TSMC booked $122 billion in revenue last year and builds over 90% of the world's most advanced microchips — and analysts say that machine will keep running whether or not Jensen Huang stays at Nvidia's helm.

The firestorm around Huang's admitted extramarital affair is unlikely to dent business at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the foundry (a firm that manufactures chips designed by others) that counts Nvidia as its biggest customer, analysts told Business Insider. Even if Huang steps down as Nvidia's CEO, the direct hit to TSMC should be minimal.

"We believe the demand for leading-edge wafers is larger than any one executive, and we see there's no sign of Nvidia slowing down or actually cutting orders from TSMC yet," said William Li, a senior analyst at Counterpoint Research. Wafers are the silicon discs from which chips are cut.

Gaurav Gupta, VP analyst and chief of research for emerging market dynamics at Gartner, was equally blunt. "At this point, we don't really see an impact from this Nvidia fiasco on them," he said.

What is the scandal about?

Huang, the founder and CEO of the $4.5 trillion chipmaker, admitted in a memo to employees on Sunday that he had an extramarital affair, though he did not name the other person. The New York Times reported that the woman, Alice Huang, was suspected by US officials of passing information to Beijing.

Nvidia's board is now investigating whether Huang was the target of a "foreign intelligence effort." Alice Huang was an executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-registered firm that US officials suspected was illegally sending Nvidia chips to China.

Why does Huang matter so much to Taiwan?

Huang has become one of the most recognizable figures of the AI boom, an industry largely powered by Nvidia's graphics processing units. He's also something of a hometown hero: born in Taiwan, he returns often to promote the island's role — and TSMC's — in the AI economy. Photos show him with TSMC chairman Mark Liu and CEO Che-Chia Wei.

The commercial link runs deep. Nvidia is TSMC's biggest customer and contributes roughly a fifth of the foundry's revenues. That concentration is exactly why the market is watching the scandal. Yet analysts say the relationship rests on supply and demand, not on one man's reputation.

"Demand for AI infrastructure build-out is strong in a supply-constrained environment," Gupta said, adding that tech leaders "shouldn't get distracted" by the investigation.

Where could TSMC actually get hurt?

The realistic risk is policy, not personality. The US has spent years trying to cut China off from Nvidia's best hardware — restrictions Huang himself has chafed against. The scrutiny around his relationship with Alice Huang sharpens the political problem, given her role at a firm suspected of diverting chips to China.

"The channels that could actually reach Taiwan are policy-driven, not tied to the scandal itself — mainly tighter export controls and more scrutiny of chips being diverted to China," Li said.

Tighter export rules could dent Nvidia's China revenues, and that would flow through to TSMC. But analysts call it a stretch. Even if Nvidia's China sales drop, US hyperscalers — the giant cloud and AI firms hungry for computing power — would likely buy up the freed-up capacity, Li said.

Gupta sees only one scenario where the scandal genuinely slows TSMC: "Only if any leadership changes or security findings implicate Nvidia and that negatively impacts investor confidence or slowdown in dealmaking, could it slow down some of the AI data center buildout." Even then, he noted, the damage would land on the entire semiconductor industry, not on TSMC alone.

What are the companies saying?

Asked about the scandal and its potential impact on the Nvidia-TSMC relationship, an Nvidia spokesperson said: "Our partnership with TSMC and the broader supply chain is strong as always."

TSMC did not respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider outside regular business hours.

The bottom line from the analyst desks: Taiwan's chip show goes on. The demand for leading-edge silicon outstrips supply, and no single executive — however famous — changes that arithmetic.