Nvidia's CEO admitted an affair on Sunday. On Monday the company was worth $200 billion less

In nine days, a chip customer in Singapore, a newspaper report and a Sunday email to staff wiped almost $200 billion off the world's second most valuable company.

Jensen Huang has run Nvidia since he co-founded it in 1993. Its own annual report says he has been president, chief executive and a board member "since our inception." Under him, Nvidia became the company whose chips train most of the world's AI. Al Jazeera puts its share of the market for these chips at an estimated 80 to 90%.

So when something happens to him, it happens to the stock. This is the story of how one week went, day by day, with each claim tied to who made it. A lot of it is still unconfirmed, and we flag that as we go.

Before the week: a customer called Megaspeed

The story starts with a company most people had never heard of. Megaspeed is a Singapore-based data centre firm. In October 2025, CNBC reported that Singapore police were investigating it "for suspected breaches of our domestic laws." The New York Times reported at the time that Megaspeed had bought nearly $2 billion of Nvidia's most advanced chips and that its data centres in Malaysia and Indonesia "appeared to be remotely serving customers in China."

Why does that matter? The US blocks the sale of its most powerful AI chips to China. These rules are called export controls: limits on what a country lets its companies sell abroad, usually for security reasons. Nvidia said in 2025 that it had found no "reason to believe products have been diverted" and that Megaspeed ran "a small commercial cloud, like many other companies throughout the world." Megaspeed has denied diverting chips to China, according to Yahoo Finance's live coverage.

We have written before about why Washington guards AI technology from China so closely. That fight is the backdrop to everything below.

October 29: "completely normal and not unusual"

Asked by Bloomberg about a Megaspeed executive, Huang said his "relationship, our interactions, have been related to Megaspeed, and it was all completely normal and not unusual," as quoted by NBC News.

November 5 and 7: Congress asks, a newspaper reports

On November 5, three Republican committee chairs in the US House of Representatives asked Huang to give lawmakers a closed-door briefing on November 18, CNBC reported.

Two days later, the Financial Times reported that the US government believed Huang had a romantic relationship with Alice Huang, a former Megaspeed executive. The two are not related. The New York Times and the FT reported that she is a Chinese citizen, that she had been under US intelligence surveillance, and that she had been recruited by China's main spy agency. A person familiar with the matter told NBC News that US intelligence agencies had concluded she was a Chinese spy. All of this comes from unnamed officials. Alice Huang has not commented publicly.

Sunday, November 8: the email

Huang wrote to Nvidia's staff. "I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did," he said, according to CNBC and NBC News. He also wrote that "Leading NVIDIA is the privilege of my life." The memo did not name Alice Huang.

The same day, Nvidia's board said it was "initiating an independent investigation" into reports that Huang "has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort." A committee of independent directors, meaning board members who are not company executives, will run it with outside lawyers. The board added that it had "no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised." A spokesperson said Huang would continue as CEO "without interruption."

Monday, November 9: the market votes

Nvidia shares closed at $178.67, down about 4.3%, according to Al Jazeera and Yahoo Finance. NBC News said the fall erased almost $200 billion in value, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq were sharply higher.

Think of it like a cricket team losing its captain to a controversy the night before a final: the mood in the dressing room shifts before anyone knows whether he will play. Not all of the fall was about the email, though. Yahoo Finance noted the stock was already down 21% over the month and negative for the year.

China's foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun called the spy claim "unsubstantiated" and "groundless speculation, and a smear against China." President Donald Trump called Huang "a fine person" who should stay as CEO, and said Huang had told him he had "absolutely no idea" about the allegations. Trump also said, "I know the FBI is looking into it in terms of something else." The FBI itself has not confirmed an investigation. Separately, the New York Times reported that a US probe into Megaspeed has moved from the Commerce Department to the Justice Department as a criminal inquiry.

Why a private life is a shareholder issue

Every listed company has to warn investors about what could go wrong. Nvidia's latest annual filing says it is "highly dependent on the services of our longstanding executive team" and that failure "to ensure effective succession planning" could hurt it. Succession planning means deciding in advance who takes over if the leader leaves.

That is the real worry. Analyst Patrick Moorhead told Yahoo Finance that Huang is unlikely to be pushed out unless the probe finds something. Wedbush's Matt Bryson said losing him would be a big negative because of his "hands-on operating style." Apple went through a calmer version of this question when it picked its next leader. Nvidia has never had to answer it.

The Indian angle

This is not only an American story. Nvidia was the most-bought US stock among Indian investors on platforms such as Appreciate and Vested this year, the Free Press Journal reported in August. Groww, which launched US stock trading in October, named Nvidia among the most popular picks of its early users, according to CNBC. The same report cites RBI data showing Indians sent $2.6 billion abroad for overseas equity and debt investment in the year to March 2026.

The days that decide it

The calendar is now crowded. Nvidia reports quarterly results on November 17, and the requested congressional briefing is the next day. Our guide to reading quarterly results explains what to look for beyond the headline profit. The board has given no date for its findings. Until it reports, the spy claim stays exactly what it is today: an allegation from unnamed officials, denied by China, about a woman who has not spoken.

This is a news summary based on reports up to November 10, 2026, and not investment advice.