Elon Musk Offers to Hire Jensen Huang as Nvidia CEO's Exit Odds Hit 90%

Details of the Allegations

Prediction market odds that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang will resign or be removed before the end of the year briefly surged past 88% on Thursday, climbing as high as 90.5% on the platform Polymarket after reports emerged of a second extramarital affair involving a direct subordinate.

The sharp shift in betting markets, jumping more than 16 percentage points in a matter of hours, followed a Nov. 11 report by The New York Times detailing a relationship between Huang, 63, and Kimberly Powell, 48, Nvidia’s vice president of healthcare. Both Huang and Powell are married to other people.

Citing five people who worked at the chipmaker, the Times reported that Powell reports directly to Huang and that the two were seen being affectionate at a hotel during an Nvidia conference in March. Three people briefed on the matter told the newspaper that a bystander who recorded the interaction on a phone was stopped by Huang’s security guard and offered a confidentiality agreement.

When asked about his relationship with Powell, Huang said, “I don’t think you should be talking to me directly,” while Nvidia declined to comment, as did Powell. The Times’ report compounded a deepening corporate governance and national security crisis for the Silicon Valley giant.

On Nov. 8, Huang sent an email to employees apologizing for being unfaithful to his wife following separate revelations of an extramarital affair with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based firm Megaspeed. U.S. intelligence officials have alleged that Alice Huang acted as a Chinese intelligence asset, an accusation Beijing has denied.

Board Deliberations and Market Fallout

Nvidia’s board of directors has since launched an independent investigation led by the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz. According to some reports, board members convened late-night discussions this week to weigh removing Huang, who co-founded the company in 1993 and has served as its CEO for 33 years.

Analysts noted that an immediate departure would pose significant operational challenges for Nvidia, which does not have a formally designated successor in place. On Polymarket, bettors favored Ian Buck, the vice president overseeing Nvidia’s data center business, as the most likely candidate to succeed Huang. Shares of Nvidia tumbled nearly 10% on Wednesday amid the leadership turmoil, just days before the company is scheduled to report its quarterly financial results on Nov. 17.

Amid the escalating uncertainty, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk weighed in publicly on the executive crisis. Responding on X to a post by financial blog Zerohedge asking him to hire Huang if he leaves Nvidia, Musk replied that it would be “an honor”. Nvidia supplies crucial high-performance graphics processing units used across Musk’s corporate footprint for AI model training, autonomous driving development, and infrastructure clusters.