Inside the Downfall of the Most Powerful Man in A.I. | Hard Fork

Speaker 0:00 [instrumental music]

Speaker 0:04 Jensen Huang is no longer the CEO of Nvidia. I don't usually stay up past midnight trying to ascertain the fate of chip company CEOs, but that's what I did last night because Nvidia is not a normal company, and Jensen Huang is not a normal CEO. In a huge surprise this morning, Huang announced his resignation after an emergency meeting of Nvidia's board, called after Huang admitted to an affair with a woman alleged to be a Chinese spy. In a lot of circumstances, that would be enough, but every good spy story needs a twist, and the Huang saga already has several. Just last night, the Times reported that Huang had also been carrying on an affair with one of his direct reports, another executive at Nvidia, and that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had a direct confrontation over Megaspeed, the Singaporean company at the heart of the Huang affair as the Trump administration debated what to do. There's no question in my mind that this is the biggest tech news of the year. Huang is one of the towering figures and big personalities of the AI boom. He's the co-founder and leader of Nvidia, the company at the center of this strange new world we're living in. He's maybe the most prominent AI optimist and a strong advocate of loosening restrictions on chip sales to China. He's a singularly powerful CEO who's also made a lot of people very, very rich. All of which is why this story is so shocking and why we have so many questions. How could the judgment of someone so powerful have been so bad? Why didn't the White House do anything if a major American CEO was involved with a Chinese spy? And maybe most importantly, what happens now? The AI sector has lost the hands-on leader of its linchpin company. The let-her-rip AI optimists lost their loudest voice. Nvidia shareholders have lost many millions of dollars of value, and all this is happening just one week before the first Frontier Lab goes public. What could go wrong? I'm Max Read. This is Hard Fork. Hello, and welcome to the first Hard Fork from the post-Jensen Huang era. For a momentous occasion like this, we've got

Speaker 2:06 a killer panel. We have technology reporter Ryan Mac, who just broke the story that Jensen Huang was having an affair with one of his reports at Nvidia. We've got reporter Ana Swanson, who's been breaking news all across this story for a week, whose scoops are too numerous to mention. And once again, from Singapore, we're joined by contributing writer for The New York Times Opinion, Stephen Witt, author of The Thinking Machine: A Biography of Huang and Nvidia. Welcome to Hard Fork, everybody.

Stephen Witt 2:29 Thank you.

Ana Swanson 2:29 Thanks for having us.

Speaker 2:30 Yeah. So we're recording this around 10:00 AM, uh, here in New York City. Um, it's been around an hour since we first learned the news that Jensen Huang had resigned as CEO of Nvidia. Uh, Ryan, what do we know about how this decision was made?

Ryan Mac 2:44 So this played out this last night and this morning. Um, last night we published a story about a second relationship that he had, a extramarital relationship, uh, with, uh, an executive at Nvidia, this vice president of healthcare, Kimberly Powell. And, you know, Jensen was already kind of teetering, um, given some of the early reporting from Ana and others, um, about his first relationship, and that kind of seemed to set the wheels in motion even more. And so, um, the board met and, you know, this morning before the market opened, they put out the announcement, Jensen resigns, and, uh, here we are.

Speaker 3:29 It seemed f- from where I was sitting like the board meeting was taking forever, like the, you know, there was an announcement this was gonna happen. There was a sense that probably the outcome was that he was going to be forced out. Um, Stephen, w- what do you think the br- the board's perspective on this was?

Stephen Witt 3:44 Many people on the board are themselves Nvidia billionaires. I think there's four different members of the board who own more than a billion dollars in Nvidia stock, and they've never seen this company without Jensen. Jensen's the only CEO that this company has ever had for over 33 years. Some of these guys have went-- been with him for the very beginning, from the very first day. So it's very hard, I think, for them to let go of Jensen even when it, it's almost forced that they have to. I suspect that they were looking for some way not to do that maybe. You know, maybe you go to counseling, Jensen. Maybe you step back for a little bit, and then maybe you come back in a little while later. But look, you know, the stock is down quite a lot already. It went down today again. That costs them, that costs the board members real money. Uh, and so they're attempting to act in the, not so much in the interests of morality or in the interests of even good taste, but in the interests of Nvidia shareholders and, and that's a tough decision to make. It's not clear that this company is worth more with Jensen gone than it is with a very tarnished Jensen in charge.

Speaker 4:44 One aspect of this story that's been interesting is the extent to which, um, the Trump administration has been aware of this affair, and there seems to have been some internal conflict about it. Um, Ana, I'm wondering if anything has changed this week within the White House and within the administration that would tip the scales against Jensen in a situation like this.

Ana Swanson 5:02 I definitely think there is this sense in Washington that the tide has kind of turned against, um, Jensen Huang. Um, for a long time, you know, uh, Jensen was-- had this very close friendship with, um, President Trump that, at least for Republicans, made him hard to touch. Um, that's something that, um, would-- wasn't there initially at the beginning of President Trump's second term, but something that, um, the two men kind of cultivated and that grew over time. And I think it became very difficult for a lot of people in the president's party to, uh, advocate for tougher, uh, restrictions on chip sales to China just because they might, um, go crosswise at that, um, that very close relationship, right? But now that Jensen is on the outs, um, you really do see these much more kind of aggressive calls, um, particularly from Congress, but also people in the administration about advancing chip restrictions. Um, Elizabeth Warren today issuing a statement saying that Jensen's resignation doesn't absolve him or the company, uh, for any responsibility for putting national security at risk or potential violations of laws. So there really is this kind of sense that, um, it-- that efforts are, are heating up in Washington to scrutinize the company's sales to China a lot more closely.

Speaker 6:27 I mean, you, you, you reported on a confrontation between Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Can you walk us through that story a little bit and tell us what you think it means in a broader sense about, uh, what's happening inside the White House?

Ana Swanson 6:40 Yeah, absolutely. So the thing to know is that the Commerce Department is responsible for American technology export restrictions, and so it plays this really important role in, um, setting the boundaries kind of of Nvidia's global business, how much they've been able to sell to China in recent years. And so President Trump, you know, have, has obviously, um, grown closer with Jensen Huang. Jensen Huang has also cultivated a closer friendship with Howard Lutnick, the Secretary of Commerce. And increasingly in internal discussions, Howard Lutnick has been seen as kind of the person pushing back or delaying various export control measures, whether it's, um, putting Megaspeed on the entity list to kind of trade blacklist or broader restrictions that would, um, stop Chinese companies from remotely dialing into data centers in Southeast Asia. Um, and so there's an awful lot of finger-pointing going on right now in this situation, but a lot of those fingers are pointed at Howard Lutnick, um, and it remains to be seen kind of how that evolves for the Commerce Department. Um, is there some fallout, you know, in terms of personnel there too, or maybe, uh, you know, they start to move much more aggressively on advancing some of the rules that people have been asking for?

Speaker 7:59 Um, Ryan, I wanna turn to the story that you reported out yesterday. Uh, so we're recording this on Thursday morning. On Wednesday afternoon, sort of towards the end of the day, around 5:00 PM, um, Times reported that, uh, Huang had, in addition to the affair with the CEO of Megaspeed, Alice Wang, who's allegedly a Chinese spy, um, he was also having an affair with an Nvidia executive who reports to him. Ryan, what can you tell us about how you, uh, came across this story? I understand it started with a tip.

Ryan Mac 8:25 Yeah, we had been reporting on it for a couple weeks, kind of, uh, on this kind of separate reporting line, um, to the, um, Megaspeed story. Um, and you know, it, it kind of picked up steam, uh, in the last couple days, um, obviously with everything playing out. You know, when I think there's this drumbeat of stories that happens, uh, what happens as reporters is you get more and more people getting the confidence to talk. And so we, we had a few more people reaching out, some people that maybe didn't wanna talk initially come back to us, uh, and say, "Hey, actually, I do know about this thing." And, you know, we got to a point where we're confident in our reporting and confident in the original tip, um, that Jensen had this affair with this vice president, Kimberly Powell, um, who oversaw healthcare at the company. Um, Kimberly Powell has been at the company since 2008. She has kind of worked her way up, um, through the healthca- healthcare kind of initiatives at the company to become this quite powerful executive in her own right at the company. Uh, uh, she gives talks about applying the company's AI products to health and, and science. Um, she's often by Jensen's side at big events. Um, we understand them to have traveled together around the world. Um, and this is something that had been talked about for a long time within the company. You know, people raised eyebrows, um, at this kind of relationship. And, you know, we got it to a point yesterday where we were comfortable in, in publishing it and, you know, we did.

Speaker 9:58 Stephen, was this second wave of the story surprising to you as somebody who's been reporting on Huang and Nvidia for a long time now?

Stephen Witt 10:04 No, not at all.

Speaker 10:05 [laughs]

Stephen Witt 10:06 Um, I mean, in fact, I had been hearing things all summer about this. It was very hard to prove. You know, for a long time, people didn't, didn't wanna talk. Ultimately, it took, you know, uh, well, excellent reporters at The Times, of course, uh, uh, who, who sh- probably will win a Pulitzer for this one, but especially the, uh, the, the congrat- the, the kind of classified intelligence, right? That's what it took to pierce the veil here. You know, I had been hearing things all summer. I'd been getting some tips. They weren't even about either one of these women. Uh, I think that's ultimately what probably forced the board's hand, was the continuation that this would just probably get worse and worse, uh, the longer that Jensen, uh, stuck around. Uh, you know, it must have been very hard for them to get rid of him ultimately.

Speaker 10:48 Yeah.

Stephen Witt 10:48 And perhaps he really did just resign. I guess we'll see.

Speaker 10:51 Yeah. Ryan, there's a specific detail I wanna ask you about this story. [laughs]

Ryan Mac 10:54 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 10:54 Uh, I'm just gonna read it. It says, "When reached by phone Wednesday and asked about his relationship with Ms. Powell, Mr. Huang said, 'I don't think you should be talking to me directly.' He then hung up." I have to ask, why is the CEO of Nvidia in the middle of probably the worst week of his life picking up the phone at all?

Ryan Mac 11:11 Good question. Uh-

Speaker 11:12 [laughs]

Ryan Mac 11:12 ... I, I'm not gonna take credit for that one. Trip is the one that m- Trip Mickle, our colleague who has been doing amazing reporting, made that call. Uh, and frankly, when he told us what happened, we were stunned. I mean, I, I honestly don't know [laughs] why he picked the phone, why he even said anything. Um, but you know, as reporters, we have to put these tough questions in front of the people we're gonna report on. And so just kind of doing our due diligence, uh, in that process, he made that call. And like most calls and most email reach outs, we expected, you know, them not to say anything or a press person to come back to us, and in this case he picked up. So it was, um, yeah, just kind of an insane moment in this very bizarre and upside down story.

Speaker 11:54 Um, I wanna ask you about another detail. Uh, the Times story included a report that, uh, they were at a conference together, and a bystander saw them, and I'm quoting, "being affectionate" and documented it on their phone. So it seems like a lot of people were around. There was a kind of, uh, maybe an understanding or a sense that, uh, the affair was being carried out in view of other Nvidia executives and employees. Um, s- you know, this, this seems to comport with what Stephen was saying before about there be- having been tips or ideas. Was that your sense too, Ryan?

Ryan Mac 12:26 I think there were just a lot of suspicions out there. And yeah, the anecdote that's in our story came from GTC, this Nvidia developer conference that happens every year. Um, this year it was in San Jose. Um, yeah, they were-- I don't believe they, they thought they were, uh, in an, uh, place that could be seen, but-

Speaker 12:43 Mm-hmm

Ryan Mac 12:43 ... uh, someone did take out their camera and, and You know, and capture some of that. And, uh, as we understand it, the security team then sequestered them, uh, in that process. And it was kind of a surreal anecdote for us to hear, uh, and something we, we definitely fact-checked along the way, um, because it was just so, you know, bizarre to us.

Speaker 13:06 Okay, so, uh, about an hour after this story breaks, um, the Journal reports that Nvidia is getting ready to oust Jensen. Um, does that mean it's the second relationship that did him in? Steven, what do you know about this?

Stephen Witt 13:19 You know, in my interviews with him, Jensen went to such great lengths to present himself as a family man. It was something he really, really emphasized. He talked about his wife all the time. Al- almost every time I talked to him, he started talking about his wife, the sacrifices she had made, uh, to make Nvidia possible. She'd stepped away from her own career to raise her kids, and then bringing his own kids into the company, even as he's openly consorting with another executive. It's almost hard to imagine that that would happen. In some ways, it's just a classic tale of masculine hubris and, and overconfidence, right? But, uh, I think probably the board, when they started to put all this together, was like, there's a such a severe error [laughs] in judgment here that it calls everything else into question.

Ana Swanson 14:07 Um, yeah, if I can just jump in on something S- Steven and Ryan are saying. You know, I've had very limited interactions with Jensen Huang, but I always got the feeling that he had created this incredible company just through sheer force of will, you know? Um, I mean, this is his personal project that he has created, um, over three decades, something that ju- has just transformed global technology and the economy. And, you know, he just, he just seems like the person who kind of, um, you know, wills things into being. Um, and [laughs] you know, that's always the feeling I got with his attitude toward, um, for example, chip smuggling concerns. He has, you know, very consistently denied, um, over years that chip smuggling is just not occurring, um, even in the face of, you know, big smuggling busts by the US government or, you know, reporting that I and others had carried out, just sort of consistently denied that it was happening. And so I think, you know, that just might be sort of, um, one of the, one of his sort of strengths but also his weaknesses that, um, you know, if I, if I were to kind of analyze the man that, um, you know, he, he, um, sees the world in the way that he would like it to be. And, you know, that has largely been a success for him. But in this episode, maybe it was his downfall.

Ryan Mac 15:34 I'd also say, you know, this is someone who hasn't been viewed as kind of this rockstar CEO until very recently, right? He, of course, he's run his company for more than thr- 30 years, but this kind of global fame he's experiencing is, is relatively new, and I guess the ascent of Nvidia to this kind of stratosphere, uh, is, is relatively new. And, you know, uh, uh, as reporters, we see what we s- his public persona changed, you know, at, to a point where he has, you know, famously signed someone's chest, a, a, a woman, a female fan's chest at an event. He, you know, is pictured with the CEO of Megaspeed openly. And, and part, part of me thinks, like, you know, if, if that's happening in front of us, like, what's going on that we aren't seeing? And now we're starting to see some of that reported out now.

Stephen Witt 16:23 I, you know, I think also Jensen created a reality bubble around himself. He had, inside the company, he was like, it was almost like a cult leader when he, when he got up and talked. He, he w- he was like a prophet. But the thing was, everything he said actually came true. And then when something he said came true, everybody in the room made a billion dollars. And so this created this, uh, this, uh, I think this thing that you couldn't even disagree with Jensen i, uh, inside the company, and he wouldn't let you anyway. He'd just start screaming at you if you didn't agree with his point of view. You know, I disagreed with Jensen once, and it was like lighting a fuse on a stick of dynamite.

Speaker 16:59 [laughs]

Stephen Witt 16:59 And when it went off, he just started screaming at me. I'm, I'm a journalist. I don't work for the company. Like, there's nothing to be gained from with that. But that indicated to me, like, oh, this guy has no brakes. Like, this guy, there's no one telling this guy, "You're acting out of turn here." Uh, you know, the, even his PR people, they, they were there, and they just let him yell at me for 20 minutes, you know? There's no one around him saying, "Jensen, reel it back in." There, he had no one like that in his life.

Ana Swanson 17:26 I will say also, just a little more than a week ago, Jensen did give an interview to Bloomberg in which he said that his interactions with, uh, the woman, Alice Wong, were, you know, just very normal and, um, just usual operations, right? And then, uh, in a week, we saw that narrative change just so dramatically.

Speaker 17:45 Yeah.

Ryan Mac 17:46 I would say reading-

Speaker 17:46 Keep going, Ryan.

Ryan Mac 17:47 Yeah, reading the tea leaves-

Speaker 17:48 I love it. I, that, just to be clear-

Ryan Mac 17:49 Sure

Speaker 17:49 ... I really love it when you guys are all talking to each other.

Ryan Mac 17:50 See you later, Max.

Speaker 17:51 Then I don't have to do anything.

Ryan Mac 17:52 Yeah. [laughs]

Speaker 17:52 Yeah. [laughs]

Ryan Mac 17:54 Uh, just reading the tea leaves of the statement they put out about the resignation, I mean, they said glowing things about him, or, you know, they give their, you know, nice things they said about him. But Jensen is not quoted in that anywhere. You know, he doesn't give a statement.

Speaker 18:06 Mm-hmm.

Ryan Mac 18:07 Uh, so that kind of feels very telling to me.

Speaker 18:11 I mean, one, one of the reasons I've been waiting to see if Jensen could retain power is 'cause it has felt, as we've sort of talked about, like the Trump administration has this vested interest, uh, in Nvidia as a sort of linchpin company for the stock market and for the A.I. industry. Obviously, [laughs] as we've talked about, Trump and Jensen have a, have a friendship. Um, and it felt maybe a little bit like at, at some point the Trump administration would put its finger on the scales or kind of swing in and continue to protect him. Seems like that didn't happen last night, Ana.

Ana Swanson 18:39 Um, yeah, I'm not sure what conversations may have taken place, um, if there were calls going back and forth. That was definitely something that- Uh, you know, we had been, um, asking about and, and very curious about. Um, but yeah, it seems like President Trump's, uh, powers don't extend that far to save, um, someone like Jensen Huang in this situation. And we have to see, you know, whether this has an impact on US policy when it comes to Nvidia, whether that remains more favorable. Um, you know, of course Nvidia, as you say, is a, a very important part of the stock market. Um, really important to US data center construction, the American edge in AI. Um, just a, you know, systemically important company at this point, so there's certainly a lot of motivation, um, to, uh, keep them, uh, intact and, uh, doing well. But we'll have to see where it goes from here.

Speaker 19:37 One more question along those lines. I'm wondering, um, to what extent you think the midterm elections last week have freed up space sort of inside the White House or inside the, the sort of US politics in general to allow, uh, a sort of the, the, the anti-Huang camp to sort of push against, uh, push against him and try and get him out of bus- out of place?

Ana Swanson 19:57 Yeah, it feel like, it felt like that really did open the floodgates. And so another thing that Jensen did, you know, he really, um, he worked on cultivating very close ties with, um, Trump, but he kind of left the Democrats behind.

Speaker 20:11 Mm-hmm.

Ana Swanson 20:12 And, you know, a lot of people in Washington are second-guessing that strategy. For instance, there was one episode where Jensen went to meet, um, to brief The Hill, and he only met with Republican lawmakers, which a lot of people in Washington thought was fairly clumsy, you know, um, given that, uh, the expectation that things might turn over in two or four years, but certainly, you know, some of those relationships are time, time-limited. A lot of more traditional CEOs certainly make an effort to reach out more to both sides of the aisle. Um, and now you have Democrats coming back. I mean, they have had to weigh this equation between sort of courting, uh, you know, tech money that had flown over, flowed over to Republicans, um, or seizing on popular opinion, which is kind of more skeptical of data centers and tech CEOs and their relationships with Republicans. And clearly Democrats have chosen to go in this more antagonistic route, um, when it comes to AI executives and Jensen Huang. And so there are several pieces of legislation being considered on The Hill now that would clamp down more on chip sales abroad, in addition to the variety of, um, you know, data center kind of, uh, pushback we've seen around the country.

Speaker 21:30 Yeah.

Stephen Witt 21:31 He also, yeah, he also alienated a significant chunk of what I would call, like, the tech right, you know? Like, like Marco Rubio, guys like Palmer Luckey, they didn't like that Jensen was, was selling chips to China. They thought that was not in the US's, uh, best interest. So outside, I mean, Trump obviously was his ally, but, you know, he really alienated the Democrats. There were a lot of people on the right who, who weren't that happy with Jensen either.

Speaker 21:55 [smacks lips]

Speaker 21:56 Yeah, and let's talk about what, uh, what happens next and sort of what's going forward. Um, uh, Steven, let me ask you. So we've been talking o- over and over again about this, Jensen as this singular figure, you know, sort of a- across his whole company, 60 direct reports. Um, does that mean that the board had never even, they must have never really even thought about a succession plan, or had they?

Stephen Witt 22:17 Uh, I think the board had maybe considered a couple possible successors, but Jensen almost deliberately never groomed a successor. It's almost like asking, "Well, now that Michael Jordan's gone from the Bulls, like, who do we replace him with?" Like, there's not an obvious candidate that, of anyone anywhere who can do what Jensen did. He really was a, a dynamo in this way, a force of nature who could s- both see very deeply into the future of computer science and also, you know, be the very tough CEO who's screaming at suppliers in Taiwan to get things delivered on time, and he was also schmoozing with customers, and he was also got Trump on the phone.

Speaker 22:51 Yeah.

Stephen Witt 22:51 It's, it's unique to Jensen, right? It's incredible some of the stuff he was able to pull off. So you can't really replace him. You almost need three people to do the job that he did.

Speaker 23:01 Yeah. I mean, let's talk for a second and just, like, ma- marvel at the significance of having one single person at the center of a company like this. This is a, uh, a $4 trillion company, uh, I mean, [chuckles] you know, at the time of recording. Uh, it's the second most valuable company in the world behind Apple. It controls something like 90% of the market for computer chips used in big AI projects. I mean, I just think it's worth s- Ryan, can you characterize the significance of this company and therefore the significance of Jensen Huang and his resignation here?

Ryan Mac 23:28 Arguably the most important company for the whole global A.I. industry, and Jensen-

Speaker 23:34 Yeah

Ryan Mac 23:34 ... Huang was the key man of that key company. And so now that he is gone, you know, what comes next? I think we're all wondering, and that is kind of what's at stake here. You know, uh, he is in many ways irreplaceable, and, um, the impacts of that will be felt on the global market, you know, for days, if not weeks to come.

Speaker 24:00 What do we know about Colette Kress? So she was the s- uh, CFO and is now the interim CEO that they've just announced this morning. Steven, did you interview her for your book?

Stephen Witt 24:09 You know, I did not. Uh, she was, kind of declined to be interviewed. Colette is great from what I hear, um, but she can only ever be a temporary or interim, uh, CEO. And the reason for that is although she's a very good executive, she is not a world-class computer scientist. She, she's a finance person. And so if you're not a world-class computer scientist, over the long term you cannot be the CEO of Nvidia or really any microchip company. The CEO of the company has to be an electrical engineer. They have to understand computing from the level of the transistor scaling all the way up to the level of the data center, and this was something the board really told me. This was the reason they be- they believed in Jensen so much right from the beginning. He actually didn't have that many business skills at first, but he was a world-class computer scientist, and that was the bottleneck. That was the thing that was hard to find. If you look at people like Lisa Su, the people who lead other competing, uh, uh, uh, microchip companies, they also have this quality. Uh, so, you know, there are other world-class computer scientists inside Nvidia. In fact, there's many of them, but then that person also has to be, like, a great chief executive.

Ryan Mac 25:19 Mm-hmm.

Stephen Witt 25:19 One name that came up a lot was a guy named Ian Buck. I interviewed him. He's, like, the smartest guy alive, but he's never really dealt with customers. He's never gotten on the phone and screamed at his suppliers in Taiwan to deliver things yesterday. So finding somebody who, who has all of these rare qualities and putting them together in one person, it, it's really tough. It's really [laughs] hard to find that person. The board is going to have a hard time, an impossible time-

Ryan Mac 25:43 Yeah

Stephen Witt 25:44 ... replacing Jensen.

Ryan Mac 25:45 I was also-

Stephen Witt 25:45 Yeah

Ryan Mac 25:45 ... just doing some research, and there's, like, kind of a precedent for this. Um, Intel CEO, Pat Gelsinger, stepped down in 2018 after having an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate at the company, and up stepped the company CFO, Bob Swan, uh, into the CEO role. Uh, he la- he lasted less than three years. You know, he was out by 2021. And so yeah-

Stephen Witt 26:08 Mm-hmm, yeah

Ryan Mac 26:08 ... these, these hard tech companies that need this kind of expertise, you don't really find that from, you know, these financial experts. Yeah. Ana, one question I have about Colette Kress is, [laughs] I mean, she's the CFO. Surely she knew something about Megaspeed. I, I have to imagine this is also on, on the, on the minds of everybody in Washington right now.

Ana Swanson 26:31 Yeah, I agree. I think, um, that is naturally where people's minds here will go. Um, you know, how much, if anything, um, did she know about the business with Megaspeed? So again, Megaspeed was accused of allegedly, uh, diverting chips into China. The US government has been investigating it for that. Um, it was also running, um, you know, what is now a legal business, but setting up data centers in Southeast Asia that serve Chinese clients. Um, but the way that, uh, that business was set up, you know, it was just very obviously kind of this Chinese company in Singapore that, um, quickly rebranded itself and started to buy massive amounts of chips. Um, we also know that Jensen Huang, um, knew the woman that was leading the company at that time, um, very, you know, very closely, like, raising a lot of questions about what his knowledge was of what the company was doing and how much he was potentially even involved in-

Ryan Mac 27:33 Mm-hmm

Ana Swanson 27:33 ... setting up this company, Megaspeed, which, which provides computing power to Alibaba. So there are still a lot of questions about, you know, how far that inquiry will go.

Ryan Mac 27:43 Yeah.

Ana Swanson 27:43 The Department of Justice is carrying out a criminal investigation into Megaspeed right now. I'd also point out that, uh, late last year, uh, around the time that a lot of this was, like, kind of coming to a head, uh, Nvidia suddenly changed the way that they reported revenue, um, to make it much more difficult to figure out how much of their revenue was coming from Singapore and Malaysia, um, you know, changing the way that they counted those customers globally in a way that was very, very frustrating for us and other reporters trying to point to this, you know, just explosion in business in, in Singapore and Southeast Asia that was tied to China. Um, and so, you know, that's something that a CFO probably would have been-

Ryan Mac 28:26 Yeah, I think so

Ana Swanson 28:27 ... uh, you know, intimately involved with.

Ryan Mac 28:28 Yeah. Um, well, let, let's talk for a second about the sort of general, uh, aftermath of this decision. Um, I mean, Ryan, I think it's fair to say that the big thing on everyone's mind is, is this the beginning of the end for the AI boom? What are you expecting in terms of a larger response, Silicon Valley, in terms of, you know, AI in general? The Anthropic IPO is coming up next week. Um, I mean, is there, is there a world where everything is totally fine and nothing happens? Is there a world where there's a, uh, a big blowup and, uh, and the stock market crashes? Oh man, I'm so bad with predictions. Uh- [laughs]

Ana Swanson 29:01 [laughs]

Stephen Witt 29:02 We won't hold you to it.

Ana Swanson 29:02 It's a dangerous game.

Stephen Witt 29:03 We won't hold you to it, I promise.

Ana Swanson 29:04 Yeah. [laughs]

Ryan Mac 29:05 Oh man. I wouldn't be a reporter.

Stephen Witt 29:05 This is not financial advice on Hard Fork, I promise.

Ana Swanson 29:08 [laughs]

Ryan Mac 29:09 Uh, it's so hard to say. We're, like, in the hour two of this happening.

Stephen Witt 29:13 Yeah.

Ryan Mac 29:13 I mean, we were having a discussion earlier, what, like, what does Nvidia look like? It looks like Jordan. It looks like the Bulls without Jordan, right? Uh, yeah, I mean, there's gonna be downstream impacts for weeks if not months. I mean, you, you mentioned the Anthropic IPO. You know, Nvidia is supposed to invest in Anthropic. It already is an investor in Anthropic and is, is about to invest more. Uh, you know, there's, Nvidia is involved in a lot of these kind of circular funding deals where it not only supplies chips but, you know, financing, uh, to companies large and small across the AI, AI and tech ecosystem. Um, you know, does that continue? Can it continue without this kind of char- charismatic figure in Jensen Huang calling the shots? Um, you know, if it's a CF- CFO type, um, now leading the company, will they become a little more cautious with their spending, a little more cautious with the decision-making? Um, you know, that's, that's all gonna play out in the next couple, again, weeks and months, and we'll see what happens.

Stephen Witt 30:12 I will say one of Colette's roles was actually overseeing a, a number of these investments. So, so she's pretty fa- familiar with this kind of financing network that Nvidia built out. Um, you know, it's, it's controversial what they've done, and there, there does sometimes look like circular financing. Uh, some of their customers have really taken on a lot of debt in anticipation of, of future build-outs down the road that may or may not occur, and if those, if those payments can't get made on the debt, that could create a cascade of defaults. Having said that, uh, Nvidia's competition is loving this.

Ryan Mac 30:46 Yeah.

Stephen Witt 30:47 You know, Broadcom is up today. AMD is up today. There's this whole, uh, ecosystem of essentially, uh, um, scavengers waiting to feed [laughs] on- On Nvidia's corpse here. Uh, I mean, i- you know, there's a lot of people who are happy today. They won't tell you that, they won't say that, but there's a lot of people in the microchip industry who see this as the opportunity that they've been waiting for for their whole lives.

Ryan Mac 31:12 You have Elon Musk out there saying he'd be proud to hire Jensen, so it sounds like-

Stephen Witt 31:16 [laughs]

Ryan Mac 31:16 ... he already has a, a landing spot there.

Speaker 31:18 So he's got his Washington, he's got his Washington Wizards to go to.

Ryan Mac 31:21 Yeah.

Speaker 31:21 That's the, that's what SpaceX is.

Ryan Mac 31:23 Well, Elon, Elon has Terafab, right? He's trying to build this chip manufacturer within the US, a partnership between SpaceX and Tesla. We'll see how long those companies stay separate from one another, but, you know, he is looking to do that. He's about to spend tens of billions of dollars on that project, and who better to lead it?

Stephen Witt 31:42 Well, ultimately, the determinant of whether this succeeds or fails is, is not the chip companies. They're, they themselves are downstream of the, the frontier labs, and to the extent that the frontier labs make products that people want to use or even have to use to stay productive or don't, the, the chips will g- the chips will be there to supply them one way or another is my, is, is my feeling, I think. However, if AI disappoints, you know, as a, as a product, if AI ends up being kind of an expensive and broken toy, which it can come sometimes seem like, then that, then it won't work.

Speaker 32:14 Yeah. Um, Ana, we've sort of touched on this a couple times, but I'm wondering what y- uh, the sort of high level reaction in Washington has been to the resignation, and what you see the, sort of the next steps on the political side of this. I mean, we talked about hearings. Um, clearly there's still a sort of battle being played out inside the administration. So what should we be looking at for the next few weeks?

Ana Swanson 32:33 Yeah, I mean, I think people in Washington are quite stunned at how quickly this has happened as well, um, even though, you know, within the administration, this discussion about, um, this alleged Chinese spy a- and Jensen Huang has been going on for quite a long time. Things have really happened very quickly in the last week. Um, so obviously with Democrats now in power in Congress, we're certainly looking at more calls for hearings involving Jensen and Nvidia. Um, you know, we're definitely looking at the possibility of more regulation from Congress, chips bills that could, um, impact their sales somewhat. And then also looking to see if the Trump administration, um, y- has more motivation to issue these kind of global rules, um, particularly ones that clamp down on data centers in Southeast Asia, which is kind of this, you know, this massive loophole that's been created. The administration bans chip sales directly to China, but it hasn't banned Chinese companies from using data centers just right outside that fence in Southeast Asia. So there's just a booming industry there, and, um, d- it, officials right now are discussing how much to regulate that. Um, they've struggled with that question for over a year now, so I'm not sure how quickly that regulation would come out, if at all, but certainly it is top of everyone's mind at this moment.

Speaker 33:59 Um, Steven, you've covered Jensen Huang more closely than just about anyone. Could you [laughs] would you have ever foreseen this outcome?

Stephen Witt 34:06 No. Uh, you know, I, I thought he would survive the initial scandal, actually. Uh, it was only when I started to hear about, you know, more women, then I was like, "Uh, maybe not." [laughs]

Speaker 34:16 Mm.

Stephen Witt 34:17 Um, you know, there was just such a strong incentive for the company to, to keep him, more so than almost any other company. Uh, it's extraordinary to think of the rise and fall of this man and how rapidly it occurred. It's like something out of Greek tragedy. You know, he, he was the most powerful man in AI, one of the most powerful people in the world 30 days ago, right? A- and now he has nothing, uh, really. I mean, he has nothing. He has 3% of Nvidia, which is still worth a lot, but he, he has no kind of executive power anymore, and Trump's not gonna return his phone calls. Um, so it's just such a shocking rise and fall, and it really shows you that even in the age of AI, AI's taking over everything, it's still these kind of human foibles [laughs] that determine what happens, right? Uh, uh, some things never change.

Speaker 35:10 Yeah, I mean, this is... it's, it's the biggest story in tech this year. Um, it feels like a, an espionage novel and a family tragedy all sort of rolled into one. Um, but, uh, you know, as Steven is saying, it has this kind of recognizable human nature element to it. It's a, it's a classic story of hubris. Um, some- a guy got insanely rich and powerful, he got famous, he started to behave like the rules didn't apply. Ana and Ryan, is that also how you guys see what happened here?

Ana Swanson 35:35 [laughs] Uh, no, I mean, certainly here in Washington too, this is just dominating the conversation, and I agree, it's just, you know, an incredible rise and fall, uh, story of somebody flying too close to the sun. Um, and you know, something that will have a lot of fallout, um, here in Congress, but also, um, within the administration where Jensen had become this, this very, uh, you know, kind of rarefied figure who was very close to the president. There are big questions about how that relationship, uh, proceeds from here.

Speaker 36:11 Yeah. Ryan, what about you?

Ryan Mac 36:13 I think a couple days ago I was watching AI remakes of The Odyssey because-

Speaker 36:17 [laughs]

Ryan Mac 36:17 ... uh, Elon Musk said The Odyssey remake by Christopher Nolan was too woke, and-

Speaker 36:22 Mm-hmm

Ryan Mac 36:22 ... uh, I don't know, you're, we're talking about Greek tragedies here, but, um, maybe some Nvidia chips were used to make those AI recreations of The Odyssey, and, and now we're here, and, uh-

Speaker 36:32 [laughs]

Ryan Mac 36:33 ... and he's out, and maybe there's a journey back for him, but it is kind of surreal to watch it all play out.

Speaker 36:39 I, I don't think I can wrap it up better than that. [laughs]

Stephen Witt 36:42 Yeah, there's this sort of endgame where, where there's this endgame where Jensen for eternity is just tortured by satirical memes of himself-

Ryan Mac 36:48 [laughs]

Speaker 36:48 [laughs]

Stephen Witt 36:48 ... generated using his own microchips in the queue.

Ryan Mac 36:51 It is... I can't tell you-

Speaker 36:51 Wow

Ryan Mac 36:52 ... how many, how fast those memes popped up yesterday, and I, I think they're pretty terrible and tasteless, but, like, they were just all over X within 30 minutes of our story going up, and-

Speaker 37:01 And, and they're all being made by the Nvidia, by the Nvidia chips humming away in data centers-

Stephen Witt 37:06 There it is

Speaker 37:06 ... in Singapore and elsewhere. Well, that, that actually is exactly and precisely a Greek tragedy.

Ryan Mac 37:11 [laughs]

Speaker 37:12 Um, this has been a really enlightening conversation, guys. I really appreciate you, you coming and, and talking me through this. Uh, this has been Ryan Mac, Ana Swanson, and Steven Witt, and I'm Max Read, and this is Hard Fork. [upbeat music]