Nvidia Stock: Trump Backs Huang, Floats Tim Cook
The nvidia stock story took a political turn on Thursday, when President Donald Trump spoke publicly for the first time about Jensen Huang’s resignation as chief executive of Nvidia and offered a strikingly sympathetic account of the man at the centre of the scandal. In a White House interview with sports commentator Stephen A. Smith, for Smith’s “Straight Shooter” podcast, Trump said he had spoken to Huang the day before and described the former chip boss as a man in distress. “I spoke to him yesterday. He’s going through hell. What he feels most badly about is his wife and family,” Trump said. “That’s what he told me. He called me.” The remarks came hours after Nvidia announced that Huang had stepped down, ending a 33-year run at the head of the company he co-founded.
Trump’s tone was that of a defender rather than a critic. He called Huang a “tremendous talent”, said his departure was “sad”, and predicted that the former chief executive would recover from the scandal. “Somehow he’ll end up on his feet,” the president said. He also praised Nvidia’s chips as products of extraordinary innovation that other countries would struggle to replicate. And when he was asked who should run the company next, he offered a name nobody in the technology industry had been expecting: Tim Cook, the former chief executive of Apple. The endorsement, delivered casually in the middle of the interview, instantly became one of the most talked-about moments of the day.
What Trump Said About Huang
The interview gave the public its first account of what Huang had told the president in the hours before he quit. Trump said Huang had called him on Wednesday and talked about the impact the scandal has had on his family. “He’s going through hell. What he feels most badly about is his wife and family,” Trump said. “That’s what he really told me.” The emphasis on family framed the resignation as a personal tragedy rather than a corporate failure. Huang, 63, has been married to his wife Lori for more than 40 years, and he apologised to her and to his children on Sunday when he admitted in a memo to staff that he had been unfaithful.
Trump was also asked directly whether Huang should have stepped down, and his answer was more guarded. He said it depended on whether the woman at the centre of the allegations was indeed a Chinese spy, a question that goes to the heart of the national security concerns surrounding the case. If she was, the president suggested, the resignation was understandable; if she was not, the affair was a personal failing rather than a matter of state. The distinction matters because the suspicion that Alice Huang, a Singapore-based businesswoman, had links to Chinese intelligence is what turned a story about infidelity into a story about national security, and it is the part of the case that remains unproven in public.
The Tuesday Phone Call
The interview also revealed that Trump had tried to save Huang’s job before it was lost. The New York Times reported that Trump had called the then-Nvidia chief executive on Tuesday, November 10, and urged him to fight for his position, citing two people briefed on the conversation. The call came as the board was weighing whether to remove its founder. Huang nevertheless resigned on Thursday, after the board had held a lengthy meeting on Wednesday and decided that his position had become untenable.
The two calls, taken together, tell a story about the relationship between the two men. Huang had become a close informal adviser to Trump on artificial intelligence, and he had spent years lobbying against curbs on sales of advanced AI chips to China. Trump, in turn, had stood by Huang throughout the scandal, and the Tuesday call was the latest sign of that support. That the president was urging the chief executive to fight for his job while the board was moving toward removing him shows how far apart the White House and the Nvidia boardroom had drifted by the end of the week. In the end, the board’s view prevailed.
Why Huang Resigned
The crisis that ended Huang’s career unfolded in stages, each more damaging than the last. The first broke last weekend, when reports emerged that Huang had a relationship with a woman the United States authorities suspect of being a Chinese spy. The woman was identified in reporting as Alice Huang, a former executive at Megaspeed, a data centre company based in Singapore, and the two are not related. American intelligence officials are said to suspect her of links to Chinese intelligence, an allegation Beijing has denied. The New York Times reported that United States authorities had concluded she acted as a Chinese intelligence asset, and the Financial Times reported that officials believed the relationship was romantic in nature.
Huang admitted the affair on Sunday, November 8, and apologised to his wife and children the same day, although he did not name the other party. The same day, the board said it would investigate whether its chief executive had been the target of a foreign intelligence effort, a formulation that immediately raised questions about national security as well as personal conduct. The board retained a former acting United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, Joon H. Kim, and his firm to run the inquiry. At first, the board sounded supportive, saying it had confidence in Huang and no reason to believe that national security or Nvidia’s secrets had been compromised.
The second blow came on Wednesday, when the New York Times reported a second affair, this time with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of healthcare, citing video of Huang being affectionate with an executive who reported to him. After a lengthy meeting on Wednesday, the board announced on Thursday that Huang had stepped down as president, chief executive and board member, effective immediately. Nvidia did not give a reason for his departure, and Huang also gave up his board seat.
Who Runs Nvidia Now
The board moved at the same time to put a familiar face in charge. Colette Kress, Nvidia’s chief financial officer and executive vice president, will serve as interim chief executive while keeping her finance role, and the board will consider internal and external candidates for a permanent replacement. Kress has been Nvidia’s chief financial officer for more than a decade, joining in September 2013, and she has been the most visible executive among investors and the public next to Huang himself. The board said it expected the company’s operations, customer commitments and product roadmap to continue without interruption. Harvey Jones, a board member and former chief executive of Synopsys, was also named Nvidia’s first board chair.
Trump’s suggestion of Tim Cook adds an unexpected name to that search. Cook led Apple for more than a decade and is one of the most respected operating executives in the technology industry, known for building the supply chain that made the iPhone the most profitable product in history. Whether Cook would want the job is another matter: he left Apple as one of the most successful chief executives of his generation, and there has been no word from him or from Nvidia’s board about the president’s suggestion. The board’s search is expected to consider both internal and external candidates, and Cook’s name will now be part of that conversation whether the board wants it or not.
The Market Fallout
The market gave its first verdict before the opening bell on Thursday. Nvidia shares dropped more than 10 percent in pre-market trading, and they fell by more than 13 percent at one point after the news broke, according to reports of the session. By the close, the shares had steadied somewhat but still finished down by more than 4 percent, and the company’s market value fell below four trillion dollars for the first time since July 2025. The scandal has wiped almost half a trillion dollars off Nvidia’s market capitalisation, according to one widely cited tally, and the shares were already down about 27 percent from a peak in early October as of the close of trading on Wednesday.
The National Security Shadow
The part of the story that will not go away is the question of whether Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence operation. The board’s investigation, announced on Sunday, is looking into exactly that, and it is the reason the scandal has drawn the attention of lawmakers in Washington as well as investors. One report said Huang is expected to testify before Congress in the coming weeks, and the hearings would put the affair and the intelligence questions under a public spotlight the company has so far avoided. For a company whose chips sit at the centre of the artificial intelligence race between the United States and China, any suggestion that its chief executive was compromised is a matter of national interest, not just of corporate governance.
That is also why Trump’s own position matters. Huang had been one of the president’s most important informal advisers on AI policy, and he had lobbied hard against restrictions on selling advanced chips to China. The president’s defence of Huang, and his suggestion that the resignation turned on whether Alice Huang was actually a spy, shows how closely the two men were aligned. With Huang gone, the administration loses a voice that argued for engagement with China on chips, and the debate over export controls is likely to shift toward those who favour tighter restrictions.
What Happens Next
The coming weeks will answer the questions that Thursday left open. The first is who Nvidia’s board chooses as its permanent chief executive, and whether Tim Cook’s name moves from a presidential suggestion to a serious candidacy. The second is what the board’s investigation finds, and whether it concludes that national security or Nvidia’s secrets were compromised. The third is what Huang himself does next, and whether his expected appearance before Congress sheds light on the relationships that ended his career.
For now, the picture is of a company in transition and a president who has made clear where his sympathies lie. Trump tried to keep Huang in his job, praised him when he lost it, and offered the name of the man he thinks should replace him. The board, meanwhile, has put its most trusted executive in charge on an interim basis and begun the search for a permanent successor. The AI boom that Huang did more than anyone to create will go on without him, but the week of his resignation will be remembered as the moment the industry discovered that even its most powerful founder was not untouchable.
Source: Business Insider