NVIDIA appoints second-generation Korean-American lawyer to investigate Jensen Huang

[Financial News] NVIDIA, a U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor company, has reportedly appointed a Korean-American lawyer to lead an investigation into the espionage scandal that emerged this month.
According to The New York Times (NYT) on the 10th (local time), NVIDIA appointed the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz (WLRK) and its partner, Jun Kim (55; Korean name: Kim Jun-hyeon), to handle an investigation into an espionage scandal involving NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang.
Headquartered in New York, WLRK is a well-known law firm in mergers and acquisitions (M&A), high-stakes litigation, and crisis management. Jun Kim is also a former federal prosecutor who served as acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and previously led an independent investigation into the sexual misconduct scandal involving former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Jun Kim was born in the United States to Korean parents and is a second-generation Korean American. After attending Stanford University and Harvard Law School, he worked as a federal prosecutor at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York from 2000. From March 2017 to January 2018, he served as acting U.S. attorney for the district, which covers Manhattan.
Jun Kim rose to prominence while leading the investigation into the ‘Manhattan truck attack’ carried out on Halloween in 2017 by followers of the extremist group Islamic State (IS), during his tenure as acting U.S. attorney. In 2021, New York State Attorney General Letitia James appointed him to lead an independent investigation into the sexual misconduct scandal involving then-Governor Cuomo. Cuomo resigned as governor after the investigation’s findings were released.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang admitted in an internal announcement on the 8th that he had had an affair. Local media reported that his affair partner was Alice Huang (Chinese name: Huang Le), a 42-year-old businesswoman believed to be an official with China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS). The U.S. government believes that Alice Huang passed information related to Jensen Huang and NVIDIA to China. In an announcement on the 8th, NVIDIA’s board said it would form an independent committee, advised by an independent outside attorney, to investigate the matter.


[email protected] Park Jong-won Reporter