Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Cheated On His Marriage With An Alleged Spy

Happy Monday! It's November 9, 2026, and this is The Morning Shift — your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. This is where you'll find the most important stories that are shaping the way Americans drive and get around.

In this morning's edition we're looking at Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's affair, and rough times over at Tesla and SpaceX. We'll also look at dealerships sharing your most sensitive conversations with AI, and Toyota trying to get a break on tariffs. 

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Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO and leather jacket enthusiast, cheated on his wife. This is a simple fact, admitted by Huang. The part of the situation that's still up for debate is whether the woman Huang cheated with is a Chinese spy sent to gather intel on Nvidia's precious advanced micro devices. If so, it could spell trouble — not just for Nvidia, not just for autonomous vehicles, but for everything wrapped up in the AI bubble. From Bloomberg:

Nvidia Corp.'s investigation into Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang's affair with an alleged Chinese spy raises a series of once-unthinkable questions, including whether the man at the center of the AI boom is at risk of losing his job.

Nvidia shares slid about 5% in premarket trading after Huang disclosed the romantic relationship in a memo to employees, a decline that would mean a roughly $225 billion loss in market capitalization. The company's board is assembling a committee of independent directors who will work with outside counsel to investigate the matter.

With the stunning revelation, investors need to consider a range of possibilities that could affect not just Huang and Nvidia, but the entire artificial intelligence industry. Nvidia, the leading maker of AI chips, has used its financial strength to back dozens of major players, from frontier labs like OpenAI to cloud computing players like CoreWeave Inc. Huang has also been among the most forceful advocates for the benefits of AI, from Washington to Wall Street.

If there's one thing that rich guys love more than acting incredibly divorced, it's cheating on their spouses in order to get divorced in the first place. There's a possible trajectory here where Jensen Huang's inability to keep it in his pants crashes the global economy — the AI bubble, its circular financing, and everything invested in it all comes tumbling down. 

Tesla and SpaceX have been teasing a merger for a while now, bringing CEO Elon Musk's biggest companies — Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, xAI — under one cult of personality stock ticker. Shares have been climbing in anticipation of such a merger, but the midterm blue wave likely took that off the table. Now, investors are balking. From Reuters:

Nov 5 (Reuters) – Shares of Elon Musk's companies ‌SpaceX and Tesla slumped on Thursday, extending losses from the previous session, as investors worried that Democratic wins in the US midterm elections could slow data center build-outs.

SpaceX, which has leaned into the ​AI data center boom, is headquartered in Texas alongside Tesla, where Democrats won ​the races for Senate, governor and attorney general on Tuesday. Musk ⁠had spent heavily to back Republicans in the midterms.

The selloff also reflects worries that ​Democratic gains could bring tougher scrutiny of Musk's businesses.

Tesla has recovered some since this Reuters piece — it's up a bit over 5% today as of this writing — but it's still down from pre-midterm highs. SpaceX is on a near-identical trajectory, but slightly higher. Don't worry, Elon still has money.

Are you concerned that AI might not be invading enough of your private life? Well, now you can rest easy with the knowledge that dealerships are bringing it in — not just on the sales floor, but in the F&I box. Some dealers are recording those conversations, and running them through AI in order to upsell you more effectively. From Automotive News:

Until this year, Len Stoler Automotive Group's finance offices generally sold one product per vehicle.

Now, that number is closer to two. The group says employees — coached in part by artificial intelligence — deserve some of the credit.

Len Stoler Automotive uses AI-powered software to record sales interactions with customers. Part training tool and part compliance coach, the technology provides feedback to the group's sales teams to help them highlight the value of a product, rather than push a customer to buy more.

Auto News frames this as a positive, a way for dealers to make more money, while to me it's horrifying. Yeah, why not share all my most private financial information with an AI in real time — an AI with the explicit intent of upselling me on stuff I don't need? Even if it doesn't work, which is likely, that AI now has my financial data to lose in some data breach down the line. Cut it out, dealers. 

When Audi promised to build a factory in the U.S., it got a tariff discount from the Trump administration in exchange. Now Toyota, like a middle child feeling left out, is asking if that means it can have extra dessert too. From Automotive News: 

When the Trump administration reportedly floated some level of tariff relief to Audi before the election in exchange for a commitment to build an assembly plant in Georgia, no one was more interested than Toyota Motor Corp.

The Japanese automaker paid more than $8 billion in tariffs during its last fiscal year, which ended March 31, dwarfing the bill from every other automaker struggling with the duties President Donald Trump imposed in early 2025.

Now, as Toyota works feverishly to lower the tariff bill, it is asking the Commerce Department whether the preelection offer floated to Audi for its $4 billion plant in Georgia also applies to Toyota because of the $3.6 billion factory it said in July it would build in Texas.

Toyota doesn't have the best bargaining position here — it already agreed to build a Texas factory, without a tariff deal in exchange — but it can't hurt the company to try. The Trump administration is on the back foot now, and it might be more willing to make deals in exchange for good press. 

Here's hoping we've dodged another.

We're nearly back below $4 per gallon, which seemed impossible just months ago. Is this the power of Woke? 

I saw a fantastic off-Broadway play recently that used this track, and it's been bopping around in my head ever since. What a song. Go see "Degenerates" if you can.