Huang had been widely expected to weather the storm after the first affair became public, even as Nvidia announced it had launched an investigation into whether its CEO had been “the target of a foreign intelligence effort”.
One current Nvidia staff member told the BBC that the initial reports of his infidelity were more or less brushed off by rank-and-file workers inside the company.
It wasn’t until Huang’s alleged affair with the Nvidia executive became public that workers started to feel “this is crazy”, the person said.
Another Nvidia employee said they had been told not to speak with the press or otherwise comment on the situation in public.
Many staff have earned millions of dollars in compensation through their ability to cash out their Nvidia shares as the stock soared.
Nvidia has said it has “no reason to believe that either national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised”, but pledged that its independent inquiry would look at all available information.
The company’s meteoric rise had been led by Jensen Huang, who became a major booster of the AI industry, which relies on Nvidia for the powerful computer chips it manufactures.
Initially those chips were designed for computer gaming.
But as AI technology evolved in the last four years into chatbots and large language models, companies building AI tools suddenly required huge numbers of the Nvidia computer chips that could process large amounts of data.
Nvidia is now hunting a permanent replacement for Huang. Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress was named on Thursday as interim CEO.
Several tech insiders that the BBC spoke with this week noted that Huang’s downfall has been a major topic of conversation in San Francisco Bay area circles, an area filled with tech employees, industry executives and billionaires.
Huang has been married to Lori Huang for 40 years. Both of their children are also executives at Nvidia.
Nvidia’s stock fall this week is the most significant five-day drop the company has seen since going public 27 years ago.
Its market value rose by more than 470% in the past five years, peaking just a few weeks ago. It is now down by 31% against a backdrop of wider uncertainty in the tech sector.
