Nvidia's CEO was the rock star of AI before his dramatic unravelling

In recent years, Jensen Huang has been riding high on the crest of the AI wave as his company Nvidia became one of the most valuable in the world.

It only took a few days for it to all come crashing down.

Back-to-back revelations of two affairs involving the CEO, including a romantic relationship with an alleged Chinese spy, upended his seemingly untouchable status as a leading tech figure and led to his resignation from the company he helped form.

His departure leaves uncertainty in the global stock market, which leans on his microchip company, and over the future of a US company seen as a linchpin in the country's race for AI dominance over China.

On Wednesday, reports emerged that the 63-year-old married man was said to have had an affair with a Nvidia colleague, coming just days after revelations surfaced of a romantic relationship with a woman alleged to be a spy for China.

This hit the company's shares, and they sank again after the New York Times reported that Huang had had a second affair with an executive at his own company.

Huang is well known in the technology, business and political world, but despite his company's rocketing rise over the past four years, he perhaps isn't as big a household name as fellow tech bros Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerburg.

However, Huang is probably more consequential to the development of AI across the world due to Nvidia making the best microchips in the business, which are used to power the technology.

The company, which is still valued at more than $4 trillion despite recent events, is at the centre of the AI race between the US and China, the world's tech and economic powerhouses.

This has led to Huang holding court with both US President Donald Trump and China's President XI Jinping. The leather-jacket wearing CEO has access to the world's powerful like few others.

It was at college where he met his current wife, Lori Mills. The pair were lab partners and married in 1985, eight years before Huang founded Nvidia.