Nvidia board's independent directors hire former top Manhattan federal prosecutor to lead investigation tied to CEO Jensen Huang

The independent members of Nvidia's board of directors have hired Joon H. Kim, a former acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan, and his law firm, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, to conduct “a thorough and independent investigation,” the Santa Clara chipmaker said in a one-sentence statement Tuesday, Nov. 10.

Independent directors are board members who do not work for the company.  The board announced the investigation Sunday, Nov. 8, after reports that founder and CEO Jensen Huang “has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort.”  The board said then that it had “no reason to believe” national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised and that it has confidence in Huang.  Huang told employees in an email the same day that he supports the investigation and “will cooperate fully.”

Who is leading it

Kim was the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, the federal prosecutors' office for Manhattan and nearby counties, from 2017 to 2018, according to his biography on the firm's website.  In that job he supervised more than 220 federal prosecutors, whose cases included securities fraud, theft of trade secrets and economic espionage, meaning theft of business secrets for a foreign government.  He is now a litigation partner at Wachtell Lipton, a New York law firm founded in 1965, and handles internal investigations for companies and their boards, the firm says.

What is still unknown

The statement does not say which directors sit on the investigating committee, how long the review will take or whether its findings will be made public.  The board said Nov. 8 it would give updates “as appropriate.”  Nvidia designs graphics processing units, or GPUs, the chips widely used to build and run artificial intelligence systems.

Source:  Statement from the independent members of the NVIDIA board, Nov. 10, 2026; Statement from NVIDIA board of directors, Nov. 8, 2026; Jensen Huang, “A Message to Our Company,” Nov. 8, 2026; Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz:  Joon H. Kim; Wachtell Lipton:  About the firm.