Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has resigned after a New York Times report published Wednesday revealed an extramarital affair with a subordinate — the company's vice president of health care, one of his 60 direct reports.

The relationship breached Nvidia's own code of conduct, which instructs employees to avoid conflicts of interest, including "personal relationships," and commits the company to "promptly investigate" reports of misconduct. For boards and compliance teams, the case lands as fresh evidence that written policy alone no longer protects an organization from its chief executive.

How does this affair compare with Huang's earlier entanglement?

This relationship carries fewer national security implications than Huang's previously reported entanglement with an alleged Chinese spy. But it signals something practitioners should note: executives at this level still do not expect consequences for relationships with employees.

Huang is far from alone. The Astronomer CEO resigned after a viral video showed him canoodling with his chief people officer at a Coldplay concert. Boards have repeatedly forced out chief executives over relationships that violated the same kind of policies Nvidia now finds itself enforcing against its founder.

What precedents set the standard for removal?

The track record is long, and the financial stakes are quantifiable:

• Steve Easterbrook, former McDonald's CEO, was ousted in 2019 over a relationship with a subordinate, then sued by the company for concealing other relationships and misleading investors. He was forced to return his $105 million severance package.
• Alan Shaw, former CEO of Norfolk Southern, was fired in 2024 over a relationship with the company's chief legal officer.
• Laurent Freixe, former Nestlé SA CEO, was dismissed last year after an internal investigation confirmed a relationship with a subordinate he had initially denied.
• Ashley Buchanan, Kohl's CEO, was forced out when the board learned he had steered millions of dollars in business to a vendor he was dating without disclosing the relationship.
• Leslie Moonves was fired as CBS CEO over sexual harassment, a separate but related category of executive misconduct.

Does #MeToo still change outcomes?

Nearly a decade after the movement burst into public consciousness, the behavioral record at the top suggests limited progress. Amy Nicole Baker, a professor at the University of New Haven who studies workplace romance, argues that little has shifted — either in CEO conduct or in how companies respond.

"The stock price goes down, at least in the short term," Baker said, citing her research on how markets react to sexual harassment allegations and affairs involving CEOs. "And usually CEOs are removed and replaced."

Boards, she notes, read executive indiscretion as a diagnostic signal. "Boards look at CEO behavior as a signal for what could be going on in the internal management of the company," Baker said. An undisclosed affair prompts a question every director eventually asks: what else is the CEO hiding?

Why does this keep happening at the top?

Baker points to the psychology of power rather than ignorance of the rules. "People show less restraint when they are in power, and they're also more likely to perceive someone else sending them sexual signals when they're actually not," she said. "So the research on power can tell us a little bit about why this keeps happening."

Powerful people tend toward impulsivity and comfort with risk — traits businesses often reward. Company culture can compound the problem when informal norms encourage boundary-pushing. "If you're willing to break a rule in one way, it's probably more acceptable to tacitly break a rule in a different way," Baker said.

The intense scrutiny of Huang's conduct may deter some chief executives in the near term. Baker expects the effect to fade.

"In terms of the CEOs and their propensity to get involved in risky workplace relationships, that doesn't seem to have changed," she said. "More people are willing to say, 'Yes, this happened to me. Yes, this is an issue. Yes, this is a problem.' There's certainly more recognition and awareness. But when it comes to people at this highest echelon, I'm not seeing a change in behavior."

For practitioners, the takeaway is structural: markets punish quickly, boards remove quickly, and no policy document has yet proved sufficient to restrain a chief executive who believes the rules apply to everyone else.