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0:00 Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Huang's admission that he had an extramarital affair has sparked speculation that he and his wife, Lori Huang, could be headed toward divorce, with Lori potentially walking away with tens of billions of dollars if they do. Huang is one of the 10 richest people in the world, with Forbes valuing his net worth at approximately $155 billion as of Monday. The Nvidia CEO admitted in a statement to employees Sunday that he was unfaithful to my wife after reports suggested he had an affair with Chinese citizen Alice Huang, whom the government believes could be an asset to the Chinese government.
0:33 Huang has been married to his wife since the mid-1980s after the two first met as students at Oregon State University, long before he founded Nvidia. And the CEO has said Lori has been part of Nvidia every step of the way. According to Nvidia's 2026 proxy, most of the shares attributed to Jensen are held in trust in which both spouses are co-trustees and as a result may be deemed to have shared beneficial interest. It's unclear if the two may have signed a prenuptial agreement before they got married or a postnuptial agreement after the fact, which could have specified if any of their assets could be separated rather than jointly held.
1:09 California is a community property state, which means that any assets that were acquired during the marriage, which would include Huang's stake in Nvidia and any income from the company, must be divided 50/50 during a divorce unless explicitly determined to be one person's separate property. That means Lori Huang could be entitled to half of her husband's fortune should they divorce, potentially yielding her at least $75 billion, depending on how Nvidia's stock performs, though the exact share would depend on any specific agreements the two signed and whether Jensen Huang could claim any property was his alone.
1:43 Now, we don't know if any divorce will take place. Lori Huang has not yet responded publicly to her husband's extramarital affair or given any indication of if she intends for them to remain married. If Lori Huang did receive half of her husband's 12-figure fortune, it could be even more than other billionaire divorce settlements. Jeff Bezos's ex-wife, Mackenzie Scott, received a stake in Amazon that was equivalent to nearly $36 billion when the two divorced. Melinda French Gates also received billions in her 2021 divorce settlement from Bill Gates, including at least $12.5 billion just to French Gates's personal philanthropic endeavors and transferring billions of dollars worth of her stock to her in the years after their divorce.
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