Silicon Valley Is Still Defending Jensen Huang

Jensen Huang has resigned as chief executive of Nvidia following reports of extramarital relationships, a departure that has stunned the company he led for 33 years and much of the AI industry. The resignation came after earlier revelations about a relationship with Alice Huang, a woman alleged to be an asset of China's Ministry of State Security. Initial news of that relationship was met with a muted response in Silicon Valley and inside Nvidia itself.

That reverence has collided with disbelief. "In just three days we went from superhero cape to 'Oops, I forgot my pants,' and nobody's quite sure how to swallow that," one employee said. One former employee argued in Huang's defense that something "more sinister" must have been at play, and that affairs alone should not have ended his tenure.

Huang's peers in Silicon Valley have been similarly vocal. Venture capitalist Antonio Gracias wrote on X that "one mistake does not erase a lifetime of leadership and contribution in building NVDA." Sarah Guo wrote that a founder who spent 30 years building such a company "has earned the presumption that he should keep leading it" — posted hours before Reuters reported a second intimate relationship with an employee, following The New York Times's Wednesday report of an affair with an Nvidia vice president. Multiple industry executives told WIRED that Huang is "irreplaceable" and that his biggest mistake, apart from the relationship with Alice Huang, was admitting the affair in writing to the entire company.

No authority or Nvidia board member has formally accused Huang of wrongdoing involving Alice Huang, and China denies she is a spy. President Donald Trump said Tuesday the FBI "is looking into it." The board says it does not believe Huang compromised any secrets but has hired law firm Wachtell Lipton to investigate. Even before the reports, the relationship had been whispered about: one venture capitalist recalled a dinner where an Nvidia executive mentioned rumors, and estimated on Monday a "less than 10 percent" chance Huang would lose his job, predicting the wind would blow over.

The larger question is whether instability at the world's most valuable company can burst the AI bubble. The anonymous chief executive of one AI company argues Nvidia's bankrolling of startups and its acquisition of companies such as model-hosting provider Hugging Face propped up demand for chips — and that "a new professional CEO won't do any of that," raising systemic risk. Whether a successor maintains that cycle, and how the Wachtell Lipton and FBI probes conclude, remain open.