Stephen Neal is key player in Jensen Huang probe

Nvidia’s investigation into CEO Jensen Huang over his affair with an alleged Chinese spy may hinge on decisions by company board member Stephen Neal, a longtime white-collar defense attorney whose extensive resume includes dealing with corporate scandals.

Neal, the former CEO of the Cooley law firm, is Nvidia’s lead independent director and head of corporate governance.

Nvidia has not named the investigators who will probe the allegations surrounding Huang, but the company has said its board is leading the probe with help from outside counsel.

Neal’s experience makes him a likely key figure in the investigation.

Nvidia’s board has said there is “no reason to believe that either national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised” by Huang’s admitted affair with Alice Huang, who had been an executive with Megaspeed, a Singapore-based Nvidia customer.

China dismissed U.S. intelligence conclusions that Alice Huang was a spy, which were first reported by The New York Times.

Jensen Huang, one of the most powerful businessmen in the artificial intelligence boom, has said he would “cooperate fully” with the investigation.

Nvidia’s board has 10 independent members, including a former president of Taco Bell, a former Eli Lilly executive, and the former vice chairman from Goldman Sachs.

Neal has litigated cases across securities, bankruptcies, antitrust, takeovers and more, according to his Cooley bio. And he’s conducted several investigations for multiple boards of directors, including at General Motors, where he advised the company in disputes with Ross Perot.

Neal has also conducted several investigations for committees of directors and independent directors, though most of those client names are confidential. He’s also handled investigations with the Securities and Exchange Commission for both corporations and individuals.

When he joined Nvidia, Neal was also the chairman of the board of directors at Levi Strauss. He stepped down in 2021 after reaching the mandatory board retirement age of 72, the company said at the time. The retailer did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on Monday.

Neal joined Nvidia’s board in 2019. He is chairman emeritus and senior counsel at Cooley, and was the firm’s CEO from 2001 to 2008.

Neal did not respond to a request for comment from CNBC.

Neal’s past clients include Elizabeth Holmes, the convicted fraudster who founded the blood-testing startup Theranos, and late financier Charles Keating Jr.

Neal and other Cooley lawyers represented Holmes in a class-action civil lawsuit in Arizona federal court over Theranos’ blood-testing services, which produced bogus results. In September 2019, Neal and his colleagues asked to be removed from the case because Holmes could not pay their legal bills.

A judge granted that withdrawal motion less than two months later.

In 1989, Neal was hired to represent Keating, who had become the face of the massive savings and loan scandal in the United States as head…