Lori Huang, the alleged Chinese spy, and the new aristocracy of tech divorces

First Amazon, then Microsoft, and finally along came Nvidia (no company has ever had a more fascinating name). Perhaps this middle-aged gentleman, Jensen Huang, is also preparing for a divorce. Distinguishing features: of late he’s been fond of black leather jackets, even though he had neither the face nor the shoulders to pull them off, and in fact he looked like a caricature – but we’ll come back to that later. On Instagram Reels, two main narratives have emerged regarding the “Nvidia CEO and the Chinese spy who double-crossed him” affair. The first highlights the irony of Huang’s past speeches on focus and purpose: “A man must look to his purpose!” he declared in a public address, “Don’t get distracted!” Then there are the AI-generated videos of her, Lori, his girlfriend since college days. She has the welcoming face of a good person, a ‘tech first lady’ in the mould of Jill Biden. The caption ‘no prenup = 81 billion’ stands out – because it seems they didn’t sign the prenuptial agreement 40 years ago – whilst on holiday with lads who look like Jude Bellingham in the new advert for American underwear.

MacKenzie Scott, Melinda French Gates. And perhaps they will form a formidable trio with Lori Huang; these were the great women behind the great men – in reality, they are behind the biggest wave of capitalism, the recent tech boom. These were the ‘garage girls’, the true visionaries who teamed up with the genius when he was in his twenties and spent his days in a tracksuit, and who is now a plutocrat posing as Serpico. This is why these are interesting divorces, first and foremost: because they are static. In the equation presented to the public, it seems impossible to factor in the variables of anxiety and pain, even though this is a marriage in tatters. All that is observed is the colossal operation to rebalance their assets.

There is no room in the imagination even for the Chinese spy, the quiet blackmailer. In the story, there are only: the fool (him) and the newly saved woman (her). The tech giants had not really considered the wild card. The creators of artificial intelligence failed to see an intelligence slipping through their fingers which, once beyond their control, would do far worse than any shareholder discontent: it can take away half of what you have. More than just divorcees, they are widows with living husbands; it is a sort of brand-new aristocracy with no lineage, built upon the dissolution of marriage. The interesting collective psychological trait is that one simply cannot imagine them being unhappy; the husbands are the Sisyphuses, whilst they stand atop the mountain, cheerful and philanthropic. The first wife of the tech genius ought to be placed under a microscope and subjected to an in-depth analysis: they are the antithesis of Diana Spencer; only inverted comparisons spring to mind. The fact is that they are extremely difficult to study; they vanish. The ex-wives are off somewhere, who knows where, enjoying life in ways we cannot even imagine. There are almost certainly non-disclosure agreements regarding their agreed disappearance; of course, we are not so naïve as to think that this silence is a sign of elegance.

Future generations will recount these stories more effectively, and the first wives of the ‘tech brothers’ will be the figures who appear only at the beginning of the legend, when the genius has vanished, leaving behind only an inept, obsessive twenty-year-old. They were the ones who made a human being out of a man who was not destined to become all too human; they provided the main pillar of a functioning existence: the appearance of normality. Once the venture was completed and the garage was worth millions of billions, the genius forgot his prehistory and recognised only the vain new version of himself (Huang’s leather jacket spoke for itself). His ex-wife remains the sole custodian of the truth, and so Freud would say: one must get rid of her. Chinese spies and various Lauren Sánchezes are one and the same. First wives are the Medusas of history; you can no longer look them in the eye because they saw God before the creation.