Nvidia shares fell by about 14% when trading opened in New York on Thursday, after the company said Jensen Huang had resigned as chief executive. By the end of the day, most of that loss had gone. The shares closed 4.3% lower, and the company was still worth around $4 trillion.
Those figures were reported by the Associated Press. In plain terms, many investors sold in a panic at first, then decided that the business had not changed overnight. Even so, the share price is now 30.5% below the record it set on 6 October.
Who runs Nvidia now
Huang co-founded Nvidia and led it for 33 years. He has left his jobs as president, chief executive and board member with immediate effect. A filing with the market regulator shows that the board accepted his resignation on Wednesday.
Colette Kress, 59, has been the chief financial officer since 2013. She now becomes interim chief executive and keeps her finance job at the same time. The board will consider internal and external candidates for the permanent job. Harvey Jones, 73, who has sat on the board since 1993, becomes its first chair.
“The Board has full confidence in Colette and the leadership team, and we expect the company’s operations, customer commitments and product roadmap to continue without interruption,” Jones said. His comments were published in the company’s announcement.
Why he left
The company gave no reason. The resignation followed a week of reports about Huang’s private life. On Sunday, he told staff that he had been unfaithful to his wife. Earlier reports said US officials believed the woman involved was working for Chinese intelligence. China has called those claims groundless. We reported on Monday that the board had opened an investigation.
On Wednesday, the New York Times reported a second affair, this time with a senior employee who reports to him. His resignation was made public the following morning.
The next test is on Tuesday
Nvidia sells the chips that train and run many of the largest AI models, so its results are watched as a guide to spending across the whole AI industry. The company says it will publish its third-quarter results on Tuesday 17 November, as planned. Its call with investors starts at 2pm Pacific time, which is 23:00 in Paris. It will be the first results day with Kress in charge.
Other AI companies will be watching too. Anthropic rents large numbers of these chips through cloud providers. We reported this week on its plan to raise up to $64bn by selling shares.
Why it matters: Nvidia’s share price is one of the main measures of the AI boom. Tuesday’s numbers will show whether its customers are still buying chips at the same pace now that its founder has stepped down.
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