According to John Updike, “The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage develop.” Today Nvidia boss Jensen Huang, the golden boy behind the world’s first five trillion dollar company, is feeling the pressure of those constraints.

Huang has not only been forced to admit to his affair with former Megaspeed exec Alice Huang (no relation) – he’s also having to come to terms with the fact she might be a spy for the Chinese government. Not a great day for Jensen Huang, then.

Sporting his trademark black leather jacket, it should perhaps not come as too much of a surprise that his midlife crisis also extends to an affair with a younger woman. Their relationship had already raised eyebrows, with Alice posting pictures of the pair enjoying intimate dinners together, which Jensen has previously claimed “have been related to Megaspeed, and it was all completely normal and not unusual”. 

He was being more accurate than he intended: in the heated arena of the corporate boardroom, affairs are surprisingly “normal and not unusual”, although they do tend to cause something of a ruckus when they are inevitably exposed.

Remember the Coldplay kisscam?

Who could forget the infamous Coldplay kisscam footage from last year, when data startup Astronomer boss Andy Byron was caught red-handed – and red-faced – in a clinch with his “chief people officer” Kristin Cabot. Their reaction – attempting to duck from the prying eyes of the camera – caused the footage to go viral and by the next morning, the pair were infamous across the world. Both resigned from the company and they are, rather unfairly, still hounded over it to this day.

In 2023, BP boss Bernard Looney was stripped of a remuneration package worth millions after failing to admit relationships – with an “s” – with various colleagues, with the BP board claiming it had been “knowingly misled”.

The incident recalled Lord Browne’s infamous departure from the same company in 2007, when he was forced to quit after lying under oath about a four-year relationship with Jeff Chevalier.

In an ill-fated attempt to block the Mail on Sunday from publishing the story, Lord Browne went to the High Court, lying under oath about meeting his beau while jogging in a London park, rather than through an escort website. He forfeited a leaving package worth some £15m.

Jensen Huang has joined a large club

Former McDonald’s boss Steve Easterbrook, a rare Brit to reach the summit of corporate America, was fired over an affair in 2019 – it later emerged he, too, had engaged in relationships with people at the fast food company. Easterbrook was subsequently fined by the US financial watchdog for misleading investors: as the saying goes, the cover-up is always worse than the crime.

The same story repeats ad nauseam: in 2005 Boeing CEO Harry Stonecipher was forced out of the firm after admitting to an affair with his vice-president for operations and commercial activities Debra Peabody. In 2006 Walmart’s marketing executive Julie Roehm had an “inappropriate romantic relationship” with Sean Womack, a former marketing VP at the retailer (Walmart claimed the pair had been spotted in a compromising position in a bar).

None of these adulterers survived their indiscretion – but Huang will hope he is simply too big to fail. He is now in full defence mode, publicly apologising to his wife and hanging his grey-haired head in shame. An investigation launched by the company will decide his fate.

Huang should perhaps pay heed to a quote by the American psychologist John M Gottman: “I liken an affair to the shattering of a Waterford crystal vase. You can glue it back together, but it will never be the same again.”

Time will tell if Jensen Huang’s crystal vase can be glued back together or if this affair will, as it has with so many others, prove to be his undoing.