Former Nvidia Chief Misled Its Top Lawyer, Sources Say
Jensen Huang misled several Nvidia leaders, including its general counsel Tim Teter and chief marketing officer Alison Wagonfeld, about the nature of his relationship with the Chinese businesswoman Alice Huang, with whom he had an affair, according to two people familiar with the matter and internal correspondence reviewed by Reuters.
Reuters reviewed exchanges from last month on condition that it not quote them directly, and it is the first outlet to report on that correspondence. In two separate messages, Huang told the leaders that his interactions with Megaspeed, where Alice Huang was a top executive, reflected standard business dealings with customers.
And he described the relationship the same way a year earlier, when press queries first drew attention to it, according to the people, though Reuters reviewed only last month's messages and not those from the earlier period.
He also discussed taking legal action against the New York Times after it published an article about his public meetings with Alice Huang, the people said. Neither Nvidia nor Huang filed a suit, and a spokesperson for the paper said it received no legal demand.
Huang resigned as chief executive this week and apologised in a statement for being unfaithful to his wife and for disappointing the company, without naming Alice Huang, a former top executive of Megaspeed International, which is a customer of Nvidia.
But the messages add a second problem to his exit, because the people say the company's own legal leadership was given a description of the relationship that did not match what was happening. Teter and Wagonfeld did not respond to requests for comment, and representatives for Huang and for Nvidia declined to comment.
The independent directors of Nvidia's board said this week that they had hired the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz to investigate his relations with Alice Huang and the suspicions of US authorities that she was spying for China, which Beijing denies and which Reuters has not independently verified. The New York Times reported that he had a relationship with an Nvidia employee, and Reuters reported that he had another with a different employee.
The market has already repriced the company. Nvidia's stock has fallen more than 30 per cent from its peak, wiping more than 1.8 trillion dollars from its market value, and Huang told Bloomberg that the US government had not informed him of its suspicions about Alice Huang.
So the correspondence puts Nvidia's general counsel among the people given an account that two sources describe as misleading, and the board's investigation now covers both the affair and what its own executives were told about it.
Reuters reviewed October messages that it says misdescribed the relationship
Huang told his general counsel the dealings were standard customer business
He raised suing the New York Times over its reporting, and no suit followed
Nvidia's independent directors hired Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz to investigate
The stock has fallen more than 30 per cent from its peak
Source: Reuters
