Cleaning Toilets To $4.5 Trillion Nvidia Empire: Rise, Fall Of Jensen Huang

For 33 years, Jensen Huang and Nvidia were one name. On Thursday morning, they were separated. The 63-year-old co-founder, who started the company at a Denny's diner table with two friends and $40,000, resigned as chief executive and left the board of a firm now worth $4.5 trillion. Nvidia gave no reason.

Behind the exit was a storm that had been building for 14 days in public, and way longer quietly, in which an affair became a question of national security. US officials believe the woman involved was working for Chinese intelligence, a claim China's foreign ministry has called "purely unsubstantiated and directed at smearing China."

Jensen Huang, 63, resigned as Nvidia's chief executive on Thursday morning and left its board. The company gave no reason. By then, the crisis had played out in public for two weeks and, according to US media reports, for far longer behind closed doors.

Huang was born in Taipei in 1963 as Jen-Hsun. He grew up in Thailand before moving to the United States, where he took the name Jensen because it was easier to pronounce.

As a child, he and his brother were sent to a boarding school in a small town in Kentucky. An uncle had recommended it to his Taiwanese parents as a prestigious school. It was a school for troubled youth.

Too young to be a student, Huang boarded there and attended a nearby public school with the children of tobacco farmers. His English was poor. He was bullied and made to clean toilets. "We worked really hard, we studied really hard, and the kids were really tough," he told US broadcaster NPR. But "the ending of the story is I loved the time I was there."

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His parents, by then settled in Oregon, brought him home. He waited tables at Denny's as a teenager, joined the computer club at his high school near Portland and studied engineering at Oregon State University, where he met his wife, Lori. He graduated at 20 and went on to design chips at AMD, now a rival, and then at LSI Logic.

A Diner, Two Friends And A Bet On Graphics

In 1993, Huang co-founded Nvidia with two friends at a Denny's in Silicon Valley. He wanted to "solve problems that normal computers can't," he said on the "No Priors" podcast, using chips powerful enough to handle 3D graphics.

The chips were called GPUs, or graphics processing units. Nvidia made the first one in 1999, and such chips were first built to make video games look better. They turned out to be ideal for the huge calculations behind generative AI, the technology behind tools such as ChatGPT and Claude.

Demand for Nvidia's chips now runs ahead of supply, even though the company charges prices that earn profit margins of more than 70 per cent. Other firms have built their own AI chips, but Nvidia has kept its technological lead.

The company also funds, and gives credit support to, firms that use its products. That has helped seed the AI industry, but it has created a web of relationships in which success and risk are partly shared.

The Leather Jacket That Became A Brand

Huang was little known to the public four years ago. He has since drawn stadium crowds. He is almost always in a black T-shirt and leather jacket, and has an Nvidia logo tattoo. His biographer, Stephen Witt, says his wife helped choose the jackets.

His fortune grew with the company. Forbes puts it at around $160bn, built largely on a stake of roughly 3.6 to 4 per cent, depending on the source.

In Taiwan, he is received like a megastar. Fans crowd him for autographs and selfies, and journalists follow him to the barber shop and his favourite night market. Taiwan is the world's centre for making semiconductors, and Huang meets industry leaders there, including Morris Chang, founder of TSMC, the company that makes Nvidia's chips.

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Those who worked with him describe a more complicated figure. A former senior employee told AFP he was "the most driven person" he had ever met, and "very paradoxical", protective of his staff but also able to be "ripping people to shreds" over mistakes. His message to employees was blunt: "The company is always 30 days away from going out of business."

The Courtship Of Washington

For much of his career, Huang kept a low profile in the US capital. That changed in late 2022, when the Biden administration began restricting exports of advanced chips, largely to keep them from China's military. Huang warned the curbs could cripple the US semiconductor industry.

He built a close bond with Donald Trump at the start of the president's second term. He visited Mar-a-Lago, Trump's private club in Florida, and the White House to praise the president's economic policies and his industry-friendly approach to AI, and he became an informal adviser on AI.

In December 2025, Trump, himself an Nvidia investor, announced that the company could sell its advanced H200 chips to China, with the US taking a cut of the sales. It was a major win for Huang and a shift from the previous administration's stance.

The approach also made him enemies. China hawks, as politicians who favour a tough line on China are known, felt he put Nvidia's profits above national security. They have repeatedly proposed rules to close what they see as loopholes used by Nvidia and other chipmakers.

According to a New York Times report, scrutiny of Huang's association with Alice Huang, with whom he allegedly had an affair, began in October 2025. The US Commerce Department, which enforces export rules, was investigating whether Megaspeed, the Singapore-based company where she worked at the time, was routing Nvidia's top chips to Chinese firms in breach of those rules.

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Alice Huang, who is a Chinese citizen, is a former executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based data centre firm that buys Nvidia chips. The New York Times reported that Megaspeed bought more than $4.8bn of Nvidia chips over two years.

Around that time, though it is not clear when, intelligence officials told Trump that she had been gathering information for Beijing, the Times reported. It said Trump was briefed about a year ago and took no action.

In May 2026, as Trump flew to China to meet President Xi Jinping, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is also national security adviser, warned him that US intelligence showed Huang was having an affair with a woman believed to be a Chinese spy. The briefing took place aboard Air Force One, the US president's plane, just before a stop in Anchorage, where Huang boarded as a last-minute addition to the trip.

The Fortnight That Ended It

On October 29, the Times reported that US intelligence services suspected Alice Huang of being a Chinese spy and that she had developed a close relationship with Nvidia's chief executive.

On November 8, Huang wrote to Nvidia's employees and admitted he had been unfaithful to his wife. "There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry," the letter said. He did not name the woman. The same day, Nvidia opened an investigation into him. Company spokesperson John Rizzo said, "Jensen is committed to continuing to lead Nvidia as CEO without interruption."

On November 9, Trump told reporters he had not been aware of the situation when he invited Huang on the China trip. He said Huang had told him he did not know Alice Huang was an alleged spy. "I really believe him," Trump added. China's foreign ministry dismissed the allegations as "purely unsubstantiated and directed at smearing China."

On November 11, the Times reported that Huang also had an intimate relationship with an Nvidia executive who reported to him. Neither Nvidia nor Huang has confirmed it. The board met to weigh his future. Megaspeed said it welcomed US government scrutiny and would cooperate with the authorities.

On Thursday, Huang resigned. Nvidia named its chief financial officer, Colette Kress, interim chief executive and began a search for a permanent successor.