The world’s biggest divorce could be happening in the near future between Nvidia boss Jensen Huang, the world’s tenth-richest man, worth $155 billion, and his wife of 41 years, Lori. Because California is a community property state, the lack of a prenuptial agreement means their massive tech fortune is legally viewed as an equal partnership. On the emotional side, no amount of money can match over four decades of companionship and holding the fort while the soldier marches on to test fortunes and build something great.
Lori chose to take a backseat professionally and let Jensen shine despite earning more than him as a chip designer at Silicon Graphics before leaving work to raise their children. It was on this sacrifice, among others, that the foundation of Nvidia was set. Perhaps acknowledging this, the 63-year-old Jensen made Lori co-trustee of the family living trust holding the vast majority of the 811.5 million shares listed under his name.
Lori has no job or board seat at Nvidia, but she is the queen of the AI first family. With a divorce looming over their heads, the foundation is trembling. If the marriage will crack, it will make Lori one of the richest women in the world. The couple tied the knot in 1985. Under California law, everything built during a marriage belongs to both spouses equally and must be split 50-50 unless both agree otherwise. Unfortunately for Jensen Huang, Nvidia was founded in 1993 (eight years after the Huangs married), so almost all of it counts as shared property.
Jensen’s latest SEC insider filing from September 18 shows 811.5 million shares. Of those, 671 million are likely to be split. Even half of that mammoth wealth is 335.5 million shares, worth at least $60 billion (every $10 move in Nvidia’s share price changes the value of a hypothetical half by about $3.5 billion). This calculation excludes the 140.5 million shares held in two irrevocable trusts and the foundation’s shares because Nvidia states neither spouse has a financial interest in them.
Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates both divorced in Washington, which is a community property state, too. The difference is that Washington courts divide assets on a “just and equitable” basis, which gives them room to approve an uneven split. In Bezos’s 2019 settlement, MacKenzie Scott walked away with about a quarter of the couple’s Amazon shares, worth $38 billion at the time. Bezos kept the other three-quarters, leaving him with about $38 billion more in Amazon stock than he would have kept in a 50-50 split of that stake.
The Gates numbers are murkier. Forbes estimates that Melinda French Gates received $25 billion. That’s roughly $40 billion shy of half the $130 billion Forbes put Bill’s fortune at when they announced their divorce. The couple kept their separation agreement private, so the $40 billion gap is a comparison on paper.
If history is any indicator, bypassing California’s 50-50 rule without a prenup is a futile battle. It was witnessed in the case of early Google programmer Scott Hassan’s bitter seven-year legal war when he tried to offer his ex-wife, Allison Huynh, a mere 10 percent. Here’s the irony. Jensen was willing to stomach a multibillion-dollar tax bill in California. “The fact that I can afford to pay $8 billion in taxes over five years is a privilege,” he told CBS Sunday Morning, as reported by Fortune. Voters rejected the billionaire tax, but another California law could put more than seven times that figure on Lori’s side of the ledger. If the Nvidia shares in the calculation above qualified as community property and were split down the middle, her half alone would be worth about $60 billion.
