One of the women at the center of ex-Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s fall from grace worked over 18 years with him at the chipmaking giant — where they reportedly carried on a romance in spite of the fact he was her supervisor.
Kimberly Powell, the company’s vice president of health care, joined Nvidia in 2008 to help bring its graphics-processing technology into medical imaging equipment. She rose through the company’s ranks to become a senior director in 2016, taking on her latest role the following year.
While Huang resigned Thursday morning, Powell’s fate at the company was unclear in the wake of a bombshell Wednesday report in the New York Times revealing the affair.
While Powell has been a high-profile figure at Nvidia — attending technology conferences around the world and delivering speeches on behalf of the company – she lives on a quiet, leafy street in the Silicon Valley suburb of Monte Sereno, Calif.
Neighbors voiced shock at the reported affair between the married Huang and the married mother of two.
“She was an excellent neighbor,” a man who lives across the street from her told The Post on Wednesday night.
He said Powell, whom he referred to as “Kim,” was out of town on a business trip, but declined to elaborate.
The neighbor, who didn’t give his name, briefly described her as a welcome part of the neighborhood before another man interrupted.
“We’re done talking to them,” the second man said as he whisked the first man away.
Several other neighbors declined to speak with The Post.
Vehicles — some appearing to be occupied by journalists – have been cruising the residential block since news of the alleged affair broke.
The home where Powell appears to live with husband Graham Gerade was under renovation and was fenced off — apparently uninhabitable.
The reported Powell-Huang romance came in spite of Nvidia’s code of conduct, which urges employees to “avoid situations where our actions create conflict” including “personal relationships.”
Powell and Huang were caught acting lovey-dovey at a San Jose hotel during the company’s annual developer conference in March, according to the Times. A bystander reportedly filmed the encounter before being approached by Huang’s security team and offered a nondisclosure agreement.
Powell had been slated to speak Thursday on a panel she was moderating at a conference, but she canceled, according to CNN.
She praised Huang’s health care ambitions on an episode of the “Lifers” podcast published in August.
“Jensen has been passionate about the health care industry going back 20-plus years, and that was really fueled by seeing just researchers who had dreams and aspirations to do something very, very meaningful and impactful in the health care domain and us potentially having the tools to do it, to achieve that goal,” she said.
Powell said she previously worked as an engineer and at an electronics startup before she reached out to Nvidia to talk about their top-of-the-line computing chips. She said that once Nvidia realized its tech could help transform the health care field, the company got back in touch to hire her, describing the job as a “dream come true” on the podcast.
Powell oversees hardware and software for Nvidia’s health care business, including technology for medical imaging, life sciences and drug discovery, according to her corporate profile.
“I pretty much live and breathe health care. So I’m talking about it all the time,” she told Business Insider last year.
Powell and Huang’s relationship hit the news after days of turmoil over revelations Huang had an affair with another woman — suspected Chinese honeypot Alice Huang, no relation. The executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed had built a network of companies with her husband — who was reportedly aware of the affair and even introduced her to the Nvidia chief – and her sister across China and Singapore with the goal of acquiring powerful chips, according to reports.
Huang, 63, apologized on Sunday in a note to employees for being “unfaithful to my wife.”
Reuters reported Thursday that Huang had an “intimate relationship” with a second Nvidia employee, citing unnamed sources. Her name and other details were not immediately known.
In the wake of Huang’s resignation, Colette Kress, Nvidia’s chief financial officer and executive vice president, is serving as interim CEO. Kress has been with the company for 13 years and will also continue to serve in her current roles during the search for a permanent replacement, which will consider both internal and external candidates.