Destructoid Checkpoint: Jensen Huang’s Very Bad Week

Note: This is a rapidly moving situation, and I am writing based on the available information as of 18:00 on Thursday, November 12, Irish time. This is a blend of facts and opinion based on information known up until that point.

Silicone Shenanigans

Jensen Huang has enjoyed a stellar trajectory over the last decade. He maneuvered Nvidia out in front of the AI bubble and rode the wave, at the expense of just about every gamer on the planet, to tremendous share value and enormous returns for investors. He has tied his company directly to the fabric of America. And all over Twitter, an army of bots and people who post just like bots have decided that a CEO like him, a very important person, can do as he wants, because the majority of what he does is good for America. 

There is just one problem. A fly in the ointment.

He may have been knocking boots with a Chinese spy.

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First, the timeline. 

• Oct 29: The New York Times reported that President Trump had been briefed, around a year earlier, on US intelligence about Huang's relationship with Alice Huang (no relation but a hilarious coincidence), an executive at Singapore-based Nvidia customer Megaspeed. Nvidia said his meetings with her were normal customer contact. That’s also another joke that writes itself.

• Nov 4–5: Three House Republican committee chairs asked Huang to attend a closed-door briefing on November 18, with a reply due by Nov 11. The committee chairs in question are Chairman John Moolenaar of the House Select Committee on China, Chairman Brian Mast of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Chairman Rick Crawford of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

• Nov 6: The NYT reported that a classified US memo says Alice Huang was recruited by China's Ministry of State Security. 

• Nov 7: The Financial Times reported the memo describes a romantic relationship between the two. 

• Nov 8 (Sunday): Huang told staff in a letter, also put out as a press release, that he had been "unfaithful to my wife." The same day, the board said a committee of independent directors, with outside counsel, would investigate. At that point, it still said it had confidence in him. Nothing is mentioned at this point about the whole spy thing. As far as Jensen is concerned, this has been an extramarital dalliance, and the company is toeing the line.

• Nov 9: Shares slid around 5 to 7%. Huang pulled out of planned speaking slots because they would obviously be a debacle. China's foreign ministry called the spy allegation groundless. I’m unsure if this denial had the intended effect, frankly.

• Nov 10: Republican Senator Kevin Cramer said publicly that Huang should step down.

• Nov 11: The NYT reported a second alleged affair, this time with a senior Nvidia executive who reports directly to Huang. Hours later, the WSJ reported the board was preparing to oust him. The stock fell around 8 to 9% after hours. The board met on Wednesday night.

• Nov 12: The BBC reports that the board of Nvidia is planning an announcement to get ahead of any further share price drop. 

• Nov 12: Jensen Huang has resigned from his position with Nvidia.

Like all breaking stories, there is a mix of confirmed and unconfirmed elements flying around the internet. The timeline above breaks out all that is confirmed, but what is not confirmed is whether Alice Huang is legitimately a spy for the Chinese government. 

The reason that remains such a pressing issue is that Megaspeed’s Malaysian sister company reportedly purchased at least $4.8 billion in Nvidia AI hardware from mid-2024 to early 2026. If that hardware, or any part of it, ended up in China, breaching US export rules, then the whole company ends up in the mix.

Now the spotlight shifts from Jensen Huang’s wandering eye to the impact of the wandering spy. 

A big question for gamers will be how this might impact the GPU market. We have already gotten absolutely creamed on pricing over the last few years, and it all shows no sign of slowing down. Sadly, there will be no positive impact from this at all.

Gamers will remain the side hustle for Nvidia, which is reportedly ending plans for more robust consumer cards to divert components into the more lucrative AI side. If the company does decide to drop Huang, it will be an interesting time for the company. His goofy leather coat obsession and thing for taking GPUs out of ovens, combined with impassioned speeches from the stage at CES, have helped to make Nvidia what it is, and in cases like this, much of the buy-in tends to be to a singular individual’s vision before all other things. For the ultimate example of that (although one devoid of any of the long-term success of Nvidia), just look up the fate of WeWork.

Jensen has been that guy, and it’s hard to think of what Nvidia might be without him. Better for consumers? Somehow worse? Only time will tell. 

The real unknown here is how all this impacts export rules. If Nvidia had a sneaky way around the bans, and that gets closed off, then they will need to replace that revenue somewhere. Markets will not forgive a drop in sales, even if they will turn a blind eye to a bit of potential treason. 

After that comes whatever is in store for companies who break the rules to a meaningful scale. I cannot even pretend to guess what that might be, as I feel it is largely just open season on breaking the law these days, as long as you know the right people.

You can already see the machine spinning up on Twitter, as every blue check in the tech industry seems to have a story about Jensen being an all-around good guy who shouldn’t get fired for personal indiscretions. Nobody is mentioning the spy thing, the potential sales into China, or anything else in the legal minefields ahead for the company.

The thing is, you can be a nice guy to most people that you meet, and cheat on your wife a couple of times, and fall for spy games. They are not mutually exclusive, especially when what we are learning about the tech industry is that all seem happy to absolve each other of their poor behavior, as long as the money flows. 

What’s happening, Destructoid?

Skyrim celebrates its 15th birthday, and I hope Bethesda has learned something in all that time, writes Andrej Barovic - “I was 10 when Skyrim first dropped, but even I remember how the online landscape was reshaped around it as soon as it came out. It was a nuclear hit, one that Bethesda will not be able to match 15 years down the line. It expanded on Bethesda’s growing ambition to make a massive game, a sandbox where you are free to do as you wish, to build as you want, to join whomever. It was liberating, a breath of cool northern air sweeping over the world of gaming and cementing one word in eternity: dragonborn.”

I think China just taught a lesson about AI that US audiences really should learn, writes Tiago Manuel - “And even though taste is in the eye of the beholder, I find it very hard to believe anyone would like this at face value. “Why is something that looks worse than many Newgrounds animations from the early ’00s even showing in theaters?” You might ask, but it turns out Niu Lai was a family’s labor of love that lucked into a modest distribution. This crucial piece of information turned the tide and got people to see the film in droves, giving it a $9 million theatrical run on a pretty much non-existent budget.”

I regret talking crap about the Ocarina of Time Remake, writes Tiago Manuel - “I wrote a piece about the Internet’s reception to the Ocarina of Time Remake‘s aesthetics. Lots of people online immediately vibed with what they saw, but a bunch of people were having none of it. It’s even possible that the haters were in the minority, but this is the Internet, and Twitter especially, so negativity will always get the spotlight.”