Nvidia Retains Joon Kim to Investigate Jensen Huang Allegations

Nvidia has retained lawyer Joon Kim and his firm, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, to investigate allegations that then-CEO Jensen Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort, CNBC reported on November 12, 2026.

The investigation concerns Huang’s affair with Alice Huang, whom U.S. intelligence suspects of being a spy for China. Jensen Huang resigned as CEO on Thursday morning after a New York Times report that he had also had an extramarital affair with an Nvidia executive, Kimberly Powell, who reports to him.

Nvidia said it had retained Kim, 55, and Wachtell, Lipton to “conduct a thorough and independent investigation” of the allegations.

Joon Kim is 55 years old. He was born in Los Angeles, the son of a South Korean diplomat. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy and Stanford University, and graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School. He clerked for a federal judge in Manhattan and worked as an associate at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton starting in the late 1990s.

He spent seven years in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York as an assistant U.S. attorney, including four years in the Organized Crime and Terrorism Unit. He returned to the SDNY in 2013, served as deputy U.S. attorney, and then served as acting U.S. attorney from 2017 to 2018. He left the SDNY in April 2018 and began a third stint at Cleary Gottlieb, which he recently left to join Wachtell, Lipton’s litigation department.

Kim’s past investigations include a probe of former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, tapped by New York Attorney General Letitia James in March 2021. Kim and attorney Anne Clark submitted a 165-page report in August 2021 concluding that Cuomo had sexually harassed at least 11 women and retaliated against a former employee. Cuomo adamantly denied some of the allegations and said other claims had been mischaracterized or misinterpreted. He announced his resignation a week after the report was publicly released.

Two years after the Cuomo probe, Kim was retained by the FDIC to conduct an independent review of allegations of sexual harassment and interpersonal misconduct at the agency. An April 2024 report found “for far too many employees and for far too long, the FDIC has failed to provide a workplace safe from sexual harassment, discrimination, and other interpersonal misconduct.”

Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Cuomo, accused Kim of writing a report with a predetermined outcome, calling him a “hired hack,” and said Kim “hid evidence” that was exonerating of Cuomo. Azzopardi also said Kim and Bharara were motivated to prosecute Joseph Percoco for “their own personal glory” and “to generate headlines for themselves.” Percoco was sentenced to six years in prison after his 2018 conviction for honest-services wire fraud; the conviction was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in a unanimous ruling in 2023.

Nvidia did not immediately respond when asked if the parameters of the investigation would be affected by the new claim. A spokeswoman for Wachtell, Lipton declined to comment for the article on behalf of the firm and Kim.

Sources

This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Company claims are reported as claims. Cover image is AI-generated.