Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who previously found himself at the epicenter of a scandal due to an extramarital romantic affair with an alleged Chinese spy, may have had a relationship with his direct subordinate. This was reported by five former employees of the company. Against this background, experts have announced the most likely candidates to succeed the head of Nvidia.
Image source: Nvidia
We are talking about Kimberly Powell, who serves as Nvidia’s vice president of healthcare. This is confirmed by video footage of 63-year-old Huang and 48-year-old Powell showing affection to each other, two former Nvidia employees said. The shooting was taken in San Jose, California, during a conference that the company held in March. The Code of Conduct instructs company employees to “avoid situations in which their actions could lead to a conflict of interest,” including “personal relationships”; and all reports of inappropriate behavior are promptly investigated, the document states. Both Huang and Powell are married to other people.
Paeull joined Nvidia in 2008 and has built a career at the company. In 2016, she was promoted to the position of senior director of business development in the field of artificial intelligence; at the end of 2017, she took the post of vice president for healthcare. She currently oversees programs aimed at applying Nvidia solutions in the fields of higher education and healthcare, in particular related to the development of equipment for medical imaging. In March, she took part in Nvidia’s annual conference, where she spoke about how AI is helping to make breakthroughs in medicine and biology.
During the conference, Nvidia executives held meetings at a nearby hotel. There they noticed Huang and Powell showing signs of attention to each other. One of the eyewitnesses captured what was happening on his smartphone camera. Security officers noticed a man with a smartphone and detained him, asking him to sign a non-disclosure agreement. The day before, when New York Times journalists asked a telephone question about his relationship with Powell, Huang replied: “I don’t think you should talk to me directly,” and hung up. Nvidia declined to comment, and Powell did not respond to a request. However, their relationship was discussed internally, sources said.
Kimberly Powell
Today there will be a meeting of the Nvidia board of directors, at which they may decide to send Jensen Huang to resign. Against the backdrop of the upcoming event, experts began to nominate candidates for his possible successors – these could be Nvidia veteran Jeff Fisher with 32 years of experience at the company, CFO Colette Kress, engineer Ian Buck, current Arm CEO Rene Haas, as well as one of Huang’s two children holding senior positions in the company.
Some board members are in favor of the appointment of Colette Kress, who has served as Nvidia’s chief financial officer for 13 years and speaks alongside Huang during discussions of the company’s financial results. On the Polymarket forecasting platform, the most likely candidate is Ian Buck, who led the development of the Nvidia software platform and was one of the key developers of CUDA; He now leads the hyperscaler product line.
Finally, the current head of Arm, Rene Haas, is called a likely candidate. He previously held executive positions at Nvidia; he is now a well-known figure and someone who has deep knowledge of the semiconductor industry.
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