Got this newsletter from a friend? Subscribe for free →

Happy Thursday to everyone except Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who is no doubt wishing he had kept it in his pants.

On Wednesday morning, it seemed impossible that Nvidia would ever let go of CEO Jensen Huang, even if he did have an affair with an alleged Chinese spy. I personally thought it would never happen. But it seems like all it took was another sex scandal hours later for Nvidia's board to change its mind.

Nvidia's board has reportedly already begun searching for a replacement for Jensen Huang, according to Bloomberg, which is a lot harder than it looks. This is partly due to the company's peculiar structure, in which Huang has 60 direct reports and approves every major decision. The chipmaker has no succession plan.

Despite the Huang’s dire situation, he can at least count on landing a job quickly if he does get fired. Shortly after news broke of his new sex scandal, Elon Musk said it “would be an honor” to hire him.

Nvidia was down roughly 7% in pre-market trading at the time of writing of this newsletter.

Let's get started.

— Jody Serrano

→ Jensen Huang’s sex scandal: the aftermath
→ Investors to Anthropic: Please take our money
→ AI cheating has no solution except this

...and all the AI news we couldn’t fit here.

The news: Reports of a second extramarital affair by Nvidia's Jensen Huang rocked the AI industry on Wednesday evening, sending the company's stock crashing down.

The second affair was reportedly with one of Huang's subordinates, Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of health care, according to The New York Times. The pair were apparently caught on video "being affectionate" at a San Jose hotel in March during an Nvidia conference.

A bystander who recorded the interaction on their phone, the Times reported, was quickly identified by Huang's security and asked to sign a nondisclosure agreement.

The takeaway: Many believed it was highly unlikely that Nvidia's deferential board would fire Huang, but successive revelations, including an analysis of the CEO's shifting stance toward China since 2022, have shown that it would be increasingly difficult to keep him around.

The news: Investors really want a piece of Anthropic's IPO, with Bloomberg reporting on Wednesday that orders for shares of the AI company have exceeded the number available several times over.

This is good news for Anthropic, whose IPO many see as an important test of investor appetite and confidence in AI. The company is currently trying to drum up interest in its debut with a series of events during its IPO roadshow, including a reported livestream with JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon.

Anthropic is set to raise up to $64.4 billion in its IPO and an additional $26 billion in private placement, the latter of which includes large commitments from players like Nvidia, Google, and AMD.

Anthropic is expected to go public on Nov. 19.

The takeaway: It remains to be seen whether Anthropic can dethrone SpaceX, which obtained the world's largest IPO valuation to date at $1.77 trillion. Anthropic is currently targeting a valuation of about $1.4 trillion on a fully diluted basis.

The news: The UK's higher education regulator said it has become increasingly difficult to detect AI use by students, a problem that poses a threat to the credibility of degrees and disincentivizes students from engaging in learning.

In a report released Wednesday, the Office for Students warned educators about the challenges arising from unsupervised assessments, including essays, dissertations, and open-book exams, which students can frequently complete at a high level using AI. Furthermore, evidence suggests that AI detection tools are not consistent or reliable at stopping this behavior, the regulator said.

To address the situation, the OfS recommended institutions go back to using assessments such as in-person exams, oral exams, and presentations.

The takeaway: Efforts to limit AI have garnered mixed results, especially given the technology's growing presence in essential educational tools, such as Google Search. While changing the type of assessments in school is a good start, it's still only one "checkpoint," and I wonder whether it can have a meaningful, long-term impact on the learning experience. After all, you can pass a test and have no idea what you just did.

Clegg explains what tech leaders did wrong when they aligned themselves with Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, which did not stop China’s AI advancement and weakened domestic support for the technology.
Read more →

Could Huang, Nvidia and company's board be held liable over affair scandal?

Why Do A.I. Agents Go Rogue? Because They’re ‘Incorrigible.’

United Airlines Is Banning AI Bots From Booking Flights

What happens to mathematics when AI becomes an oracle?

Stanford's century-long AI study admits it's already out of date

CoreWeave turns to customer prepayments, shorter contracts to fund AI growth

Schumer accuses Trump of defending Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at cost of national security

AWS gives developers a free local stand-in for its cloud, built from scratch by AI agents

Scoop: Lutnick stalled Trump's Nvidia–China chip curbs after Oval talks

A 13-Year-Old Asked AI About Suicide on Her School Laptop. It Didn’t Get Flagged for Weeks