Nvidia said on Thursday that Jensen Huang is stepping down as chief executive, ending a 33-year run at the helm of the company he co-founded and built into the engine of the artificial intelligence boom.
Chief financial officer Colette Kress will take over as interim chief executive while the board searches for a permanent successor, the company said. Former Synopsys chief executive Harvey Jones, a board member, was named Nvidia’s first-ever chairman. Huang, who is also the company’s fourth-largest shareholder with a stake of about 3.61 per cent, will leave the board as well.
The announcement came a day after Nvidia’s board met to consider removing Huang, following reports of two extramarital affairs. The first involves Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based cloud company Megaspeed, whom US authorities suspect of spying for Beijing. The second, reported by The New York Times on Wednesday, involves Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of healthcare, who reported to him. Huang, 63, is married and has admitted to one of the affairs.
The decision plunges the $4 trillion company into uncertainty and threatens to disrupt an artificial intelligence ecosystem that Huang helped bankroll, pouring Nvidia’s swelling cash pile back into cloud providers, suppliers and the industry’s biggest laboratories. His departure could also have far-reaching consequences for US chip export policy, given his push to preserve access to the Chinese market and his close ties with President Donald Trump, who said on Sunday that Huang had “done an amazing job for our country”.
Investors reacted swiftly. Nvidia shares fell more than 10 per cent in premarket trading on Thursday, putting its market value on course to drop below $4 trillion for the first time since July 2025, and AI-linked stocks fell across the globe. The chipmaker has lost about $300 billion in market value since its board announced an investigation on Sunday into Huang’s relationship with Alice Huang, while short sellers have made about $3.8 billion in paper profits, according to data firm Ortex.
Huang became a rock-star chief executive as Nvidia’s chips — prized for their ability to perform many calculations at once — became the oil of the AI boom and a strategic prize in the US-China race to dominate the technology, making Nvidia the world’s most valuable company. Fans in Taiwan and South Korea mobbed him for autographs, and stocks moved at his mere mention of company names at events.
Scrutiny of his conduct intensified in recent days after reports of his relationship with Alice Huang, who is not related to him. US authorities concluded last year that she passed information to Beijing while working with Nvidia to build data centres in Asia, though no evidence has been made public that Huang knowingly took part in any intelligence activity, and neither he nor she has been charged with any crime. Beijing has denied Alice Huang is a spy. Washington has also investigated Megaspeed, a coveted official Nvidia cloud partner with priority access to its chips, over suspicions it helped China obtain advanced AI chips restricted under US export controls.
Earlier this month, Nvidia’s board launched a probe, led by independent directors with outside legal counsel, into whether Huang had been targeted by a foreign intelligence operation. It expressed confidence in him at the time. That position has now plainly shifted: the board met on Wednesday to consider his removal, and on Thursday the company announced his departure.
The espionage allegations against Alice Huang remain unproven, and the second affair rests on reporting by The New York Times. Nvidia has not said whether Huang resigned or was removed, and it has not named a timetable for appointing a permanent successor.
Sources: Reuters — “Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to step down in big blow to AI boom”; Reuters — “Global AI stocks sink as Nvidia crisis deepens sector selloff”
