Who is Lori Huang? Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s wife could get $75 billion in divorce without prenup

Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang's admission of an extramarital affair has prompted speculation that his wife, Lori Huang, could be entitled to roughly half of his fortune, which Forbes estimates at $155.2 billion, if the couple were to divorce. No separation has been announced, and Lori Huang has not commented publicly.

Lori Huang (née Mills) has stayed largely out of public view as her husband became one of the world's most recognisable executives, Malay Mail noted. The two met as engineering students at Oregon State University, when he was 17 and she was 19, according to Business Insider. They married in 1985, eight years before Nvidia existed. Huang has said he promised her he would be running a company by 30, a goal he met when he co-founded Nvidia on his 30th birthday.

She also had a hand in that decision. According to accounts of Nvidia's founding, she did not want Huang to leave his job at LSI Logic unless co-founder Chris Malachowsky quit Sun Microsystems at the same time. Huang has since described her as involved with Nvidia from the very start, Forbes reported, and has credited her and their daughter with shaping his wardrobe, including his trademark leather jacket.

The couple's financial lives are closely linked. They run the Jen-Hsun & Lori Huang Foundation together, Benzinga reported, and Nvidia's 2026 proxy statement lists her as a co-trustee of family trusts holding more than 528 million Nvidia shares.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Huang recently told colleagues that his wife handles virtually all of the household's administration, from signing documents to running the family finances. He quipped that he could not recall his own home address and had never paid a bill. The arrangement suggests that much of the couple's wealth may be held jointly. Two of their children, Madison and Spencer, work at Nvidia.

Huang disclosed the affair in a memo to Nvidia employees on November 8, acknowledging that he had been unfaithful to his wife and apologising to his family and staff. He said he intends to continue leading the company.

The disclosure followed late-October reporting by The New York Times that US intelligence officials believed Alice Huang (also known as Huang Le), a former executive at data-centre company Megaspeed, may have acted as an asset for Chinese intelligence. She is not related to Jensen Huang. Megaspeed reportedly purchased around $2 billion of Nvidia products and is suspected by US authorities of helping restricted chips reach China.

According to the Times, a classified memo prepared under Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier this year had warned senior administration officials about the relationship.

Key developments:

Beijing has denied the espionage allegations. The claims have not been independently established, Huang's memo does not name the other party, and no criminal charges have been reported.

Nvidia shares fell 4.3% on November 9, wiping nearly $200 billion off the company's market value, Bloomberg reported. Forbes valued Huang's net worth at approximately $155.2 billion as of 4 p.m. ET that day, noting that the sell-off briefly pushed him out of the world's ten wealthiest people. His fortune had already taken a hit days earlier: according to Moneywise, it fell by about $15.1 billion on November 5, when Nvidia dropped more than 9% amid wider concerns over AI spending.

Huang holds a stake of more than 3.5% in Nvidia, making him its largest individual shareholder, according to Forbes, a holding that would be on the table in any divorce. Nvidia's 2026 proxy statement lists Lori Huang as a co-trustee of family trusts that held more than 528 million Nvidia shares as of March 2026, as Moneywise reported.

California is a community-property state. Under the state courts' guidance, community property covers what a couple jointly owns or owes from the marriage: wages earned while married and anything bought with them, from shares and real estate to retirement savings, business interests and personal belongings. Debts taken on during the marriage are shared in the same way.

Separate property is narrower. It covers assets held before the wedding or acquired after separation, along with inheritances or gifts made to one spouse alone. A prenuptial or postnuptial agreement can also set specific assets aside from the shared pool.

The Huangs married in 1985, eight years before Nvidia was founded in 1993, so his stake was built during the marriage. That timing underpins estimates that Lori Huang could receive between $75 billion and $77.5 billion.

Several factors could materially change that outcome:

If Lori Huang were awarded half of the fortune, her settlement would surpass every recent billionaire divorce, at roughly double the largest on record. MacKenzie Scott's Amazon stake was worth about $36 billion when she and Jeff Bezos divorced. The full terms of Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates's 2021 settlement have never been made public, although he has since committed at least $12.5 billion to her philanthropic work and transferred billions more in stock.