Neal joined Nvidia’s board of directors in 2019 and is chairman emeritus and senior counsel at Cooley, after serving as CEO of the law firm from 2001 to 2008.
Nvidia’s board is unusual among the largest U.S. companies in not having a designated chairman. A 2025 report from law firm Fenwick found that only one S&P 100 company (which would be Nvidia, according to its own filings) had no president.
In its proxy filings, Nvidia states that this setup “ensures that each member has an equal say in the affairs and management of Nvidia.”
The other nine members of Nvidia’s board (excluding Huang, who is a director) include four men who have been with the company since the 1990s, a former Taco Bell executive, an aeronautics professor and a former Goldman Sachs executive who joined just this year.
The board’s public statement on Sunday said it had “confidence in Jensen and his leadership team” and had “no reason to believe that Nvidia’s national security or secrets were compromised.”
However, his admission of an affair on Sunday surprised employees and former colleagues who spoke to the Financial Times.
Madison Huang, Jensen’s daughter who serves as a senior director on Nvidia’s product marketing team and has become an increasingly visible presence at the company’s conferences, canceled a planned appearance at a company event in South Korea on Monday.
Delaware law, where Nvidia is incorporated, says executives have certain fiduciary duties, including a duty of care and loyalty to their company.
Nvidia’s code of conduct requires executives to “conduct with the highest degree of integrity, ethics and honesty. Our credibility and reputation depend on your good judgment, ethical standards and personal integrity.”
Even if Huang is found to have violated those guidelines, his defenders in Silicon Valley argue that he is too big to fire.
“Yeah, I should have known better,” Maguire said of Sequoia. “But let’s not bomb our AI industry either because China carried out a successful intelligence operation.”
Additional reporting by George Steer.
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