Jensen Huang resigns as Nvidia CEO and board member amid export-control scrutiny

Jensen Huang resigned as Nvidia chief executive and relinquished his board seat, according to ZeroHedge, a departure that removes the most prominent industry advocate for open-weight artificial intelligence models. The move followed reports that Alice Huang, a former Megaspeed executive whom U.S. intelligence reportedly believes was recruited by Beijing, had promised Nvidia chips to DeepSeek, a Chinese lab known for open-weight models. The resignation occurred hours after the report circulated, and Nvidia's interim leadership is expected to be handled by Colette Kress, the company's chief financial officer.

The source points to a reported $4.8 billion Nvidia chip purchase by Megaspeed over two years, with nearly $2 billion installed in Malaysian and Indonesian data centers allegedly serving Chinese customers remotely. It also cites Bloomberg reporting that Moonshot, the developer of Kimi models, is renting Nvidia's top artificial intelligence chips. Those details matter because export-control enforcement increasingly focuses on chip resale, cloud access and indirect routing, not only direct sales to Chinese firms. The alleged Alice Huang link adds a national-security dimension to a debate that had centered on model openness.

In July, Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, IBM, Mistral and Hugging Face published a letter titled Open Weights and American AI Leadership, arguing that open models support security and safety. OpenAI, Anthropic and Google did not sign. Huang also met lawmakers and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, while Nvidia promoted its Nemotron models and an Open Secure AI Alliance. A White House testing framework in August exempted open-weight models. The resignation weakens the political coalition that had resisted broader restrictions.

The stakes include access to models that let companies, researchers and governments run systems on local hardware, reducing dependence on large cloud providers. Federal restrictions under consideration would impose licensing, testing or compliance burdens that favor well-capitalized firms. Nvidia's leadership change also changes the balance of influence in Washington: a company that once defended open access now faces scrutiny over export controls and China-linked chip channels.