Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of healthcare, has cancelled a planned appearance at the Milken Institute Future of Health Summit, hours after the New York Times reported that she had a relationship with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, to whom she reports.
The news came from Meg Tirrell, CNN’s medical correspondent, who said on X that Powell had been due to speak at the opening session of the summit on Thursday morning, on a panel Tirrell is moderating. “I just heard from organizers that she’s cancelled her planned attendance,” Tirrell wrote, adding that she had reached out to Nvidia about the report. Neither Nvidia nor Powell has said why she pulled out.
Hours After The Report
The cancellation came shortly after the Times’ report, which cited five people who worked at Nvidia. They said Huang and Powell were captured on video being affectionate at a San Jose hotel during Nvidia’s GTC conference in March. The Times said it has not seen the video. The claims have not been confirmed by Nvidia, Huang or Powell, and Nvidia declined to provide a statement. Powell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Future of Health Summit runs from November 11 to 13 at the Salamander hotel in Washington, DC, and brings together CEOs, policymakers, researchers and investors from across the health sector. Powell was among the listed speakers. The Milken Institute’s biography describes her as having spent nearly two decades at the intersection of computing and healthcare, and credits her with expanding Nvidia’s presence into areas such as BioNeMo, its platform for AI-driven biology and drug discovery. Her career has centred on pushing Nvidia’s chips into medical imaging and life sciences since she joined the company in 2008.
Appearances like this are central to her role. Powell is one of the main faces Nvidia sends to healthcare audiences, and she regularly speaks at events such as the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference and Milken’s summit. Her withdrawal leaves a gap at an event where Nvidia’s healthcare push, including its work with drug makers and startups, would likely have been a topic.
A Pattern Of Cancellations
Powell is not the first Nvidia figure to step back from public events since the scandal broke. Huang has pulled out of several appearances, including the ElevenLabs Summit in New York, and his daughter Madison Huang, a senior director at Nvidia, cancelled a trip to South Korea for an Nvidia event, citing a “family matter”.
Huang admitted in a memo to employees on November 8 that he had been unfaithful to his wife. Nvidia’s board opened an independent investigation into whether he was targeted by a Chinese intelligence operation involving Alice Huang, a Megaspeed executive. The allegations against Alice Huang remain unproven, and China has denied them.
Pressure Mounts On The Board
The Powell report, along with a Wall Street Journal report that Nvidia’s board is preparing to oust Huang, has sharply raised the stakes. The Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, said the board could meet as soon as Wednesday to decide his future. Nvidia’s shares fell nearly 8% in after-hours trading following the reports.
The Powell allegation raises a governance question: whether the chief executive had a relationship with a direct report, and how Nvidia’s code of conduct, which tells employees to avoid conflicts including those arising from personal relationships, applies. It remains to be seen whether the board’s investigation will extend to the matter, and whether Powell’s role at the company is affected.
This article is based on a post by CNN’s Meg Tirrell on X and reporting by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. The allegations about a relationship have not been independently verified, and Nvidia, Jensen Huang and Kimberly Powell have not publicly confirmed them. The reason for Powell’s cancellation has not been stated.