Huang resigns from Nvidia after affair

AP:

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang resigned Thursday after his extramarital affair raised national security concerns, in a spectacular downfall for the longtime head of the chipmaker, a vital player in the artificial intelligence boom.

Huang, who has been synonymous with Nvidia since he co-founded it more than 30 years ago, faced growing calls to resign following his affair with a Chinese businesswoman who reportedly was also acting as a spy for Beijing. His troubles compounded late Wednesday when media reports said Huang had another affair with a Nvidia employee who reported to him.

The ouster sets off a scramble to find a permanent replacement to lead Nvidia, which did not have a succession plan. The board will consider candidates from both inside and outside the company, the company said in a statement.

The company named Colette Kress, the executive vice president and chief financial officer (CFO), as interim chief executive. She became CFO in 2013, overseeing the company’s global finance operations. Before that, she worked for three years at Cisco and spent 13 years at Microsoft.

In a statement Thursday, Kress said that Nvidia’s “strength has always come from its people” and that she was “committed to building on the extraordinary foundation Jensen created over the last 33 years”.

The board of directors said Thursday it had also named its first-ever chairman, Harvey C. Jones, an entrepreneur and venture investor.

Nvidia shares tumble at the opening bell

Shares of Nvidia tumbled 14 per cent at the opening bell Thursday but pared their losses by midmorning, when they were down 4.2 per cent as the tech-heavy Nasdaq turned positive. The company is due to report earnings Tuesday.

Nvidia’s board had gathered to discuss Huang’s future after revelations about his affair with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed International suspected of being a Chinese government agent. The two are not related.

In its first statement since the scandal broke, Megaspeed, a provider of cloud computing services for AI, said Thursday that it takes its obligation to comply with United States export control laws “extremely seriously”. The company prominently touts a partnership with Nvidia on its website.