Jensen Huang scandal sparks divorce speculation
forbes.com
forbes.com
Not that I'm suggesting this is what happened, but in this situation, "both sides" have motivations both for/against Jenson/Nvidia, and it would be silly to blindly trust what _either side_ says.
Whether you agree with his outlook or not, he was vocally against the current administrations' priorities/opinions. Undermining his opinions as "well he was convinced of that by a spy", or even just removing him from the position where he can have influence, helps the current US administration (which, notably, is not necessarily the same thing as helping the US)
I mean I think many things about Nvidia but one thing I do not think is that its CEO is an idiot.
I also think he will have had security advice that she might be, not least because Trump and Rubio knew a year ago.
Here is an easy guide to working out if someone could be a spy: if they are foreign, keen to get to know you, and they run a large enterprise that would be materially advantaged by having a way around the export controls on your products that impact the state where they were born and where they do business, they could be a spy.
Does it?
The results are ultimately Chinese data centres no matter where they are (Malaysia and Indonesia apparently).
But Megaspeed's parent company/backers build data centres in China and there is not enough (if you'll pardon the pun) of a Chinese wall between the things the parent builds and the subsidiary builds; they apparently shared the same promotional material.
All of this is stuff Jensen Huang does know. I think it's hilarious anyone is out there allowing for him to have an innocent "I was preyed on and could not have known" excuse. It doesn't stack up.
https://x.com/CulperResearch/status/2054624514193928695?a=_7...
It just got national attention after the NYT picked it up.
Jensen is a friend to China and has been relentless in promoting the interests of China - why would Chairman Xi want to undermine the man who advocates strongly to sell him GPUs and chips?
But it is still a great point.
Xi and Huang appear to be strongly and consistently aligned with respect to Chinese access to SOTA nVidia, each with their own natural motivations (no need for any conspiracy here).
Strong strategic alignment, even without conspiracy, is highly likely to result in independent uncoordinated acts of cooperation. Interesting dynamics can result. Any actor (national, international or "smaller") with interests in the technology competition will be watching this space closely. And some will act, for their own reasons.
I don’t think the divorce is the real story here.
If Jensen's wife got half of his share, that's a significant amount, enough to fuck with the company if she wants to. She could decide to sell it all and buy AMD, interfere with the decision process, etc... It could make a serious dent in her fortune, but there are still going do be some billions left, that's fuck you money at the orgy level.
Should it happen, I don't think she will get crazy, but she is certainly a risk compared to Jensen, and the market adjusts.
AI's Wide Shut
I look at Gates, post-divorce Bezos and Musk and see a lot of insecurities projecting outwards. The isolated nerd becomes the uber-CEO and has more money and power than people can even comprehend.
Musk spent $445 million in Texas, and Talireco still won. Hillary outspent Trump 3:1 and lost. Harris outspent Trump 2:1 and lost. Bloomberg's expensive campaign sank without a trace.
The notion that money buys elections doesn't hold up well.
Money can get one's message out. But if the voters don't like it, they won't vote for it.
But for what it’s worth I think your analysis needs more depth. Harris outspent Trump but how much did Republican/Democrat aligned organisations spend? What about all the local news stations that have been bought up and now play biased pieces dictated from out of market? etc etc. It’s an area you could write a dissertation on and I’m sure many have.
Not spies, but it is not surprising: Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos, Tiger Woods, etc.
Note: Watch Lioness season 3, premise is spy honeypotting: coincidence it came out just before this scandal
They are all just deeply psychologically damaged people with a lot of money to cover all that up.
Add to that the level of constant temptation coming from every way, women literally throwing themselves at them either for their own gain, or as in this example for their country.
I don't think we should be feeling pity for them, but they live in a very, very, VERY different world than the normal person.
Whom the gods wish to destroy…
I’m learning that Jensen Huang was middle class with a school teacher as a mother. Bezos was also a son of a teacher and his father was a unicyclist (!)
These guys hit it big and you just get the impression that they finally get to cash in on all those adolescent dreams of hot girls and gaudy extravaganza we all eventually grew out of
Looking around Silicon Valley I see many people did not and good for them. My tastes changed as I grew up. I still know full grown adults who eat chicken nuggets and that’s not for me either
I'm not super wealthy, and on a personal level I'm very happy for my partner to have an equal claim to my wealth, but I do resent that I have to think about this and that this has been a topic of conversation I've had with my dad and friends over the years. If I didn't love and trust my partner as much as I do I'd probably need to get prenuptial agreement or avoid marriage altogether. To not hold this position is just poor risk management, and you have to get very lucky with your partner to not need to worry about this stuff.
I worry the more of these cases there are the more people are going to avoid marriage or sign agreements which are even more unfavourable. I've already seen people on some parts of the internet commenting on this story and using it as a reason for men to not commit or to sign prenuptial agreements so they aren't financially harmed from marriage.
Don't get me wrong, I think she deserves a ton of money here, but 50% of everything? Common... There is a reasonable amount that she's entitled to here, and it's in both men and women's best interest that that is what she gets.
Note: This is an opinion which I am only expressing because it's somewhat unpopular. If you don't like it consider putting another opinion forward rather than down voting it.
Marriage is best looked at as a societal entity for the creation and growth of a family. As such, entering one should be seen as a partnership, in many ways similar to a business partnership or startup.
Do not do either if you do not have a high level of trust in your partner! The possible downsides are immense!
It then falls to the state to figure out what to do when things go wrong. Not only like this, but with other important things like what happens to your stuff when you die. Here be dragons.
So the 50/50 thing is an obvious starting default given this lens. Especially when things get complicated (children get involved), tracking "how much" each person contributed to the partnership is an impossible task.
Contributions in terms of time and other resources will be seen in a highly variable way. Traditionally men have completely undervalued what women bring in terms of time and opportunity cost (lost career progress).
So: it is best to leave that valuation to the people in the partnership, and start with the presumption that both will contribute equally in their own ways.
You can attempt to change this default with prenups and other legal tooling. Your mileage may vary, legal enforceability of these arrangements is a complex per-state issue.
> Do not do either if you do not have a high level of trust in your partner! The possible downsides are immense!
I think you're making my point for me here. If, as you say, the possible downsides of marriage are immense, then most people probably shouldn't get marriage or should at the very least sign agreements with their partner in the event they split so the women (in most cases) has little financial protection.
I largely agree with you that we undervalue what loving supporting partners bring to the table and that this shouldn't be overlooked. My only point really is that the law has to be reasonable, or men will continue to view marriage as an immensely risky thing that shouldn't be considered outside of finding someone extremely, extremely special (something not everyone has the luxury of sadly).
1) sounds like you don't have much to be concerned about, and 2) this cuts both ways (you have an equal claim to her wealth).
> on a personal level I'm very happy for my partner to have an equal claim to my wealth, but I do resent that I have to think about this
It's not clear to me what there is to think about: if you ever get divorced, you have legal certainty about how the assets will be split. If the rule didn't exist, courts would have to try and figure it out for each and every case (more so than they already do).
Unless you're advocating for "you take what you brought in", in which case historical precedent has shown this has been immeasurably unfavourable to women.
Jensen Huang has not done tens of billions of dollars worth of hard work; he mainly got really, really lucky. If he only gets to cash out half of that extreme fortune for whatever reason, let alone not keeping it in his pants, I don't think there's any serious discussion to be had about what's "fair" for him.
She has nothing to her name, while if we broke up she'd realistically be set for life.
Thankfully I've found someone who I love and trust very much, and isn't very superficial so doesn't really care either way. And frankly I couldn't imagine my life without her so it's hard for me to rationally assess these outcomes. If I lost her and half of everything I've work for there really isn't much point in me continuing on.
However, if I were with any of my past long-term partners I would be pretty worried about the financial risk of committing in marriage and about the negative incentives this would create for a long-term stable relationship.
I'm also not advocating for "you take what you brought in", I'm advocating that courts reasonably assess situations rather than have silly catch-all rules which I suspect are ultimately harmful for the formation of long-term relationships. I believe partners deserve a lot. Huang's wife should get billions, just not 50% of everything he has built because this is unreasonable.
Cool.
Maybe some of his billions would then actually be meaningfully channeled into worthy causes ala what MacKenzie Scott has been doing, instead of being tied up in his current foundation which appears to be primarily for tax avoidance and for funneling money to companies like CoreWeave for nebulous educational initiatives.
Ex-wives are our best hope for meaningful giving from our current oligarchs as the men are all self-absorbed narcissists who can't stand to see number go down because of the gamification aspect of modern wealth.
IMO if you think this results in more actual improvements than drawbacks for the common person then you haven't been paying attention to how wealth inequality has been fracturing society and leaving the majority behind.
It's almost everybody.
Mackenzie Scott only took 25% and I thought that was really stupid. Imagine all the good she could have done with that extra 25%, she's already the most philanthropic billionaire of all time in the sense she didn't just dump her money into her own foundation, she's been giving it away directly which is awesome.