Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang lost $7.4 billion in a cheating scandal in half an hour.
It seems to be the most expensive adultery of the year. As Jensen Huang repented to Neopo employees, the exchange withdrew about $7.4 billion of its capital in the first thirty minutes of trading. According to Forbes, the capital of the head of Nvidia dropped to 154.7 billion, and he himself dropped in the ranking of billionaires from eighth to tenth place.
Forbes attributes the collapse to an investigation into his relationship with a woman described as a Chinese spy. But for the market, as well as for the reader, these two stories have long since merged into one.
Regret was heard loudly. "I was not faithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no justification for my actions," Huang wrote in a letter to employees, as reported by CNBC. With whom exactly the betrayal took place is not specified in the published quote. But when the head of one of the major tech companies on the planet brings his personal drama to the entire corporation, it means things have gotten really hot under his chair.
And it's hot because of Alice Huang, a businesswoman associated with the cloud company Mega Speed, a client of Nvidia. US intelligence agencies, according to CNBC, are concerned that she is passing information to Beijing. We emphasize: these are intelligence suspicions, not a proven accusation. However, Nvidia's board took them seriously enough to officially announce an investigation into allegations that Huang was a target of foreign intelligence. The wording is sterile: the board has no reason to believe Nvidia's secrets or national security are compromised, but "all available information" will be reviewed.
At the same time, the company pretends that nothing is happening. An Nvidia representative assured that Huang will continue to lead without interruption. An interesting design: the board of directors checks a possible recruitment of the CEO by someone else's intelligence, and the CEO himself remains calmly at the head of everything that is checked.