According to people familiar with the matter, as revealed to The Wall Street Journal, NVIDIA's board of directors is reportedly preparing to remove CEO Jensen Huang from his position, leaving Jensen Huang's future at NVIDIA in doubt. Previously, The New York Times reported that Jensen Huang had two extramarital affairs, one of which involved a person suspected to be a Chinese spy, and the other was said to involve Kimberly Powell, the vice president of the company's healthcare business.
In a company memo made public on November 8th, Jensen Huang admitted to having an extramarital affair: “I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our child. There is no excuse for what I did. I deeply regret it.” Lori has not yet made any comments on this memo.
Jensen Huang's position has raised questions about NVIDIA's future among the public, including who will take over the leadership of this $4 trillion market value chip giant if he were to leave, as he has always been a key face of the company. However, in the family's charitable endeavors, it is his wife Lori Huang who holds the highest title.
According to the latest tax return documents of the foundation reviewed by Fortune, Lori is the president of Jen-Hsun & Lori Huang Foundation. As of the end of 2024, the foundation reported assets of approximately $9.2 billion. Jensen Huang is listed as the secretary and chief financial officer of the foundation, while since 2014, Lori has consistently served as the president in all available tax return documents.
Her influence also extends to the majority of NVIDIA shares held by the Huang couple. According to the latest proxy statement of NVIDIA reviewed by Fortune, as of March 23, Lori and Jensen Huang jointly serve as trustees for three family trusts, which hold nearly 669 million NVIDIA shares. This constitutes the majority of the 870.6 million shares that are beneficially owned by Jensen Huang, as stated in the proxy statement; calculated shortly after the close on November 11, these shares are valued at approximately $151 billion. This figure also includes the shares held by the foundation.
The proxy statement also stated that, as members of the foundation's board of directors since 2007, the couple may be considered to jointly possess the voting rights and investment rights to the 58.7 million NVIDIA shares held by the foundation, although neither of them enjoys any economic benefits from these shares.
On November 8, NVIDIA's board of directors stated that they were investigating reports regarding Jensen Huang being targeted by foreign intelligence operations, but claimed that "there is no reason to believe that national security or any of NVIDIA's secrets have been compromised." Subsequently, the independent directors hired former U.S. Deputy Federal Prosecutor Joon H, Kim and their law firms Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to handle this investigation. China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on the other hand, stated that the allegations of espionage are unfounded.
Lori Huang's Role in the Foundation
Lori (originally Lori Mills) met Jensen Huang in a basic electrical engineering course at Oregon State University, where they were assigned to the same lab group. She graduated in 1985. Jensen Huang was 17 and she was 19. They married in 1985, and a few years later she left the workforce to raise their two children. Today, both children, Madison and Spencer, work at NVIDIA. In an interview with Singaporean media CNA, Jensen Huang said, "She's been there for NVIDIA every single moment."
The growth of the foundation coincided with the Huang couple's donation of NVIDIA shares and the rise in the company's stock price. According to tax declaration documents, its net assets increased from approximately $819 million at the end of 2020 to over $9.1 billion by the end of 2024, of which about $8.6 billion was in stock holdings in 2024 alone. In 2024 alone, the foundation achieved a book profit of approximately $5 billion. A statement on behalf of NVIDIA indicated that as of March, the foundation held 58.7 million NVIDIA shares.
According to Jensen Huang's Form 4 filing and the foundation's tax returns, in June and September 2024, Jensen Huang and Lori donated a total of 1.3 million NVIDIA shares to the foundation in their capacity as co-trustees of the trust established during Jensen Huang's lifetime. The foundation estimated the value of these donations to be approximately $160 million. In September, the same trust also recommended that the foundation donate an additional 688,000 shares to an unnamed donor.
The foundation's reports indicate that no salaries were paid in 2024. The only two executives listed, Lori and Jensen Huang, declared working one hour per week without receiving any compensation; their paid external assistants included an investment manager and an accounting firm.
In 2024, the foundation distributed grants totaling approximately $126.3 million. Of this amount, over $82 million went to Schwab Charitable Fund, an organization that provides advisory support to donors for the foundation. The reporting documents indicate that the foundation made donations to donor-advised funds owned by itself or its internal personnel with advisory rights. Other recipients in 2024 included Oregon State University, which received about $30.5 million; and Crisis Text Line, which received about $10.8 million.
The application documents also show that, according to federal allocation rules, the foundation is required to allocate approximately $344.6 million in 2025. The tax return for 2025, which would indicate whether it meets this requirement, has not yet been made public. Some public statements from 2025 indicate that the foundation donated $22.5 million to the California College of the Arts; in November, the Huang couple announced that they would donate $5 million annually to the San Francisco Opera House for several consecutive years.
A declaration document reviewed by Reuters shows that this year the foundation purchased approximately $108.3 million in computing power from CoreWeave to be donated to universities and non-profit research institutions. According to a announcement in 2026, Vanderbilt University announced that the Huang couple would provide an additional donation of $75 million for its arts, architecture, and design campus located in San Francisco.
Neither NVIDIA nor the foundation responded to Fortune's request for comment.
