Nvidia: if the Huang power couple were to divorce, how much would his wife Lori get?

Jensen Huang must clearly have a certain little quirk, given that almost every day it emerges that he has had a new lover. For now, there appear to have been three, but perhaps it is best to follow the story of the affair that forced the former CEO of Nvidia to resign to see if there are any updates and whether the number has risen... and that’s without even considering that not everything necessarily comes to light in cases like these.

Jensen Huang is 63 years old and has been married since 1985 to Lori Mills, a woman he met at Oregon State University. As yet, there are no reports of a possible divorce petition from his wife following her husband’s repeated infidelities, but it is perfectly reasonable to speculate on how much she would be entitled to should she decide to call it quits.

Introduction: From now on, as this is a family matter, we will refer to the Huang couple by their first names. Now, let’s look at some figures. As far as we know, Jensen’s shareholding, amounting to 3.5 per cent of the total capital of Nvidia – of which Jensen is the largest shareholder – is worth approximately 143.2 billion dollars, according to a Forbes estimate: he is the thirteenth richest man in the world. He is the company’s largest shareholder, and the firm has seen a stock market boom following the explosion of the artificial intelligence phenomenon, to the extent that share prices have risen from around $4 eight years ago to a figure that has fluctuated considerably in recent days, given the upheavals, but still well over 30 times that figure.

Jensen and Lori live in California, and according to the laws in force in this US state, where community of property applies, the assets of married couples are held in common and should be divided 50/50 between the former spouses in the event of a divorce. This amounts to approximately 70 billion dollars, based solely on the value of Nvidia shares at their current market price, and without taking into account the property holdings that a couple worth over 140 billion dollars undoubtedly has around the world, or other assets. Of course, the figure could be different if the couple had entered into pre- or post-nuptial agreements, but nothing is known about this at present. Jensen himself had recently told colleagues, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, that his wife ‘does everything for him, including signing documents and managing the finances’, to the extent that her husband ‘didn’t even pay the bills himself’, so it is likely that many of their assets, apart from shares, are jointly owned.

In fact, however, as things stand there are no reports of a possible divorce between the couple. Jensen himself publicly apologised to his wife last Sunday for the first extramarital affair to come to light – the one with Alice Huang, the alleged Chinese spy. But it then emerged that he had had other ‘bedmates’, and it may well be that Lori’s patience and capacity for forgiveness are now nothing more than a distant memory. We shall see how it all turns out.