Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, already under scrutiny over an affair with a woman U.S. intelligence believes was a Chinese spy, also had an extramarital relationship with a senior executive who reports to him, the New York Times has reported, citing five people who worked at the company.
The executive is Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of healthcare. The relationship had not been previously reported. The five sources spoke to the Times on condition of anonymity, and the allegations have not been confirmed by Nvidia, Huang or Powell.
What The Report Says
According to the Times, the relationship between Huang, 63, and Powell, 48, has been discussed inside the company. Both are married to other people.
Two of the people said Huang and Powell were captured on video being affectionate at a San Jose, California hotel during Nvidia’s annual GTC developer conference in March. The Times said it has not seen the video. Executives were staying at a nearby hotel for meetings during the conference, and a bystander filmed the interaction on their phone, three people briefed on the incident told the paper.
Those sources said Huang’s security staff noticed the bystander with the phone and sequestered them, then offered them a non-disclosure agreement to sign.
Powell herself presented at GTC that month, speaking about using AI to drive breakthroughs in healthcare and biology. According to the Times, her presentation featured cartoon depictions of Huang.
Questions Over Nvidia’s Code Of Conduct
The Times pointed to Nvidia’s code of conduct, which tells employees to “avoid situations where our actions create conflict,” including those involving “personal relationships.” The company also says it “promptly investigates reports of misconduct.” Many corporations have policies against managers having relationships with their subordinates.
Reached by phone on Wednesday and asked about Powell, Huang reportedly said, “I don’t think you should be talking to me directly,” before hanging up. Nvidia declined to provide a statement, and Powell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Who Is Kimberly Powell?
Powell has spent nearly two decades at Nvidia and is one of the public faces of its push into medicine and biology.
Education and early career. Powell holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, with a concentration in computer engineering, from Northeastern University. She began her career in medical imaging, working as a hardware engineer on FPGA design at DOME Imaging Systems, and later as a product manager for diagnostic imaging display systems at Planar Systems. She has an Executive Education degree from MIT Sloan.
Joining Nvidia. She joined Nvidia in 2008 with a specific mandate: to establish Nvidia’s GPUs as the accelerator platform for medical imaging instruments. That put the company’s chips inside the devices used for scans and diagnostics, years before the current AI boom.
Rising through the ranks. According to her LinkedIn profile, as cited by the Times, she was promoted to senior director of artificial intelligence business development in 2016 and was appointed vice president of healthcare by late 2017. Before moving into healthcare full time, she also led Nvidia’s higher education and research business, along with its strategic evangelism programs, Nvidia AI Labs and the Nvidia Inception program for startups.
Building the healthcare business. As VP of healthcare, Powell oversees Nvidia’s worldwide healthcare business, spanning accelerated computing, AI and visualization platforms used across medical imaging, life sciences and drug discovery. Her portfolio includes platforms such as BioNeMo, which is used for AI-driven biology and drug discovery. She has also announced partnerships with organisations including IQVIA and the Mayo Clinic, and says Nvidia’s enterprise AI platform supports over 1,000 healthcare startups building AI agents. Fast Company named her to its AI 20 list, noting that she has led Nvidia’s health efforts for 17 years.
Public profile. Powell regularly appears at industry events such as the JPM Healthcare Conference, HLTH and the Milken Institute’s Future Health Summit, and delivers speeches on behalf of the company at conferences around the world. She was at a technology event in Aspen, Colorado in June.
The Wider Fallout For Huang
The new report lands as Huang faces one of the most turbulent periods of his tenure. On October 29, the Times reported that U.S. officials had concluded that Alice Huang, a Megaspeed executive with no relation to Jensen, was a Chinese intelligence asset who had developed a close relationship with him. China has denied the espionage claims, and Alice Huang has not responded to requests for comment. The allegations against her remain unproven.
On November 8, Huang acknowledged the affair in a memo to employees in which he wrote that he had been unfaithful to his wife. Nvidia’s board opened an independent investigation into the matter, led by the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. The board has said it has no reason to believe national security or company secrets were compromised.
The Republican leaders of three influential House committees have also asked Huang to appear for a closed-door briefing on his interactions with Alice Huang, with a deadline of November 18.
The fallout has begun to disrupt his public schedule. Huang pulled out of a scheduled appearance at the ElevenLabs Summit in New York, and has reportedly withdrawn from an Anthropic CEO forum in California as well.
Huang is also far from the first prominent business leader whose personal conduct has collided with the boardroom, a pattern examined in this list of CEOs and founders who have had affairs.
The latest allegation adds a new dimension to the scandal. Unlike the questions around Alice Huang, which centre on national security, the Powell report raises a corporate governance issue: whether the chief executive of the world’s most valuable company had a relationship with a direct report, and how the board should handle it. It remains to be seen whether the board’s investigation will extend to the matter.