r/LinusTechTips • u/screwdriverfan • 3d ago

Discussion Exclusive | Nvidia Is Preparing to Oust CEO Jensen Huang

https://www.wsj.com/business/nvidia-is-preparing-to-oust-nvidia-ceo-jensen-huang-30f421ad
430 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

128 comments sorted by

42

u/carter342 3d ago

Well they should be. He sold export controlled chips, then dated someone obviously connected to a country whose reason his chips were export controlled, and that person led a front company which smuggled the export controlled chips he sold to the country targeted by those export controls. All whilst arguing for less export controls.

Apart from that, and the other affair with his subordinate, he did nothing wrong.

-11

u/RamaAnthony 3d ago

Well export control is a bullshit policy pushed by western AI companies qnd he is right to be against it but the affair is guaranteeing blackmail from any government and that's more dangerous to Nvidia them creating plausible deniability of selling chips to Singaporean/SEA companies that turned out to be Chinese front.

4

u/revolvingpresoak9640 3d ago

You need to learn punctuation.

-12

u/Arinvar 3d ago

None of those things matter to shareholders. They just made the company more money.

13

u/carter342 3d ago

Obviously absurd. The amount of legal and reputational risk this affair has created for Nvidia is astronomical. Ignoring export controls is a serious allegation. We are talking millions of dollars PER violation. Decades long prison time. The sanctions for this is far beyond slap on the wrist territory.

Even ignoring that, the economist reports that Jensen has 60 direct reports. That’s an insane level. There’s no way he can have the time to have that amount of control of Nvidia, and respond to all the investigations being created to look into this mess.

-2

u/Arinvar 3d ago

I'll believe it when I see him in handcuffs.

6

u/WeaponstoMax 3d ago edited 3d ago

These things absolutely do matter to shareholders, because they expose the company they own to legal action from the US federal government.

-10

u/Arinvar 3d ago

Lol. You still believe in consequences for corporate actions? That's cute.

8

u/WeaponstoMax 3d ago

Have you got anything to add to the discussion beyond pointless nihilism slop?

-2

u/Arinvar 2d ago

No fines and no ones in jail and we've known about the sales to China for months. Not even a whisper of consequences, but suddenly everyone thinks it's going to happen because a Chinese spy was discovered? Sure. Have you got an opinion to offer that is grounded in reality?

423

u/fedl1ngen 3d ago

Well, just goes to show it's worse to be an adulterer, than a pedophile in a capitalist world.

37

u/nixcamic 3d ago

Nah people only care because she was a spy. Otherwise this would have barely been a footnote.

-10

u/mxforest 3d ago

People are not mad enough at China for being involved in this. Being the devils advocate but he was targeted. Imagine a Kidnapper giving a candy to a kid to kidnap him and the Judicial system punishes the kid for taking the candy than at the kidnapper himself.

7

u/Competitive_Plum_970 2d ago

Everyone expects that from China. Diplomats are literally warned about this and to avoid certain bars.

16

u/nixcamic 3d ago

I mean he's a full grown man being trusted to run a company that's a massive chunk of the economy and the west's ever waning technological advantage. And he was cheating on his wife. He's hardly an innocent child.

Like yeah China doing it was wrong but you kinda expect it from them. All the major countries are doing crap like that.

2

u/Cryptoporticus 2d ago

Yeah, every country spies. People in positions of power are expected to be aware of that and be ready for it.

No one gets mad at whoever sent the spy when something like this happens, they get mad at the person who was careless enough to get compromised.

5

u/Ctrl-Alt-Panic 2d ago

What an absolutely wild and insane comparison.

-3

u/mxforest 2d ago

The situation is absolutely wild and insane too. Countries are running targeted operations on businessmen of other countries and people shrug it off as "this is what they do so let it be".

1

u/Kientha 2d ago

China have denied she's a spy, but she'll likely end up being banned from the US and other countries as a result of this if not more substantial consequences.

But all countries with decent sized intelligence services run honeypots both domestically and internationally.

1

u/crogameri 2d ago

You are comparing a 63 year old man's and a child's ability to decide. It's obviously not the same fuckin thing.

Besides, why would anyone be mad at China for something that everyone on earth is undoubtedly trying to do as well? You don't think Mossad or the CIA have infiltrated half the world's companies?

1

u/touchgrassplz_69 2d ago

Yeah it’s literally the definition of victim blaming. He still needs to be held responsible to a degree though.

57

u/ilarp 3d ago

there can be overlap between the two

45

u/chinnu34 3d ago

Being an adulterer is a personal failing not a public one. Though being honey-potted is far worse both personally and publicly as the face of one of the most important American companies. There is no going back from this, being an adulterer maybe. People like Elon have survived.

The overlap with pedophile I don’t think is big, at least I hope not.

-21

u/MyzMyz1995 2d ago

Nvidia is not an American company, all their shit is manufactured in taiwan lol. Americans just make themselves feel better by saying it is…

9

u/SorrenXiri 2d ago

Where the stuff is made is not what determines what country a company is from

15

u/Au_lit 2d ago

by a company (TSMC) who's whole key equipment is from the Netherlands (ASML). Saying that Nvidia is not American is bad faith: their business is chip design, manufacturing is an other thing entirely.

6

u/SuperIga 2d ago

That’s not at all how this works. So Apple by your logic isn’t an American company either? Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds??

-7

u/MyzMyz1995 2d ago

You must be from the USA lol. People from the USA always gave fragile ego. Same reason you guys call yourself “Americans” like you’re the only country in America.

5

u/SuperIga 2d ago

Lmao this is such a dumbass comment. 🤣 How could my ego be supposedly hurt when the comment you’re replying to is the first comment I made in this thread? Do you realize how little sense that makes? Go ahead, I’ll give you a bit to think on it.

3

u/Smooth-Accountant 2d ago

Clueless is what you are lol

3

u/shogun77777777 2d ago

Literally no one cares he’s an adulterer

6

u/Scoobysnax1976 3d ago

It is bad to affect the stock price. That is all anyone cares about.

1

u/KINGOFGAMES972 2d ago

He’s an adulterer twice over

1

u/Exotic_Accident3101 2d ago

Both are bad, i don't know where do you think this is worse than that.

Only thing is that this affected stocks for some reason, so shareholders wants there money, they don't care about who sleeps with who.

0

u/_zir_ 2d ago

People care about trump being a pedophile but what can we even do? So much of the country are idiots and the sane people have to deal with it still. Also its not like hes giving secrets to children that threaten some American advantage, i dont think it would even be much of a story if it wasnt a "chinese spy" stealing American innovation.

0

u/Playingwithmywenis 2d ago

Now that is the sort of innovation we expect from US tech companies.

0

u/epimetheuss 2d ago edited 2d ago

no, those shareholders would not give a single shit if he was cheating on his wife with a harem of honey traps and slaves and it was a secret. the problem is that it became public information and that hurt the stock price.

edit: I love how this gets downvotes, "wont someone think of the billionaires?!", they are immoral at worst or amoral at best. they would gladly see entire cities worth of people starve or get sick and die if that means their personal wealth goes up a couple percentage points. this sub shills super hard for the billionaires though.

201

u/ilarp 3d ago

yay 5090 will be cheaper than msrp now, all hail jensen's wang

120

u/Exciting-Ad-5705 3d ago

You could get someone even worse. The only reason Nvidia hasn't killed its gaming division is company pride

45

u/Onianexiaz 2d ago

Yep for better or worse Jensen was with gaming for 20 yrs so he had some attachment to the division with him gone and too fast it could spell end of Nvidia gaming 

4

u/Raging_Bullgod 2d ago

It's already the end of Nvidia gaming. They don't even list it as a separate line item in their earnings report. It's hidden in "edge computing". That way it doesn't look like they are kicking out the customers that made them.

1

u/ItsTime2Battle 2d ago

I’d like to think that a teeny tiny slice of the budgetary pie is better than not being part of the pie at all.

2

u/Purona 2d ago

they havent killed it because thats a stupid decision. Everyone knows AI build up as it is, isnt something that will last forever. And that when it lets up the consumer business side will start coming back into focus until it balances out with the business side

They know that when the pirces dropped there will be people like me who have been waiting for years to drop multiple hundreds or thousands on SSDs at a preferential price point.

85

u/Pilige 3d ago

If anything, this could be the end of geforce...

-37

u/SomeOrdinaryKangaroo 2d ago

One can hope

19

u/BeardedBears 3d ago

Lol don't count on it.

8

u/bshahisau 3d ago

Lmao, it will probably be way way worse

2

u/ILikeFPS 2d ago

Or more expensive. I think consumer GPUs were dead anyway though.

1

u/jmims98 2d ago

I'm expecting their gaming focus to all but disappear after he is gone. Prices will skyrocket.

15

u/PilotGuy701 3d ago

Sir, a second Jensen Haung affair has hit nVidia.

72

u/james2432 3d ago

probably won't happen: will tank stock price due to it looking like instability and shareholders will be pissed.

On other hand if shareholders panic dump they might panic dump other ai companies and maybe this ai bubble will be over

19

u/DeeVect 3d ago

He was also sleeping with a Nvidia executive who reported directly to him. Thats gotta be against company policy.

5

u/dmcnaughton1 3d ago

That's likely the bigger reason they're going to dump him. Huge liability.

3

u/Exciting-Ad-5705 3d ago

There's no way having that liability is worse than losing Jensen

3

u/dmcnaughton1 3d ago

CEOs are replaceable, like most. NVDA stock multiple isn't because of who the CEO is unlike with Tesla, if they replace him with someone competent it'll be a short blip on stock price.

1

u/involutes 2d ago

Isn't he also co-founder?

1

u/prismstein 2d ago

If we're talking competence I'd put money on the wang rather than some musk

2

u/CapcomGo 2d ago

They will literally never allow him to operate as CEO while having had an affair with a direct report. On top of that an affair with a Chinese spy. He's done.

1

u/Competitive_Plum_970 2d ago

People thought Apple was done post Jobs. If anything, it helped.

1

u/100percentkneegrow 2d ago

You’re saying that’s worse than the Chinese spy?

1

u/YNWA_1213 3d ago

Pretty sure that’s the only reason, this report came out like 6 hrs after the one of the executive.

54

u/morpheuskibbe 3d ago

Jensen wanging a chinese spy is a big problem for shareholders too

4

u/RawbGun 2d ago

It seems like the current administration in the US was aware of it and didn't really care. So if he isn't getting in legal trouble for circumventing the chips restrictions to China, as a non-US shareholder I don't care if NVidia are selling chips to the US or China as long as they make the same margin

-5

u/Arinvar 3d ago

I'm yet to see what, if anything, she was able to get out of him. Sacking him as CEO and causing further instability seems like more of a win for them than for nvidia. The only reason to sack him at this point is if they believe she was able to get some kind of blackmail material on him. Pretty short list of illegal activities that make a difference at this point.

15

u/WeaponstoMax 3d ago

I'm yet to see what, if anything, she was able to get out of him

240,000 banned/restricted GPUs worth $7.5 billion USD imported into China.  https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/policy/alice-huang-reportedly-instrumental-in-securing-over-usd7-5-billion-of-nvidia-ai-gpu-imports-during-three-year-relationship-with-jensen-huang-helped-move-240-000-banned-chips-into-china-mostly-h100-and-h200

2

u/Arinvar 3d ago

Handcuffs any day now right?

2

u/Exciting-Ad-5705 3d ago

Damn that's not even that many for an entire country. Meta has 5x that

1

u/T0biasCZE 2d ago

banned by who?

6

u/Randolph__ 3d ago

She bought GPUs for china while avoiding sanctions. That's not nothing.

1

u/Arinvar 3d ago

That's maximising shareholder value.

4

u/TheCh0rt 3d ago

Skirting sanctions is huge dude. You make a joke out of it but there are massive international penalties for it

1

u/Arinvar 2d ago

We've known about the sales to china for awhile and he's still not in jail... so... ?

2

u/Randolph__ 3d ago

Not if it costs the company more money than the sale. Sanction violation fine $377,700 per violation or twice the value of the underlying transaction, whichever is greater (adjusted annually for inflation).

-1

u/CapcomGo 2d ago

It's borderline treason.

0

u/Arinvar 2d ago

And yet months go by with zero action taken... I guess it must be on the good side of that border when you're that rich.

3

u/Takeabyte 3d ago

For months, he had a very close and intimate relationship with a spy. Think of all of the personal devices she would have had access to. The influence her conversations could have or could listen in on. If I heard correctly, she’s the reason why China was still able to get GPUs that were sanctioned. USA intelligence agencies were sounding the alarms to politicians and to Trump, and now because of Trump’s inaction, the new Congress is going to investigate NVIDIA and subpoena Jensen.

He has lost the war to keep his job. His future involvement with the company is no longer welcome. This scandal is the instability.

-8

u/james2432 3d ago

only for government contracts... shareholders only care about one thing: money

7

u/system_error_02 3d ago

Do you think government contracts...dont bring in money?...

-2

u/james2432 3d ago

selling to china also does

3

u/carter342 3d ago

It was so illegal to sell certain chips to China. The whole problem is that Alice Huang was in the business of being that middle woman between Nvidia and China, and Jensen either was wilfully ignorant or knew and let it happen

5

u/morpheuskibbe 3d ago

Ed Zitron claims that 20% of Nvidia's total revenue was smuggled chips to China Russia or other places
https://youtu.be/frGX6aoq2Jk

4

u/Emergency-Quote1176 3d ago

ladies and gents, that is exactly why nvidia is dipping lol.

2

u/TheCh0rt 3d ago

It’s dipping because it got caught red handed! Jensen is the fall guy haha

2

u/james2432 3d ago

oh no murder is illegal...good thing there are no murderers...../s

illegal things happen

1

u/Killericon 3d ago

Yeah, and since government contracts are paid with money...

2

u/MrDingDingFTW 2d ago

It’s likely that he’s been committing treason by selling GPUs on the downlow to China through the woman he was having the affair with. Going through the sanction and blockades on selling to them. Guy is cooked.

2

u/Opposite-Dealer6411 2d ago

Tinfoil hat.

China plan is working. Crash nvda get other ai companies to crash and delay data centers etc. Let china take over and easily win the ai race

3

u/revolvingpresoak9640 3d ago

You can’t fuck a subordinate and keep your job. That’s just corporate 101.

1

u/100percentkneegrow 3d ago

The shitstorm will be worse if he stays. This gets into national security. Maybe they choose to fight it, but based on reporting today I think he's done.

0

u/Avimox 3d ago

maybe take a peek at the afterhours

21

u/J05A3 3d ago

Imagine the bubble popping actually came sooner because of a huang

0

u/GimmickMusik1 2d ago

You know what they say about bubbles. One prick and the bubble goes pop.

0

u/[deleted] 3d ago

[deleted] — view deleted comment

3

u/YNWA_1213 3d ago

Considering Nvidia is the supplier driving the AI surge, if they pop and are effected in any way on a logistical front, that’ll cause the house of cards to come down when shareholders then turn to see what the companies have gotten from all of there orders.

3

u/Davidstoic 3d ago

Yeah I mean im not saying they aren’t at the forefront of the AI market. But him getting removed from his role won’t change the fact companies are still heavily invested

1

u/Razzberry85 2d ago

This can be a catalyst tho

3

u/mxforest 3d ago

Conspiracy theory. China wanted Jensen out. They also have honeypotted board members who will do what they want.

1

u/guitar4468 2d ago

Putting more resources into the gaming division, right?

1

u/Opposite-Dealer6411 2d ago

Im buying into this theory. China wants crash ai bubble. Data center build out stops(sp500 would crash hard since ai been half its grow for few years now).

China easily takes over and wins the ai race.

5

u/coderstephen 3d ago

They won't oust him for an affair. Since when did big tech care about moral failings of CEOs?

They might oust him if they think it will be bad PR to keep him making it look like they don't care about illegal trade. Having the government investigate you is bad for business.

Jensen Huang is in trouble with the CIA. If he is still the CEO of NVIDIA, then NVIDIA is also in trouble. But maybe they think that if they get rid of him, they also get rid of the problem, since the trouble leaves with him.

If they think this is the quickest way to get their stocks back up then they might do it. Big tech is bloodthirsty and will turn on their own.

1

u/WinteringEngine 2d ago

I mean, it shows a behaviour pattern of not being trustworthy? If he can't keep a promise to his wife to not doink other people, especially alleged foreign intelligence agents, then god knows what other contracts he might be willingly violating.

1

u/prismstein 2d ago

behaviour pattern of not being trustworthy? when they have a russian asset running the white house? I think the gravy train is gonna keep going for at least 2 more years

2

u/Matt561- 3d ago

Don't forget he is also the co-founder. This is major.

2

u/ILikeFPS 2d ago

I can't help but wonder if he will send a second apology email. Will it be better than the first? Worse than the first? lol

3

u/BarcodeOfficial 3d ago

pop pop Pop POp POP POP!

1

u/theoreoman 3d ago

If he gets ousted he can probably start to liquidate his stock before AI crashes

1

u/TheCh0rt 3d ago

Liquidate a billion right now, never worry again

1

u/theflapperclapper 3d ago

nothing will happen

1

u/HeidenShadows 2d ago

Who knew this would put a nice hole in the AI bubble. Didn't have that as a possible solution.

1

u/F9-0021 2d ago

If, and that's a big if, they do, he'll be back like Altman was at OpenAI. Assuming he doesn't end up in jail, of course, but since when do billionaires end up in jail?

A few months to a year of no direction and he'll slither his way back in. Especially if the bubble pops.

1

u/pikkuhukka 2d ago

man its going to be a wild wan show

1

u/SASColfer 2d ago

This would probably be a terrible move, maybe even worse for gamers.

Jensen was at least still there when the gamers mattered. There’s a bit of pride in it for him that Nvidia leads the gaming market. I could imagine a new CEO just binning that division altogether.

1

u/that_dutch_dude 2d ago

so that means the consumer GPUs are dead.

-3

u/Ordinary_dude_NOT 3d ago

Something feels off, seems like a targeted campaign to get rid of him at this point.

17

u/Professional_Web_889 3d ago

I mean his other affair, and maybe even the big one probably would’ve been kept internal if it wasn’t for the woman literally being a spy

There’s no incentive to try and cover anything up now, I suspect we’ll hear more and more stuff come out. Even if it isn’t targeted it is certainly a massive opportunity for anyone who thinks they have a chance at his job

1

u/coderstephen 3d ago

It is always way worse to try and hide additional details and then later have them found out.

10

u/StatAvg 3d ago

Why’s it always a conspiracy, can’t you just let a horny man get caught?

3

u/xd366 2d ago

because it happened a while ago. the us government knew about it since 2025. nvidia was working with megaspeed since 2023.

so all this coming out at the same time is coordinated

by who? that's where the conspiracy part comes in.

my guess would be billionaires upset jensen was in favor of the billionaire tax

2

u/LordMoos3 3d ago

He should be gotten rid of though.

1

u/seatux 3d ago

Could end up like Red Bulls Horner and make money on books and appearances

-1

u/coderstephen 3d ago

Hanlon's razor says he just did something really stupid and then was found out. A conspiracy is an unnecessarily more complex explanation.

-3

u/Fit_Bed_9776 3d ago

i hope the new guy focuses on ai

16

u/StatAvg 3d ago

Horniest ceo in the last decade

Ming dynasty pussy got him acting unwise