The whole point of affair is leverage and blackmail opportunities. Like Bezos, Jensen stands to lose half his wealth if his wife divorces him now
Jensen is a hard charging, uber-entrepreneuer. They've been married over 40 years and met each other as lab partners in electrical engineering. He was 17. She was 19. They've been best friends for longer than most people making assumptions about all this have been alive. Jensen is obviously super-smart. His wife is quite possibly even smarter than he is and very probably his intellectual equal. She hasn't gone out and spent 18 hrs a day for decades building a high-risk tech startup but she's been a key part, if not the key, to him being able to be who he is, and being who he's needed to be, every day since before NVidia's founding.
She knows every one of his flaws, weaknesses and gaping ego needs far better than he does (and he for her). Yet, she's also clearly one of the most independent, self-sufficient, least needy people most of us will ever meet. Jensen's gone between 12 and 18 hours a day (when he's home at all), non-stop for decades - aside from infrequent vacations, during which Jensen is still on the phone, laptop or simply thinking about NVidia almost every waking moment.
She is someone so independent, all of that is not something she "puts up with reluctantly." That can't last for over 40 years. It's much more likely she prefers it that way. She has always had her own long-term friendships, activities and entire life, completely separate from his and him. I'm not saying saying I think they have some kind of open or poly sexual relationship. Just that they are each intellectually, socially and emotionally independent of each other - and always have been. Although it probably is kind of 'poly' in the sense that Jensen is married to his life at NVidia and she's married to her life outside of Jensen/NVidia. Yet they're both married and committed to each other too.
On top of that NVidia is the world's most valuable company and together they are a multi-billionaire (pre-nup or not). When the scale starts anywhere near a 'B', it's completely alien to the rest of us. For the last decade, Jensen and his wife have both been 'post-economic' in a way that even I (a lowly multi-deca-millionaire pauper) cannot conceive.
How can I assume all this about two people I don't even know? I was a serial tech entrepreneur, which is how I got into BigCo - I sold my startup to them. And I've been basically describing my relationship with my wife. While we share some friends equally, it's only a few and almost all the friends we each spend social time with are separate. While I know all my wife's friends and she knows all mine, we're rarely with our friends socially together. Most of her, my and our friends are married couples, and most of them seem to go damn near everywhere like they're linked at the hip. This strikes both my wife and I as strange. And we seem to be equally strange to our friends. They're always asking me where my wife is when I show up alone (like I nearly always do) and her friends ask her where I am when she shows up alone (like she nearly always does). Note: these aren't 'couple-centric' gatherings or events, there are lots of single individuals around too.
I don't happen to want to sleep around with other people. My wife feels the same. If she really wanted to, I wouldn't stop her. Shit, she's the best friend I've ever had. I can't really parse where I end and she begins and I know the same is true for her. Our relationship is far beyond the primitive ego dynamics of: "This high-value other person forgoing all others is a testament to their commitment to me and a signal of my value (and props up my own needy ego)." We don't do things separately because we don't love doing things together or don't love each other. We do a lot together. But when we met, we were already each complete, independent people, with vibrant, complete intellectual, emotional and social lives (both inner and outer). Unlike the line in that love story, she didn't "Complete me" and I didn't "Complete her." We were both already complete before we met.
I think the relationship my wife and I have is probably similar to Jensen's and his wife's in many ways because I know four other couples who share a very similar dynamic in their long-term stable marriages (three of the four are the product of high-intensity, high-achievement, all-consuming careers). Where Jensen and his wife may differ from my wife and I is that, of the five samples I have (mine + four others), One is completely 'open' and mine is 'open if you want' but neither of us 'wants'. The other three samples are similar but the implementation is slightly different and more like this: "If you really want to have a side-thing that will make you happy, then do it - I truly don't mind and I want you to be happy. Just be circumspect and classy enough not to do it in front of our friends or kids."
Since that's 3 out of 5 samples, I'll guess that Jensen's relationship may be similar to that too. And that's why this is, sadly, a problem both of them have to deal with - and that's why I'm pretty sure Jensen's regret and apology are incredibly sincere toward his wife. Not for "violating the sanctity of their vows" but for negligently creating a problem they both now have to stage manage the optics of. It's also why I'm virtually certain divorce is the farthest thing from Jensen's wife's mind. They are true equal partners in a deeper, more committed way than most can imagine.
[To be clear: I think there's also around a one-third chance their relationship is such that she's had her own side-things too and is just disappointed he didn't manage one of his 'side-things' as well as she manages hers.]