NVIDIA's latest chips were also on an export ban for several Middle Eastern countries ("security" theater). That's about the time the UAE's sovereign fund invested a large sum in Cerebras. They were still able to get the chips by way of Kuwait, which is a friendly Middle Eastern state.

Of course, not a year went by before the UAE and Saudi invested heavily in the Trump crypto fund and, very coincidentally, the ban was lifted.

Fear not, Cerebras managed to get another investment from OpenAI!

The timing is politically important though; shifts headlines from

"Trump/GOP lost their ass in midterms!" and "Dems intend to investigate GOP/Trump!"

Also provides news channel attacks on Dems; Congress should be looking into national security issues over here in CEO land! Not dividing Congress with partisan hackery!

Important to call out the social engineering going on among all the tribal groups.

Well, you say that, but the perception is he hasn't got sacked for circular financing, nor for the providing of sanctioned components (supposedly they went to third countries, not China, so legal). But he got sacked for two affairs.

This seems very silly.

In all likelihood he got sacked for all those things, the affairs just were a convenient excuse.

What board would admit two thirds of their revenue is imaginary money. It's much better to sack a CEO for being "unfaithful to his wife".

> national security reasons

We've really run this term into the ground, haven't we? They don't even bother to try to convince us that China wants to hurt us anymore before making our lives shitty for it.

Yeah Jensen Huang is secretly Chinese.

Pretty sure he was fucking a Chinese spy though... so...

>I'd love to be wrong

wong?

I mean, an undisclosed affair with the CEO of a large customer is also a pretty big conflict of interest, regardless of natsec concerns…

They could not have done any of the export ban skirting without the complicity or outright cooperation of the administration.

Remind me: when did Huang direct NVDA funds to the Trump ballroom fund?

national security hoaxes. When was the last time China attacked the USA? compared to say our best ally and friend Israel that sunk the USS Liberty.

> supposedly

According to who?

He ALSO slept with a direct report, which would get most of us fired too.

A lot of people in this industry have gotten it into their heads over the last 25 years that if you create enough value, you get to ignore things like "rules", "laws" and "common sense".

Part of me is hopeful after this. Huang did something that was, at the very least, profoundly stupid, and just short of treason at worst. However, I'm also filled with dread, because I know that this means that there will be even more of an effort by founders to make sure they're immune from consequences from boards if they go public. You already see this at Meta and with Zuckerberg.

We need real reforms on corporate governance that make this sort of situation - a board able to control the C-suite - the norm, not the exception.

>NVIDIA has supposedly been skirting the export ban put in place by the previous administration.

Of course they are why wouldnt they.

>NATIONAL SECURITY REASONS

Clipper Chip Mark 5 nonsense.

Fuck no. Jensen did no such thing. He actually hasn’t been charged with a single crime. You’re outright hallucinating here.

The board is voting him out because they can AT any TIME.

If the board liked him, they would wait for the charges to go through. But they don’t like him. Tons of people cheat on their wives and husbands and I’m sure even the fucking board has people that have.

The board doesn’t like him and has been waiting for a way to oust him while not looking incompetent. Why they don’t like him I don’t actually know.

Maybe because he’s Asian? Maybe this is an internal op by the US government to get someone else up there? I don’t know. But I can guarantee that everything your reading is a cover story. There are underlying forces and motivations here at work that we are not able to know.

yup, my NVDA puts are printing hard rn.

Can you imagine if it were a female CEO fired for the same thing? Oh how the accusations of sexism and double standards and how she doesn't have to report to the board what she does with her body. The argument writes itself.

How naive do you have to be to believe that Congress actually cares about that? They don’t care and happily watch their shares rise in price.

If the second affair didn’t come out, this wouldn’t be a discussion.

And yet from the reporting Trump okayed the sale so Nvidia argues they had a license to export from the President. Lutnick was okay with it too apparently and State didn't get a vote. If the reporting is accurate, then I think Nvidia gets zero blowback from the sale.

The rumor is

Trump knew about this in late 2025 and decided not to act.

The reasoning is believed to be because of the idea that if China didn't get Nvidia chips, it would just develop it's own chips faster. So holding the belief that China would end up in the same spot no matter what, it would be preferable to get them to pay Nvidia along the way.

Delving a bit deeper into conspiracy

It's also possible that Trump saw it as a silent favor to Jinping, who took the opportunity to return the favor months later by cutting Chinese oil purchases. One hand washes the other and all that.

>From all the reporting I've read, it is hard for me to avoid the conclusion that NVIDIA sold to China despite the export ban. I'd love to be wrong

This was blatantly obvious. Do we really think Malaysia was using Billions in GPUs on some secret AI project?

I don't think so.

I think it was the affair with the direct report that did him in.

That's a bigger no-no than selling to spies, especially when the administration knew about it and did nothing.

Elon Musk has an AI bot generating explicit images without consent, regardless of age, yet nobody's firing him.

While Jensen seems like an egomaniac who deserves what happened to him, there's a part of me that feels some China hawks had fingers in his firing, it must not sit well with them than America's most valuable company is not in the hands of the old guard.

There is zero possibility than Jensen Huang faces any serious consequences for this. NVidia is too big and Huang is too wealthy. This administration in particular would never prosecute that. And, even if they did, a pardon is only $1-3 million anyway.

I believe it was the affair with the married subordinate that was the real problem. There's a huge amount of legal exposure for NVidia with that. With the Chinese spy he can portray himself as the victim. As I've said elsewhere, with billionaire corporate security and the support of the US government, It's astounding to me that this happened at all.

Also I'm reminded of this quote [1]:

> If you find two ants in your kitchen, the best estimate of the total number of ants in your kitchen is not two

[1]: https://x.com/_NathanCalvin/status/2084856543561093535

Let's cut the crap, it's a coup because he is in favor of the open-weight ecosystem and doesn't want to restrict models at the firmware level. Anthropic is in large part behind this.

The ban was lifted and fees were applied so there were plenty of legitimate ways to sell. I hate how inaccurate hn has become.

Except the administration has known about them skirting it since day 1.

So it’s no longer about national security. What changed now compared to 2 years ago to make Trump care? Did Jenson reduce SpaceX’s allocation?

> Whether you agree or disagree with the ban, it exists and Jensen&NVIDIA are in a world of trouble if this comes to light.

...maybe. Or maybe not. Consistency in application of the law is not exactly at an all-time high right now.

Oh please, nothing at all will happen to them ...

NVIDIA is important and Jensen's a billionaire ... we're talking a little bit of media scrutiny for a few weeks, a little embarrassment for Jensen, some heartache for his family, and that's it. This will then be consigned to the footnotes of history.

His PR company right now are just saying, say nothing, lay low, we'll handle it.

I still think it would have been far easier for Jensen if he'd given the lady a horse. I understand that's the going rate in the US right now.

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It may well be that it's his private life and it doesn't have much to do with things, but it is a contributing factor. The skirting of export bans was the reagent, but the infidelity is the catalyst that is making it much bigger.

CEO is supposed to be a high integrity position despite most tech CEOs trying to pretend that is not the case. If this person cannot be loyal to those closest to him, how can he be loyal to the company or shareholders?

And, there is no spy business. They just want a more compliant CEO. What a *hit show.

So many HN folks defending Huang's actions as "just an affair" - what an epic reading comprehension fail. Yes there is an affair, and that's what grabbed the initial headlines. But just read a paragraph or two and you'll find the espionage story.

For reference, the US has sentenced violators of export laws to decades of prison or even execution in extreme cases (when the Rosenburgs leaked nuclear secrets in 1953, they were sentenced to death). It's just shy of treason, legally. This is maybe one of the largest and most consequential intelligence breaches in history. Anyone who thinks this about an extramarital affair really isn't paying attention. Buckle up, its gonna get bumpy.

Everybody should be against the export ban. It's laughable to claim that it is for "national security", it's blatant protectionism to cover US AI companies for the fact that they operate at monumental losses. Any country in the world should be allowed to buy the hardware they need to run AI, if they need it, and if the roles were reversed the US should also be allowed to buy tech from other countries. Graphic cards aren't nuclear bombs, and AI is a multi-use core technology every nation on earth should have access to. So far, China has made a far better impression in that respect than the US. At least they have published open weight models.

The future will be commoditized local AI anyway, so it doesn't matter in the long run. I just needed to rant a bit about the US hypocrisy in that matter.

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