Nvidia CEO黄仁勋因婚外情被罢免，CFO暂代CEO

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This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily, reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus, global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast with Carol Masser and [music] Tim Stenc on Bloomberg Radio.

Hi everyone, welcome to the Bloomberg Business Week weekend podcast. A tumultuous week for Nvidia and fair to say the global tech industry as Jensen Wong, the founder and CEO and the preeminent face of the AI infrastructure boom was ousted from his post after reports of two affairs, including one with a woman who is suspected of spying for China. Chief Financial Officer of Nvidia, Colette Crest was named interim CEO.

The board, which has never had a chair before, appointed Harvey Jones as chair. He's been on the board for years and formally led Synopsis. It's a company that Nvidia last year took a $2 billion stake in. Fair to say that all eyes will be on the company's earnings this coming week as investors weigh the impact on Nvidia's future. More on all that in just a minute.

I have to say, Tim, this was a week where we had a very clear main story almost every day. Meanwhile, to be fair, there is another story we followed as well throughout the week. This as anticipation is building around Anthropic's highly anticipated IPO as the latest Bloomberg reporting calls the deal multiple times overs subscribed. And let's not forget, we got an update on the economic front in the US. This as hotter thanex expected inflation data fueled fresh speculation about the Fed's next move, including the possibility of a larger interest rate hike in December, which would be, of course, the last Fed meeting of the year.

Again, check out all the details and all the latest on all of these news events. You can find it on the Bloomberg and at bloomberg.com.

Coming up this hour, Wall Street could be entering a new era of trading. The New York Stock Exchange developing a platform for tokenized securities, potentially transforming how and when investors buy and sell stocks. New York Stock Exchange Group President Lynn Martin joins us to explain what it means for the future of financial markets.

And a little later on, two very different approaches to the future of on-screen entertainment. First, Fable Studio CEO Edward Sachi on his new fully AI generated movie. And then, yeah, it's one of the most anticipated video game releases in years. We talk Grand Theft Auto 6 and how its parent company Take 2 Interactive is making its biggest bet yet.

All that to come. We begin though with the story that we've been following closely all week. Nvidia CEO Jensen Wong Xouster after reports of two affairs, including one with a woman suspected of spying for China. Just days before he resigned, that relationship sparking an investigation and drawing attention in Washington. The controversy comes as the US and China remain locked in a competition over dominance in advanced semiconductor technology.

For the latest, we leaned on someone who has talked to Jensen Wong many, many times over the last few years. We're talking about the host of Bloomberg Tech, Ed Ledllo.

Yeah, I mean, lots of people posing the question, what is Nvidia without Jensen Wong? Um and there there there is a big uh divide across the investor base and people in I wouldn't say Silicon Valley that's too narrow. You know this is something that that will have global impact. those that that on the one hand say, you know, this is a sort of keyman risk story, but but it was inevitable and then a very big camp of people that say irrespective of of Jensen Wong's infidelity and pending the outcome of an internal investigation and those being made by US agencies that Jensen Wong should have stayed in post.

And so that's what people are grappling with now.

It's a very sort of big existential question. Yeah. I I I mean any chance he comes back, there have been CEOs who've been let go who've come back.

Well, I think the way that Carol put it a moment ago is really important because, you know, I read the statement and the one bit that was missing from that succinct statement was, is there any relationship at all between Jensen Wong and Nvidia? So, Bloomberg went back to Nvidia and we clarified that going forward uh Jensen Wong will not have an association with the company. He will not have an advisory role. He will not be chairman emeritus.

He will not be an employee or an executive and that's like really important. He will be a shareholder of course. Um but the principal difference between Jensen Wong and say an Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg which the three of us have talked about so much recently right in the context of the midterms is that actually Jensen Wong has relatively modest economic ownership of this company less than 4%.

He has

right but he has no voting power that there is not that that dual class of shares. So yeah.

Can you talk to us about that? Tim and I have been talking about this in the newsroom big time. Ed, it kind of blows my mind this com this individual so identified with one particular company and its dramatic growth and creation of wealth for many investors um this company for what three decades essentially and that he didn't have a more significant share of the company or that he didn't have voting shares when you think of something like Meta or you think about Elon's universe right these these are individuals who have created did something so identified with the company but they also have voting share so there's a lot of control I'm not saying one is wrong better but I was surprised we were surprised

the answer is quite straightforward because Nvidia went public in 1999 before having a founder friendly dualclass share structure was popular um simple as that I I had a a meeting relatively recently with Jensen Wong at a hotel in San Francisco where we were doing an interview about that delegation that came from South Korea and it was at the time that I was working on that story about Sequoia, the venture capital firm,

and Jensen made this kind of um off-the-cuff remark when I had told him about the story about Square I was reflecting on and he made the point that, you know, when he raised money for the first time, uh Sequoia Partners gave him a check for a million dollars, which then was a lot of money, and he gave up a pretty healthy chunk of equity in exchange for that $1 million. And it's just a world away from the economics of what we're talking about present day.

Yeah. I mean, even the tiny chunk that he owns, he is this the largest individual shareholder, less than 4% of the company, worth worth around $140 billion at at today's prices. I I do want to talk to you about the board, Ed. A group of people

who I think fair to say not known individually, very much outside of Silicon Valley or in some cases Sand Hill Road. Um, in fact, one board member who's been there for more than 33 years, truly since the beginning, talk to us about the type of people who are on Nvidia's board and their relationship in general with Jensen Wong.

Well, so the most important one because this is the news is Harvey C. Jones and he is a known quantity in Silicon Valley and also in the chip industry. not not just by virtue of being a director since 1993. He was executive chair of Synopsis, a company Nvidia now has an investment in. Um but but that was part of why this news and the way the market reacted to it was so interesting. You know, CFO Klet Crest is interim CEO and continues as CFO.

She has been there for 13 years. And for the first time, which is it's a strange thing to say out loud if you're not familiar with the company, but Nvidia has a chair of its board for the first time de facto Jensen Hong was operating as CEO chairman. He was a director on the board, but he he di