If Jensen Huang steps down amid an “affair” scandal, who would succeed him? ... “His son, daughter and son-in-law all work at NVIDIA”

[Financial News] NVIDIA, the world’s No. 1 artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor company, is being shaken by an affair scandal involving its founder and CEO, Jensen Huang. With corporate control concentrated in Huang’s hands, the question of who will succeed him has once again drawn attention.

According to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and other outlets on the 8th (local time), Huang’s daughter, Madison Huang, and son, Spencer Huang, both work at NVIDIA, while his son-in-law, Nico Caprez, is also an executive overseeing a key business. With no clear successor, his two children and son-in-law are effectively handling major responsibilities at NVIDIA.
NVIDIA is known to have fewer employees than other big tech companies and to have maintained a relatively flat organizational structure. At the same time, it has had no clear second-in-command or successor, with CEO Huang personally managing the company’s wide-ranging operations.
Huang has consistently expressed his commitment to running the company. Its internal reporting structure is also not traditionally hierarchical: about 60 executives report directly to the CEO, leaving Huang with sole control over decision-making. As a result, after news of Huang’s affair became public, some analysts warned that “key-man risk” could turn into a crisis for NVIDIA.

NVIDIA currently has no official CEO succession plan that has been made public to shareholders or the public at large. The WSJ, however, said Huang had turned NVIDIA into a family business to an extent rarely seen in Silicon Valley.
His daughter, Madison Huang, has worked in the “Omniverse” division, which plays an important role in NVIDIA’s expansion beyond semiconductors into software. She often accompanies her father on business trips and is also part of “The Band,” an informal group of a handful of executives who support CEO Huang’s speeches and presentations.
His son, Spencer Huang, works in robotics. According to a disclosure NVIDIA filed last May, Spencer and Madison’s total compensation for fiscal 2026 was $1.3 million and $1.2 million, respectively.

His son-in-law, Caprez, also joined NVIDIA in 2024 as a corporate development manager and was promoted to vice president this January. He is now one of the key executives responsible for partnerships with emerging cloud service providers and financial guarantee strategies for customers.

However, with the family succession structure not yet actually established, controversy surrounding Huang has raised questions about whether such plans will proceed as intended. In particular, as the allegations go beyond an affair to include suspicions of espionage involving Chinese intelligence agencies, NVIDIA is in a difficult position to handle the matter on its own.
Foreign media previously reported that the U.S. government suspects Alice Huang, a former senior executive at a Singaporean data center company who had an affair with CEO Huang, of providing information to Chinese intelligence. In response, NVIDIA’s board launched an independent investigation into allegations that CEO Huang had been targeted in an operation by a foreign intelligence agency.
So far, no evidence has been found that CEO Huang deliberately leaked sensitive information. In a letter to employees after the controversy emerged, Huang said, “I know that apologizing cannot undo what I have done,” and added, “I hope my family can heal and that trust can be regained over time.”
[email protected] Kim Hee-sun Reporter