Jensen Huang is out at Nvidia. The man who built the chipmaker into the engine room of the artificial intelligence boom resigned on Thursday, November 12, ending a 33-year run at the top of the company he co-founded. Nvidia announced the move in a statement, naming chief financial officer Colette Kress as interim chief executive while the board hunts for a permanent replacement.
It was a stunning fall, and a fast one. Just two weeks earlier, Huang was still the leather-jacketed face of the AI era, the salesman-in-chief for a technology the whole world suddenly wanted. Then came a string of reports about his private life, questions about national security, and a board investigation. By Thursday morning, he was gone — from the CEO’s chair and from the board.
What actually happened
Here’s the timeline as the news wires have reported it. On October 29, The New York Times reported that Huang had a relationship with Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, a former executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed International. US authorities have concluded she was working for Beijing, according to the Times report. Nvidia has said it had “no reason to believe” that either national security or company secrets were compromised, but it opened an inquiry anyway.
Huang admitted on Sunday that he had an affair. Then, on November 11, the Times reported a second one — this time with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of healthcare, who reported directly to him. The Associated Press said it could not independently confirm those reports.
The board moved quickly after that. On November 8, Nvidia said independent directors, helped by outside lawyers, would look into whether Huang had been the target of a foreign intelligence operation. The Wall Street Journal reported on November 11 that directors were preparing to remove him. Shares fell about 8% in after-hours trading that night.
Thursday brought the end of it. Huang, 63, resigned as chief executive and gave up his board seat. The company gave no reason for his departure in its announcement.
The market didn’t wait
Investors reacted before most people had finished their morning coffee. Nvidia shares plunged more than 10% in pre-market trading on Thursday, according to AFP, and were down 14% at the opening bell before clawing some of it back. By mid-morning they were down about 4.2%, the AP reported, as the wider tech-heavy Nasdaq turned positive.
Step back a little and the damage looks worse. Reuters noted the stock had already fallen 26% since the Times first reported on October 29 that Alice Huang was working for Beijing. That’s a lot of value wiped out in two weeks — not because the chips stopped selling, but because the market suddenly couldn’t picture the company without the man who had run it since 1993.
And there’s a practical problem on top of the reputational one. Nvidia did not have a succession plan. The company said its board will consider candidates from inside and outside Nvidia, but it gave no timeline. Huang owns about 3.6% of the company’s stock, making him its fourth-largest investor, and Reuters noted he had no obvious successor waiting in the wings.
Who’s in charge now
Colette Kress steps in as interim CEO. She’s Nvidia’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, and she’ll keep the CFO job while she runs the company. The board also made its first-ever chairman appointment: Harvey C. Jones, an entrepreneur and venture investor who used to run chip-design software firm Synopsys.
The picks tell you something about where the board’s head is. Kress knows the numbers cold — she’s been the one walking investors through Nvidia’s earnings calls for years. Jones brings boardroom steadiness. Neither is a household name, and that’s probably the point right now. After two weeks of headlines about its former boss, Nvidia needs calm more than it needs charisma.
One name did get thrown into the mix from outside, though. President Donald Trump suggested Apple chief Tim Cook should replace Huang. It was a suggestion, not a plan — nobody at Nvidia has said anything about approaching Cook, and there’s no sign Apple would want to lose him either.
Why this one hit so hard
CEOs resign all the time. This one landed differently, and it’s worth saying why.
First, Huang wasn’t just any chief executive. He co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and ran it for 33 years, turning a graphics-card maker into the most important company in artificial intelligence. When people talked about the AI boom, they talked about Huang — his keynotes, his leather jacket, his promises about what the chips could do next. Losing him is like a band losing its frontman mid-tour.
Second, the reason matters. This wasn’t a retirement or a disagreement over strategy. The reports at the centre of it involve a woman US authorities say was working for Beijing, and a second affair with a direct report. That combination — a possible foreign intelligence angle plus a workplace relationship with a subordinate — put the board in a corner. Even before anyone proved wrongdoing, the questions alone were enough to rattle investors, customers and Washington.
Third, the timing is brutal. Nvidia is due to report quarterly earnings on Tuesday, November 17 — just five days after the resignation. The company confirmed the results will come out as scheduled, but Kress will now have to present them to a market that is watching every word for signs of what’s next.
The questions nobody can answer yet
A few things are still up in the air. Congress may get involved: USA Today reported that Huang faces a possible congressional subpoena if he does not agree to a closed-door briefing about the allegations linked to the Chinese businesswoman. The board’s investigation into whether he was targeted by a foreign intelligence operation is still running, and its findings haven’t been published.
There’s also the bigger question of what Nvidia looks like without its founder. The company still makes the chips that power most of the world’s AI systems, and that hasn’t changed. Its customers — the big cloud companies, the AI labs, the carmakers — still need those chips. But the person who sold the vision is gone, and the next CEO will have to sell it all over again, to a market that’s suddenly nervous.
What happens next
Three dates matter now. November 17 is the earnings report — the first real test of Kress as interim CEO and the first hard numbers since the scandal broke. Then comes the board’s search for a permanent chief executive, which could take weeks or months and will be watched closely by every investor in tech. And somewhere in the background, the board investigation and the congressional questions will keep moving, with answers that could still change the story.
For now, the AI boom has lost its most famous face. The chips are still shipping. The question is who tells the world what they mean next.
Sources: Associated Press; Reuters; AFP; USA Today.
