I Wrote Jensen Huang’s Biography. Here’s What Led to His Downfall.

Stephen Witt, who wrote the biography of Jensen Huang called "The Thinking Machine," has published an opinion essay in The New York Times on the Nvidia chief's abrupt exit. It is an argument by a man who spent time with his subject, not a news report, and it frames the fall as a very old story about overconfidence rather than a story about technology.

According to Witt, Huang left after revelations that he carried on at least two affairs. One was with Alice Huang, an executive who ran a Singapore-based company that owns data centers in Southeast Asia, and whom U.S. intelligence determined to be a Chinese spy. The other was with Kimberly Powell, an executive in Nvidia's health care group and one of his direct reports.

The data centers matter to the story. They are suspected of helping Chinese A.I. developers get around U.S. limits on sales of Nvidia equipment. A recent report in The Information suggested they served as a way station for about $7 billion in equipment smuggled into China. Because U.S. intelligence captured evidence of the relationship, Witt writes, it is hard to believe Huang did not understand what was happening.

Of the Powell relationship, Witt says a former Nvidia employee told him it was common knowledge inside the company, which employs both of Huang's children in executive roles. Asked why Huang would behave that way in front of his kids, the former employee said it gave him a narcissist's high. Witt says he heard rumors of infidelity earlier this year but could not confirm them, and he describes a culture of silence at Nvidia that he sensed in subordinates' sycophantic laughter and in what they muttered after Huang left a room. In his telling, government intelligence and reporters at the Times finally broke that silence. He expects more women to come forward.

Witt describes a carefully built public image. When he first met Huang in 2023, Huang and his handlers promoted the idea of a humble man who deflected credit to employees and reminded people he had once been a dishwasher. Witt recalls a breakfast at Denny's where Huang left the waitress $1,000 in hundred-dollar bills, without any show; Witt had to track her down to ask. Over time he came to suspect the humility was an act performed to flatter Huang himself. He says Huang could not tolerate disagreement, and that contradicting him, even on trivial matters, could set off a harangue lasting an hour or more. Executives appeared genuinely afraid of him, which reminded Witt of the abusive instructor in "Whiplash."

The family-man image, Witt says, was harder to see through and probably involved self-deception. Huang talked constantly about his wife, Lori, and their children, Madison and Spencer, and traveled with them widely. He encouraged his children to leave unrelated careers for Nvidia. Several weeks ago, at a wedding in Hawaii, he gave Madison away to Nico Caprez, another Nvidia executive. Huang met Lori at 17, when they were lab partners in an electrical engineering course; it took him six months to ask her out. They married in their early 20s, and she left the work force to raise the children so he could found his company. Witt says the oldest friends he interviewed described the marriage as happy, even ideal.

Witt notes that in a divorce Lori Huang could become one of the richest women in America. He doubts there is a prenuptial agreement, since neither had much in the mid-1980s. Their hundreds of millions of Nvidia shares are held in family trusts. The couple recently gave $75 million toward a flagship building at Vanderbilt University's new San Francisco campus, and a building they helped fund at Oregon State, where they met, is nearing completion.

Witt also sees hypocrisy in Huang's advocacy for women. In the 1990s Nvidia was a boys' club with a mascot, "Dawn," a scantily clad C.G.I. pixie, dropped in 2020 around when Huang began speaking of empowering women. In 2023 Witt watched him call for gender parity at a company still 80 percent male.

Politics, Witt argues, triggered the fall. Huang became a close ally of President Trump in 2025 despite little prior interest in politics, and by this September's White House tech summit sat at Trump's right arm. He persuaded the president to lift export restrictions on Nvidia chips to China, clashing with hawks, notably Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who oversaw the memo that exposed Huang.

Nvidia now needs a successor, and Huang never groomed one. Colette Kress, who comes from finance, will serve as interim chief executive, and Witt doubts she is a long-term answer. He compares Nvidia without Huang to the Bulls without Michael Jordan. What to watch is who the board names, and whether the allegations Witt recounts are confirmed or expanded by further reporting.