Lori Huang leads the Huangs’ $9 billion foundation and co-trusts most of their Nvidia stake
Key Takeaways
- •Nvidia's board appointed Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress as interim CEO following Jensen Huang's resignation.
- •Nvidia's board is investigating reports that Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort but stated it has no reason to believe national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised.
- •The independent directors retained Joon H. Kim and his firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to conduct the investigation, while China's foreign ministry called the spying allegations groundless.
- •Lori Huang serves as president of the Jen-Hsun & Lori Huang Foundation, which reported approximately $9.2 billion in assets at the end of 2024.
- •As of March 23, Lori and Jensen Huang were co-trustees of three family trusts holding nearly 669 million Nvidia shares, keeping formal authority over the bulk of the family's holdings independent of his standing at the company.

Jensen Huang resigned as CEO of Nvidia, the company announced Thursday, after reports of two extramarital affairs—one involving a suspected Chinese spy and another reportedly involving Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care, according to The New York Times.
In a company memo made public on Nov. 8, Huang acknowledged the conduct, writing: “I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry.” Lori Huang has not commented publicly on the memo.
Huang’s departure has raised questions about the future leadership of Nvidia, the $4 trillion chipmaking company he has long represented publicly. The board appointed Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress as interim CEO. Nvidia’s board also said Nov. 8 that it was investigating reports that Huang had been the target of a foreign intelligence effort, while stating that it “has no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised.”
The independent directors later hired former acting U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim and his firm, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, to conduct the investigation. China’s foreign ministry has called the spying allegations groundless. Nvidia’s board statement and a statement from the independent directors addressed the matter.
While Huang’s corporate role is changing, his wife, Lori Huang, holds the top position at the family’s philanthropic foundation. She is president of the Jen-Hsun & Lori Huang Foundation, which reported approximately $9.2 billion in assets at the end of 2024, according to its most recent tax filing reviewed by Fortune. Jensen Huang is listed as the foundation’s secretary and chief financial officer. Lori has held the presidency on every available filing dating back to 2014.
Her responsibilities also extend to most of the couple’s Nvidia shares. As of March 23, Lori and Jensen were co-trustees of three family trusts holding nearly 669 million Nvidia shares, according to Nvidia’s latest proxy statement reviewed by Fortune. Those shares represent most of the 870.6 million Nvidia shares that the proxy identifies as beneficially owned by Jensen. That figure, worth roughly $151 billion as of late Nov. 11, also includes stock held by the foundation. Because trusteeship is separate from corporate employment, that arrangement keeps Lori Huang’s formal authority over the bulk of the family’s holdings independent of Jensen’s standing at Nvidia.
The proxy further states that, as foundation board members since 2007, Lori and Jensen may be deemed to share voting and investment power over the foundation’s 58.7 million Nvidia shares, although neither has a financial interest in those shares. The filing is available through the Securities and Exchange Commission. Proxy statements, filed annually with the SEC, are where public companies disclose insider compensation and beneficial ownership.
Lori Huang’s role in the foundation
Lori Huang, born Lori Mills, met Jensen Huang when they were assigned as lab partners in an electrical fundamentals class at Oregon State University, where she graduated in 1985. He was 17 and she was 19. They married in 1985, and she left the workforce several years later to raise their two children, Madison and Spencer. Both now work at Nvidia.
In an interview with Singapore-based media outlet CNA, Jensen Huang said, “every moment of Nvidia, she was there.”
The foundation’s growth has followed the Huangs’ donations of Nvidia stock and the company’s rise in value. Its net assets increased from approximately $819 million at the end of 2020 to more than $9.1 billion at the end of 2024. About $8.6 billion of its holdings that year were in stocks, according to its tax filings, and the foundation recorded approximately $5 billion in paper gains in 2024. Nvidia’s proxy shows that the foundation held 58.7 million Nvidia shares as of March.
In June and September 2024, Jensen and Lori, acting as co-trustees of their living trust, transferred a combined 1.3 million Nvidia shares to the foundation, according to Jensen’s Form 4 filings—the SEC disclosures corporate insiders must submit for stock transactions—and the foundation’s tax return. The foundation valued those donations at approximately $160 million. In September, the trust also transferred 688,000 shares to an unnamed donor-advised fund, a vehicle that holds charitable assets while donors recommend grants to nonprofits over time.
The foundation reported paying no salaries in 2024. Its only listed officers, Lori and Jensen, each reported working one unpaid hour per week. Its paid outside assistance consisted of an investment manager and an accounting firm.
The foundation distributed approximately $126.3 million in grants in 2024. More than $82 million went to Schwab Charitable Fund, which sponsors donor-advised funds. The filing states that the foundation made a contribution to a donor-advised fund over which it or an insider had advisory privileges. Other recipients included Oregon State—the university where the Huangs met—which received approximately $30.5 million, and Crisis Text Line, the nonprofit text-based crisis support service, which received about $10.8 million.
The filing also states that the foundation was required to distribute roughly $344.6 million in 2025 under federal payout rules, which obligate private foundations to pay out a minimum share of their assets for charitable purposes each year. Its 2025 return, which would show whether it met that requirement, has not been made public, making it the key upcoming filing for tracking the foundation’s giving.
Public announcements in 2025 said the foundation matched $22.5 million in donations to the California College of the Arts. In November, the Huangs announced a multiyear commitment of $5 million annually to San Francisco Opera.
In 2026, the foundation purchased approximately $108.3 million worth of computing capacity from cloud computing provider CoreWeave to donate to universities and nonprofit research institutes, according to a filing reviewed by Reuters. Vanderbilt University also announced a $75 million matching gift from the Huangs for its art, architecture and design campus in San Francisco. Those commitments continue a giving pattern that has leaned toward higher education and the arts.
Nvidia and the foundation did not respond to Fortune’s requests for comment. This article was originally published on Fortune.com.