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The business of desire

Jensen Huang confessed everything in one sentence. What he left out is what undressed him.

On Sunday, NVIDIA's boss writes “I was unfaithful to my wife.” By Thursday he is the boss of nothing. In between: a very well-chosen singular, a phone hung up, and an old magazine truth. Power buys almost everything, except other people's silence.

November 12, 2026

Sloane, silver bob with bangs and dark red lips, a black leather jacket over her shoulders and a black satin dress, sits cross-legged on a long empty boardroom table at night, her hand on a face-down phone next to a black folder, a pen and a white rose.
Recipe
Confession6 words
Reprieve4 days
Words from Huang in the release0
Jacketleather

On Sunday, November 8, Jensen Huang, NVIDIA's founder and CEO, sends an email to his employees. NVIDIA posts it in its newsroom the same day. The sentence that matters is six words long: “I was unfaithful to my wife.” On Thursday, November 12, the same newsroom announces that he has resigned from everything, “effective immediately.” Four days to close out thirty-three years. It takes longer to get a sofa delivered.

The official documents, line by line, are with our cousins at Silicium Rose (in French): the resignation, two texts, zero reasons. Here we look at something else. How a man who held everything lost the one thing that doesn't fit on an org chart: the story of his own life.

The man who held everything

The portrait comes from the BBC. As many as 200 people reported directly to him. His feedback could be brutal and public, and he thought nothing of pointing out one person's mistakes in front of the whole company. His biographer, Stephen Witt, describes to the BBC a “demanding” boss who “really pushes his people to the limit”, with “a level of arrogance” and “a level of self-deception as well.” Witt adds that Huang went to great lengths to present himself as a family man.

And then there's the jacket. He is rarely seen without his black leather jacket, the BBC notes. A leather jacket is handy: it says rock star, it says boss, and it shows nothing of what's underneath. His fortune is estimated this Thursday at $145 billion by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, as cited by the BBC. At that price, you get used to things going the way you decided.

The confession: six words and a lot of white space

Read his message again, it's short. He writes: “I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did.” He writes that he takes “full responsibility”. He writes to his staff: “Leading NVIDIA is the privilege of my life,” and that he will work to earn back their confidence.

Now look for what's missing. With whom. When. For how long. How many times. “Unfaithful” is a wonderful adjective: it takes no object and it never says whether it's plural.

Further down the same email, he mentions “the national security concerns raised in news reports” and the independent investigation opened by his board, which he says he supports. Both subjects sit in the same message. Not a single word connects them. It's beautiful work: a confession wide enough to look complete, narrow enough to give nothing away.

That same Sunday, his board writes that it “has confidence in Jensen”. And NVIDIA tells CNBC: “Today's news will not slow NVIDIA. Jensen is committed to continuing to lead NVIDIA as CEO without interruption.”

Other people filled in the blank

A secret is a story with one author: you. The day you half-confess, you start handing out pens.

The first pen belongs to the New York Times. Its reporting is behind a paywall, so I'm reading it through the BBC and CNBC, which quote it. Since October 29, the paper has reported that US intelligence believed a businesswoman who had grown close to Huang was a spy for Beijing. China calls the allegations “entirely groundless”. NVIDIA's spokesman said at the time that their interactions were “not unusual or unexpected”.

Ten days later the confession lands, and everyone makes the connection the email doesn't. The BBC headlines on the “CEO's affair with suspected Chinese spy”. CNBC writes that in his memo Huang disclosed he had been intimate with the woman. The memo contains no such sentence. It contains six words and white space.

On Monday the 9th, it's Donald Trump who tells reporters about his phone call with him. According to the president, quoted by the BBC, Huang answered: “I had no idea she was a spy.” The BBC notes it is the first indication of what Huang knew. It comes out of someone else's mouth. For a man who held everything, that's already a defeat.

Sloane, platinum bob with bangs, black leather jacket open over a black top, sits with one knee up and a hand in her hair under pink and blue neon.
Sloane. Leather dresses you up. It doesn't cover everything.

Wednesday: the second story, and a phone hung up

On Wednesday the 11th, the New York Times publishes a second article, which I'm reading this time through the BBC, CBS News and The Verge. According to five people who worked at NVIDIA, Huang also had a relationship with an executive at the company who reported to him.

The detail I care about isn't in the bedroom, it's in the contract. Still according to the Times, as relayed by CBS News and The Verge, two of those people say the pair were filmed by a bystander at a hotel during NVIDIA's developer conference in March; the paper says it has not seen the footage. And, again according to the Times, Huang's security detail took the bystander aside and offered that person a nondisclosure agreement.

If the Times has it right, that's power meeting a secret: it pulls out a contract. You can hand a contract to one bystander. You can't hand one to five people who worked at NVIDIA and a newspaper.

The Times calls Huang. His answer, according to the paper: “I don't think you should be talking to me directly.” Then he hangs up. Read that sentence again. It's an org-chart sentence. It says: there are people for that. Except that for this, precisely, there's nobody.

The rest is a matter of hours. That same Wednesday, according to the Wall Street Journal, whose report CBS News says two sources confirmed, the board is preparing to push Huang out. And it is on that Wednesday the 11th, according to the document NVIDIA filed with the SEC, that the board accepts his resignation. Thursday's press release connects nothing to anything: not one reason, not one word from Jensen Huang. The BBC does it for them. For Zoe Kleinman, its technology and AI editor, he was “undone by his own love life”, and it was when rumours of a second affair surfaced that “the board decided he had gone too far.”

Read her first line again. A CEO's private life stays private until the markets open. After that, a bedroom secret is called information the shareholder would have liked to have.

What the jacket was hiding

Desire isn't what brings bosses down. Everyone has desire, even people in fleece vests. Secrets do. A secret can't be delegated, can't be outsourced, and doesn't fit inside a nondisclosure agreement. It's the one thing a man with, by the BBC's count, as many as 200 direct reports has to carry entirely alone. And, visibly, the one thing he couldn't manage.

Near the end of Sunday's message sits the clearest sentence of them all: “My family bears no responsibility for my choices. I do.” That one we leave with him. It's his.

Bloomberg made a film about him, The Rise and Reckoning of Jensen Huang. Silicium Rose tells how the affair rewrote the film (in French). Me, I'll keep the picture: a man in black leather who built everything, controlled everything, locked everything, and forgot that a phone always has two ends.

The jacket: do we keep it?

Picture : Sloane, house model.

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