Nvidia: How Jensen Huang gambled away his life's work in 315 days

Frankfurt, Las Vegas, San Francisco. A summer day at the end of August, a restaurant in the Ferry Building in San Francisco. The ex-Nvidia manager sighs when she meets Handelsblatt for lunch. “I wish Nvidia nothing but the best,” she says, picking at her fish dish. “But something went wrong.”

There are the angry outbursts of Jensen Huang, founder and CEO for 33 years, which have become more and more frequent. There was his erratic behavior, which alienated more and more employees, including her. And there are the “lightning promotions,” especially those of one man: Huang’s son-in-law, Nico Capres.

His daughter Madison's partner received three positions in the company in less than three years, each more senior than the last. Most recently, he was appointed head of AI infrastructure growth. “This is the fastest rise that Silicon Valley has ever seen,” says the ex-manager. And don't mean it as a compliment.

Concerns about the future of Nvidia, about the ever-larger wheel that Huang and his team are turning, are already virulent in the summer of 2026. And yet hardly anyone would have believed that the Nvidia founder would be out of his job in the fall and that the company would sink into the biggest scandal in its history.