Nvidia, the company whose chips train almost every large AI model in the world, announced on 12 November 2026 that Jensen Huang has stepped down as CEO. Huang founded Nvidia 33 years ago and had run it ever since.
What happened?
- Interim CEO: Colette Kress, Nvidia's CFO, is interim CEO until a permanent successor is found, and keeps her finance role. The board says it will consider both internal and external candidates.
- Board chair: Nvidia's 11-member board had never had a chair. Harvey C. Jones has become the company's first board chair.
- The reason: Nvidia's official announcement gave no reason. Media reports have linked the departure to reports about Huang's personal relationships, one of which has also raised US government security concerns. The board had already hired the law firm Wachtell Lipton to investigate the allegations.
- Congress: According to CNBC, Huang has agreed to testify before the US Congress, and the Senate has requested his testimony for 3 December.
How far did Nvidia stock fall?
Nvidia shares dropped more than 13% at the open on 12 November, briefly taking the company's market value below $4 trillion. Part of the loss was recovered during the day and the stock closed about 4.3% lower. Even before the news, the share price was about 27% below its 6 October high of $239.
On the same day, shares of rivals such as AMD, Intel and Broadcom rose. Investors expect chip buyers to stop placing all their orders with a single company.
Why does this matter to everyone?
Nvidia is not just a hardware company. ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and most AI services are trained and run on its graphics processors (GPUs), so any shock at Nvidia affects the whole industry:
- Competition in chips will heat up. Analysts say this could turn a market Nvidia nearly monopolised back into a competitive one; for buyers that means more choice and possibly better prices.
- The AI bubble debate is now more serious. The market was already doubtful about companies' huge AI spending, and this news deepened those doubts. I cover this in more detail in the AI bubble.
- Ordinary users won't notice a change for now. Nvidia products, from GeForce graphics cards to data-centre chips, are shipping on schedule. Any effect on graphics card prices will depend more on competition, supply and demand in the coming months than on this news.
What's next
Nvidia says it will publish its third-quarter results on schedule on 17 November. That report, and how Colette Kress handles the company, will be the first signs of Nvidia's direction after Huang. The same week Anthropic, in which Nvidia is an investor, is going public; read about it in Anthropic's Nasdaq IPO.
Source: CNBC ↗
