Ex-Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is forfeiting about $108 million as he is resigning from the legendary chipmaker he founded 33 years ago – but questions still remain about the rest of his riches.
Huang, 63, holds a more than 3.5% stake in Nvidia, making him one of its largest shareholders.
The company’s stock has tumbled nearly 13% so far this week as his alleged affairs with a suspected Chinese spy and two employees at his firm have thrown the company into turmoil.
His net worth has plummeted by roughly $11 billion over just the past few days, hitting $143.3 billion on Thursday – down from $154 billion, according to Forbes.
The Silicon Valley legend is now the world’s 13th-richest person, behind Walmart heir Jim Walton and his family.
As part of his resignation from Nvidia on Thursday, Huang will be forced to give up $108 million in unvested equity compensation – representing less than 0.1% of his net worth, according to Bloomberg.
But the vast majority of Huang’s wealth comes from his trove of Nvidia common stock – not stock options or some other form of equity compensation.
Since the billionaire tech entrepreneur owns those shares outright, it’s highly unlikely Nvidia will try to seize them, according to Patrick Riccards, a crisis communications expert.
“I think Nvidia just needed to be done with this,” Riccards told The Post. “They’re not fools. They realize that all of them are very wealthy because of him and they don’t want him to be an enemy.”
Nvidia is also expected to be hauled before Congress soon, and while the acting CEO might be subpoenaed, “it’s likely Huang is going to go up there, too, and this board has to be very wary of what he’s gonna say,” he added.
Huang has already agreed to answer questions from three House committees behind closed doors before Congress breaks for its Thanksgiving recess next Friday, according to House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast (R-Fla.).
The most serious risk to Huang’s wealth is whether his wife of more than 40 years, Lori Huang, decides to seek a divorce.
The ousted Nvidia boss has tucked away roughly 740 million Nvidia shares into a web of family trusts and limited liability companies, securities filings show, as previously reported by The Post.
If Lori files for divorce, she could be entitled to about half of those shares – or about $60 billion, a painful hit to the founder’s fortune, according to legal experts.
The tech founder will also be losing his annual salary from Nvidia. Huang was paid about $7.5 million in each of the past two years.
Instead of trying to force Huang to forfeit his shares, Nvidia is probably more concerned about how it will look if he decides to sell – and whether it could trigger a mass sell-off among shareholders, Riccards said.
“I’m sure he’s [Huang] sitting down with financial planners now to determine how much of his stock he should keep and how much he should drop,” Riccards said. “Once they find out that he’s dumping shares, it’s gonna devastate this company’s financial picture.”
It’s common for top executives to be bound to lock-up agreements in their employment contracts, which block them from selling all their shares at once – instead putting in place a schedule that requires them to slowly sell off after a period of time. However, these restrictions typically expire a few years after an IPO. Nvidia went public in 1999.
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