Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's letter to staff about affair (nvidianews.nvidia.com)

Look, Jensen got whatever he wanted, China got the GPUs it wanted - China also turned Jensen into a staunch advocate for selling GPUs to China - everything's good - everyone wins.

"Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang challenged US export controls on advanced semiconductors, arguing that continued technology collaboration and access to the Chinese market are ultimately in America’s best interest. Speaking to reporters in South Korea this week, Huang described China as a “singular, vital, important, dynamic market, and nobody can replace that.” He asserted he would continue campaigning for full access to this market, stating he is "optimistic" that China will remain a key consumer of US chips."

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/nvi...

He's not a traitor or a spy he's a capitalist wanting to make money - that's the American way.

He's a victim, he apologizes well, he's working with the board on this...

Is HN just this millionare-friendly? astroturfed?

Not that I expect a metaphorical lynching, but it's certainly a take when the news is "one of the most important roles in the US is potentially losing national secrets by absurd oversight".

Responsibility implies consequences and as far as I can tell there are none so far, other than minor embarrassment.

Huang doesn't even admit wrongdoing for the actual important part of the scandal, selling restricted hardware to an adversary!

Besides, taking responsibility is something you DO, not something you say. Stepping down would be taking responsibility, for instance.

Seriously. The letter reads like 100% insincere PR hot air. Don't fall for it.

I dont get all the Jensen glazing. "we are all human and all of us make mistakes. " . ok so what?

Yeah, but how often is a "business person" (a) clearly personally, entirely responsible for a mistake like this and (b) is a significant enough "business person" for such a public letter to even matter?

To put it another way, Huang's apologie is how someone in his position would address a situation like this. It's not very impressive to hear a CEO make a personable apology for making such a personal mistake. Like, how else would it read?

Like, it wasn't that long ago that Bill Gates' got called out for similar things and made a similar apology (https://www.wsj.com/articles/bill-gates-apologizes-to-founda...). Of course, Bill Gates isn't at the center of the world's entire economy while getting caught sleeping with a Chinese spy, so there wasn't as much scrutiny on him.

The corruption in terms of PRC GPU import policy and Huang's relationship with the US administration are important.

This is not a prurient sexual scandal, it's a major corruption and infiltration scandal in one of the most important companies in the world. Huang personal travelled with the US President and advised him on regional strategy, and gave him tens of millions of millions of dollars in gifts.

Huang can handle it correctly and be as contrite as he wants but it won't take away the geopolitical impact created by the operation.

A world in which Kings rule, and peasants defend their depraved way of life.

I really hope that you are a bot from a PR firm, because it his hard to image people being so servile to power.

Also note that his wife and children are victims of his unfaithful actions. He is the only one responsible for that - he just said so himself.

This is an interesting take. I'm not sure I agree with it. I understand the principal: that she might have been being dishonest towards him, so he's a victim of lies.

Anyone who's worked in and around any high value, high risk or regulated areas has done the training courses on these sorts of risks though: specifically, people will lie to you to get information out of you.

Sure, on a personal level, consider him a victim if you want. On a professional level, this is him ignoring training, at great risk to the business.

What ? If she was in his house and was a real Chinese spy who knows what data she extracted. Sorry, that's news worthy.

Jensen also probably got too close to Trump and now the China hawks and maybe the dems are out to make an example.

Also Jensen does not have golden shares/full control unlike Musk, Zuckerberg etc. so he can be actually be unseated.

He's both a victim and a perpetrator.

And while I usually wouldn't care if he cheated on his wife, because that's between him and his family, in this case, he was also incredibly dumb. This guy could have cheated on his wife with any number of women, but he chose to do it with a Chinese spy. I think having somebody who makes incredibly dumb decisions be the CEO of the world's most important company is definitely newsworthy.

"You're not talking to someone who woke up a loser, but you are talking to someone who woke up next to a Chinese spy."

There's $50B at stake, so there's a huge incentive for foundations to ruin what's left of the family.

I don't know; at some point “don't put your dick in people from the Other Side” should be a pretty well known rule if you're someone important. She didn't even hide her nationality.

Best bet: not too good right now.

Of course, the spy aspect could be relevant from a professional perspective (depending on what actions he took or what he knew), but I'm guessing you're talking about him having an affair.

HN cares about money and tech. Don’t take morality or life advice from here.

> It’s the well-documented bias in which people systematically overestimate how morally they would behave compared with others—especially in high-pressure or ambiguous situations—while underestimating the situational forces that actually shape behavior.

I'm sure we're all paragons of moral virtue here but the reality is that unless you've been personally targeted by a nation state and successfully resisted, then you're really just fantasizing. Yeah bro, I'm sure you would have effortlessly resisted the Chinese sex trap, right after you benched 1000, got that hole in one and beat Hamilton at qualifying. You're just that good.

The one big thing I will given Huang credit for is not going all-in on blockchain and recognizing it as a bubble. NVidia never really pivoted from their core business/customers to support crypto miners, unlike what they're doing with AI.

He's the visionary behind what they do and the person who influences industries around him to make it real.

God god, no.

There's very little he could ever accidentally tell someone that would matter that much.

Other than handing over very detailed schemas etc, there's almost nothing important he could tell them.

Maybe some future ideas and plans, maybe some government things about the Administration, it's small peanuts.

Nvidia is an operational success, their IP is embedded within deep layers of know how and expertise.

He's the 'father' of that org, he set the tone, they like him there.

Nvidia would risk being an Intel without him.

For over a decade CUDA was nothing but a money and silicon wasting function that brought in very little extra revenue for the amount of company resources it uses. And arguably it started even before CUDA with Cg. And I will say another unpopular thing, they are in hardware business, apart from the past 1 - 2 years which they are enjoying massive success, for most of the past 30 years hardware business are 10x tougher than Software side.

Most CEO would have given up. Paul Graham invented the term to describe it, Founder Mode.

And for another note about comments elsewhere in the thread that Open AI is what brought up the current AI craze. Nvidia was already selling to OpenAI via introduction of Elon Musk in 2016.

I seriously doubt Nvidia would have been anywhere close to what they are today without Jensen's Leadership.

He's been consistently showing up and proving himself over decades to be core to Nvidia's success - core as in leadership. I would look to sell my Nvidia shares without knowing him being at the helm.

The bigger threat is Jensen selling all his stocks at peak (if he was fired). Then, this dude with $100B in the bank could've easily started an NVIIA competitor. He has every component needed for a success. This is why NVIDIA's board would never let this guy go.

I think these trends happened to them despite Huang.

This "what distraction are they trying to make" line is ridiculous conspiracism. It's completely obvious that someone leaked it to the NY Times because they are alarmed that the admin is doing nothing about what is obviously a huge national security problem.

Consider that the leak destroys the legitimacy of Huang's lobbying efforts efforts against tighter chips controls to China. In parallel the NYT released yesterday their investigation into commerce dept approvals of h200 chips to Chinese entities that the NYT claims are ghost offices linked to Chinese military contractors [1]. Also consider that these events put Nvidia under long term congressional security oversight with an installed watch dog. Nvidia is losing it's autonomy to cut international deals. Seems like the CIA/permeant state is getting nervous about China again.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/07/business/economy/nvidia-c...

Alternatively this could be a Chinese play designed to sow dissent and disruption in the USA post the mid-terms.

Or, it could just be a rather trivial story about an over confident and all to human titan of industry making the kind of mess in his personal life that a lot of people end up making - watch any TV mini series for example after example.

(May 2026) https://culperresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Culper...

Neither the board nor the US government nor investors nor the average person gives a shit about a CEO having an affair as long it doesn't compromise his ability to do his job well.

So male infidelity is not a big deal?

Unless the CEO happens to be the CEO of what is considered one of the most important company for national security and future, and his private life involves somebody who appears to be a spy for the biggest competitor for world hegemony. Then it's kind of big deal for everybody.

It also sounds like it was known something was going on with foreign agencies and Jensen, do this puts it out in the open and clears the air.

Lastly, if anyone was trying to use the affair as leverage over him, the best way to break the leverage is to just come out and spill the tea yourself (so to speak)

- Is this person susceptible to blackmail from the secrets they're keeping?

- Has this person performed a notable breach of trust?

- Has this person displayed a notable lack of judgement?

Even when the alleged misconduct is private, #1 is of particular concern. Airing it out is an obvious way to lessen that specific concern. The allegations here raise the other concerns too, however.

Bedding an adversarial entity's agent in a regulated field is a serious matter (for the company) with potentially serious consequences. It can lead to executive decapitation, it can even lead to / criminal investigations if the operative bypassed export controls using executive proximity.. the fallout can be great and widespread.

It can also be a nothingburger and an amusing page six divorce story in the end where we all read how rich cry as well. Time will tell. What's telling of where this might lead and how serious it is, is that it was US federal government that warned about this.

However if he cheated with a chinese spy then he was targeted by China and that raises this to a national security risk.

Not long I suspect, we don't expect much from tech CEOs. Nobody even remembers when Bezos cheated on his wife.

Jensen is as powerful as any politician, if not more so. Same with Elon, etc.

If you don't want that then get rid of the ability for such individuals to amass so much power.

That's the real reason that this affair is a problem. It made him blackmailable.

It's because the woman is a member of the PRC, and it's being made into a national security issue, regardless of whether he announces it or not.

The strategic thing is for him to come forward first.

Because it's already public. This is called "getting ahead of/seizing the narrative"

They tried every persona: Sexy, shy, homely. Same sex. Confrontational. Open, but scared her overseers would punish her. Still get a ping now and then.

Detection and prevention is key

https://foxandlion.pub/analysis/traitors-among-us-who-is-vul...

It's not about religion, it's about trust and keeping promises. Like it or not, the default understanding in a marital relationship in many places in the world is monogamy. Some people, of course, engage in other practices, after an explicit discussion, and agreement and understanding. But presumably Huang's wife believed she and her husband were in a monogamous relationship, and trusted Huang to keep it that way. That's the issue; religion is irrelevant. (And different religious practices have different things to say about monogamy vs. polyamory, and atheists decide for themselves if they want to be monogamists or polyamorists; religion need not be involved at all.)

But regardless, I think his infidelity is not his employees' business; IMO it's weird to bring it up in this way. The bit about his affair partner possibly(?) being a spy is the thing that actually matters to NVIDIA and NVIDIA employees, but he only dedicates a few sentences to it.

The moralists also conveniently ignore that the vast majority of men is not very attractive. Cheating would take a lot of effort for them. In contrast, I knew some men who were attractive enough they had to fend off women almost daily. For them, not cheating takes a lot of effort. The bottomline is that most of the 5/10 guys who say "I would never cheat" would do so the very next day if a 9/10 woman suddenly got interested in them, which is exactly what happened in this case.

His likely ex-wife is about to be very rich tho.

But I'm not sure how hard it would be to resist a honey trap.

I mean a state sponsored enterprise to get you to have sex with someone (or one of a group of people).

Getting him to have sex with her was literally this woman's day job and she was probably told it was a matter of national security.

It is quite absurd once you think about it.

People continue to under-value the spank bank. SMH.

I think what you've just described is "post nut clarity". I'm sure he knew what he did immediately, but the gravity of the consequences might've taken a bit to catch up to him.

I think it says a lot about what wealth does to you. A lot of people dream of wealth but I suspect many would be less than thrilled by the reality. It must be incredibly isolating. You constantly have to fend off people who are trying to use you. It must make it harder to trust anyone. A lot of ordinary life experiences are now barred to you.

For example, a lot of executives in these trillion dollar companies are forbidden from flying commercial for security reasons. Nobody would think about missing the airport and everything that entails. In most places it's an objectively awful experience but it's still a shared experience. Going to a private FBO by helicopter to take a Global 7500 direct to your destination is something only a tiny portion of the population can relate to.

So I think this kind of isolation makes such wealthy and/or powerful people more susceptible to this kind of thing because, in a way, they're starved from a lot of human interaction and experiences in a way most of us can't understand (and wouldn't want).

What really is the point of somebody hoarding this much wealth? You kind of have to have sociopathic tendencies (IMHO) because such wealth simply cannot exist without the impoverishment of millions of people. And for you it's kind of a golden prison.

[1]: https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2014/04/sergey-brin-amanda-...

That's Japan. Don't make it sound like other parts of Asia are like this.