Nvidia Board Opens Independent Investigation Into Jensen Huang, Asks the Leather Jacket to Recuse Itself

SANTA CLARA, CA — Nvidia’s board of directors opened an independent investigation Sunday into chief executive Jensen Huang, after Huang told employees he had an affair and U.S. intelligence officials alleged that the woman involved has ties to Chinese intelligence. Markets were closed. I set my alarm for 4 a.m. anyway, because a story like this deserves to be bought at the earliest possible hour.

“I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry,” Huang wrote in an email to Nvidia staff, CNBC reported. He also said he was “fully committed to NVIDIA” and supported the investigation, according to CBS News.

The woman is Alice Huang, no relation, an executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based data center company and an Nvidia customer. U.S. intelligence officials believe she worked on behalf of China’s Ministry of State Security, according to reporting first published by The New York Times and the Financial Times. That is an allegation from U.S. officials, and it is only an allegation. China rejected the claims as “groundless speculation,” the BBC reported.

The board said a committee of independent directors, assisted by outside counsel, will run the inquiry. “While the Board has no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised, the Board’s inquiry will examine all available information,” the board said in a statement, according to CNBC. An Nvidia spokesperson said Huang remains CEO.

The jacket

The committee’s first act, according to a senior board member who asked not to be named because he was speaking from underneath the conference table, was to ask the leather jacket to leave the room.

“It has been at every keynote. It has seen every roadmap,” the board member said, from the carpet. “We love the jacket. But it has a conflict of interest, and the conflict of interest is that it is the most famous thing in the building.”

The jacket declined to comment, though it declined in a way that was extremely cool. It is now waiting on a bench in the lobby, where three employees have asked it for a selfie.

Nvidia’s crisis communications team, which until Sunday was one intern whose only job was posting the stock chart, spent the afternoon drafting a response. An early version, written on a whiteboard that nobody has confirmed exists, adapted Huang’s famous keynote line, “The more you buy, the more you save,” into “The more you investigate, the more you save.” Legal erased it. The intern says he still believes in it. So do I.

The export-control desk

Megaspeed has faced scrutiny over U.S. chip export controls before, CNBC reported. Washington has spent years writing rules about which chips may go where, and Nvidia has spent years designing chips that fit precisely under those rules, like a man limboing under a bar that keeps getting lowered.

A compliance consultant who exists mainly on my podcast, which has two listeners, both of them me, told me the export-control world was struggling with a question it had never considered: whether the restricted list should include the chief executive. “Right now his permitted destinations column just says ‘home,’” the consultant said. “And honestly, that is between him and his family.”

Three House Republican committee chairs asked Huang to attend a closed-door briefing on Nov. 18, CNBC reported, and Democratic lawmakers separately called for an investigation or testimony. Bipartisan interest. In this market, nothing is rarer. I consider it a buy signal from both chambers.

My position

Some analysts are calling this a crisis. I checked every chart I own and none of them has a line labeled “crisis.” The board says it has no reason to believe any secrets were compromised. The CEO is still the CEO. The jacket is still the jacket, just in a different room.

My crypto portfolio is down 98 percent, and I held it through worse than a board inquiry. I can hold this.

My alarm is set for 4 a.m. Monday. When the bell rings, I will be long Nvidia, long independent committees and long the bench in the lobby where the jacket is waiting to be let back in.