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Nvidia is preparing to oust Jensen Huang
1206 points1604 comments79.9 average comments/hourSubmitted by jbredeche
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Comment on Hacker NewsI recently recalled Nvidia's rather strange reaction to the Gamers Nexus investigation into GPU smuggling [0]. Found it somewhat strange at the time how incredibly agitated the reaction seemed to have been, given Nvidia could sell the same GPUs for the same price essentially instantly without the Chinese market. Their reaction wasn't merely a denial, dismissal or even silence, but very irrationally sounding for a company of their size and standing. Why not just sell to not-sanctioned entities, ensure compliance to the best of your abilities and otherwise keep your head down? Again, wasn't like they struggled to find buyers for their chips. Considering Megaspeed, I now see this in a very different light. Him cheating is personal and I wish the affected members of any family of a cheater the best, but not relevant for us outsiders. Being honey trapped very bad securities wise, but he'd be a victim (and evidence for why we shouldn't discount Mistral in the frontier lab race [1]). If sanctions avoidance went all the way to the top, that is hard to negate even for a board that is interested in keeping him. At that stage he was neither honey trapped nor "merely horny"... [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H3xQaf7BFI [1] https://time.com/archive/7146565/hollandes-popularity-goes-u...
Comment on Hacker News · 19 direct repliesI said on this a few days ago that he should be thinking about resigning: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50418016 At the time I didn't think it would happen because of impact on Nvidia's stock price, but at that point we didn't know about his second affair - with Kimberly Powell. I'd suggest this latest revelation makes his position untenable, especially if the board found out about the second affair via a source other than Huang himself. He should have spilled the beans on that when the first affair came out, not that it would necessarily have saved him, but withholding the information - if that's what he did - should condemn him. It's another serious lapse in judgement and a failure of integrity that is not befitting of one of the most powerful corporate leaders on earth. Goodness knows how his wife is feeling at this point. Certainly makes his apology from a couple of days back ring rather hollow. EDIT: The fact that someone like Jensen Huang - who I'd previously considered to be an incredibly smart guy as opposed to a nitwit - can somehow completely implode his life in almost the most ridiculous way imaginable does give me some hope that at least some of the troublemaker ne'er do wells that have wielded so much power over us all over the past decade or so might also experience some just desserts in the not too distant future.
Comment on Hacker News · 14 direct repliesHere's why Jensen is critical to Nvidia as well as the industry: Without Jensen Huang's vision, Nvidia might have remained primarily a graphics chip maker, and the deep learning revolution would not have arrived when it did. Long before deep neural networks took off, Huang backed the use of Nvidia GPUs for scientific and general-purpose computing, including the development of CUDA. In 2012, Krizhevsky, Sutskever, and Hinton used Nvidia GPUs and CUDA to train AlexNet, whose breakthrough performance helped ignite the modern deep learning boom. Nvidia's investment in programmable GPUs helped make that breakthrough possible. The critical vision was that GPUs could become a platform for computing beyond graphics—and that Nvidia should invest in making them programmable before a large market for that use existed. The board should punish Huang without punishing the industry and the nation. For example by cutting his salary and stock to 0 for 2 years.
Comment on Hacker News · 34 direct repliesPeople arguing the technical and business merits of what Jensen brought to the company aren't getting how serious these allegations against him are. The US Government is using NVIDIA chips for all sort of stuff across all classification levels. Subsequently, Jensen has deep relationships within the government that warrants additional scrutiny. Him authorizing his company to sell massive amounts of chips to a restricted country is massively illegal, but companies work around that and have since forever. Doesn't make it less illegal, but that's only a small part of the problem. The real problem is that nobody knows how much sensitive info Jensen gave this woman or how far that info spread. It's really about fairness. Us technical salespeople take training that tells us all of the ways that deals with restricted countries happen and how we will immediately get fired ten ways to Sunday if we forego that to close quota. Also, normies with clearances tell their partners stuff they shouldn't. Stuff they think isn't really sensitive since it seems so minute. This isn't bad until said partner spills at the wrong place and wrong time. That's how normies get sent to prison for treason. Loose lips sink ships and all that. [^0] Getting fired -- WHICH HE ABSOLUTELY SHOULD BE -- is the least of his problems. [^0] Examples: - https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/article/retired-us-army-officer.... Army officer leaks secrets through dating website to sound cool; gets six years - https://www.foxnews.com/us/pentagon-leaker-jack-teixeira-rec.... Leaked secrets about Ukraine war through Discord to sound cool; gets 15 years - https://www.westernjournal.com/ex-cia-officer-accused-leakin.... CIA officer leaks stuff to journalist girlfriend; gets 10 years
Comment on Hacker News · 12 direct repliesNvidia is one of the most critical strategic assets in the USA today, underpinning economic dominance and national defence. Leadership at this level usually operates under an implicit shield. Normal procedure would be to cover-up. A sudden loss of Nvidia's founder and CEO at this juncture is a blow to American strategic posture and a windfall to China. I think the real story is not the affair, which was already reported in asian media in 2024, but what specific catalyst broke that protective shield and made continued containment untenable.
Comment on Hacker News · 13 direct repliesWhat’s the non-cynical explanation here which doesn’t involve Jensen having ruffled feathers he shouldn’t have? Elon regularly gets away with way more morally (and perhaps legally) egregious stuff and yet he has increasingly cemented his position. Partly through indirect leverage from his companies and partly from buying access to power directly. Even Sam managed to stage an employee revolt to stay in control. For founders of companies perhaps the lesson keeps repeating itself - keep control of your companies no matter what. I’m not sure this is good for shareholders and the larger AI ecosystem either. Corporate governance is obviously important especially for mature industries. But Jensen has consistently demonstrated ability to keep Nvidia alive during dire times and eventually delivered the biggest profits in corporate history. Edit: some cynical explanations: 1. China hawks in tech and admin wanted him out 2. Nvidia competitors found oppo research too juicy to ignore and sequenced a set of destructive reporting 3. People in AI found Jensen’s grip of the supply chain too annoying and wanted to loosen it somehow 4. Internal politics / someone wanting Jensen’s job 5. Some combination of the above
Comment on Hacker News · 10 direct repliesNuanced opinions 1) The fact that he cheated on his wife isn't particularly relevant, other than the lack of a prenup meaning she owns half his stock (4% of the company). 2) The fact that he slept with a subordinate shows bad judgment, but isn't a huge deal (although improper and opens up potential quid-pro-quo lawsuits) 3) The fact that he slept with a Chinese spy is a huge deal. 4) The fact that there are allegations that he was aware that they were selling illegally to China is a huge deal. 5) Even though those export control were arguably bad, the law must be respected and the being seen ignoring the law would have a chilling effect on appearance of a fair democracy. 6) There is definitely a demonstration of lack of judgment (getting caught selling to china rather than maintaining plausible deniability), (sleeping with a spy rather than just hiring an escort) 7) Despite all of this, in theory he would arguably still be the most profitable CEO (if he doesn't get charged with a crime, AND if there are no other issues to discover) in the medium term, but where there's smoke there may be fire. Does this raise the odds of circular financing and other shenanigans?
Comment on Hacker News · 39 direct repliesIf this had happened at a more recent founder-led tech company, the board would have far less practical independence Dual-class share structures have become the defacto standard for founder led companies, giving founders disproportionate (even majority) voting power. Someone like Zuckerberg effectively controls the board and would be extraordinarily difficult to oust against his wishes (absent some exceptional legal intervention or a decision to step aside)
Comment on Hacker News · 5 direct repliesThis is kinda huge; my layperson view is that Jensen has been responsible for their long term technology strategy, which requires deep understanding of so much outside of the business domain. I'm not exactly thrilled that they are "eating the world" (hf purchase had me bent out of shape, for example), but they've undeniably executed on some long term complex shit. Who could take his place?
Comment on Hacker News · 6 direct replies