Jensen Huang biographer Stephen Witt on Nvidia founder’s ‘cult of personality’ - The Straits Times

Stephen Witt speaking at the Singapore Writers Festival at the Victoria Theatre on Nov 13.

SINGAPORE – Ousted Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang could not have been fooled by alleged Chinese spy Alice Huang, who is accused of smuggling a reported US$7.5 billion (S$9.7b) in Nvidia chip sales to China, says Huang biographer and American journalist Stephen Witt.

“There is no way he did not understand that she was running a smuggling operation,” says Witt in a one-on-one interview with The Straits Times at the Victoria Theatre on Nov 13, ahead of his keynote at the Singapore Writers Festival. “If you know for a fact that Chinese state policy is to develop artificial intelligence (AI) to be number one in the world, you would have to be wilfully stupid to pretend that she doesn’t have some kind of government connection.”

It was the 63-year-old Huang’s construction of a “cult of personality” that led to his precipitous downfall, says Witt – who had exclusive access to Huang and spoke to two hundred people around the tech maverick while writing the award-winning biography The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia And The World’s Most Coveted Microchip (2025).

Huang’s rapid fall came after the New York Times reported on Oct 29 that he had an affair with Alice Huang, a former director of Megaspeed, which is registered in Singapore. Since then, two more extramarital affair allegations have surfaced, the Nvidia chief executive has resigned and Nvidia shares have plunged by close to 15 per cent.

“I did not think it would end like this,” says Witt, who spent time projecting scenarios of an AI apocalypse, Nvidia’s world domination or losing its market share. In the past two weeks, he has received hundreds of media requests and had to scramble to update his address to the Singapore audience. The no holds barred speaker is also here to teach journalism at the Asia Creative Writing Programme.

In one fell swoop, the charismatic Huang’s carefully cultivated omerta – a Southern Italian code of silence – has all but evaporated. Witt thinks it unlikely that even Huang’s most loyal lieutenants would rally behind him now. Instead, Nvidia faces a serious retention risk as employees could leave for competitors like AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) and Broadcom, whose stocks are now up.

Witt had questioned Huang – whose 33-year reign made him the longest-serving tech chief – on succession planning but found he did not have a clear No. 2, and a bloated 60 direct reports. Witt was surprised by Colette Kress’ appointment as the US$4 trillion AI giant’s interim chief as she had no technical background. “Colette cannot draw an exploded diagram of a GPU and tell you what each part does,” he said.

Portrayed as an egomaniacal leader afraid of losing to his competition in Witt’s book, Huang did not have a C-suite nor are his most important technical staff listed on the company website. On Nvidia’s next leader, Witt says: “I think they have to go outside – because the toxicity and radioactive nature of Jensen now mean that all of the people who had previously been close to him are a little bit tainted.”

In hindsight, Witt questions Huang’s constant chatter about how much he loved his wife. Some of Huang’s friends have said he and his wife Lori’s marriage were a model. In photos with Alice Huang, his family is sometimes present. Witt says: “He fooled everybody, he certainly fooled me. He fooled his family, he fooled the other executives at Nvidia, he fooled his board – and I guess he probably fooled his wife too.”

In his keynote, Witt described Huang as a classic case of Shakespearean hubris – his hamartia, Greek for fatal flaw, is his “irrational confidence in the self”. During question and answer time, moderated by veteran tech writer Grace Chng, Witt fielded questions from an engaged audience keen for theories about Huang’s motivations.

Huang, Witt theorised, was fond of creating personas that he presented to himself and to others – sometimes the magnanimous boss, other times the tyrant. He played President Donald Trump’s loyal minister when he needed to get chips into China.

Many times, he portrayed himself as the family man. Witt, who had asked about infidelity in his interviews, was constantly met with silence from Huang’s circle. “What I think was happening was that they were all making so much money by standing next to Jensen that they just had no incentive to tell the truth,” he said.

Stephen Witt was in town to talk about his award-winning biography, The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia And The World’s Most Coveted (2025).

Gazing into the crystal ball, Witt also indulged in speculation about Huang’s future. He ruled out the possibility of Huang working for someone like Elon Musk (“a titanic ego death match”) and suggested that he might retire from public life or start another company.

He noted that Huang remains Nvidia’s largest individual shareholder, and could still be involved in some capacity: “He was Nvidia and Nvidia was him.”

Huang’s ouster shocked Witt, who had thought that the founder might be sent for counselling and practically work as a shadow chief executive. But the lies, enabled by a culture of impunity that Huang created for himself, proved too much for even his biggest cheerleaders: “I think the board knows that there’s more skeletons out there coming.”

Stephen Witt will appear at the Singapore Writers Festival for a panel on investigative journalism (Victoria Theatre, Nov 15, 11.30am) and a panel on neutrality in data (Asian Civilisations Museum, Nov 21, 8pm).

Shawn Hoo is a journalist on the arts beat at The Straits Times. He covers books, theatre and the visual arts.