Nvidia’s impact on health care

The lead Ruth’s take

The hits keep coming! Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s personal scandals are now a healthcare story. Of the three affairs that Huang reportedly had, per the New York Times, one was with the behemoth chipmaker’s health care business head, Kimberly Powell.

Powell, who reported directly to Huang, has been working at Nvidia for 18 years. In her time there, Nvidia has struck several prominent partnerships with pharmaceutical companies, medical imaging companies, and genomics companies, including Eli Lilly, Roche, and Illumina. One area the company seems keen to propel is AI-driven drug discovery.

Nvidia has also invested billions across the AI landscape and has a portfolio of some 125 companies, almost a fifth of which are health care companies. These span a variety of areas from transcription through an investment in Abridge to virtual nursing and hospital monitoring, with an investment in Artisight. Huang himself has a perspective and interest in health care. Specifically, he thinks that AI is on the brink of bringing major advancements in science:

“Whether it’s in energy science, in climate science, of course in biology and all the places in healthcare and drug discovery, the physical sciences, the breakthroughs are incredible,” he said at the Milken Institute’s 2026 Global Conference in May. “If you could just see all of the things that I see every day, you would be so fired up, so excited about the future.”

Something we’re asking ourselves at SO is: what are the repercussions of Huang’s absence at Nvidia for health care?

Reporting from The Wall Street Journal highlights how the company was negotiating billions in financial guarantees to companies that otherwise couldn’t afford its chips, effectively financing future demand for its chips. This raises a bigger question: as both a supplier of technology and a source of capital in the AI ecosystem, what does turbulence at Nvidia mean for health tech operators? Will funding dry up? Could chip prices come down?

Please reach out with your thoughts on this. We’re working on an analysis as we speak and your on-the-ground perspectives are vital to our understanding of this very evolving situation.

Now onto the news.

—Ruth