Silicon Valley rallies behind Jensen Huang after his resignation

Jensen Huang has resigned as chief executive of Nvidia, ending 33 years in charge of the company he founded 2

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. He was one of the world's wealthiest and highest-profile executives, a close ally of Donald Trump and an influential voice on export-control and AI policy, and his exit shakes the company at the center of the AI boom 1

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The resignation followed a New York Times report that Huang had been close to a woman US officials suspected of spying for China 1

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. He admitted the infidelity himself, in a letter to employees sent the weekend before he resigned, though he has not publicly given a reason for stepping down beyond it. The letter conceded he had been unfaithful to his wife of 41 years 1

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. Neither Huang nor the company has confirmed two further alleged affairs with Nvidia employees 2

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The relationship and the probe

The woman, Alice Huang, is a Chinese executive who ran Megaspeed, a Singapore-based datacenter firm 1

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. The relationship began in late 2023, while the commerce department was investigating Megaspeed over possible chip diversion to China, the Times reported 1

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. Huang appeared with her at a Taiwan bar in 2024, then at a conference in 2025 1

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The US government knew before the public did. In spring 2026, Secretary of State Marco Rubio oversaw a classified memo built on electronic surveillance of Alice Huang 1

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. Per the New York Times, the memo reported that the Nvidia chief executive was involved with a woman suspected of spying for China. The relationship appears to have helped move billions of dollars in advanced chips to China 1

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Rick Smith, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation counterintelligence agent, put it bluntly: "Jensen Huang lost his mind here" 1

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The market and the defense

The financial shock was immediate. Nvidia's stock plummeted, the Nasdaq fell 4% straight after the resignation, and the company lost hundreds of billions of dollars in market value in the week 1

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. Nvidia is the world's most valuable chip company, valued at roughly $4 trillion 1

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Then the counterattack began. Trump backed Huang, calling him an "honorable guy" 1

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. Silicon Valley executives and investors rallied behind him in social media posts and letters to the board 2

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. They called him irreplaceable, blamed the directors for bowing to pressure and argued his exit would set the US back in the AI race 2

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Beijing, for its part, denied any involvement in the Huang affair. A foreign ministry spokesperson called the reports "nothing but a smear against China" 1

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Who knew, and what happens now

Security experts call the episode a massive failure of corporate oversight at Nvidia. It is unfathomable, they said, that no one there was tracking the chief executive's meetings abroad. Who inside the company knew, and whether concerns were raised internally, is open. Nvidia has not commented on that, or on the affairs 1

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. The risk is industry-wide. OpenAI has run honeypot training scenarios for staff, and one intelligence firm estimates about a dozen honeypot or blackmail-related investigations at major companies over three years 1

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. "The honeypot style trap is as old as the earth itself," said Randy Watt, who runs a security firm 1

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. Espionage against American technology has a long history. A Center for Strategic and International Studies report counted at least 224 Chinese espionage incidents in the US from 2000 to 2022, over half aimed at commercial technology 1

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The accountability is spreading past Huang. The administration faces questions, reported by Axios, over why Megaspeed was left off a list of companies posing national-security concerns despite intelligence outlining problems 1

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. Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, meanwhile, is under pressure to step down over the inaction 1

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What decides Huang's own fate now is a set of investigations. Nvidia has hired a top US law firm to investigate his relationship with the suspected spy 1

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. Huang has agreed to give congressional testimony, and he faces a shareholder lawsuit in California 1

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. Trump said the FBI would open its own investigation, though the bureau has not confirmed it.