The couple, through their Jen-Hsun & Lori Huang Foundation, has pledged $75 million in matching gifts toward a new art school at Vanderbilt University, which is taking over the soon-to-close California College of the Arts campus at 145 Hooper Street. They also committed $5 million annually to the San Francisco Opera starting in late 2025—a gift the financially strained opera called "transformational."

Reports that Jensen Huang had at least three extramarital affairs—one with a suspected Chinese spy, according to officials cited by the New York Times—have fueled widespread speculation about a divorce. Lori Huang has not commented publicly, and no divorce has been announced.

If the couple were to divorce, California's community property law would generally split assets acquired during the marriage equally, including Huang's Nvidia stake and company income, unless a valid prenuptial or postnuptial agreement exists or a court deems an asset separate property. Lori Huang could become one of the world's richest women almost overnight.

"Lori would get a lot, to say the least," said Ray Madoff, a Boston College Law School professor and author of "The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy."

A possible model for Lori Huang is MacKenzie Scott, who has given away $26 billion since 2019 through her organization Yield Giving, using money from her divorce from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

The foundation's future is unclear. It ramped up giving recently, jumping from $14 million in grants in 2020 to $126 million in 2024 as Nvidia's soaring stock price increased its required annual distributions. A divorce could change who controls the foundation and its priorities, though existing commitments would remain.

"Any of the foundation's existing commitments would remain commitments that need to be paid—their divorce decree or their divorce settlement would define if either one of them keeps the foundation," said a San Francisco foundation professional who spoke on condition of anonymity. "If they decide to go their separate ways, that foundation needs to still exist until the current commitments are fulfilled."

The Huangs could also split the foundation, as Bill and Melinda Gates did after their 2021 divorce. Melinda Gates left their foundation in 2024 with $12.5 billion for her own philanthropy.

Organizations hoping for continued support should maintain relationships with both parties, Madoff advised. "In some cases you might not know who's going to end up with control," she said.

The Huangs are the foundation's only listed officers—Jensen as secretary and chief financial officer, Lori as president. Bloomberg reported that the foundation has given large sums, mostly Nvidia shares, to the GeForce Fund, a donor-advised fund at Schwab Charitable Fund, whose grantees are not disclosed.

Donors technically relinquish legal control over money placed in donor-advised funds in exchange for tax benefits, but Madoff said the relationship operates "on a wink and a nod."

San Francisco has much at stake. "Dozens of major programs around the city rely on just a handful of people and their generosity, and those people's personal lives can have a ripple effect across society. That's the nature of philanthropy," said Jay Cheng, a political strategist and government affairs official for the San Francisco Association of Realtors.

Other billionaires have recently made eye-popping donations to the city. Mayor Daniel Lurie announced that Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky pledged $100 million to city parks—described as the largest single gift to the city—and AI company Anthropic pledged $50 million to a donor-advised fund at the San Francisco Foundation.

"We as a city are getting caught up in the glamour of tech and newly made wealth," said Woody LaBounty, a city preservationist and former executive director of SF Heritage. "That is not a healthy model."

Jensen and Lori Huang have been together since before Nvidia's founding. The Santa Clara-based company has become a multi-trillion-dollar linchpin of the AI revolution, and the couple's foundation now ranks among the 15 largest private foundations in the United States, according to CNBC.

Still, the foundation professional noted one other possibility: "The Huangs might not get divorced."