Were Jensen simply a caretaker CEO, a vanilla Board appointment, I would say he should resign.
But that is not the case. He is the founder. A founder has a very different relationship to a company. He is its father and mother, and severing that relationship and transitioning to a CEO that does not have the same relationship is fraught with danger.
As a shareholder, for purely self interested reasons, I would be very hesitant to call for his removal.
Speaking strictly from a fiduciary duty point of view, it's in everyone's interest for Nvidia to sell as many chips as possible to as many customers as possible.
> As a shareholder, for purely self interested reasons, I would be very hesitant to call for his removal
The tragedy is resigning may avoid him becoming the target of the Congress or even criminal prosecutors, now at the state level or down the line federally.
Could say the same about quite a few tech companies with founders (or the ones that think they’re the founder) at the helm. The companies would all be fine and some even better off without.
I don't get it what does his personal life has to do with him running NVIDIA? Also despite what is being disseminated in the mainstream media, he lobbied to make China reliant on much older chips which were approved and puts America at a huge advantage, but narratives are being wildly twisted to sell that Jensen Huang acted dishonorably against this country.
There is a nasty smear campaign against Jensen Huang throughout social media, cheating on his wife is one thing, political maneuvering before we even learn of what the actual damage if any was done and kneecapping an enterprise while America has a lead over others in AI is sabotage.
I don't live living in this no forgiveness court of public opinion society. Everyone makes mistakes CEOs are people too. Do you fire the intern to takes down prod? Only if he does it twice.
This is a bit of a reductio ad absurdum. He didn’t fat finger a bad command. He had an intimate relationship with an adversarial intelligence asset that was also running a $4B smuggling operation moving his embargoed goods into a foreign adversary’s industry.
Well taking down prod is often a mistake, having an actual affair is calculated.
You can say it's "feelings" or whatever but the right thing to do would've been to be open with your wife and family about your feelings and then get a divorce and pursue the relationship...or not have the affair at all.
I don't blame anyone for making "mistakes", maybe even a moment of weakness or whatever, would be different, but from the article I read, seemed like an on going relationship.
The problem is, he is perceived as an untrustworthy liar who hides things and get away with them if he can.
Anyone have a good model of how much more GPU prices would go up (or down) in the world where he resigns vs not. My guess is they would go up even more with some much more ruthless CEO who'd wanna prove himself able to push up the stock price but I guess a counter argument is that there's only so much higher the prices can go so maybe it wouldn't be much different.
For better or worse, Jensen === NVIDIA. It’s hard to overstate the key-person risk here.
Without Jensen, the stock will tank. He has pulled NV from the brink of disaster many times, and also selected the critical investments which paid off and allowed AI to be born (CUDA), even before they made any sense whatsoever.
A company so big so reliant a single person is a risk either way, it's just a matter of when it gets resolved. It's the bus factor. See also what would happen to $3T in combined market value if Elon Musk were to have a stroke tomorrow.
He should probably go to jail (after a fair trial, of course).
Even with the few public facts we have now, I don't know how a reasonable person could conclude that it isn't extremely likely that he knew all about the export control diversions that were going on. He would have to be an idiot not to, and he clearly isn't an idiot.
Of course there's no way a centibillionaire is going to do 20 days in jail, let alone 20 years (because we don't live in a society with an actually functioning rule of law), but resigning and disappearing from public life is getting off easy here.
Jensen beat the reform academy conditions as a boy.
Jensen beat the odds as a founder and CEO.
The chinese sent a female spy to make him look like a fool. Thats why all major governments use this tactic. It works on everyone, for some period of time, to some degree. Almost as if the public thinks "Why didn't he know ? Didn't she have a 'Hello I'm a Spy' sticker on at the meetup ?"
Now, The Economist aka 'the Rothchilds' aka 'the british billionaires' magazine is throwing him under the double decker for clicks.
The man has a track record of winning.
This is a speed bump, not a brick wall.
We're all apes, and he's the big monkey the little monkeys are attacking today.
I just listened to a new podcast from Kara Swisher and Hillary Clinton. In it, Kara also calls for his resignation, but interestingly Clinton never does (though she never directly contradicts Kara either). Instead Hillary talks about how during her time as Secretary of State there were lots of business people both big and small that were targets of foreign spies and that they would brief those individuals to give them a heads up (something that was reportedly not done for Jensen Huang).
It's insane to think people don't consider a successful state sponsored hack as a failing of the individual, but a spy compromising them is. It's clear that nations will go to extremes that people are unaccustomed to dealing with. Lots of people have affairs — feel free to call that a personal moral failing, but treating it as a business failing is outlandish considering how frequently it happens and how it rarely has any business impact.
He can do something great again with his life. Just not while he’s spending the next year being investigated in multiple countries and going through family issues.
> It works on everyone, for some period of time, to some degree.
No, it doesn't. It works on the unethical. Cheaters would like you to believe that everyone is cheater, but they're not.
There's a type of person who find a wallet on the ground and attempts to find the owner of the wallet. There's another type of person who just quietly pockets the money. I suspect Huang is the latter. Most billionaires are. Normal, ethical people don't even aspire to that obscene level of wealth and power, would consider it gluttony.
Huang, "The Fonz", was captured on video cheerfully signing his autograph on a woman's chest while jokingly posing the rhetorical question, is that a good idea? Of course it was not a good idea—which he knew but did it anyway—and a normal, non-cheating person would politely offer to sign something more appropriate.
Let me put it this way: I think it's extremely unlikely that Huang cheated on his wife for the first time after age 60.
I was at an AI founders event in NYC and had an amazingly beautiful Slavic style woman throw herself at me and my buddy. Neither of us are the type that would have supermodel types interested in us based on looks alone. It was so damn obvious.
Same phenomenon with dictator worship, and authoritarianism in general. Organizations that structure all their operations around a single power figure seem to be the most effective, but we're ignoring all the downsides: single point of failure, lack of checks against poor (or illegal) decisions, and of course we're ignoring the countless failed organizations with the exact same structure.
It’s been like this for as long as I can remember. The incessant corporate bootlicking is one of the reasons why HN is so widely derided elsewhere on the internet.
For a place called Hacker News there isn’t much Hacker spirit, irrespective of which definition of Hacker one uses.
more than that, they need to feel that they deserve their outsized wealth and impact, as compared to other people, due to their merit, as opposed to the vast luck, circumstances, and support from those under them
No. You haven't even tries to show that Jensen is essential to Nvidia's success. You've just said "Nvidia stock is up, Jensen is CEO, QED." That's not persuasive.
Fact is that Nvidia's stock price is mostly due to factors outside of his control. Like most CEOs,he he could be replaced with a slice of buttered toast and the same result would be achieved. So why keep him around when he's already admitted to unethical behavior? A man who cheats on his wife will cheat his investors, too.
The thing is pessimists make money, optimists make money, stupid idealists get slaughtered...
As a CEO, he kicks ass...
As a husband, public humiliation by memes and private humiliation by his family are in order...
How is a model minority infidelity with a woman who probably wasn't a spy, but was absolutely out to oust Lori Huang like Lauren Sanchez ousted Mackenzie Bezos worse than a felon convicted of accounting fraud put in charge of Cerebras? And don't even start on they should all be thrown out. We didn't throw out creepy, stalking, semi-assaulty womanizing Eric (piece of) Schmidt. Why don't we all just take a step back and acknowledge the model minority racism inherent in the outrage here.
Downvotes I'm sure, but I doubt anyone is going to spell out a case where JHH needs to go, but all systems normal with Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Eric Schmidt, and everyone else on that page, some of whom are likely in the Epstein files which JHH isn't.
> How is a model minority infidelity with a woman who probably wasn't a spy, but was absolutely out to oust Lori Huang like Lauren Sanchez ousted Mackenzie Bezos worse than a felon convicted of accounting fraud put in charge of Cerebras?
It's not about the act itself. It's a data point about the man's character and judgment.
A man who cheats on his wife will cheat his investors, too.
Ok, you get that the issue isn't that he "looks like a fool" for having an affair, right? If that's the worst thing he's done as a billionaire, he's relatively a saint.
The issue is that he may have just been caught effectively subverting US national security. Like, even in just the teaser paragraph, they spell that out:
>American officials think she is a Chinese spy, and that her Singaporean company is a front for smuggling the politically sensitive chips into China.
That's a very bad look. Way worse than just "looking like a fool".
Has there any proof of any actual subversion of national security?
I mean, sleeping with a spy is not the same as giving her any secrets or chips.
A third point is that, as an Nvidia investor, I don't really care what the US government considers a "national secret" or if china gets the secret too.
I care if this harm Nvidia's ability to generate revenue.
> Has there any proof of any actual subversion of national security?
Let's see what investigations by the board and congress uncover. It's only been days since the story broke. As a share holder, you may care that he has damaged Nvidia's reputation with the dealings (China & Trump) surrounding this.
That's spelt Rothschilds. It's a nice little conspiracy trope you're working there with the quotes around "the British billionaires" but you should probably just say "Jews" or "globalists" so everyone gets your point. Why waste time with euphemisms when you have something this novel to say?
The public is not thinking "how did he not know she was a spy?"
The public is thinking "Why did he have an affair with a business partner? (who also happened to be a spy). That is a massive conflict of interest. Was he putting Nvidia's interests first, or his own?
I am not convinced that he needs to resign, but describing this as a speed bump is utterly delusional.
It's not about the affair, it's about the failures in security and intelligence and rule of law. This story is about much more, we will see much more eventually.
Many people believe the time for letting the wealthy and elite do what ever they want without consequence should be over. See last week's election results
What we need is an investigation and transparency into the details. Why was Trump able to negotiate a 15% profit sharing deal with Jensen shortly after Trump was informed about this? How much did Jensen know about the export control violations?
A determination for either outcome is unwarranted without more information.
Isn't it an open secret that Singapore is largely a front for smuggling GPUs into China? I think it's a they know we know they know situation where as long as the stock market goes up to the right, the right political donations get made, and they don't get too brazen about it - no one looks too closely.
So is everyone already commenting their say about all this because we're all Economist subscribers here or are we reading the headline of the paywall and rolling with it?
What an interesting Chinese operation. Undermine Nvidia, possibly force the CEO to resign, and lose half the company in a divorce. I'd say as far as China is concerned this was a successful intelligence operation.
and all they actually cared about is getting some good GPUs to bootstrap their already functional industrial technology sector.
Like, being paranoid about this is kinda dumb. This is pretty much just a sweet industrial play to bootstrap their technoogy sector. Something US corporations do in many different ways.
White tech founder cheats on his wife? He's just the butt of late-night TV jokes for a few weeks. (Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs... the list goes on)
Non-white tech founder does the same? Fire him, NOW!
Meanwhile Zuck is the only founder that's still a respectable family man, and yet he's pilloried left and right.
But that is not the case. He is the founder. A founder has a very different relationship to a company. He is its father and mother, and severing that relationship and transitioning to a CEO that does not have the same relationship is fraught with danger.
As a shareholder, for purely self interested reasons, I would be very hesitant to call for his removal.
The tragedy is resigning may avoid him becoming the target of the Congress or even criminal prosecutors, now at the state level or down the line federally.
What’s good for your portfolio and what’s good for the long term health of the company are not always the same thing.
If you create an environment where there are no consequences, you're inviting trouble for you as a shareholder.
If he can do this and not face serious consequences from the company, then he can do other things that are damaging, including to your bottom line.
Depending on what investigations find, it might not even matter.
There is a nasty smear campaign against Jensen Huang throughout social media, cheating on his wife is one thing, political maneuvering before we even learn of what the actual damage if any was done and kneecapping an enterprise while America has a lead over others in AI is sabotage.
You can say it's "feelings" or whatever but the right thing to do would've been to be open with your wife and family about your feelings and then get a divorce and pursue the relationship...or not have the affair at all.
I don't blame anyone for making "mistakes", maybe even a moment of weakness or whatever, would be different, but from the article I read, seemed like an on going relationship.
The problem is, he is perceived as an untrustworthy liar who hides things and get away with them if he can.
All the roads lead to he must resign or be fired.
Without Jensen, the stock will tank. He has pulled NV from the brink of disaster many times, and also selected the critical investments which paid off and allowed AI to be born (CUDA), even before they made any sense whatsoever.
He should probably go to jail (after a fair trial, of course).
Even with the few public facts we have now, I don't know how a reasonable person could conclude that it isn't extremely likely that he knew all about the export control diversions that were going on. He would have to be an idiot not to, and he clearly isn't an idiot.
That points to him being complicit in very serious (20 year sentence) crimes. https://www.bis.gov/enforcement/penalties
Of course there's no way a centibillionaire is going to do 20 days in jail, let alone 20 years (because we don't live in a society with an actually functioning rule of law), but resigning and disappearing from public life is getting off easy here.
Jensen beat the odds as a founder and CEO.
The chinese sent a female spy to make him look like a fool. Thats why all major governments use this tactic. It works on everyone, for some period of time, to some degree. Almost as if the public thinks "Why didn't he know ? Didn't she have a 'Hello I'm a Spy' sticker on at the meetup ?"
Now, The Economist aka 'the Rothchilds' aka 'the british billionaires' magazine is throwing him under the double decker for clicks.
The man has a track record of winning.
This is a speed bump, not a brick wall.
We're all apes, and he's the big monkey the little monkeys are attacking today.
Just shake it, shake it off.
It's insane to think people don't consider a successful state sponsored hack as a failing of the individual, but a spy compromising them is. It's clear that nations will go to extremes that people are unaccustomed to dealing with. Lots of people have affairs — feel free to call that a personal moral failing, but treating it as a business failing is outlandish considering how frequently it happens and how it rarely has any business impact.
The article calls for resignation. Not execution.
He can do something great again with his life. Just not while he’s spending the next year being investigated in multiple countries and going through family issues.
No, it doesn't. It works on the unethical. Cheaters would like you to believe that everyone is cheater, but they're not.
There's a type of person who find a wallet on the ground and attempts to find the owner of the wallet. There's another type of person who just quietly pockets the money. I suspect Huang is the latter. Most billionaires are. Normal, ethical people don't even aspire to that obscene level of wealth and power, would consider it gluttony.
Huang, "The Fonz", was captured on video cheerfully signing his autograph on a woman's chest while jokingly posing the rhetorical question, is that a good idea? Of course it was not a good idea—which he knew but did it anyway—and a normal, non-cheating person would politely offer to sign something more appropriate.
Let me put it this way: I think it's extremely unlikely that Huang cheated on his wife for the first time after age 60.
For a place called Hacker News there isn’t much Hacker spirit, irrespective of which definition of Hacker one uses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp5qsEuUOWo
I'm sure the CEOs would love for us to believe that they are in their position because of merit.
The public thinks the spy affair is a scandal, but the governments that can really hang the man see it as a round of chess.
Boards of directors and investors, we know where they vote, typically where they are legally obligated to, financial interests of shareholders.
And thats where we are right now, british billionaires magazine wants him fired. That doesn't exactly ruin his life, just being fired.
He'll survive this. Enjoy the show.
No. You haven't even tries to show that Jensen is essential to Nvidia's success. You've just said "Nvidia stock is up, Jensen is CEO, QED." That's not persuasive.
Fact is that Nvidia's stock price is mostly due to factors outside of his control. Like most CEOs,he he could be replaced with a slice of buttered toast and the same result would be achieved. So why keep him around when he's already admitted to unethical behavior? A man who cheats on his wife will cheat his investors, too.
As a CEO, he kicks ass...
As a husband, public humiliation by memes and private humiliation by his family are in order...
How is a model minority infidelity with a woman who probably wasn't a spy, but was absolutely out to oust Lori Huang like Lauren Sanchez ousted Mackenzie Bezos worse than a felon convicted of accounting fraud put in charge of Cerebras? And don't even start on they should all be thrown out. We didn't throw out creepy, stalking, semi-assaulty womanizing Eric (piece of) Schmidt. Why don't we all just take a step back and acknowledge the model minority racism inherent in the outrage here.
Downvotes I'm sure, but I doubt anyone is going to spell out a case where JHH needs to go, but all systems normal with Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Eric Schmidt, and everyone else on that page, some of whom are likely in the Epstein files which JHH isn't.
Harper Valley PTA hypocrisy to the moon here.
It's not about the act itself. It's a data point about the man's character and judgment.
A man who cheats on his wife will cheat his investors, too.
The issue is that he may have just been caught effectively subverting US national security. Like, even in just the teaser paragraph, they spell that out:
>American officials think she is a Chinese spy, and that her Singaporean company is a front for smuggling the politically sensitive chips into China.
That's a very bad look. Way worse than just "looking like a fool".
A third point is that, as an Nvidia investor, I don't really care what the US government considers a "national secret" or if china gets the secret too. I care if this harm Nvidia's ability to generate revenue.
Let's see what investigations by the board and congress uncover. It's only been days since the story broke. As a share holder, you may care that he has damaged Nvidia's reputation with the dealings (China & Trump) surrounding this.
The law also doesn’t apply to an American billionaire, on account of being a billionaire.
So really, nothing wrong happened here.
The public is thinking "Why did he have an affair with a business partner? (who also happened to be a spy). That is a massive conflict of interest. Was he putting Nvidia's interests first, or his own?
I am not convinced that he needs to resign, but describing this as a speed bump is utterly delusional.
Who hasn't had a momentary lapse of reason, especially when sex is involved ?
The billionaire class who could hang him understand all this.
His status in life is up for a vote. What do you think is happening ?
Status is a moving target.
Status is a popularity contest.
Status is not your identity.
He is going to keep being Jensen Huang.
What we need is an investigation and transparency into the details. Why was Trump able to negotiate a 15% profit sharing deal with Jensen shortly after Trump was informed about this? How much did Jensen know about the export control violations?
A determination for either outcome is unwarranted without more information.
Like, being paranoid about this is kinda dumb. This is pretty much just a sweet industrial play to bootstrap their technoogy sector. Something US corporations do in many different ways.
Non-white tech founder does the same? Fire him, NOW!
Meanwhile Zuck is the only founder that's still a respectable family man, and yet he's pilloried left and right.
No one gets punished for crimes. You get punished for getting caught.