for the first time, a board preparing to remove the chief executive. That is why this is a new story, not a repeat of yesterday's: the question is no longer whether the scandal is survivable, but whether the board will end it by ending Huang's tenure.

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What the board is actually deciding

The Journal's report is careful about what it does and does not say, and the distinction matters for anyone trying to read the next 24 hours. The board is "preparing to oust" Huang and is planning to meet as soon as Wednesday to determine his future — that is a process under way, not a decision already taken. It was not immediately clear who would succeed him, the Journal reported, and that uncertainty is itself part of the story. Huang, who is 63, has roughly 60 direct reports and has said he does not believe in succession planning, preferring that leaders pass on knowledge continuously rather than naming a successor. Nvidia's latest proxy statement warns that the company is "highly dependent on the services of our longstanding executive team" and that a failure to ensure succession planning could "hinder our strategic planning, execution, and long-term success." The market reacted as if the odds had shifted. Bettors on the prediction market Polymarket put the odds of Huang leaving his position by resignation or removal by the end of the year at 77 percent after the report, according to the Journal's live coverage — a sharp rise from the 13 to 14 percent odds the same markets assigned to his removal just a day earlier, when the board's public line was still one of confidence. Analysts moved too: Baird analysts Tristan Gerra and Tyler Bomba wrote in a research note that Huang might have to step down as chief executive, and Baird downgraded Nvidia's stock. The board's own investigation, led by Joon Kim, a partner at the law firm Wachtell Lipton and a former acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, is still running, and its formal question is narrow — whether Huang was targeted by a foreign intelligence operation. But the board's meeting will inevitably range wider, because the directors now have to judge not only what happened, but whether a chief executive whose personal conduct has cost the company hundreds of billions in market value and drawn bipartisan fire in Congress can keep leading it.

The second affair, and why it changed the calculation

The first affair was a national-security story. The second is a governance story, and that may be what finally moved the board. A relationship with a subordinate is a direct conflict with the company's own rules: Nvidia's website warns that personal relationships can create conflicts of interest, and says "we avoid situations where our actions might create a conflict — actual or potential — between our personal gain and our obligations to Nvidia." The New York Times reported the relationship with Powell on the basis of five people who worked at the company, and the report landed on the same day the board was said to be preparing its meeting — a sequence that suggests the directors learned of the second affair as they weighed the first. It also undercut the board's Sunday position. When the board announced its investigation, it said it had confidence in Huang and his leadership team and no reason to believe secrets were compromised — a statement made before the investigation had examined anything, and one that now reads as premature. The first affair, meanwhile, keeps growing in scope. The Justice Department is now leading multiple investigations involving Alice Huang, according to people familiar with the matter cited by the Journal, and The Information's report — that her network of companies across China and Singapore bought about 240,000 H100, H200 and some A100 chips, and that her ties to Nvidia helped move them when export-restricted orders stalled — remains the hinge of the export-control question. Reuters has said it could not independently verify that account, and China's foreign ministry has rejected the espionage allegations as "entirely based on groundless speculation." None of the reporting so far accuses Nvidia of knowingly violating export controls, and the board has said it has no reason to believe corporate secrets were compromised. But the second affair changes the board's problem from a single lapse to a pattern of conduct, and patterns are much harder for a board to defend — to investors, to regulators, and to the directors themselves.

Congress turns the screws

While the board deliberates, Washington is not waiting. A trio of House Republicans is pushing Huang to testify about his alleged relationship with a Chinese spy, and according to a person familiar with the discussions cited by Reuters, they are unlikely to allow him to send the company's general counsel to answer questions on his behalf. House Foreign Affairs Chairman Brian Mast and two other top Republican lawmakers had already asked Huang on 4 November to provide a closed-door briefing on 18 November; Mast is now open to issuing a congressional subpoena if Huang does not respond, his spokesperson said, and Huang was given until 5 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday to decide whether he would agree to meet lawmakers behind closed doors. The pressure is bipartisan and it is escalating in parallel. Republican Senator Kevin Cramer of the Senate Banking Committee has already called on Huang to step down, telling Politico that the potential for extortion was so tremendous, with something as sensitive as Nvidia chips at stake, that he had to go. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has called on Congress to pass the AI Overwatch Act, which would give Congress power over advanced chip exports, and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries has called for the annual defence bill to include restrictions on chip sales to China. A proposed shareholder class action, filed on 9 November in a federal court in San Jose, California, accuses Nvidia and Huang of misleading investors by concealing the national-security risks linked to the affair. And on Monday, President Trump said the FBI is examining whether Huang was targeted by a foreign intelligence operation — while also saying, when asked on Sunday whether Huang should stay on as chief executive, "I think so, oh yeah, sure," and calling him "an honorable guy." That split — the FBI examining the affair while the president publicly defends the chief executive — captures the political bind. Huang has been one of Trump's closest allies in Silicon Valley and a regular presence in Washington, lobbying for looser chip export rules; the scandal has now made that closeness a liability for both men.

The governance problem the scandal exposed

Whatever the board decides about Huang, the episode has exposed how unusually the world's most valuable chip company is governed, and that exposure will outlast this week. Nvidia has no chairman — only about 1 percent of publicly traded companies in the Russell 3000 share that trait, according to Equilar — and Huang, together with the board's lead director, former Cooley chief executive Stephen Neal, draws up the agenda for board meetings, determines what information directors receive, and presides over them. The board has changed slowly even as the company grew into a roughly 4 trillion dollar business: as of last spring, three of its ten independent directors had held their seats for 25 years or more, and two others had served more than a decade. The proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services ranked Nvidia at the risky end of its corporate-governance scoring last spring, citing the long-tenured directors and the lack of a chairman or a mechanism to refresh the board. Huang founded the company 33 years ago and owns about 3.6 percent of its shares as of late March — a large personal stake, but not majority control — and he runs an unusually flat organisation in which dozens of executives report directly to him. None of this was a problem while the stock was soaring. It is a problem now, because the company is unusually dependent on one person's judgement at the exact moment that judgement is the subject of a board investigation, an FBI examination, and bipartisan congressional pressure. The Journal's governance reporting makes the point bluntly: the board denied Huang's relationship, only for him later to acknowledge it, and announced an investigation while publicly declaring it did not expect to find serious problems. If the board now ousts Huang, it will have to explain why its confidence lasted four days. If it keeps him, it will have to explain why two affairs, a 430 billion dollar market loss, and a congressional subpoena threat do not add up to a leadership change. Either way, the governance questions — who oversees the chief executive, who succeeds him, and how a board with no chairman holds a founder to account — will remain open long after this week's meeting.

What it means for Nvidia's business and the AI boom

Strip away the scandal and Nvidia is still the dominant supplier of the chips that train and run advanced AI systems, with demand that remains strong. That is why this story matters beyond the personalities, and why the market's reaction is about risk rather than collapse. The shares had already fallen more than 4 percent on Monday 9 November and 5.53 percent on Tuesday, closing at 168.89 dollars and wiping about 430 billion dollars from the company's market value in two sessions, briefly pushing its valuation below 4 trillion dollars for the first time since July 2025. Wednesday's roughly 8 percent after-hours fall, on the ouster report, extends a slide that has now taken the shares about 9.5 percent below where they stood before the affair news broke, on top of the earlier losses. What investors are pricing in is not a collapse in chip demand, but a set of linked risks: tighter export restrictions, a damaged relationship with the administration, a leadership change at a company with no succession plan, and a governance discount that may persist until the investigation, the earnings call, and the congressional briefing produce answers. The China question is the sharpest of these. China is both a major market for Nvidia and the focus of the export controls that limit it, and Huang has spent years lobbying Washington for looser restrictions, arguing that continued sales would preserve American technological leadership. If the scandal weakens his standing in Washington, that lobbying position weakens with it — and Reuters reported separately on 11 November that a Chinese university with deep ties to the People's Liberation Army bought Nvidia's H200 chips last month despite being on a United States export blacklist, a finding that shows the controls are leaking and that Congress will be asking harder questions about them. The immediate tests are fixed: Nvidia reports quarterly earnings on 17 November, the first time Huang will face investors directly since the story exploded, and the congressional briefing is set for 18 November. Until then, the company has not suspended Huang, the investigation has not concluded, and no secrets have been shown to be compromised. But the board's meeting may make those dates moot: if Huang goes, the earnings call will be led by someone else, and the story will become about who runs the AI economy's most important company next.

Checklist: what to watch next

• The board meeting, reported to be as soon as Wednesday: watch for any statement on Huang's future, and whether the board names an interim leader or a successor.
• Whether the Journal's ouster report is confirmed, denied, or left unanswered by Nvidia — and how the shares react when regular trading resumes.
• The 5 p.m. Eastern Wednesday deadline for Huang to agree to a closed-door congressional briefing, and whether House Republicans follow through on the subpoena threat.
• Nvidia's quarterly earnings on 17 November, and whether Huang or a successor leads the call — guidance on China sales will matter most.
• The congressional briefing on 18 November, when three Republican committee chairmen want to hear from Huang about his reported contacts with the alleged intelligence operative.
• The board's independent investigation, led by Joon Kim: watch for whether it expands beyond the question of whether Huang was targeted, and how long it takes.
• Any verification, or refutation, of The Information's 7.5 billion dollar shipments figure — Reuters has said it could not independently verify it, and the number remains the hinge of the export-control question.
• The Justice Department investigations involving Alice Huang, and whether they produce charges or findings that bear on Nvidia.
• The San Jose shareholder lawsuit, and whether it survives early motions.
• Whether Congress moves on the AI Overwatch Act or new export restrictions, and whether the administration tightens the rules for H200 or other advanced chips.

Bottom line

Four days ago this was a board investigation into whether a chief executive had been targeted by a foreign intelligence operation. It is now, according to The Wall Street Journal, a board preparing to remove that chief executive — after a second affair was reported, after the shares fell about 8 percent in after-hours trading, and after House Republicans began floating a subpoena. The facts that would settle the most serious allegation — that an affair facilitated export-restricted chip shipments worth 7.5 billion dollars — remain reported but unverified, and Nvidia has not been accused of knowingly breaking export controls. But the verified facts are serious enough on their own: a 430 billion dollar market loss in two sessions, a senator from the president's own party calling for the chief executive to resign, the FBI examining the affair, and a board that said on Sunday it had confidence in Huang now said to be meeting to decide his future. The next dates are fixed — the board meeting, the congressional deadline, earnings on 17 November, a briefing on 18 November — and they will tell the market whether this is a crisis Nvidia can close or a story that keeps growing. Until then, treat every new claim with the same caution the reporting itself demands: what is alleged is not what is proven, and the difference is now measured in who runs the world's most important AI company.

Reference sources

• The Wall Street Journal, "Nvidia Is Preparing to Oust CEO Jensen Huang", 11 November 2026
• Reuters, "Nvidia is preparing to oust CEO Jensen Huang, WSJ reports", 11 November 2026
• Reuters, "Nvidia CEO Huang had relationship with executive who reported to him, NYT reports", 11 November 2026
• Reuters, "How Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang got entangled in a China chip and spy scandal", 11 November 2026
• Reuters, "House Republicans push for Nvidia's Huang to testify, float subpoena over spy allegations", 11 November 2026
• The Wall Street Journal, "A Spy Scandal Lays Bare Nvidia's Governance Vacuum", 11 November 2026
• The Wall Street Journal, "Huang Might Need to Step Down as Nvidia's Top Exec, Baird Says", 11 November 2026
• Abloominst 24/7, "Nvidia Loses $430 Billion in Two Days: The $7.5 Billion China Shipments Report, a Resignation Call, and What Comes Next", 11 November 2026