Jensen Huang was just becoming one of America’s biggest philanthropists before his departure as the chief executive of Nvidia. With an estimated net worth of about $145 billion, he and his wife, Lori, had built one of the country’s largest foundations, with about $9 billion in assets.
But Mr. Huang said this week that he had been unfaithful to his wife, acknowledging an affair with a woman U.S. intelligence has determined was a Chinese spy. The Times then reported that he had another affair with an Nvidia executive who reports to him. Nvidia said on Thursday morning that Mr. Huang was resigning from the company he had led for 33 years.
The fate of the foundation, which the couple started in 2007 and oversee together, is not clear.
Ms. Huang is the foundation’s president, and Mr. Huang is its secretary and chief financial officer, according to the most recent tax return for the charitable organization, which is called the Jen-hsun & Lori Huang Foundation. In 2024, its most recent tax year on file, the foundation’s assets nearly tripled, thanks to more than $5 billion in investment gains.
Marital issues have led to major shifts in the world of philanthropy in recent years, such as the departure by Melinda French Gates from her joint charitable entity with her ex-husband, Bill, and the elevation of MacKenzie Scott as one of America’s biggest givers following her divorce from Jeff Bezos.
The Huangs’ foundation is rather low-profile: Despite being one of America’s biggest charitable entities, it has no website or lists any public staff.
And the couple had only just begun giving. The biggest public gifts by the Huangs have gone to higher-education institutions, a relatively safe and conventional place to disburse large amounts of money. They have announced a combined $180 million or so to four schools, including a $75 million donation in July to establish an art and design college at Vanderbilt University’s planned outpost in San Francisco.
Mr. Huang has described his philanthropic giving as an investment, not charity. “I don’t give anything away,” he said in 2010, dismissing the premise of the question. “The way I think about it is I’m investing in the next generation, to help us and to inspire us to create even better and more useful technologies.”
Their giving has also intersected with what is good for Nvidia. The Huangs’ foundation bought computing time from Coreweave, a key Nvidia partner and customer, and donated $108.3 million of it to universities and other nonprofits, according to an Nvidia corporate filing in May.
