Good morning. How do you replace someone who is irreplaceable?
That’s the question on everyone’s mind as the fate of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang hangs in the balance.
As of Wednesday evening, Nvidia’s board of directors was meeting to decide whether to fire Huang following the revelation of multiple affairs, one with an alleged Chinese spy, and the other allegedly with a female executive at the company.
Finding a successor, both in the short term and for the long term, will not be easy.
One modest proposal: An AI Jensen. Upload all his knowledge and business savvy to a computer (powered by Nvidia GPUs, of course), and voila! We get all the best of the legendary leather-clad leader, minus the prurient tendencies.
More news follows. —Alexei Oreskovic
Thoughts? Suggestions? Hot tip? Drop Andrew a line.
THE BIG STORY
How Megaspeed built a network in Singapore and Malaysia to move contraband Nvidia chips
The chip-smuggling controversy swirling around Nvidia centers on one company: Megaspeed, a Singapore-based cloud computing provider that, according to several media reports, is suspected of funneling advanced AI processors to Chinese companies.
THE BLIND BOX
"If there’s a meeting and there’s acronyms that are used, there are times that I’ve just terminated the meeting."
THE RUNDOWN
—A day after Anthropic’s office push, Databricks goes after knowledge workers. AI agents that never sleep.
—United Airlines to block AI agents from booking tickets. The wrong kind of agents.
—Meta's infrastructure boss to leave. Life beyond data centers.
—Silicon Valley’s richest outspent supporters of California’s billionaire tax by more than 10 to 1.
—J. Crew debuts new AI shopping tool. Designed to think like a stylist.
—Nintendo's Legend of Zelda reboot is a hit. 5.2 million copies sold in 4 days.
THE PARTING SHOT
Rise with the jacket, fall with the jacket.