Who is Lori Mills, NVIDIA CEO's wife of 40 years
What's the story
Jensen Huang, the co-founder and CEO of NVIDIA, is at the center of a major scandal after he admitted to cheating on his wife, Lori Mills, with alleged Chinese spy Alice Huang. In an internal message to NVIDIA employees, Huang admitted to having an affair and apologized to his wife and children, saying, "I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did."
Personal background
Who is Lori Mills?
Lori has not yet publicly commented on the affair or the investigation around her husband's close relationship to the Chinese businesswoman
Lori Mills, now Lori Huang, has been married to the NVIDIA CEO for over 41 years.
The couple met at Oregon State University in the early 1980s while studying electrical engineering. Huang was just 17 at the time, and Lori was 19.
Timeline
Took him six months to ask Mills out
They married in 1985 after graduating.
"I was the youngest kid in school, in the class. There were 250 students and three girls," Huang recalled during a speech at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2024.
"I looked like I was about 12," he said, confessing that it took him six months to build up the courage to ask Mills out.
Couple
'I had a date every Sunday
He claimed to have used his young-looking appearance to approach Lori, who was his lab partner.
"I walked up to her and I said, 'do you want to see my homework?'"
He also told her that she would get straight As if they did their homework together every Sunday night.
"As a result I had a date every Sunday."
Ongoing investigation
Investigation into allegations
"Just to make sure that eventually she marries me, I told her that by the time I'm 30, I'm going to be CEO," Huang continued, admitting he had no idea what he was talking about.
"And then we got married."
After graduating, they worked in Silicon Valley as microchip designers, with Huang telling the New Yorker that Mills made more than he did.
Mills reportedly worked as a microchip designer at Hewlett-Packard.
Family legacy
Family's connection to tech
A few years after they married in 1985, Mills left the workforce to raise their two children.
In 1993, Huang founded NVIDIA when he was 30, true to his words.
The Huangs founded the Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang Foundation in 2007 to support education, healthcare, and technology research.
Their children, Spencer and Madison, have also pursued careers in tech.