Abstract:
According to five people who have worked at Nvidia, Nvidia head Jensen Huang also had an extramarital affair with an executive who reported to him. Nvidia fell more than 8% after hours. The previously unreported romance is with Kimberly Powell, vice president of healthcare at Nvidia. According to Nvidia's code of conduct, employees are asked to "avoid situations in which our conduct creates conflicts," including "personal relationships," and the company states that it "expeditiously investigates reports of inappropriate conduct." Many companies have policies prohibiting romantic relationships between managers and subordinates.
According to two people who have worked at Nvidia, Huang, 63, and Powell, 48, were photographed having intimate acts at a hotel in San Jose, California, during an Nvidia conference in March.
Both Huang and Powell are married.
Huang, who co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and built it into a premier supplier of artificial intelligence chips, has come under increasing scrutiny.
This month, after Huang admitted to the extramarital affair, Nvidia's board of directors launched an investigation into the matter, led by the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Republican leaders of three influential House committees also asked Huang to attend a closed briefing on his relationship with the woman named "Alice Huang."
When a reporter reached Huang by phone on Wednesday and asked about his relationship with Powell, Huang said: "I don't think you should talk to me directly." He then hung up.
Nvidia declined to issue a statement. Powell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Kimberly Powell, Vice President, NVIDIA Healthcare
The five people said Huang's relationship with Powell had been discussed within the company.
Powell joined Nvidia in 2008. She oversees projects that apply Nvidia chip technology to higher education and health care, particularly medical imaging equipment, according to the company's website.
Powell has risen through the ranks at Nvidia. According to her LinkedIn profile, she was promoted to senior director of artificial intelligence business development in 2016. By the end of 2017, she was named vice president of healthcare. She attends technology conferences around the world and speaks on behalf of the company.
In March of this year, Powell attended Nvidia’s annual developer conference GTC in San Jose, where he talked about how to use artificial intelligence to power breakthroughs in the fields of health care and biology. Her presentation featured a cartoon of Jen-Hsun Huang.
During the meeting, Nvidia executives met at a nearby hotel. Jen-Hsun Huang and Powell were seen having intimate acts in the hotel. Three people with knowledge of the incident said a bystander captured the interaction on a cell phone.
Huang's security personnel discovered the bystander's cellphone and took him away, these people said. The security personnel offered him a confidentiality agreement.
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