Affairs of an ex-CEO

~~Diary~~ Affairs of a CEO who just messed up- big time.

Jensen Huang, the ex-CEO, co-founder and president of Nvidia, the world’s second most valuable company, has been the focus of the news recently. Why? Because, despite having met his wife in college and marrying her in 1985, despite having two children, despite being one of the most powerful CEOs, with a net worth of around $200bn, he gave in to a trivial human error: lust.

Huang has been exposed to have had 3 (not just 1, not 2) extra-marital affairs- after projecting himself as a ‘true family man’ bare in mind- and with one of his lovers being a potential spy for China. Jeez. But why is this such a big deal?

Well, it’s because Nvidia, his company, is one of America’s most useful assets, as a tech titan. It started off as a gaming industry chipmaker, by creating graphic processing units (GPUs) that could render realistic 3D graphics. However, this chip was so powerful and had the ability to process multiple computations (transforming input data into a different output), that it was perfect for use in high performing computers, and more importantly, AI.

Nvidia began by launching different graphic processers throughout the 1990s, earning recognition and many awards, before providing GPUs for Apple’s Power Mac G4 supercomputer in 2001, thus beginning its expansion in the tech industry. Nvidia also donated one of its supercomputers to OpenAI in 2016- hopping on the AI trend early- as this allowed ChatGPT to be created. Now, its chips are used by some of the largest AI companies, such as Anthropic, OpenAI and Oracle. This is not only because Nvidia’s chips are some of the best, but because it makes up 92%!!!! of the GPU chip market, something necessary for any AI firm, whether they’re American or Chinese. In turn, Nvidia has become the only company in the world to reach $5 trillion in value.

So, what does it mean that Huang has had an affair with a spy?

As trends have shown time and time again whenever a big CEO has had an affair: the value of the company drops.

Nvidia’s stock has dropped over 25%, with a loss of market value being estimated between $192 billion and $247 billion– that is a LOT of money. But does it make that much of a difference for a company valued in the trillions? We will have to see. If its value continues to decrease at this rate, then the answer is yes. But, Nvidia itself is such an important powerhouse, it is unlikely that the entire company will diminish as a result of its CEO’s lust and disobedience. In fact, the real reason why Huang had to resign was not that he cheated but that he cheated with somebody who worked for him (something heavily disallowed in the US as it could be seen as a manipulation of his power)- wow, how fickle this world is… Anyway, hopefully stocks don’t loose all their value and stay down, otherwise there may be a dip in the stocks and shares market that investors will not appreciate…

Anddd the whole spy thing?? Seems almost too fictional to be true. But why could this be so bad?

China and America are in direct competition to become the leading AI power, due to its huge potential. Trump recruited Nvidia, Microsoft, OpenAI and Oracle to spearhead the Stargate Project, which dedicates $500 billion over four years to expanding AI infrastructure in the U.S, showing the huge trust placed in Nvidia. By potentially allowing a spy into Huang’s life, America’s lead in the AI race could be threatened if Huang’s lover has leaked info to China. Moreover, she is an executive for Megaspeed, a Singaporean tech company that is now under investigation for smuggling Nvidia’s chips into China. As a result, China could develop knowledge and teach just as powerful as Nvidia…

There is so much more behind this story, and with many news stories reporting on Trump’s engagement with Huang, the FBI investigations, Nvidia’s board responses, I really recommend you do some extra reading!

But hey, maybe Jensen Huang’s thought process was something along the lines of: if you’re going to go out with a bang and ruin you and your family’s lives, you may as well threaten the world’s stability whilst you’re at it- right…?