“The secret for being CEO for this long is, one, don’t get fired, and, two, don’t get bored,” he said at an event in Las Vegas. “I don’t know which one comes first. How long [will I continue as CEO]? For as long as I deserve it.”

Ten months later, Huang is putting that adage to the test: Over the weekend, he admitted to having an affair with a business executive suspected by U.S. intelligence of acting as an operative for the Chinese government. China’s foreign ministry denied the allegation.

As Huang faces increased scrutiny after he admitted to the affair with an alleged spy, he now faces questions about whether he can continue on as the company’s top brass. 

Nvidia has since launched an independent investigation into its CEO and his romantic relationship with suspected spy Alice Huang, an executive at Megaspeed International. Megaspeed is a data center and cloud computing company and one of Asia’s largest buyers of Nvidia chips. Nvidia’s board said Sunday that it has no reason to believe national security or company secrets were compromised.

“I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry,” Huang said in a statement on Sunday.

“Today’s news will not slow Nvidia. Jensen is committed to continuing to lead Nvidia as CEO without interruption,” a company spokesperson told Fortune in a statement.

The probe has reinvigorated investors’ concerns about the need to construct a succession plan, which, notably, Huang and Nvidia have not publicly shared. As of Monday morning, Nvidia stock is down more than 6%. Bernstein analysts, in a note published on Sunday, noted it would be unclear who could or would fill Huang’s shoes because the identity of his company is so inextricably linked to his own.

“Nvidia is not an ordinary company and Jensen is not an ordinary CEO,” they wrote. “He IS Nvidia, clearly sets the long term strategy and direction, and (with supposedly 60 direct reports) pulls most of the company’s strings himself.”  

Huang’s two children, Madison and Spencer Huang, both have roles in the company, but Huang’s son-in-law Nico Caprez, Nvidia’s 35-year-old vice president of global AI infrastructure growth, could be among the next in line to lead the AI juggernaut.

“I do imagine Huang is kind of preparing [Madison] and Nico for that next step,” one Nvidia employee who works with Caprez, told The Information last month.

Who is Nico Caprez?

Caprez is a former alpine skier representing Switzerland who began his career as a Boston Consulting Group consultant. He graduated with an MBA from the London Business School in 2021, where he met Madison Huang. The two married this September.

While Madison serves as a senior director of physical AI and robotics product marketing, and Spencer is a director of robotics product management, Caprez rose through the ranks at Nvidia to lead global AI infrastructure growth in less than three years, starting as a corporate development manager in February 2024 before becoming the director of global AI infrastructure enablement for Nvidia’s cloud partners about a year ago. 

The young executive was part of deal-making efforts to raise $500 billion with six major asset managers including Apollo Global Management and Blackstone, to finance Nvidia chips for data centers in August. Caprez also reportedly assisted in Nvidia’s efforts to take minority stakes in two data center developers as part of its AI infrastructure buildout.

Senior leadership has extolled Caprez’s value both within the company and to the CEO more specifically. Vladimir Troy, Nvidia’s vice president of AI infrastructure who works alongside Caprez, said “Nico is very important.” A cloud executive who also met with Caprez called him “Jensen’s consigliere” in an interview with The Information. 

Huang, however, has been mum on who will lead the company in its next era, whenever that may be. In an interview with Bloomberg last month, the CEO shied away from speculation his daughter would one day replace him at Nvidia’s helm.

“I don’t hope the job on her, and the reason for that is because if that’s their aspiration, Spencer of Madison’s, they have to go earn it, and it’s really, really hard work,” he said. “For many people, they can focus on their job and their families. When you’re the CEO of the company, you have to focus on, of course, your family. But I’ve got a whole bunch of other families I’m caring for. I’m responsible for an entire industry, and so I think the pressure of being the CEO is high.”

Nvidia’s ‘key-man’ problem

Huang’s newly precarious spot at the top of his company has some worries not just about who one day replaces him, but whether anyone really can.

“The so-called ‘key-man risk’ looms large here, and it’s doubtful markets have adequately priced it in,” economist Mohamed A. El-Erian wrote in a post on X. “This will not be easy for the board to navigate.”

Daniel Newman, CEO of global technology research firm the Futurum Group, said that what’s made Huang so difficult to replace is that the company has been built around his leadership style, which leans autocratic.

“He really drives everything that happens. He has a team of lieutenants that are in charge of making sure that what he asks becomes gospel, that it’s executed ferociously, maniacally,” Newman told Fortune. “The market has built such admiration and confidence for him that he’s become a Jobs or a Musk type of figure at Nvidia, where there just isn’t really any thought of it not being a founder-led company.”

Whenever Nvidia transitions to new leadership, it will likely see a shift in strategy, moving slightly away from the rapid clip of innovation Huang has pushed, to becoming an “execution machine” that has solidified backend and supply chain uncertainties to deliver efficiently to partners, Newman added. Changes in the company focus also mean that even if there’s one CEO, there will likely be a leadership team, not a single figure, making Nvidia’s biggest decisions.

“It’s very improbable that they’re going to find one person that’s going to fill all the gaps,” Newman said.