Kimberly Powell, a longtime executive at Nvidia, has found herself at the center of a controversy as she is reported to be in a relationship with the company's CEO, Jensen Huang. According to The New York Times, this alleged affair was discovered during the company's annual developer conference in March, where Powell and Huang were seen being affectionate at a San Jose hotel. The newspaper cites five sources within Nvidia who witnessed or learned about the incident.
Powell, 48, joined Nvidia as a director in 2008 and has since risen through the ranks to become the Vice President of Healthcare. Prior to her work at Nvidia, she was an engineer and product development expert at an electronics startup. Powell's promotion history suggests that her work on promoting Nvidia's artificial intelligence chips in medical imaging caught the company's attention, leading them to recruit her for their team in 2008.
The alleged affair comes amidst another controversy surrounding Huang and his relationship with Chinese businesswoman Alice Huang, who has been linked by US intelligence officials to facilitating shipments of Nvidia chips to Chinese companies. When contacted by The New York Times, Huang declined to discuss the relationship, while Nvidia and Powell did not respond to requests for comment.
Reports suggest that Powell is married and has two children, but her husband's identity remains unknown. This new development has cast a shadow over Nvidia, a leading company in the technology sector, and raises questions about the ethical implications of such relationships within the corporate structure.