NEW YORK — Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a message to employees that he had been unfaithful to his wife and took "full responsibility" for his actions, while Nvidia said the CEO was committed to continuing to lead the company without interruption.
Huang admitted to having been unfaithful to his wife, saying, "My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry."
Addressing his colleagues, board, partners and shareholders, Huang said: "My responsibility is to serve you and be worthy of your trust. I have fallen short of that responsibility. I am fully committed to Nvidia and will work to earn back your confidence."
The board has confidence in the CEO and his leadership team, Nvidia said.
Huang, who has led Nvidia for more than three decades, has been central to its rise to become a dominant supplier of AI chips.
Nvidia shares fell sharply on Monday after the developments, tumbling more than 6 percent in Frankfurt trading, extending last week's sell-off and pushing the stock to its lowest in months. At those levels, the chipmaker stood to lose about $270 billion from its closing price on Friday, according to LSEG Datastream.
"The market's probably telling you now this does no favors to the stock whatsoever in a time when there's a lot of conjecture as to the build-out of data centers," said Chris Weston, head of research at brokerage Pepperstone in Melbourne.
But Weston said he did not think Huang, whom he described as the "godfather of AI", would be replaced.
The fallout from the development extended to South Korea, where Madison Huang, Huang's daughter and an Nvidia executive, canceled a planned visit to Seoul for an Nvidia conference that was set to begin on Monday, according to companies she had been scheduled to meet.
South Korea expects contracted deliveries of Nvidia graphics processing units, or GPUs, to proceed without disruption despite the issue, South Korea's Vice-Minister of Science and ICT Ryu Je-myung said on Monday.
US President Donald Trump said on Sunday he had not spoken to Huang, and called him a fine person. "I hope everything's fine. He's done such an incredible job," he added.
The developments pile pressure on Nvidia at a time when investors are already pulling back amid uncertainty over the sustainability of the booming AI market that made the chipmaker one of the world's most valuable companies.
The $4.5 trillion chipmaker's shares have given up all their gains this year amid a broader tech market rout triggered by worries over the pace of AI spending.
Josh Gilbert, lead analyst at trading platform eToro, said Huang's fingerprints were on every part of the company's rise, so any doubt over his position would matter to shareholders.
Following media reports that Nvidia had opened a probe into Huang after he acknowledged an affair with a woman whom US officials say was working for Chinese intelligence, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun on Monday rejected the allegation.
"The so-called Chinese spy allegation is groundless. It is nothing but a smear against China," Guo said at a regular news briefing when asked to comment on the reports.
AGENCIES-XINHUA
