2026-11-12 12:59:59
Rohan Goswami, Reed Albergotti, and Ashley Gold, reporting for Semafor at 10:27pm ET:
Some members of Nvidia’s board favor appointing Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress as interim CEO at the beleaguered chipmaker if CEO and founder Jensen Huang is ousted, according to people familiar with the matter.
Here’s Kress’s LinkedIn profile.
Semafor earlier confirmed that Nvidia’s board is preparing to oust Huang as soon as Wednesday, after media reports detailed that he had a second extramarital affair. The Nvidia board briefed the White House on its planned meeting, according to a senior administration official.
Nvidia has tapped an outside search firm to find the company’s next CEO, Bloomberg reported. One person being considered for the top job is Apple hardware chief Johny Srouji, who was among the executives considered for Intel CEO in 2019, according to another person familiar with the matter.
Kara Swisher spitballed Tim Cook as an idea, but that’s nonsense. If Cook wanted to be the CEO of a Fortune 2 company, he’d still be CEO at Apple. Apple despises Nvidia and Nvidia despises Apple. Cook may well be enjoying this fiasco, but only as entertainment drizzled with fresh farm-to-table schadenfreude — not as a personal opportunity.
Srouji, though, is an interesting name. Semafor doesn’t say whether this is just wishful thinking on the part of Nvidia’s board or if Srouji has indicated receptiveness. Srouji has been at Apple since 2008 but he’s a bit of a cipher. My spidey-sense can’t tell if he bleeds six colors or not.
Mark Gurman — and no one else — claimed last year that Srouji went to Tim Cook and threatened to leave for another company. Srouji called bullshit on this with a memo that stated flatly, “I love my job at Apple, and I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon.” Then, in April, when John Ternus was named Cook’s successor, Srouji was simultaneously promoted to the new position of Chief Hardware Officer.
So one scenario is that Srouji feels no allegiance to Apple, and Tim Cook and John Ternus are the sort of leaders who, when faced with a threat from a subordinate, give in because they’re cowards, and give a big promotion to someone who might leave Apple for a rival just weeks after Apple’s CEO transition.
Another scenario is that Srouji meant what he said, loves his job at Apple, and truly is John Ternus’s trusted and trustworthy hardware lieutenant. In this case, Nvidia’s board leaking that they’re considering Srouji to replace Huang is like someone in hell saying they’re considering ordering some ice water. My money is on this scenario.
2026-11-12 11:57:43
Nina Trentmann and Ian King, reporting tonight for Bloomberg:
Nvidia Corp.’s board has been working with an outside firm to identify potential replacements for Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang following reports of multiple extramarital affairs, including one with a woman who is reportedly suspected of spying for China, a person familiar with the situation said.
The board is weighing the idea of naming a temporary chief while searching for a permanent one, the person said, asking not to be identified because the information isn’t public. Directors were meeting on Wednesday to discuss Huang’s fate, according to people familiar with the situation. The Wall Street Journal said earlier that the board was preparing to oust Huang, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter. Nvidia didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
There’s no obvious internal candidate because Huang rejected any sort of succession planning within the company’s ranks. I don’t know who they could hire from outside with gravitas, expertise, and integrity who would want the job. It looks more and more like 20 percent of their sales have been illegally smuggled into China and Nvidia covered it up. There’s more to clean up here than marital infidelities.
If the board goes ahead and sacks Huang, I think they should find the best internal candidate and promote them. At least as the temporary CEO. Then conduct a measured search for a replacement. Panicking would only make this worse — but Nvidia’s board is a bunch of no-names who might be shitting their pants at the moment.
2026-11-12 11:42:05
Robbie Whelan, Josh Dawsey, Amrith Ramkumar, reporting for The Wall Street Journal in the aftermath of the NYT’s scoop that Huang was having an affair with an Nvidia vice president too:
Nvidia’s board is preparing to oust CEO Jensen Huang after he had two extramarital affairs, including one with a suspected Chinese spy and another with an employee.
The board is planning to meet as soon as Wednesday to determine his future, people familiar with the matter said. His departure would bring down the curtain on an era during which he stoked the global artificial-intelligence boom and became a geopolitical star. It would leave one of the world’s most valuable companies in need of a new leader.
The WSJ report was filed at 7p ET Wednesday, so presumably “as soon as Wednesday” means tonight. I give it better than even odds that we wake up tomorrow and Huang is out.
2026-11-12 11:35:21
Ryan Mac, Tripp Mickle, and Georgia Gee, reporting for The New York Times:
Jensen Huang, the leader of Nvidia who is under investigation for an affair with a woman who U.S. intelligence determined is a Chinese spy, also had an extramarital relationship with an executive who reports to him, according to five people who worked at the company.
The relationship, which has not been previously reported, was with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care, said the people, who spoke under the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive information. Under Nvidia’s code of conduct, employees are told to “avoid situations where our actions create conflict” including “personal relationships,” and the company states that it “promptly investigates reports of misconduct.” Many corporations have policies against managers having relationships with subordinates.
Mr. Huang, 63, and Ms. Powell, 48, were captured on video being affectionate at a San Jose, Calif., hotel during a Nvidia conference in March, according to two of the people who worked at the company. The New York Times has not seen the video.
Both Mr. Huang and Ms. Powell are married to other people.
If there are other affairs, it seems pretty likely that intelligence agencies know about those too. He wasn’t very secretive about either of the affairs that have come out so far. If there are more, those who know about them in the China-hawk U.S. national security community are going to keep leaking new ones every few days until Huang resigns or the Nvidia board fires him. And at this point I would bet there are more affairs.
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. [...]
In March, Ms. Powell appeared at GTC, Nvidia’s annual developer conference in San Jose, where she spoke about using A.I. to aid in breakthroughs in health care and biology. Her presentation used cartoon depictions of Mr. Huang.
During the conference, Nvidia executives were at a nearby hotel for meetings. Mr. Huang and Ms. Powell were seen being affectionate at the hotel. One bystander captured the interaction on their phone, three people briefed on the incident said. Mr. Huang’s security workers witnessed the bystander with the phone and sequestered the person, the people said. The workers then asked the person to sign a nondisclosure agreement.
The Times doesn’t say whether the “bystander” signed the agreement, whether they were offered anything in exchange for signing it, or whether they were an Nvidia employee (in which case the offer could have been that they get to keep their job in exchange for signing it). The Times also doesn’t say whether Huang’s security team carries a pad of NDAs with them, like meter maids do with parking tickets.
2026-11-12 03:17:32
Jason Snell:
These message boards were an embarrassment for Apple. Not only were they very much out of step with what the web has come to be over the last couple of decades, but their presence under an apple.com domain meant that they ranked highly in search and were perceived by the general public as being official in some way.
I’m with Snell. Good riddance.
2026-11-12 03:02:58
Austin Mann:
Honestly, the idea of a folding iPhone didn’t immediately appeal to me. I usually like smaller devices, but when I first started playing with the Duo in September, I realized it’s really something special and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a review unit from Apple. The iPhone 18 Pro remains the most powerful camera in the lineup, and though the Duo also has an excellent camera, where it really shines is everything around the photograph: planning, editing and sharing.
There are many reasons to prefer any of the regular (“uno”) iPhones to the Duo, but for almost everyone, the camera is not one of them. The iPhone Duo’s ultrawide 0.5× lens is either identical or nearly identical to the iPhone 18 Pro’s. It’s nice to have the Pro’s 4×/8× telephoto third lens when you really need it. And, yes, the Pro’s 1×/2× main camera is definitely the best one that Apple makes.
But just like with the iPhone Air — whose one-lens camera I love — the Duo’s 1×/2× main camera is really good. Just look at the photos Mann captured with it. Gorgeous. The camera system is not a reason not to buy a Duo.
(That said, when Mann captured this stylish photo of me at Apple’s “Pro and Tell” event in Los Angeles last month, he was carrying his iPhone 18 Pro.)
