Silicon Valley has weathered one scandal after another, as allegations of toxic workplaces, corporate misconduct and powerful executives’ personal relationships continue to unsettle the technology industry.
The latest controversy involves Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang and reported relationships with Alice Huang, a businesswoman alleged to have links to Chinese intelligence, and Kimberly Powell, 48, the company’s vice president of healthcare.
The claims reverberated across the technology sector, with Nvidia’s share price falling sharply after the allegations emerged.
Huang resigned as chief executive on Thursday after an internal investigation was opened, in a development that threatened to reshape the future of the multitrillion-dollar company.
Nvidia and Huang were also named in a proposed class-action lawsuit filed on Monday. The complaint alleges that shareholders were misled because the company concealed Huang’s alleged ties to Alice Huang.
The allegations surrounding Huang are only the latest scandal to engulf the influential men who have helped shape the modern technology industry.
Bill Gates
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has faced renewed scrutiny over extramarital relationships and his controversial association with Jeffrey Epstein, the late financier and convicted sex offender.
In recently disclosed closed-door testimony before the House Oversight Committee, Gates acknowledged several affairs during his marriage to Melinda Gates and identified three women with whom he had relationships.
Jensen Huang with his wife Lori. He resigned as chief executive on Thursday after an internal probe was launched into his reported affair with Alice Huang
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates arrives for a closed-door interview with the House Oversight Committee
Gates finalised his divorce from Melinda in 2021 after 27 years of marriage
He also alleged that Epstein tried to blackmail him after learning about his infidelity.
Gates, who divorced Melinda in 2021 following 27 years of marriage, named bridge player Mila Antonova, nuclear scientist Karima Nigmatulina and physician Alice Jacobs Nesselrodt, whom he met at a conference, as women with whom he had been unfaithful.
Documents linked to Epstein have also included allegations that Gates had relationships with Russian women, contracted a sexually transmitted infection and tried to keep the matter from his wife.
Gates has said his affairs were entirely separate from Epstein’s sexual exploitation and insisted that none involved Epstein’s victims.
He has described his relationship with Epstein between 2011 and 2014 as a “huge mistake,” saying he pursued the association because he wrongly believed it could help secure philanthropic funding.
However, questions about Gates’s conduct toward women in professional settings surfaced years before the Epstein revelations revived interest in his private life.
A 2021 investigation by The New York Times reported that Gates had pursued several women who worked at Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Microsoft’s board opened an investigation in 2019 into his attempt to begin an intimate relationship with a female employee nearly two decades earlier.
In one reported episode in 2006, Gates, then Microsoft’s chairman, attended a presentation by a female employee before leaving the meeting and emailing her almost immediately to ask her to dinner.
Several years later, he allegedly made a similar invitation to another woman employed by the Gates Foundation.
The New York Times said six employees of Microsoft, the foundation and the company managing the Gates family fortune believed those incidents, along with others, contributed to an uncomfortable workplace atmosphere.
Jeff Bezos
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also became embroiled in a major scandal after his relationship with media personality Lauren Sanchez triggered allegations of blackmail and an international hacking investigation.
The pair eventually married in Venice in 2025 at an elaborate ceremony attended by celebrities including Kim Kardashian and Oprah Winfrey. Bezos had proposed two years earlier with a ring reportedly worth $5 million.
Their romance initially drew attention for far less celebratory reasons. Bezos accused a major tabloid of extortion over intimate photographs he had sent to Sanchez, while investigators working for him alleged that Saudi Arabia was behind the leak.
Bezos met his first wife, MacKenzie Scott, in 1992. They had four children during their 27-year marriage.
On January 9, 2019, the couple announced their divorce in a joint statement, describing it as the outcome of a period of “loving exploration and trial separation.”
The following day, the National Enquirer published a sensational report claiming that Bezos had been having an affair with Sanchez, who was then married to Hollywood talent agent Patrick Whitesell.
Bezos became embroiled in controversy after his affair with media personality Lauren Sanchez became public
Bezos met his first wife, MacKenzie Scott, in 1992, and they had four children together
The article published intimate messages that Bezos had allegedly sent Sanchez as early as April 2018.
“I love you, alive girl. I will show you with my body, and my lips and my eyes, very soon,” one message reportedly said.
In another, he wrote: “I want to smell you, I want to breathe you in. I want to hold you tight.… I want to kiss your lips…. I love you. I am in love with you.”
The National Enquirer also said it possessed intimate photographs Bezos had sent to Sanchez.
The dispute escalated the following month, when Bezos published a blog post accusing the tabloid’s owner, David Pecker, of “extortion and blackmail.”
Bezos said the company had threatened to release intimate images of him and Sanchez unless he halted his investigation into how the messages and photographs had been obtained.
His post included internal emails from National Enquirer executives describing the material they allegedly held.
One image was characterised as a “below the belt selfie,” while another reportedly showed “a shirtless Mr. Bezos holding his phone in his left hand while wearing his wedding ring.”
“He’s wearing either tight black cargo pants or shorts and his semi-erect manhood is penetrating the zipper of said garment,” the email continued.
In March 2019, Gavin de Becker, the security consultant hired by Bezos to investigate the leak, said he believed Saudi Arabia had hacked the billionaire’s iPhone.
De Becker suggested the alleged operation could have been retaliation for critical coverage of Saudi Arabia in The Washington Post, which Bezos owns, including reporting on the killing of columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents.
United Nations officials said in 2020 that they were “reasonably certain” Saudi Arabia had played a role in hacking Bezos’s phone.
American Media Inc., the parent company of the National Enquirer, disputed that account and said its source was Michael Sanchez, Lauren Sanchez’s brother. Reports claimed he was paid $200,000 for supplying the material.
Michael Sanchez denied providing nude photographs. Lauren Sanchez nevertheless supported reports about his involvement, telling TMZ: “Michael is my older brother. He secretly provided my most personal information to the National Enquirer – a deep and unforgivable betrayal.”
Elon Musk
Tesla chief executive Elon Musk became the subject of controversy after reports said his friendship with Google co-founder Sergey Brin had broken down over an alleged affair with Brin’s then-wife, Nicole Shanahan.
The Wall Street Journal reported in 2022, citing people familiar with the matter, that Musk and Shanahan had a brief relationship in 2021.
The alleged affair was said to have contributed to Brin’s decision to file for divorce and ended the longstanding friendship between the two technology billionaires.
Musk strongly denied the report, writing on X: “I’ve only seen Nicole twice in three years, both times with many other people around. Nothing romantic.”
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The Wall Street Journal responded at the time: “We are confident in our sourcing, and we stand by our reporting.”
The allegations returned to public attention in 2024 after The New York Times published an investigation claiming that Musk and Shanahan had taken ketamine together at a private party in Miami in December 2021.
Citing eight sources and documents reviewed by its reporters, the newspaper said the pair had “disappeared together for several hours” during the event.
Three people told the publication that Shanahan later told Brin she had had sex with Musk, prompting the Google co-founder to file for divorce the following month.
Shanahan has also denied having an affair with Musk, describing the speculation to People magazine as “utterly debilitating.”
Musk strongly denied having a romantic relationship with Nicole Shanahan
Nicole Shanahan and Sergey Brin attend an awards ceremony in 2019
Sergey Brin
Before Musk’s alleged relationship with Shanahan became a headline, Google co-founder Sergey Brin had faced a scandal of his own involving a company employee.
Reports in 2013 said Brin had been involved with Amanda Rosenberg, a marketing manager working on the Google Glass project.
Brin was then married to Anne Wojcicki, founder of biotechnology company 23andMe. They had been married for six years and had two young children.
Rosenberg worked closely with Brin to promote Google Glass, the project he had championed at Google’s secretive research division, Google X.
During that period, Rosenberg became friendly with Wojcicki, who later discovered explicit messages exchanged between her husband and the younger employee.
Vanity Fair reported that Wojcicki was blindsided by the relationship.
The situation was further complicated because Rosenberg was reportedly dating Hugo Barra, a senior executive on Google’s Android team.
By April 2013, Brin had moved out of the couple’s large Los Altos estate and into another nearby property they owned.
Despite the end of their marriage, Brin and Wojcicki reportedly maintained a cordial relationship while co-parenting their children.
The affair nonetheless caused turmoil inside Google, where co-founder Larry Page was said to be particularly angry about the situation.
One source told Vanity Fair: “Larry is so ethically strict…. I heard Larry was insanely upset by this whole situation and wasn’t talking to Sergey… At Google, some people were furious internally, especially women, that Sergey and Amanda were not [professionally] separated.”
Google had no formal policy banning workplace relationships, however, and neither Brin nor Rosenberg was removed from the company.
Rosenberg faced intense media attention and online abuse after the relationship became public.
She later spoke about experiencing severe clinical depression during and after the scandal, eventually leaving Google to pursue a career as a writer.
Eric Schmidt
Former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt has been linked to at least five women during his marriage to Wendy Boyle, whom he married in 1980.
Their relationship has been described as an “open marriage.” Although the couple reportedly separated in 2011, they have remained legally married despite the controversies surrounding Schmidt’s personal life.
One of Schmidt’s earliest high-profile relationships was with Marcy Simon, a prominent New York public relations executive. The pair were first linked in the early 2000s.
Schmidt appeared unconcerned about concealing the relationship. Their romance became widely known, and Simon openly described him as her “boyfriend.”
Simon was married to another man when the relationship began, but later divorced and continued seeing Schmidt. They reportedly remained romantically involved until around 2014.
During a break in that relationship, Schmidt became involved with CNBC journalist Kate Bohner, who was reportedly with him from 2006 to 2009.
Bohner first met Schmidt in the 1990s while researching a Forbes profile of the technology executive. They reconnected years later after Schmidt invited her to produce videos for YouTube, which Google had recently acquired.
Eric Schmidt and his wife Wendy Schmidt at a gala in November 2026
Eric Schmidt leaves his private jet with former girlfriend Michelle Ritter
The relationship soon became serious. Bohner believed Schmidt would eventually divorce Boyle and that she might become his second wife.
She met his daughters, had keys to his home and frequently travelled with him aboard his private jet.
After several years, however, Bohner became increasingly frustrated by media coverage that characterised her as Schmidt’s “mistress.”
She eventually concluded that Schmidt did not intend to leave his wife, and the relationship ended.
Vanity Fair also reported that Schmidt had brief relationships with Lisa Shields, vice president for media relations at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Wendi Deng, the former wife of Rupert Murdoch.
In a note written by Deng and obtained by the publication after their relationship ended, she wrote: “I achieved my purpose of Eric saw me looking so gorgeous and so fantastic and so young, so cool, so chic, so stylish, so funny and he cannot have me.”
“I’m not ever feel sad … about losing Eric … Plus he is really really ugly. Unattractive … and fat. Not stylish at all try to wear hip clothes…. I’m so so soo soooo happy I’m not with him.”
In 2020, when Schmidt was in his mid-60s, he began dating Michelle Ritter, an entrepreneur in her twenties.
Ritter was studying law at Columbia University when one of her professors introduced her to the billionaire.
She was seeking funding at the time for StarX, an online sports-fan platform she hoped to launch.
The relationship soon became both romantic and commercial. In 2021, the pair founded an investment firm called Steel Perlot, with Schmidt committing at least $100 million to the venture.
Ritter increasingly appeared with Schmidt at high-profile events and was introduced to influential figures in Silicon Valley, including OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and technology entrepreneur Alexandr Wang.
The relationship later deteriorated. Ritter reportedly became frustrated that Schmidt had not followed through on a promise to divorce Wendy, while their business venture also struggled. The couple had separated by 2024.
Their contentious breakup took a more serious turn the following year, when Ritter made a series of allegations against Schmidt.
In November 2025, she accused him of sexual assault and surveillance.
Ritter alleged that Schmidt had “forcibly raped” her aboard a yacht off Mexico in 2021 and had sex with her without her consent during the 2023 Burning Man festival.
She also claimed that Schmidt had created a “backdoor” into Google’s servers, enabling him to access and monitor her and others with Google accounts.
Schmidt has strongly denied the allegations. In March 2026, a Los Angeles judge ruled that Ritter’s claims should be handled through private arbitration.
An arbitrator ruled in Schmidt’s favour in April, finding that Ritter had defamed him through her sexual-assault allegations. She was ordered to pay $10.7 million in damages.
