Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang lost his status as one of the ten richest people in the world on Tuesday, falling four spots in the billionaire rankings over the last two days as shares sank on news that the company is investigating his affair with an alleged Chinese spy.
Key Facts
Huang shed another $9.8 billion on Tuesday by 12 p.m. EST, adding to Monday’s $7.4 billion loss and placing him in No. 12 on Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires list, down four spots this week.
Huang’s $145.6 billion estimated worth now ranks behind Spanish businessman Amancio Ortega and Walmart’s Rob Walton and family.
He fell below Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett and Oracle’s Larry Ellison on Monday when his net worth slumped to $154.7 billion.
Nvidia shares were down 6.5% at noon EST, bringing the company’s market cap to $4.02 trillion—a substantial drop from its peak at $5.7 trillion on Oct. 2, when analysts were predicting the company would soon become the first to be valued at $6 trillion.
The drop makes Huang the biggest loser for the day in the rankings, with Elon Musk in No. 2, down $5.5 billion at 12 p.m.—he is by far the richest person with a net worth of $891.4 billion.
Key Background
Nvidia shares fell sharply as the markets opened this week after Huang disclosed to his employees on Sunday that he had an affair with Alice Huang, who the U.S. believes was recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security to collect information on the company. She was an executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based data center company and Nvidia partner that has been the subject of U.S. investigations surrounding China’s access to Nvidia chips, and has been photographed with Huang dating back to June 2024. Nvidia announced it was opening an independent investigation into the relationship on Sunday, though the company asserts it has “no reason to believe national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised.” The New York Times reported on Huang’s connection to the suspected Chinese spy plot at the end of October, finding that President Donald Trump had been briefed on U.S. intelligence findings a year earlier and chose not to act. At the time an Nvidia spokesperson had told The Times “Jensen’s interactions with Ms. Huang are not unusual or unexpected.”
Tangent
Heading into the trading day on Monday, Nvidia had a market capitalization of $4.5 trillion, having rebounded slightly on Friday after falling 9% as part of the post-election selloff many semiconductors and AI-linked companies faced. Shares fell sharply at the opening bell and stayed down around 5% all day, while other tech giants continued to recover from last week’s losses. Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Tesla all rose, along with other semiconductor companies including Broadcom, AMD and Intel, making Nvidia’s dip an outlier.
Surprising Fact
Should the scandal prompt Huang and his wife Lori Huang to divorce, she could potentially get half of his fortune, with the majority of his shares held in trusts where both spouses are co-trustees, according to Nvidia’s 2026 proxy. California is a community property state, so assets acquired during the marriage are divided 50/50 in a divorce unless they’re determined to belong to one person explicitly. Much about the situation remains unclear, including whether they signed a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement, and whether they would even get a divorce.
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