“Saturday Night Live” spent its cold open this weekend lampooning former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, whose affair with a woman suspected of spying for China has upended the company and cost him his job.
The show brought back Bowen Yang, who left the cast in December, for a surprise appearance as a leather jacket-wearing Huang. Yang’s character introduced himself as “Jensen ‘Hide Your Wife’ Huang.”
“Ladies, when you invite Jensen over, you know what’s about to go down: the S&P 500,” Yang joked, referencing the hit to Nvidia’s stock price.
He continued with another dig at the company’s market turmoil: “That’s why I’m into BDSM: Breaking Da Stock Market.”
Yang’s Huang also offered a tongue-in-cheek warning to the audience: “Fellas, don’t be like me. Remember, women don’t like guys like us. That’s how we became guys like us.”
The sketch’s main plot featured host John Mulaney as a CIA official briefing tech executives — Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel and Sam Altman, played by Jeremy Culhane, Andrew Dismukes, James Austin Johnson and Ben Marshall — on how to spot foreign spies.
“America needs you to learn the difference between a woman who would actually want to have sex with you and a woman who is clearly a spy,” Mulaney’s character said, before drawing a Venn diagram showing no overlap between “Beautiful Women” and people genuinely interested in the executives’ opinions.
When Mulaney asked what it meant if a woman fit both categories, Jane Wickline’s version of Dario Amodei guessed, “An angel?!” Mulaney replied: “No. They are a spy.”
The scandal behind the jokes
The sketch aired two days after Huang, 63, stepped down as Nvidia’s CEO on Thursday following weeks of mounting controversy over his alleged affairs with multiple women.
For roughly a year, US intelligence officials have suspected that one of Huang’s alleged mistresses, Alice Huang — an executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed who is not related to the former Nvidia chief — may have been spying for Beijing. Investigators began scrutinizing her after Megaspeed was accused of illegally rerouting Nvidia AI chips to China in violation of a US export ban imposed over national security concerns.
The scandal grew further after The New York Times reported Wednesday that Huang had also allegedly been involved with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of healthcare. Reuters reported Thursday that a third Nvidia employee had also allegedly had a relationship with Huang.
Huang, who married his wife Lori in 1985, apologized publicly after the first affair allegations surfaced. “I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did,” he said Sunday.
Nvidia, the world’s second-most valuable company behind Apple, has seen its stock fall roughly 20% since the start of November as the scandal unfolded. Huang has agreed to testify before Congress before Thanksgiving.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login