Jensen Huang has resigned as chief executive of Nvidia, creating uncertainty around the US chipmaker’s investment and supply commitments to an African artificial intelligence infrastructure project led by Cassava Technologies.

Huang’s departure followed a meeting of Nvidia’s board on Wednesday to consider removing him after reports of two extramarital affairs. He resigned on Thursday. The reports have not been independently verified.

One reported affair involved a Chinese businesswoman whom US authorities suspected of working for Beijing’s intelligence services. China denied that allegation. The other reportedly involved a senior Nvidia executive who reported to Huang, according to a report cited from The New York Times.

Nvidia’s role in Cassava’s expansion

Nvidia supplies processors to Cassava and also owns a stake in the company. Cassava, founded by Zimbabwean billionaire Strive Masiyiwa, is developing GPU infrastructure intended to support businesses seeking computing capacity for training and running AI models in Africa.

Cassava disclosed Nvidia’s equity investment in October 2025 but did not reveal its size. The company is seeking to develop a GPU cluster in Cape Town into a business spanning five countries. Its first data centre is operating in Cape Town, South Africa.

Cassava and Vodafone have announced a project in Egypt, while Kenya, Nigeria and Morocco are included in the company’s expansion plans. The rollout could cost as much as $720 million and is expected to involve the deployment of 12,000 Nvidia GPUs.

The timing of Huang’s resignation leaves open questions about whether Nvidia’s next leadership will maintain the same approach to regional investments and provide African operators with timely access to newer processors. The effect on the Cassava partnership has not been established.

Growing demand for local computing capacity

Huang spoke about Africa to Yahoo Finance three weeks before his resignation at an Nvidia conference in Berlin. Discussing the company’s global ambitions, he said, “There’s a reason why we’re in Africa,” and added, “We want to compete everywhere.”

Other projects are also expanding the continent’s access to Nvidia-powered computing. Altron said its Nvidia-powered facility in South Africa went live in October 2025 with five customers, including Lelapa AI, which develops speech tools for languages such as isiZulu and Sesotho.

A separate consortium involving Nvidia and South Korea’s Naver plans to build a data centre near Casablanca with capacity of up to 500 megawatts. The facility is intended, in part, to serve European customers.

Local data centres can give African customers greater control over where their data is processed. However, the continent’s development of computing infrastructure remains dependent on hardware and software supplied by US companies such as Nvidia.

If Nvidia becomes more selective under new leadership, African operators could require additional financing or major customers before proceeding with expansion. That remains a possibility rather than a confirmed outcome, and no decision about Cassava’s project has been announced.