Jensen Huang has lost his job, his board seat and approximately $10 billion in paper wealth since admitting to an affair. If his 41-year marriage ends, California law could put a much larger portion of his fortune at stake.
Huang resigned as Nvidia’s chairman, CEO and director this week, days after admitting in a letter to Nvidia employees that he had been unfaithful to Lori Huang, his wife since 1985. The board named CFO Colette Kress as Nvidia’s interim CEO and made longtime executive Harvey Jones its first board chairman while it searches for a permanent successor.
“I owe my family and all of you an apology,” Huang wrote.
“I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry.”
The admission followed a New York Times report that U.S. intelligence agencies suspected Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based data center company Megaspeed, of collecting information for Beijing, and that she had a close relationship with Huang. China has denied any involvement. Singapore’s Home Ministry said this week that she left Singapore in February and was barred from returning after a police investigation that it said “did not involve espionage.”
Two other relationships have since been reported. The New York Times reported on Nov. 11 that Huang had been romantically involved with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of healthcare, who reported directly to him, citing five people who worked at the company. One day later, Reuters reported that Huang had an intimate relationship with another Nvidia employee, whom he did not name. Powell did not respond to the Times and Nvidia declined to comment. Reuters.
Nvidia’s board opened an independent investigation into whether Huang was targeted by a foreign intelligence effort and said it had “no reason to believe that NVIDIA’s national security or secrets were compromised.” An FBI investigation into his relationship with Alice Huang is also underway.
Huang has not announced his intention to divorce. But a split would test how California divides a fortune built almost entirely on a single stock, and the answer would depend less on its overall net worth than on how the couple’s Nvidia shares were acquired and held.
Most of Huang’s stake in Nvidia is in trusts he shares with his wife
Huang said he beneficially owned approximately 870.6 million Nvidia shares, or 3.58% of the company’s outstanding shares, as of March 23, 2026, according to Nvidia’s 2026 proxy statement. Nvidia Ranked No. 16 in 2026 Rankings Fortune 500 and was the first company on the list worth more than $4 trillion.
Jensen and Lori Huang are co-trustees of their living trust, which holds approximately 528.5 million shares, and two other family trusts. Together, the three trusts hold nearly 669 million shares. An additional 73.3 million shares are held by limited liability companies whose sole member is the living trust.
Lori Huang also leads the family philanthropy. She is president of the Jen-Hsun & Lori Huang Foundation, which reported assets of approximately $9.2 billion at the end of 2024, Fortune reported. The foundation owns about 58.7 million shares of Nvidia stock, but the proxy says neither spouse has a pecuniary interest in them.
The distinction matters. Beneficial ownership and control of shares does not in itself establish personal ownership or determine how assets would be divided in a divorce.
California’s community property rule gives each spouse half of what was built during the marriage
The couple met as lab partners at Oregon State University and married in 1985, eight years before Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993. They live in California, a community property state, where property acquired during a marriage is typically owned jointly and divided equally in the event of divorce.
“In California, all property acquired by a spouse during the marriage is community property,” said Christopher Melcher, a Los Angeles attorney who specializes in high-net-worth divorces. New York Post. “She would be entitled to 50%.”
Under California court guidelines, community property generally includes income and assets acquired between the date of marriage and the date of separation. Property owned before marriage or acquired after separation, as well as gifts and inheritances, are generally separate property, and some assets may be a mixture of the two.
This means that Lori Huang could be entitled to half of the community property share of the couple’s Nvidia holdings, not necessarily half of each share related to her husband.
The outcome would depend on how the shares were acquired, how the trusts are structured, whether separate and community assets were commingled, and whether the couple signed a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement. A court should review these details before deciding what either spouse will receive.
California is also a no-fault divorce state, meaning either spouse can file for divorce without proving infidelity or other wrongdoing. Infidelity, even within multiple declared relationships, generally does not entitle one spouse to a greater share of community property.
Huang’s net worth is a moving target
Huang is worth about $145 billion and ranks 13th among the world’s richest people, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Fortune reported. That figure is a market estimate, not a tally of marital assets, and it rises and falls with the stock of Nvidia, which lost $450 billion in market value in the days following its admission.
Huang described his wife’s role in the business in simple terms. “Every moment of Nvidia, it was there,” he said in an interview with CNA.
Gn bussni
