Jensen Huang has lost his job, his board seat, and roughly $10 billion in paper wealth since admitting to an affair. If his 41-year marriage ends, California law could put a far larger share of his fortune in play.

Huang stepped down as Nvidia’s president, CEO, and director this week, days after confessing in a letter to Nvidia employees that he had been unfaithful to Lori Huang, his wife since 1985. The board named chief financial officer Colette Kress Nvidia’s interim CEO and made longtime director Harvey Jones its first board chair while it searches for a permanent successor.

“I owe my family and all of you an apology,” Huang wrote.

“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.”

The admission followed a New York Times report that U.S. intelligence agencies suspected Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based data center company Megaspeed, of gathering information for Beijing, and that she had a close relationship with Huang. China has denied involvement. Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs said this week that she left Singapore in February and was barred from returning after a police investigation, which it said “did not concern espionage.”

Two more relationships have since been reported. The New York Times reported on November 11 that Huang had been romantically involved with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care, who reported directly to him, citing five people who had worked at the company. A day later, Reuters reported that Huang had an intimate relationship with another Nvidia employee, whom it did not name. Powell did not respond to the Times, and Nvidia declined to comment to Reuters.

Nvidia’s board opened an independent investigation into whether Huang was targeted by a foreign intelligence effort and said it had “no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised.” An FBI inquiry into his relationship with Alice Huang is also underway.

Huang has not announced plans to divorce. But a split would test how California divides a fortune built almost entirely on a single stock, and the answer would turn less on his headline net worth than on how the couple’s Nvidia shares were acquired and held.

Most of Huang’s Nvidia stake sits in trusts he shares with his wife

Huang reported beneficial ownership of about 870.6 million Nvidia shares, or 3.58% of the company’s outstanding stock, as of March 23, 2026, according to Nvidia’s 2026 proxy statement. Nvidia ranked No. 16 on the 2026 Fortune 500 and was the first company on the list worth more than $4 trillion.

Jensen and Lori Huang are co-trustees of their living trust, which holds about 528.5 million shares, and of two other family trusts. Together, the three trusts hold nearly 669 million shares. Another 73.3 million shares are held by limited liability companies whose sole member is the living trust.

Lori Huang also runs the family’s philanthropy. She is president of the Jen-Hsun & Lori Huang Foundation, which reported about $9.2 billion in assets at the end of 2024, Fortune reported. The foundation holds about 58.7 million Nvidia shares, but the proxy states that neither spouse has a pecuniary interest in them.

The distinction matters. Beneficial ownership and control of shares do not by themselves establish personal ownership, or determine how assets would be divided in a divorce.

California’s community-property rule gives each spouse half of what was built during the marriage

The couple met as lab partners at Oregon State University and married in 1985, eight years before Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993. They live in California, a community-property state, where assets acquired during a marriage are generally owned jointly and divided equally in a divorce.

“In California, all property acquired by a spouse during marriage is community property,” Christopher Melcher, a Los Angeles attorney who specializes in high-net-worth divorces, told the New York Post. “She would be entitled to 50%.”

Under California Courts guidance, community property generally includes earnings and assets acquired between the date of marriage and the date of separation. Property owned before the marriage or acquired after separation, along with gifts and inheritances, is generally separate property, and some assets can be a mix of both.

That means Lori Huang could be entitled to half of the community-property portion of the couple’s Nvidia holdings, not necessarily half of every share tied to her husband.

The outcome would depend on how the shares were acquired, how the trusts are structured, whether separate and community assets were mixed, and whether the couple signed a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement. A court would need to examine those details before deciding what either spouse receives.

California is also a no-fault divorce state, meaning either spouse can seek a divorce without proving infidelity or other wrongdoing. Infidelity, even across several reported relationships, generally does not entitle one spouse to a larger share of community property.

Huang’s net worth is a moving target

Huang is worth about $145 billion and ranks as the world’s 13th-richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, as Fortune reported. That figure is a market estimate, not a tally of marital property, and it rises and falls with Nvidia’s stock, which shed $450 billion in market value in the days after his admission.

Huang has described his wife’s role in the company in plain terms. “Every moment of Nvidia, she was there,” he said in an interview with CNA.