HOUSE OF CARDS

Biographer Reveals Fatal Flaw Behind Trumpy Billionaire’s Fall

Jensen Huang’s biographer says one of the billionaire’s defining traits led him to push his luck.

Nvidia’s billionaire CEO Jensen Huang had a fatal flaw that set the stage for his stunning downfall, his biographer says.

Huang, 63, stepped down Thursday from the $4 trillion company he led for more than three decades after his extramarital affairs—one with a senior employee and another with a suspected Chinese spy—were exposed.

In an interview on NPR, Stephen Witt, the author of a 2025 biography about Huang, called it a “shocking downfall for the man who, until quite recently, had a claim to be the most powerful guy in tech—one of the most powerful people alive, actually—because of his influence with Trump and his connections inside China and all over the world.”

Witt, who wrote The Thinking Machine based in part on hours of interviews with Huang, suggested that one of his defining traits—a domineering streak—emboldened him to push his luck as his influence grew.

“He is not a person who really brooks much disagreement. He’s not a person who really listens to anyone else,” Witt told NPR’s A Martinez. “And I think perhaps as he grew more powerful and as he grew more influential, I think the kind of, you know, the hubris set in, the overconfidence, the classic, maybe masculine overconfidence, that ‘I’m untouchable, that ‘no one can touch me.’”

“But that’s never true, not for anyone,” he added.

Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Huang, the eighth richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of around $151 billion and a close ally of President Donald Trump, admitted to cheating on his wife with Chinese business executive Alice Huang, who led a Singapore-based company that imported $4.6 billion in Nvidia microchips.

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American intelligence determined that Huang, who is not related to the fired Nvidia boss, was spying for Beijing as a Chinese asset. She was being investigated by U.S. intelligence for allegedly smuggling advanced microchips into China in violation of sanctions when they uncovered the affair, according to The New York Times.

The Times unearthed another alleged affair Wednesday, reporting that Huang had also been involved with 48-year-old Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of healthcare since late 2017.

Martinez asked Witt whether he thought Huang decided to resign on his own or if he was pushed out by Nvidia’s board.

“It’s hard for me to imagine Jensen... not fighting his way to the end. So perhaps it just got to a point where it’s absolutely untenable,” Witt said. “I mean, he has been the CEO of this company for 33 years, and he was prepared to do it for another 33. He never wanted to let go. There’s no successor. He never cultivated a second-in-command or someone to replace him.”

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