By Javier Surasky
Jensen Huang spent more than three decades building one of the most influential companies in the development of artificial intelligence. Yet after just a few days of controversy, he ended up leaving Nvidia's leadership. The speed of his departure stands in sharp contrast to the magnitude of the economic, technological, and political power he had accumulated, raising a question: how much of that power did he actually lose when he stepped down?
There is a
paradox at the heart of this case: the crisis unfolded amid suspicions of
possible Chinese intelligence activities that have yet to be publicly
substantiated, but the institutional consequences are already clear. Nvidia
changed its leadership, launched an independent investigation, and became the
subject of new congressional scrutiny over U.S. national security. A dizzying
escalation.
Yet it
would be a mistake to attribute these developments to a single event. Beneath
this particular crisis lie long-standing tensions involving Nvidia's commercial
interests, U.S. restrictions on China's access to advanced semiconductors and,
no less importantly, Huang's network of personal and political relationships.
The
significance of this episode lies precisely in how these tensions converge.
This gives me an opportunity to examine the limits of individual power, the
resources that sustain it, and what happens when those resources begin to
weaken. Just as important is the ability of uncertainty to produce consequences
across an international system of technological dependencies.
One Fall, Many Reasons
On November
8, 2026, Nvidia's board of directors announced an independent investigation
following reports of an alleged foreign intelligence operation targeting Jensen
Huang. The company stressed that it had no reason to believe its trade secrets
or U.S. national security had been compromised and expressed confidence in its
founder and CEO. On November 10, the independent directors announced that they
had retained outside legal counsel to conduct the investigation.
Just 24
hours later, the board accepted Huang's resignation as president, CEO, and
board member. The news was made public on November 12.
Colette
Kress, Nvidia's chief financial officer since 2013, took over as interim CEO,
while Harvey C. Jones was appointed chair of the board, a position the company
created as part of the transition.
Nvidia's
official documents confirm Huang's resignation and the leadership changes, but
they do not explain why he left (Nvidia Corporation, 2026). News reports,
meanwhile, place the crisis against a backdrop of extramarital relationships,
including one with a businesswoman suspected by U.S. intelligence agencies of
having ties to China, as well as questions about Huang's conduct and Nvidia's
corporate governance (Soni & Rooprai, 2026; Cherney et al., 2026). So far,
however, there has been no public evidence establishing that Huang disclosed
protected information, nor have the espionage suspicions been substantiated.
Distinguishing
established facts from allegations is essential to understanding what happened.
But that is only half the story.
The other
half concerns U.S. digital security policy.
For years, Nvidia had been at the center of U.S. disputes over semiconductor exports to China. Huang had publicly defended the commercial importance of the Chinese
market while questioning the consequences of certain restrictions. To
complicate matters further, members of Congress had begun calling for tighter
controls on China's access to U.S. processors, and in March 2026, lawmakers
from both parties had called for a review of export licenses. The controversy
surrounding Huang brought questions of security and corporate integrity into an
already contentious dispute.
These
accumulated tensions help explain why the crisis so quickly took on political
and economic significance. But they do not establish whether those tensions
ultimately drove the board's decision or Huang's own. We need to distinguish
what we know about the circumstances surrounding his resignation from what
remains unknown.
Losing the Position, Keeping the Power
In May 2026, Nvidia became the first actor featured in our AI Power Map series. We
chose it because of its strategic position in the development of processors,
programming tools, and infrastructure essential to numerous artificial
intelligence systems.
Its
influence goes beyond its products' market share. It also rests on
relationships of complementarity and dependence built around its technology:
investments made by developers, infrastructure providers, and research centers
can make it difficult to replace Nvidia's products and solutions quickly.
Huang
played a central role in building that position. This matters because our focus
now shifts from Nvidia's power as a company to the personal power of its
founder.
As CEO,
Huang had the authority to lead the company, shape strategic decisions, and
formally represent its interests. His departure immediately changes that.
Executive decision-making authority now rests with Kress, under the board's
oversight.
But over 33
years, Huang also accumulated specialized knowledge, relationships with
business leaders and government officials, negotiating experience, and
considerable wealth. He still holds approximately 3.6% of Nvidia's shares (Soni
& Rooprai, 2026). That stake does not give him control of the company, but
it represents a significant financial interest and a potential source of
influence. In other words, Huang may have lost the authority to determine
Nvidia's strategy without losing his ability to maintain relationships with
influential figures, even if some of those ties weaken precisely because he no
longer represents the company.
To assess
how much power Huang retains, we will need to see whether he can continue to
mobilize resources, facilitate agreements, or influence specific decisions.
This brings another dimension of the situation into focus: holding an
institutional position grants powers that can disappear overnight, while other
personal resources may endure and take on new forms.
Huang's
departure immediately changed the formal distribution of authority within
Nvidia. But the actual redistribution of power may take considerably longer.
The Strategic Knowledge Huang Takes With Him
The most
delicate issue in this succession is not necessarily who now occupies the CEO's
office. It is what happens to the knowledge accumulated by someone who spent
more than three decades taking part in the company's most important decisions.
Nvidia can
revoke access credentials, recover documents and devices, secure its files,
enforce confidentiality obligations, and even reorganize its internal security
procedures. But it cannot simply reclaim the knowledge and expertise Huang
accumulated throughout his career. That knowledge presumably includes inside
information about technological projects, commercial negotiations, supplier
relationships, expansion strategies, research priorities, and government
officials' positions, among other matters.
Under U.S.
law, certain forms of knowledge may qualify as trade secrets if they meet
specific legal requirements, including having value because they are kept
confidential. But a former executive's general professional experience is not
automatically protected information (18 U.S.C. § 1839(3), 2016).
And there
is more to consider. Even knowledge that is not legally protected as a trade
secret may be valuable to others. Knowing how a company like Nvidia operates,
understanding its priorities and decision-making processes, and being familiar
with its informal ways of working can prove crucial in negotiations with the
company.
The
geopolitical implications of Nvidia's technologies make this issue even more
sensitive. Information about processing capabilities or supply strategies could
be valuable to competitors and governments seeking to develop artificial
intelligence. Yet it would be unjustified to assume that Huang would
necessarily be disclosing confidential information if he shared such knowledge,
or that doing so would automatically constitute a proven threat to national
security.
This brings
us to a governance problem that can be summed up in one question: How do
strategically important organizations manage the knowledge concentrated in
executives who leave?
The answer
depends on institutional safeguards, legal obligations, and how information is
distributed within an organization. I do not know the specific terms of Huang's
departure or what measures Nvidia has taken, but I do see an asymmetry: it is
much easier for a company to enforce security controls over someone who still
works for it than over someone who has left. This makes the retention of
strategic knowledge a dimension of power in its own right, distinct from both a
company's control over technology and the formal authority of its executives.
How Authority Is Redistributed Within Nvidia
Huang's
departure set in motion a redistribution of power. As noted earlier, the board
appointed Colette Kress as interim CEO. Kress knows Nvidia from the inside: she
joined in 2013 as executive vice president and chief financial officer, after
working at Texas Instruments, Microsoft, and Cisco. She led Nvidia's finance
organization for more than 13 years, witnessing firsthand its transformation
into a company that now plays a critical role in the global AI infrastructure.
Her appointment as interim CEO, while retaining her financial responsibilities,
appears intended to provide leadership with a deep understanding of Nvidia's
financial and operational workings (Nvidia Corporation, 2026).
Alongside
Kress, the other central figure in the succession is Harvey Jones, who became
chair of the board, a position created as part of the current transition. His
appointment reinforces the idea that Nvidia is seeking continuity: Jones has
served on its board since 1993, the year the company was founded.
Kress
brings operational and financial continuity. Jones brings continuity rooted in
the company's history and corporate oversight.
The new CEO
assumes the executive authority that comes with the position and the
responsibility of coordinating an organization whose strategy had been closely
tied to its founder. The new board chair takes on a more prominent role,
supporting the search for a permanent successor and overseeing the independent
investigation.
I believe
this emphasis on continuity is directly related to the strong presence Huang
had established and the relationships he had built, including personal ties,
with governments, suppliers, and customers. Those relationships depend on
continuity, trust, and knowledge of past negotiations, and these qualities are
sometimes better preserved through personal connections than through
institutional procedures. A business relationship can survive as long as its
economic foundations remain intact, but in a political negotiation, one
interlocutor cannot simply replace another by exchanging business cards.
At the
heart of Nvidia's dilemma is how to navigate a transition that could affect its
ability to get results in its dealings with other actors. That is why the
company was quick to say it expected its operations, commercial commitments,
and technology plans to continue without interruption. Whether that happens,
however, will depend on how well the new pilots steer the company through the
current storm.
Uncertainty and the Geopolitical Dispute
The allegations surrounding Huang did not create the familiar, much-discussedconflict between the United States and China over access to advanced
semiconductors. But they gave those calling for stronger government
intervention on digital national security grounds new arguments to draw on.
On November
9, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jim Banks explicitly linked Huang's situation
to the need for tighter controls on advanced chips (United States Senate
Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, 2026b). On November 11,
Warren and Chris Coons asked the U.S. government to preserve existing records
concerning Nvidia's exports (United States Senate Committee on Banking,
Housing, and Urban Affairs, 2026a).
These
congressional actions show how an unsubstantiated suspicion of espionage can
reinforce earlier political initiatives, with uncertainty prompting preventive
responses both within and beyond the state considering or adopting such
measures.
Reuters
(2026) reported on November 12 that some Chinese companies were trying to
secure access to Nvidia computing capacity at overseas data centers, fearing
that the United States might extend its restrictions to remote access to
controlled technologies. A day later, Baptista (2026) identified Chinese AI
infrastructure projects worth more than $3.2 billion in total, built around
restricted Nvidia processors. The figure includes planned projects, contracts,
and facilities, so it does not represent actual chip purchases alone.
What is
clear is that the "Huang/Nvidia crisis" has prompted policy moves by
the two main contenders in the race to lead AI development.
Other
actors have also been caught up in the turmoil. Infrastructure providers face
uncertainty over their investments, developers are seeking to secure access to
computing capacity, and financial markets have begun to react. On November 12
alone, Nvidia shares fell 4.3%, while other AI-related technology companies
also saw their stock prices decline (Valetkevitch & Jones, 2026).
Conclusion
The
Huang/Nvidia case shows the power of suspicion: its ability to change
expectations and behavior in a highly sensitive international environment, even
before the facts under investigation have been established.
Huang's
fall ultimately shows that technological power cannot be explained solely by
the possession of strategic resources. It also depends on the people who manage
those resources, the information they hold, the relationships they build, the
ability of institutions to constrain how their knowledge is used, and even the
charisma and trust an individual inspires.
In our AI Power Map, Nvidia will continue to occupy a central position as long as it
retains technological capabilities that are difficult to replace. But this
episode makes me pay closer attention to the relationship between personal
power, institutional authority, strategic knowledge, and regulatory capacity.
We still do
not know how much power Jensen Huang retains or what the consequences of his
departure will be. But it has already become clear that the power surrounding
artificial intelligence reaches into every sphere it touches, including
interpersonal relationships and highly visible charismatic leadership.
References
18
U.S.C. § 1839
(2016). https://uscode.house.gov/us/usc/t18/s1839/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Baptista,
E. (2026, November 13). Huang exit and US scrutiny imperil $3 billion in
Chinese AI projects reliant on Nvidia. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/china/huang-exit-us-scrutiny-imperil-3-billion-chinese-ai-projects-reliant-nvidia-2026-11-13/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Cherney, M.
A., Hu, K., Alper, A., & Seetharaman, D. (2026, November 12). Exclusive:
Former Nvidia CEO Huang had a relationship with a second employee, sources say.
Reuters. https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/exclusiveformer-nvidia-ceo-huang-had-a-relationship-with-a-second-employee-sources-say-5023034
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preserve NVIDIA records following reports of foreign intelligence operation
targeting CEO Jensen Huang. https://www.banking.senate.gov/newsroom/minority/senators-warren-and-coons-direct-lutnick-rubio-and-miller-to-preserve-nvidia-records-following-reports-of-foreign-intelligence-operation-targeting-ceo-jensen-huang?utm_source=chatgpt.com
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