Jensen Huang’s wife could join a very exclusive club in a divorce — the league of billionaire tech exes - The Independent

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After more than 40 years of marriage, Lori Huang may be mulling the possibility of joining one very exclusive group: the tech billionaire ex-wives’ club.

Jensen Huang’s notoriously private wife is yet to speak publicly about his betrayal after the Nvidia co-founder admitted in a letter to staff last week that he had an affair with a woman accused of being a Chinese spy in a “honey trap” plot, before news of a second alleged affair with a married employee came to light Wednesday evening.

Huang resigned Thursday morning as CEO of the chipmaking giant that is spearheading the AI revolution.

The scandal has seen Lori Huang thrust into the spotlight, joining other illustrious women like Melinda French Gates and MacKenzie Scott, who experienced similar ordeals at the hands of their ex-husbands, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Amazon mogul Jeff Bezos.

Now speculation is mounting as to whether 65-year-old Lori Huang will join the club of exes, acerbically dubbed by journalist Tina Brown as the “female cohort who get the billions, without an egomaniacal man attached.”

Lori Huang is the co-trustee of family trusts that hold nearly 669 million in Nvidia shares, according to Fortune. While there is no indication she has filed for divorce, if she did initiate proceedings against her 63-year-old husband - ranked the eighth-richest man in the world - she would be in line for at least $75 billion, according to Forbes.

When Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates divorced in 2021 after 27 years of marriage, her settlement, while never publicly disclosed, was estimated at around $25 billion. Scott, Bezos’ ex-wife, settled for $38 billion when they divorced in 2019 after 25 years of marriage.

Since then, the women have given away billions of dollars to philanthropic causes.

Aside from their billions, philanthropy is something the women have in common. Lori Huang is the president of the Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang Foundation, and, like her, the nonprofit maintains a low profile.

The Huangs’ foundation, which held $9 billion in assets in 2024, was featured in an Inside Philanthropy report titled “Meet the Black Box Billionaires: Are These America’s Most Secretive Megadonors?” Among its beneficiaries are the San Francisco Opera and universities but the nonprofit steers clear of donating to political causes, according to the New York Times.

Another commonality is that French Gates, Scott and Lori Huang have all played an integral role in the success of their husbands’ businesses.

“Every moment of Nvidia, she was there,” Huang said in a May interview with Asian network CNA. “She’s been part of Nvidia every step of the way.”

The couple met when Lori Huang, then Lori Mills, was one of only three female students in Huang’s electrical engineering class at Oregon State University in the early 1980s. The competition among the 200 male students for the women’s attention was fierce, he recalled in a 2023 New Yorker interview.

Despite the odds (Huang said he looked like he was about 12 years old), six months of bugging Lori Mills to do homework with him every weekend paid off. He worked up the courage to ask her out on a date, and the college sweethearts went on to marry in 1985.

“I tried to impress her—not with my looks, of course, but with my strong capability to complete homework,” he told the New Yorker.

The couple moved to Silicon Valley after they wed and worked as microchip designers. Lori Huang, also a talented engineer, at one point was earning more than her husband, he told the New Yorker. She put her career on hold to raise their two children, Spencer and Madison, and so her husband could co-launch Nvidia, which he did in 1993 from a Denny’s. He recently said the sacrifice of her own career was “the gift that she gave me.”

“Lori took care of everything and I don’t remember her complaining one time,” Huang recalled in May on the How I Built It podcast.

As Nvidia took off and the company’s wealth boomed, Lori Huang was a constant, quiet presence while her husband took center stage at conferences and state dinners.

“Aside from Lori, I don't think anyone has been to every conference,” Huang told CNA. “And she's been to every conference, every speech.”

Huang apologized to his wife and their two children in a statement released November 8, in which he admitted he was unfaithful. “My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry,” he said, asking for privacy for his family. The couple’s children both work at Nvidia.

“My family bears no responsibility for my choices. I do,” he said. “Please give them privacy.”

The Independent has contacted Nvidia for comment.

Nvidia’s board met Wednesday night to decide Huang’s fate at the company after a second allegation of an extramarital relationship with a senior corporate subordinate emerged. Huang’s position clearly became untenable, forcing his resignation, and the company’s stock plunged 10 percent Thursday morning following the announcement.

The future of the power couple’s marriage, meanwhile, is unclear.

“It’s good to have someone in your life who unconditionally believes in you, who believes you’re doing your best,” Huang said in a 2024 magazine article with his alma mater. “You need people like that, and Lori’s always been that person for me — ever since I was 18, she was there believing in me and knowing I could do it.”

“Even when I had self-doubts, she didn’t,” he added.