A board opens a file on its own chief, and a safety office loses its lamp: two checks, one weekend
Nvidia's directors are investigating reports that Jensen Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort. The same weekend, the small US office meant to test AI models was reported drifting towards the White House. Only one of those checks comes with a calendar.
The tech story of the day is not a chip, a model or a data centre. It is two pieces of governance, one private and one public, tested in the same weekend. You can read both as drama. It is more useful to read them as plumbing, and to ask which pipe still has a valve on it.
**The board.** Nvidia's board said on Sunday that it has opened an independent investigation after reports that its chief executive, Jensen Huang, was the "target of a foreign intelligence effort". The announcement followed Huang's acknowledgement to the board that he had been intimate with a business executive whom, according to The New York Times, US intelligence determined was gathering information for Beijing. The board said there is no reason to believe national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised, that Huang supports the investigation and that he will remain chief executive. Huang "fully supports the review and has committed to cooperating with it," the company said. In a letter to staff he apologised to his family and said he had "fallen short" of his responsibility to colleagues, the board, partners and shareholders.
