Inside Jensen Huang’s Nvidia Exit, the Math Behind a Potential Tesla–SpaceX Merger

Akash Pasricha (0:13)

Welcome, everyone, to The Information's TITV. My name is Akash Pasricha. It is Friday, November 13th. Today on the show, we have the latest on what went down during Jensen Huang's last week as CEO of Nvidia. Our colleague, Phoebe Liu, will join us shortly with all the details. We're then going to unpack the math behind a potential merger between Tesla and SpaceX and what the numbers behind that deal could look like. We also have some more founders from our 50 most promising startups list for the year coming on the show.

To close it out, we have got the CEO of SeatGeek coming on. It's going to be a great show, so let's get right on into it.

The ripple effects of Jensen Huang's resignation this week continue to reverberate not just within Nvidia, but also with customers and also in Washington. Our Nvidia reporter, Phoebe Liu, has been tirelessly covering this story all week. I want to bring her on to share more of her latest reporting. Phoebe, welcome back to the show. It's great to have you here.

Phoebe Liu (1:20)

Good to be here.

Akash Pasricha (1:21)

We started the week with you, we ended the week with you, and what a week it has been for you. How many hours of sleep are you on right now?

Phoebe Liu (1:32)

Last night, actually seven is pretty good. Probably shouldn't have, but you know.

Akash Pasricha (1:36)

Okay. Night before was probably a little less than that.

Phoebe Liu (1:41)

Yeah.

Akash Pasricha (1:42)

Okay. So, look, I want to start with really, what was the end of the story, which was Jensen's final days as CEO. I mean, you went out to your sources to figure out what those many hours looked like. What do we know?

Phoebe Liu (1:59)

Yeah. I think what happened that made the board change its mind between Sunday when it seems like it was going to take its time with investigating what exactly went down to Wednesday night when Jensen resigned, presumably because the board asked him to after many hour long board meeting Wednesday evening. I think it comes down to lying or a perception of lying. At the end of October, The New York Times reported that Jensen had a close relationship with this woman, Alice, who we've talked about before, who some US authorities think was a Chinese spy, and who my colleagues in Asia reported helped divert AI chips to China where they weren't supposed to be because of export control restrictions.

After that, Jensen said publicly and privately to executives that that was a normal business relationship. He gave an on-the-record interview to Bloomberg saying that, then the Financial Times reported that it was a romantic relationship. After that, Nvidia's general counsel, Tim Teeter, went to Jensen's house and said, hey, if this is true, you've been telling people it's not true, you need to come clean, and he confronted Jensen, which led to Jensen apologizing.

Then after that, it seems like, yeah, Jensen was maintaining in several private conversations to executives like, oh, like Alice was the only one, there weren't any others. I think at that point, if executives were to have believed him, the news that came out Wednesday about his other affair with Kimberly Powell, a vice president who reported directly to him, made it that much worse because it seemed like he lied to some of his most senior executives. The open question is, did he lie to the board? Is that why the board called? That Wednesday meeting, a couple of sources told us that the Kimberly News was what drove the sudden Wednesday board meeting being called, and eventually Jensen's resignation, which is honestly pretty incredible because he is so tied to the fate of this company and yeah, it does seem like something that was not that intertwined with the business itself, was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Akash Pasricha (4:40)

This meeting with the lawyer going to Jensen's house, this was at the end of last week?

Phoebe Liu (4:46)

This was Friday night.

Akash Pasricha (4:48)

Friday night, okay.

Phoebe Liu (4:51)

After the financial time story broke saying that.

Akash Pasricha (4:54)

Right. It had to take the general counsel to go to his house, to talk some sense into him or whatever that looked like.

Phoebe Liu (5:04)

Yeah. I wasn't personally there.

Akash Pasricha (5:08)

Yeah.

It's just kind of funny that you have to go to the house. Anyway, so Phoebe, I mean, look, one of the things that has been interesting about this are all the different stakeholders in the story. There's obviously the board, there's Jensen.

There's also his family who we have reported on extensively. The information is very closely involved in the business.