Nvidia Stock Plunges as Huang Resigns as CEO
The latest nvidia stock shock arrived on Thursday, November 12, when Jensen Huang resigned as chief executive of Nvidia, ending a 33-year run at the head of the company he co-founded and turning a week of scandal into the biggest leadership crisis in the history of the artificial intelligence boom. The board said Huang had stepped down as president, chief executive and board member, effective immediately, and named chief financial officer Colette Kress as interim chief executive while it searches for a permanent successor. The announcement, carried in a company news release on Thursday, closed a frantic few days in which the board had moved from publicly backing its founder to meeting in private to decide whether to remove him, and it sent the stock market today into another sharp sell-off in the world’s most valuable chipmaker.
Huang, 63, is Nvidia’s longtime co-founder, president and chief executive, and for most of the past three years he has been the public face of the artificial intelligence boom. The chips his company makes have become the foundation of the systems that train and run advanced AI models, and Nvidia grew under his leadership into one of the most valuable companies on earth, with a market value above four trillion dollars for much of the year. His resignation therefore reaches far beyond one company, whose shares are held by almost every large fund. When its leader falls in a scandal that mixes personal conduct with questions of national security, investors, customers, rivals and lawmakers in Washington all have to work out what comes next, and they have to do it quickly.
The market gave its first verdict before the opening bell. Nvidia shares dropped more than 10 percent in pre-market trading on Thursday, 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, capping a volatile week in which hundreds of billions of dollars of value had already been wiped out. The shares had already dropped sharply on Monday and Tuesday, and they were down about 27 percent from a peak in early October as of the close of trading on Wednesday.
Nvidia Stock: The Sell-Off in Numbers
The scale of the loss explains why Wall Street is treating this as more than a boardroom drama. Nvidia is one of the magnificent seven stocks, the small group of giant technology names that have driven most of the market’s gains in recent years, and its shares are a core holding for pension funds, index funds and retail investors alike. When a company of that size loses more than a tenth of its value in a single session, the damage spreads to the indexes, to the funds that hold it, and to the suppliers and customers that depend on its chips. Estimates of the value destroyed during the week varied between reports, but all of them ran into the hundreds of billions of dollars, with one widely cited tally putting the loss at about 700 billion dollars in market capitalisation so far in the week and another putting it near 600 billion.
Colette Kress Takes Over as Interim Chief
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. In the Thursday announcement, the board said she had helped lead Nvidia through a period of extraordinary growth and had a deep understanding of its business, its customers, its operations and its financial position, and it added that 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.
Why Huang Resigned: Two Affairs and a Spy Inquiry
The crisis unfolded in three acts, each more damaging than the last, and the resignation was the end of a week in which each new report narrowed the board’s room to keep its founder. 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 last month that United States authorities had concluded Alice Huang acted as a Chinese intelligence asset, and the Financial Times reported that United States 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 Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz to run the inquiry, with independent directors overseeing it with outside legal counsel. At first, the board sounded supportive. It said it had confidence in Huang and no reason to believe that national security or Nvidia’s secrets had been compromised, and the investigation was presented as a way to establish the facts.
The concern around the first relationship goes beyond the personal. Megaspeed is a major Nvidia customer and a coveted official cloud partner with priority access to its chips, and United States authorities have scrutinised the Singapore-based company over suspicions it helped China obtain advanced AI chips restricted under United States export controls. One report said Alice Huang had facilitated 7.5 billion dollars in chip sales to China. Washington restricts sales of advanced chips to China over concerns that the Chinese military, intelligence agencies or companies could use the technology, and the affair therefore raised the question of whether the chief executive of the company that makes the most important AI chips in the world had been compromised by a foreign intelligence operation, or had put trade secrets at risk. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, Congress and Nvidia itself all opened investigations, and the story could not be treated as a private matter.
The second act arrived on Wednesday, November 11, when The New York Times reported that Huang had a second extramarital relationship, this time with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of healthcare, who reports directly to him. The Times cited five people who worked at Nvidia. A relationship between a chief executive and a direct report raises a separate set of problems from the first affair: questions about workplace conduct, conflicts of interest, and whether company policy was followed. It arrived the same day the board was reported to be weighing Huang’s removal. The Wall Street Journal first reported on Wednesday afternoon that the board was preparing to meet that evening to determine Huang’s future, and the news sent the stock down almost 10 percent at one point during extended trading.
Congress Steps Up Scrutiny of Nvidia and Trump
The resignation has not ended the scrutiny; in several ways it has intensified it. Huang has agreed to testify before Congress, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Brian Mast, told reporters on Thursday, and he faces a potential congressional subpoena if he does not comply with a request to provide a closed-door briefing about the allegations related to the Chinese businesswoman. Lawmakers in Washington are pushing for tougher limits on AI chip sales to China after the scandal, and the questions now reach beyond Huang himself to the export control regime, to the role of Megaspeed, and to what the Trump administration knew and when. Congress has stepped up its scrutiny of both Trump and Nvidia in the wake of the exit. President Donald Trump had defended Huang earlier in the week, calling him an honourable man. Nvidia is also facing a shareholder class-action lawsuit, according to reports of the fallout.
What Happens Next: Earnings, Testimony and the AI Trade
Three dates and decisions now frame the story. The first is November 17, when Nvidia is expected to report its third-quarter fiscal 2027 earnings. The results will arrive in the middle of the crisis, and they will test whether the scandal has touched the business itself. Investors will be watching for any sign that customers have paused orders, that the investigation has distracted management, or that the company’s guidance has changed. A strong report could steady the stock; a weak one, delivered while the leadership question is unresolved, could deepen the rout.
The second is the search for a permanent chief executive. The board says it will consider internal and external candidates, and the choice will shape Nvidia for the next decade. An internal appointment would signal continuity and reassure customers that the product roadmap is safe. An external appointment would signal a fresh start and a board determined to rebuild trust after a governance failure. Either way, the new chief will inherit a company that is still the leader in AI chips and still facing the same strategic questions: how to stay ahead of rivals building their own chips, and how to navigate export controls that limit sales to China.
The third is Congress. Huang’s agreement to testify, and the possibility of a subpoena if he does not, means the scandal will play out in public hearings as well as in the market. Lawmakers will want to know what Huang knew about Alice Huang, what Megaspeed did with the chips it bought, and whether export controls were evaded. The answers could shape new legislation on chip sales to China, and they could determine whether the episode ends with Huang’s resignation or widens into a broader reckoning for the industry. The board’s investigation, the shareholder lawsuit and the congressional inquiry will all run in parallel, and each could produce further revelations.
For now, the facts are these: Jensen Huang resigned on Thursday after 33 years at the head of Nvidia, following reports of two extramarital affairs, one of them with a woman United States officials suspect of working for Chinese intelligence; Colette Kress is interim chief executive and Harvey Jones is the company’s first board chair; the shares plunged by more than 10 percent in pre-market trading and closed down by more than 4 percent, taking the company’s market value below four trillion dollars; and Huang has agreed to testify before Congress. The next statement from the board, the earnings report on November 17, and the congressional hearings that follow will decide whether this is the week Nvidia lost its founder and kept its crown, or the week the AI boom lost its most important leader and began to change shape.
Source: CNN and USA Today