Nvidia Board Prepares to Oust CEO Jensen Huang as Shares Slide

Nvidia’s board of directors is preparing to remove Jensen Huang as chief executive, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, in a dramatic escalation of a scandal that has shaken the world’s most valuable chipmaker. Directors were set to meet as soon as Wednesday evening to decide the future of the man who co-founded the company in 1993 and has been its only chief executive.

Shares fell more than 8% in after-hours trading on Wednesday after the report, adding to a slide that had already taken about 7% off the stock through the close since the weekend, when the board first disclosed its investigation.

A swift escalation

On Sunday, Huang told staff in writing that he had been unfaithful to his wife, admitting an affair with Alice Huang, a senior executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based data centre company. US officials suspect Alice Huang — also known as Huang Le — of having been recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security, according to reports in the Financial Times and The New York Times. She has not been charged with anything, and no public finding of wrongdoing has been made against either Huang.

The board opened an independent investigation the same day, saying it had “no reason to believe” that national security or Nvidia’s secrets had been compromised, and adding that it had confidence in Huang and his leadership team. A committee of independent directors, assisted by outside legal counsel, was put in charge of the review.

That position appeared to shift within three days. The New York Times reported a second affair, this time with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice-president of healthcare, who reports directly to Huang. The Journal then reported that the board was preparing to oust him, and the Financial Times reported that directors were set to hold urgent talks about his future on Wednesday. Reuters, citing a source familiar with the matter, said the board was meeting on Wednesday to decide whether to remove him.

The episode has also drawn fresh attention to US controls on advanced chip exports to China, a regime Nvidia sits at the centre of as the dominant supplier of AI processors.

No successor named

Bloomberg reported that the board is working with an outside firm to identify possible replacements and is weighing whether to name an interim chief executive while the search runs. No successor has been named, and Nvidia has not confirmed any of the reports. As of Wednesday night, the company had made no announcement, and its latest public statement on Huang’s leadership remained the board’s 8 November message of confidence.

Analysts quoted in the coverage have floated chief financial officer Colette Kress as a possible interim leader and longtime executive Ian Buck, who led the creation of Nvidia’s CUDA software platform, as an internal option. Those are outside views, not board decisions, and Nvidia has never publicly named a number two. Huang, 63, owns 3.58% of the company’s shares, making him its largest individual shareholder.

The market reaction

Nvidia is the dominant supplier of the processors that power artificial intelligence, and its leadership is central to the AI trade that has carried markets higher for much of the year — amid fierce competition and surging AI chip demand across the sector. Any change at the top would come days before the company’s third-quarter results call on 17 November, and a closed-door briefing that three House committee chairs have asked Huang to give on 18 November.

CBS News reported that the Trump administration was aware of the matter.

What is confirmed — and what is not

For now, the ouster remains a report, not a decision. The board has said nothing publicly beyond its 8 November statement, and Huang remains chief executive. The investigation the board opened on Sunday concerned reports that Huang had been the target of a foreign intelligence effort — not a finding that secrets were passed on. No charges have been brought against Jensen Huang or Alice Huang.

If the board does act, it would end one of the longest and most successful runs in Silicon Valley history. Huang built Nvidia from a graphics-chip start-up into the company at the centre of the global AI boom, and he has repeatedly said he does not believe in succession planning. The board must now decide whether the man who made that boom can survive it.