It wasn’t so much a question of whether Jensen Huang would cease to serve as president and CEO of Nvidia, but when. Huang, 63, has dominated the global tech headlines this week, following stinging revelations of his extramarital affair with businesswoman Alice Huang, a woman believed to be a Chinese spy by the United States intelligence circle. 

Nvidia’s central role as the chipmaker extraordinaire in the artificial intelligence boom, under Huang’s 33-year stewardship in building it into a $4 trillion company, meant there would be a reckoning in the public eye, and so there was: Huang’s apology to his family, President Donald Trump’s reactions, Nvidia’s response, further damaging reports of alleged affairs with a senior Nvidia employee, the Taiwanese-American’s eventual resignation, and CFO Colette Kress taking over as interim CEO. 

It has been quite the Hollywood-esque saga so far this week. How Nvidia’s fortunes and the global AI development will fare from here is anyone’s guess, but time will surely tell. 2. Against this backdrop, The Grid revisits previous scandals that have had far-reaching consequences for some of the industry’s biggest names.

Ezra Olubi, Paystack

It had to be a November for Ezra Olubi too. The technically gifted executive, in his ninth year of co-leading Paystack, the Nigerian fintech giant he co-founded with Shola Akinlade, was fired by the company following weeks of sexual misconduct and improper conduct allegations in November 2025.

The Paystack co-founder and then-CTO was first suspended following allegations of sexual misconduct involving a subordinate, which surfaced on social media. This drew attention to a series of his decade-old tweets containing sexually explicit remarks about colleagues and minors. Paystack subsequently terminated his employment, citing the significant reputational damage caused by the resurfaced tweets and their inconsistency with the company’s values. Olubi disputed the fairness of the process, arguing that his employment was terminated before the investigation was concluded and without an opportunity to respond to the allegations. Little has since been heard about the legal action Olubi threatened over what he described as his unfair termination, while Paystack has continued to grow from strength to strength.

Andy Byron, Astronomer

Coldplay accidentally exposed an alleged affair between Astronomer CEO Andy Byron and his colleague Kristin Cabot at one of their recent concerts. https://t.co/hsJHV2u5UM

— Pop Base (@PopBase) July 17, 2025

It was a viral pop-culture moment that would become the undoing of Andy Byron, the former CEO of US data infrastructure company Astronomer. At a Coldplay concert at Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts in July 2025, the camera settled on Byron embracing Kristin Cabot, the company’s chief people officer, with the footage quickly gaining a life of its own as the pair made a futile attempt to avoid the camera. What followed was the public unravelling of an alleged affair, an internal investigation and mounting scrutiny of the company’s leadership. Astronomer subsequently announced Byron’s resignation, saying its leaders were expected to set standards of conduct and accountability that had not been met. Co-founder Pete DeJoy took over as interim CEO.

Bill Gates, Microsoft

Long before the recent headlines, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates had found himself at the centre of a similar controversy involving an employee. In 2019, the company’s board commissioned an external investigation after receiving a complaint about Gates’s relationship with a Microsoft employee, reportedly dating back to 2000. Gates’s spokesperson subsequently acknowledged that an affair had taken place, describing it as one that had ended amicably. Gates stepped down from Microsoft’s board in March 2020, before the investigation was completed. While reports suggested that board members had considered his continued position inappropriate, his representatives maintained that his departure was unrelated to the investigation, saying he had intended to devote more time to philanthropy.