Employment Law

Nvidia co-founder Jensen Huang resigned as chief executive and from the board on Thursday, November 12, 2026, effective immediately. The company described the exit as a resignation, not a firing. CFO Colette Kress is serving as interim CEO while Nvidia weighs internal and external candidates for the permanent role. Huang, 63, led the company since he co-founded it in 1993 and owns about 3.6 percent of its stock. The departure followed the public disclosure on October 29 of his relationship with Alice Huang, a Chinese citizen and former executive at a Singapore-based data-centre company. Huang wrote to employees on November 8 that he had been unfaithful to his wife. The board had initially kept him in place during an independent investigation, then met again on November 11 after a New York Times report on a second relationship, this one involving Kimberly Powell, a vice president who reports directly to him. Nvidia shares fell more than 13 percent in early trading and closed down more than 4 percent.

On Sunday, November 8, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told staff in a note that he had been unfaithful to his wife. The same day, Nvidia's board opened an independent investigation into reports that Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort. The New York Times and Financial Times report that U.S. intelligence officials believe Alice Huang, an executive at Singapore-based data center company Megaspeed, was recruited by China's Ministry of State Security. Alice Huang has no relation to the Nvidia CEO. Nvidia calls the spy allegation unsubstantiated, and Huang says he had no idea she was a spy. President Trump has said the FBI is involved. Nvidia stock closed down 4.27% on Monday, November 9.

Goldman Sachs has restricted access to Anthropic's Claude Code and Microsoft's GitHub to its engineering staff, according to Bloomberg, which reported the change on November 2. Internal guidance issued in October removed the tools from most bankers and traders. The bank cited productivity and risk concerns. A Goldman spokesperson, Nick Carcaterra, said the firm weighs productivity gains against potential risks when deciding who keeps AI tools. The bank has roughly 12,000 engineers, and access now sits largely with them. Strats, who span trading, quantitative research and software engineering, still have access, according to a second person familiar with the matter, so the change is narrower than a blanket ban on non-engineers. Bankers and traders had used the tools for tasks such as monitoring trading flows and creating content, and some traders have said the change frustrated them.

San Mateo County now requires businesses operating in its unincorporated areas to obtain permits before running certain autonomous robots in commercial settings. The ordinance took effect October 29, 2026, after the Board of Supervisors voted 4-0 on September 15 to adopt it. Supervisor Ray Mueller of District 3 sponsored the measure, which the county calls a first-of-its-kind permitting system. The rule covers untethered, partly or fully autonomous machines that serve customers and are powered by rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. Stationary kiosks, fixed-path automation, personal-use toys under 30 pounds, and robots used only in private residences are excluded. Each robot and each location requires its own permit, and businesses must secure a new or updated permit before adding a robot or moving one to an unlisted location. Permits renew annually. Applicants must certify consumer privacy protections and submit an economic impact assessment and a binding workforce mitigation plan. The county's code compliance department enforces the ordinance. Violators face administrative fines and abatement, and may have their permits suspended or revoked.

Nvidia said Jensen Huang has stepped down as president, CEO, and board member, effective immediately. CFO Colette Kress is serving as interim CEO while the company searches for a permanent successor, and Harvey C. Jones was named the first chair of the board. The departure follows a May classified U.S. intelligence memo concluding that Alice Huang, an executive at Singapore-based Nvidia customer Megaspeed, was a Chinese intelligence asset, according to CNN. Shares fell as much as 13% on the news before recovering some ground.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed SB 947, the No Robo Bosses Act of 2026, on September 30, 2026, making California the first state to restrict employers from making termination or discipline decisions based solely on automated systems. When an automated tool is the primary basis for a decision, a person must verify it against other records, such as managerial evaluations, peer reviews, or personnel files. Affected workers must receive written notice stating that AI played a primary role and naming a human contact. The Labor Commissioner, the state attorney general, or local prosecutors enforce the law. It applies to all California employers, public and private, regardless of size, takes effect July 1, 2027, and bars employers from using automated systems to infer an employee's protected status under the Fair Employment and Housing Act.

Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 947, the "No Robo Bosses Act of 2026," on September 30, 2026. The law bars California employers from relying solely on automated decision-making systems (ADS) to discipline or fire workers, and it requires human oversight when such tools assist those decisions. Where an employer primarily relies on an ADS output, a human must corroborate the decision with other evidence, such as supervisor evaluations or personnel files. Violations carry a $500 civil penalty each, and the law applies to employers of all sizes. Sponsored by State Senator Jerry McNerney (D-Pleasanton) and backed by the California Federation of Labor Unions, AFL-CIO, the bill passed the Senate 28-10 and the Assembly 53-14. It becomes part of the California Labor Code and takes effect July 1, 2027. The state enforces it. Newsom signed it alongside AB 1883, which restricts AI tools that infer employees' emotional states, and AB 1331, which bars surveillance in bathrooms.

Shareholder Mark Kistenmacher, represented by Rosen Law Firm, filed a proposed class action in federal court in San Jose, California, against Nvidia and CEO Jensen Huang. The complaint alleges that Nvidia and Huang misled investors about the national security implications of Huang's relationship with Alice Huang, a Chinese executive linked to Megaspeed, a Singapore data center firm that buys Nvidia chips. The suit says those statements "artificially inflated" Nvidia's share price and seeks unspecified damages for anyone who bought Nvidia stock between October 9, when The New York Times first reported the pair socializing in Taiwan, and November 8, when the company said it was investigating reports that Huang was the "target of a foreign intelligence effort." The New York Times reported on Oct. 29 that U.S. officials had concluded Alice Huang was "a Chinese intelligence asset." Nvidia has launched an independent investigation led by former federal prosecutor Joon H. Kim, and Huang has acknowledged the affair in an internal message.

Governor Gavin Newsom signed a package of AI workplace bills on September 30, 2026. The centerpiece is SB 947, which bars employers from relying solely on an automated decision system to discipline or fire workers and requires written notice and human review. The package also includes SB 951, which requires layoffs caused wholly or substantially by AI or automation to carry added disclosures, such as the type of technology and the job functions affected, and AB 1883, which bans AI surveillance tools that infer emotional state or collect neural data, with an exception for safety monitoring such as driver fatigue detection. SB 947 is nicknamed the "No Robo Bosses Act of 2026." Enforcement runs through the Labor Commissioner or public prosecutors, with civil penalties of $500 per violation. Some firms also count AB 1331, a broader ban on monitoring in workplace bathrooms, as part of the package.

Nvidia's board has hired Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz to run an independent review of reports that CEO Jensen Huang had a relationship with Alice Huang, a businesswoman U.S. authorities have flagged as a potential Chinese intelligence asset. Huang confirmed the affair in an internal message to staff, apologizing and saying he took full responsibility. The board said it has no reason to believe national security or company secrets were compromised and backed his leadership. A company spokesperson said Huang intends to remain CEO. The review's first question is whether Huang was targeted by a foreign intelligence effort.

Nvidia's board opened an independent investigation on Sunday, November 8, after reports that Chinese intelligence had targeted CEO Jensen Huang. In an email to staff, Huang acknowledged an affair with the woman at the center of the reports, Alice Huang, a Chinese citizen and executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based company U.S. authorities suspect of helping China get around AI chip sales restrictions. The New York Times and Financial Times reported that U.S. intelligence agencies had placed Alice Huang under surveillance. The Times further reports that China's Ministry of State Security recruited her to gather information about Jensen Huang and influence his views on selling AI chips to Chinese firms. The board said it has no reason to believe national security or company secrets were compromised, and Huang has said he fully supports the inquiry. Nvidia's share price fell as much as 9% intraday Monday. Lawmakers want to question Huang, and Democrats have called for an investigation or testimony.

Nvidia's board has hired Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and former acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York Joon H. Kim, who will lead the investigation under a panel of independent directors. The probe is examining whether CEO Jensen Huang was targeted by a foreign intelligence effort and whether company secrets or national security were compromised. The board is also meeting to decide whether to oust Huang. The inquiry followed Huang's Sunday admission that he had an affair with Alice Huang, a Megaspeed executive whom U.S. intelligence officials reportedly consider a Chinese operative. The New York Times and Financial Times have reported that these agencies believe she passes information to Beijing, but no public finding has established that she worked for Chinese intelligence. Beijing has rejected the allegations as a campaign to "smear and malign China." CNBC, citing the New York Times, also reports a romantic relationship between Huang and an employee, Kimberly Powell.

404 Media reported on October 29, 2026, in an investigation by Joseph Cox, that Proton's leadership pressed staff to adopt AI faster, even as the company's privacy-focused encrypted email business depends on trust. The reporting cited Slack messages in which Yen called a request to pentest new code before release "bullshit and loser thinking" and urged engineers to stop "lovingly handcrafting all our code." One employee told the outlet that Yen regularly called people "losers and stupid." The story drew on interviews with eight current employees and one former employee, along with internal Slack chats, meeting recordings, and an AI manifesto written by CTO Bart Butler. Proton's spokesperson did not dispute the reporting or its characterization of the company's internal culture. According to audio 404 Media obtained, Butler told an all-hands meeting that 90 percent of Proton's code in October was written by AI. Proton had previously banned AI use, and it now tracks how much AI-generated code each employee produces through software installed on their computers. Yen also reportedly told engineers, "This will be the last year that we hire engineers," and planned to re-interview staff about their AI use starting November 4, with the results potentially determining who keeps their job.

Insurers that specialize in AI risk warn that the largest AI companies are building legal liabilities that could reach tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars as AI spreads through the economy, and that the insurance market may not be able to absorb them. Some industry officials want the U.S. government to provide a liability backstop. The exposure is already showing up in claims: AI-related cases involving cyber attacks, copyright and privacy have reached multimillion-dollar levels against directors, officers and entities. Analysts warn the coverage squeeze could slow the rollout of automated tools in healthcare, finance and legal services.

OpenAI dismissed three safety and model alignment researchers, Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak, and Mikita Balesni, on October 1 after an internal investigation. The company says they mishandled sensitive information and broke its trust rules, calling the conduct a "significant breach of trust." The Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI suspected the three of leaking internal model designs to AI safety researcher Ryan Greenblatt, including through disappearing Signal chats. The researchers dispute OpenAI's account, and none has commented publicly on the report. The probe reportedly began after a September article about Astra, a new OpenAI model that uses a design that improves performance while making its reasoning less visible to humans. Korbak has said he was told he was fired over how he communicated with the outside evaluator METR, and Balesni says he was let go for speaking too often with third-party safety groups. Korbak was OpenAI's technical liaison to METR and Redwood Research, which had been invited to examine how OpenAI's AI agents behave.

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont signed Senate Bill 5, the Artificial Intelligence Responsibility and Transparency Act (Public Act 26-15), in late May or early June 2026. The law governs "automated employment-related decision technology," defined broadly to cover any tool that processes personal data and produces a score, rank, or recommendation that is a substantial factor in, or materially influences, hiring, promotion, discipline, or termination.

OpenAI fired three safety researchers, Tomek Korbak, Mikita Balesni, and Jasmine Wang, on October 1, calling it a significant breach of trust. The company said an internal investigation found they violated policies for handling sensitive information and failed to raise safety concerns internally. A Wall Street Journal report on October 22 said the trigger was disappearing messages enabled on Signal chats. The probe began in September, when OpenAI's security team called the three into meetings, asked them to unlock their personal phones, and requested to see their Signal chats. The company suspected them of passing details about internal model designs to Ryan Greenblatt, an outside AI-safety researcher who denies facilitating any leaks. The firings followed a leak investigation into a The Information story about the proprietary designs of OpenAI's Astra model.

Nvidia co-founder Jensen Huang stepped down as president, CEO, and board member, effective immediately. The board named Chair Harvey Jones, and CFO Colette Kress will serve as interim CEO. Nvidia's filing dates the board's acceptance of the resignation to November 11, but the company announced it Thursday, November 12. Shares fell more than 4% by Thursday's close after an steeper early drop, and neocloud stocks that rely on Nvidia GPUs also declined. Separately, United Airlines said the same day that it bars unauthorized third-party AI agents from buying, changing, or servicing tickets on its platforms and through travel agencies, citing security and federal check-in rules.

Binance said Tuesday that hackers stole $6.3 billion in crypto after compromising an employee's computer and an internal AI tool through a fake job interview, giving them control of the company's wallets. The exchange describes the theft as possibly the largest financial heist on record and attributes it to North Korea, calling it a "sophisticated, multi-stage campaign." The intrusion began with a lure, not a technical exploit. A Binance engineer was contacted through a job-hunting platform by someone posing as a project director, then interviewed over a social chat app by a person claiming to be CEO of a fictitious company. That person asked the engineer to download an assignment containing a malicious code repository. Binance's report says the campaign started in June with an advertisement for a tampered version of a coding tool, and a second software engineer was targeted in September. The theft itself occurred on October 29.

Fiserv disclosed on its November 3, 2026 third-quarter earnings call that it has cut its combined employee and contractor headcount by 3,000 since June, with senior management down more than 10%. The company also raised its Project Elevate savings target to $1 billion from $500 million, after activist investor Jana pushed for $1.25 billion. Fiserv plans to exit more than a dozen smaller, non-core products that lack strong performance, growth, or margin profiles. Shares rose between roughly 9% and 12%, depending on the measurement window. CEO Takis Georgakopoulos, formerly of J.P. Morgan's payments business, took over in June, the same month the layoffs began. The company had more than 38,000 employees as of December 31, 2025.

Federal prosecutors have charged Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35-year-old Saudi national and former OpenAI engineer, with using a device to intercept oral communications. Prosecutors say he hid a recording device in a conference room at OpenAI's San Francisco headquarters. The device was a thumb-sized unit costing less than $25, the kind sold for hobbyist electronics projects, concealed inside a television. OpenAI security found a second recording device when they searched his bag earlier this month. The Justice Department says OpenAI determined the first device was likely planted on Sept. 28. Agents arrested Alfozan on Oct. 9, and the Justice Department unsealed the complaint and announced the charges on Oct. 13. OpenAI fired him. The company says it has seen "no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data."

Connecticut's ban on employment promissory notes, agreements that require workers to repay training costs if they leave early, now applies to employers of every size. Previously it covered only employers with 26 or more employees. The expanded ban takes effect October 1, 2026, subject to statutory exceptions. Connecticut's AI rules, also in effect, bar employers from using an automated employment decision tool (AEDT) as a defense to a discrimination complaint. The Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities or a court may still weigh evidence of anti-bias testing and other proactive efforts. The changes were enacted through Public Act 26-12, which Thomson Reuters lists as signed May 12, 2026. New Jersey's job-protected family leave law, effective July 17, 2026, now covers employers with 15 or more workers, down from 30. Separately, the New Jersey Department of Labor has clarified its ABC test for classifying workers as employees or independent contractors under unemployment, wage-and-hour, and wage-payment law, effective October 1, 2026. Rhode Island's Fair Employment Practices Act now defines "employee" to include domestic workers, effective June 10, 2026.

Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 947 and SB 951 on September 30, 2026, making AI oversight in discipline, termination, and layoffs binding California law. SB 947, authored by state Senator Jerry McNerney, bars employers from relying solely on automated decision systems to discipline or terminate workers starting July 1, 2027. A human must check the system's output against supporting data and give the worker written notice. The bill is a revised version of SB 7, which Newsom vetoed in October 2025 over concerns that its notice requirements were overly broad. The signed version narrows its scope to discipline and termination. SB 951 requires employers to disclose when AI or automation drives a mass layoff, relocation, or termination, effective January 1, 2027. A third law, AB 1883, bars certain AI workplace surveillance, including tools that try to read emotional state or collect neural data, also effective January 1, 2027.

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn and the SEC have charged Chetram Balli, 54, with insider trading based on confidential deal information from Cravath, Swaine & Moore. Prosecutors allege Balli accessed nonpublic information through his job as a document processing specialist and traded ahead of at least five of the firm's major deals, including Paramount Skydance's $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. They say he has profited by at least $70,000 since April 2025. Beyond Paramount, the charges cite trades in Universal Health Services Inc., Pacira Biosciences Inc. and Forge Global Holdings. Balli was arraigned in Brooklyn federal court and released on a $75,000 bond.

Kroger has closed at least 50 supermarkets since mid-2025, according to a Fast Company tally of local media reports, store locator tools, and review data. The count stands at 51 locations across 18 states. Harris Teeter, Fred Meyer, King Soopers, and Kroger-branded stores make up most of the closures, with others operating under the Ralphs, Pick 'n Save, and Smith's banners. The closures trace to a June 2025 plan, announced by then-CEO Ronald Sargent, to shut about 60 underperforming stores over roughly 18 months. Kroger said the closures would have minimal financial impact and would be spread across the country. The plan followed the collapse of its proposed $24.6 billion merger with Albertsons, which was blocked on competition grounds and then abandoned.

Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight, a New York-based plaintiffs firm, announced on October 20, 2026, a national practice group for artificial intelligence and emerging technology cases. The group pulls together lawyers from across the firm: 22 partners and senior attorneys and 21 junior attorneys, or 43 lawyers in all, which the firm says is more than half of its attorneys nationwide. It is chaired by Palo Alto managing partner Ella Zheng, who is also counsel to Devin Kim in his retaliation lawsuit against xAI and SpaceX. The group's work falls into seven areas: executive and founder representation, technology whistleblower and AI fraud, AI safety and compliance, cyber sexual abuse, privacy and data breach, product safety, and algorithmic bias. Christine Dunn, co-chair of the firm's Sexual Violence, Title IX and Victims' Rights Practice Group, will lead work on technology-facilitated harassment, exploitation and abuse. The firm says the group builds on its existing employment discrimination, whistleblower and qui tam, civil rights, and class action work, and that its lawyers have recovered more than $5 billion for clients through verdicts and settlements.

Federal prosecutors have charged Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35-year-old Saudi national and former engineering lead on OpenAI's product team, with attempting to intercept oral communications using a concealed device. Prosecutors say he hid a recorder behind a television in a conference room at OpenAI's San Francisco headquarters, and that a camera the company installed later captured him checking that spot. He was arrested October 9 and remains in federal custody. The charge carries a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The case is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California, with the FBI involved. FBI Director Kash Patel called it a counterintelligence priority, and Attorney General Todd Blanche said on X that theft of intellectual property involving advanced AI technology threatens national security. The case was unsealed October 13.

Binance began reopening withdrawals on November 1, about three days after attackers drained roughly $6.3 billion from its hot wallets, the largest theft in crypto history. Reopening is phased: the Bitcoin network came back first, followed by Ethereum and BNB Smart Chain, and the exchange will add more assets as security checks clear. Binance says it has restored backing for about 90% of affected assets and will cover the losses from its own funds rather than user balances, according to co-CEO statements. The FBI has attributed the theft to TraderTraitor, a North Korea-linked group. The attack reportedly started with a compromised engineer's laptop and took under four hours. Separately, Weil, Gotshal & Manges, a nearly century-old firm known for restructuring work on Lehman Brothers and Enron, announced it will wind down operations after more than 30 partner departures this year, a failed merger discussion, and its chosen successor to the chair declining the role.

The Senate voted 77–22 on September 28, 2026, to pass S. 4668, the Protect College Sports Act of 2026. Senators Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) are among its sponsors. The bill would create a federal right for athletes to earn NIL compensation, require disclosure of NIL payments above $600, cap agent fees at 5%, and grant a limited antitrust exemption for joint media-rights sales. It would preempt conflicting state NIL laws, replacing more than 30 state statutes with one national standard. Contract, tort, privacy, consumer protection, trademark, and copyright law would remain intact. The bill also adds a limited private right of action and roster and scholarship protections for women's and Olympic sports.

Two Gartner analysts argue in a Fast Company piece published around October 16, 2026, that fears of an imminent AI-driven employment collapse are overstated. Drawing on a review of hundreds of large organizations and more than a million workers, they attribute less than 1% of tracked workforce reductions to AI productivity gains. Most cuts, they say, stem from ordinary forces: demand shifts, macroeconomic conditions, mergers, and cost restructuring. They do not dismiss AI's disruptive potential, but argue that general-purpose technologies have historically not reduced total labor demand in a straight line.

The First Circuit heard oral argument on July 28, 2026, in Saint Cyr v. JPMorgan Chase, where a proposed class of job applicants asks the court to revive a suit that U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy dismissed. Plaintiff Mozart Saint Cyr, a Massachusetts financial consultant, claims that JPMorgan's HireVue one-way video interview functioned as a lie detector under M.G.L. c. 149, § 19B. Murphy found the complaint did not plausibly allege that the tool was used to assess truthfulness. He also separately remanded the notice claim for lack of Article III standing. The district court decision is dated October 22, 2025.