Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Resigns as Market Value Plunges $550 Billion

IT之家 November 12 news, according to Reuters, Jensen Huang has resigned as NVIDIA CEO as an extramarital affair scandal continues to escalate, triggering a sharp selloff in global AI-related stocks on Thursday.

The sudden change in NVIDIA's leadership has also added new risks to an AI industry already facing financing and regulatory pressure.

NVIDIA announced that CFO Colette Kress will serve as interim CEO while the company searches for a permanent successor.

As a core company in the AI supply chain, NVIDIA not only supplies chips but also provides funding support for data center and other infrastructure projects that use its chips — a business model that has been questioned over circular financing concerns. As NVIDIA sinks deeper into crisis, the entire AI industry is also coming under new pressure.

NVIDIA shares fell 8.2% in early trading to their lowest level in more than 16 months, and its market capitalization fell below $4 trillion for the first time since July 2025.

CoreWeave, a new cloud computing provider backed by NVIDIA, fell 9.1%. Just one trading day earlier, CoreWeave had led a rebound in AI-related stocks on strong earnings, surging more than 27% in a single session.

Other new cloud computing providers were not spared either, with IREN and Applied Digital both declining. Nebius plunged 16.2% after announcing that 2026 revenue would come in near the low end of its previous forecast range.

Since NVIDIA's board announced on Sunday that it was investigating Huang's extramarital affair scandal, the company has lost more than $550 billion in market value (IT之家 note: approximately 3.68 trillion yuan at current exchange rates).

Steve Sosnick, chief market analyst at Interactive Brokers, noted: "NVIDIA has intricate trading relationships with many companies across the industry. Does that make the whole industry more stable, or more fragile? As the situation becomes clearer in the coming weeks, the answer will emerge."

Data from analytics firm ORTEX shows that since the start of this week alone, investors shorting NVIDIA have racked up $9.6 billion (approximately 64.184 billion yuan at current exchange rates) in paper gains.

Chipmakers, long seen as the main beneficiaries of the AI boom, have also become the hardest-hit sector in the selloff, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index falling 1.3%.

Marvell Technology fell 3.8%. Huang had singled out Marvell in June this year, saying it was poised to become "the next trillion-dollar company."

Oracle also fell 2.6%; the company is expanding its collaboration with NVIDIA on cloud AI chips.

Other tech stocks also came under pressure. Micron Technology fell 2.5%, while SanDisk and Western Digital dropped 6% and 3.7%, respectively. Photonics manufacturers Lumentum and Coherent, as well as AI server maker Dell, fell between 3% and 5.1%.

Construction and power equipment maker Caterpillar and utility Vistra each fell about 0.5%.

The two other AI chipmakers competing with NVIDIA, AMD and Broadcom, bucked the trend, rising 3.7% and 5.6%, respectively. Investors expect that turmoil at NVIDIA could create opportunities for competitors.

Shares of major cloud service providers such as Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft also rose 0.8% to 2.7%.

Global tech stock markets also saw turbulence. Japanese and South Korean markets both closed down nearly 0.7%, and European tech stocks fell about 1%.

Data compiled by the London Stock Exchange Group shows that NVIDIA's current forward 12-month price-to-earnings ratio is about 12 times, the lowest level since November 2012.