Markets
Jensen Huang Resigned and Nvidia Fell 4.3% to $166.19
Jensen Huang resigned as Nvidia's chief executive on November 12, 2026, with CFO Colette Kress named interim CEO; the shares closed 4.34% lower at $166.19.
The board did not need its meeting to end in a vote. At 8:48 a.m. in New York on Thursday, November 12, Nvidia announced that Jensen Huang had resigned as president, chief executive and director, effective immediately, ending a run that began when he co-founded the company in 1993. A filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission four minutes later said the board had accepted the resignation on November 11. The release gave no reason. It followed days of reports about Huang's private life, including an affair he admitted to employees on Sunday and reports linking him to an executive whom US intelligence officials had described as a Chinese agent.
Two appointments came with it. Colette Kress, chief financial officer since September 2013, becomes interim CEO and keeps the finance job. Harvey C. Jones, a director since 1993 and a former chief executive of Synopsys, becomes the first chair in the company's history; until Thursday the 11-member board had none. The board said it would consider internal and external candidates for the permanent role and that it had "full confidence" in Kress. Wedbush's Dan Ives told CNBC he expected her to serve about a year before an outside hire.
The stock moved more on the way down than on the way back. Nvidia was already 8.48% lower before the announcement, on the overnight reports, and touched $148.80 in the first minutes of the session, down 14.35%. It then recovered most of the day's loss and closed at $166.19, down 4.34%, leaving its market value at about $4.0 trillion. Retail buyers stepped in: Vanda Research counted $111 million of net purchases by individual investors in the first 30 minutes, more than 40 times a normal open. Analysts were less eager. Baird cut its price target to $200 from $500, Stifel to $205 from $315 and Cantor Fitzgerald to $250 from $350.
The rest of the chip sector split rather than followed. AMD rose 5.86% and Broadcom 5.54%, while Intel and Marvell lost more than 4% and Super Micro fell 11.3% on reports of a US probe linked to the same Alice Huang story. The S&P 500 finished 0.35% lower at 7,592.40, and the Nasdaq Composite 0.39% lower at 25,366.09, after both had been down close to 1% in the morning.
Three dates now matter more than any rumour. Nvidia reports its fiscal third quarter on Tuesday, November 17, the first set of results Kress will present as chief executive. House Foreign Affairs chair Brian Mast says Huang has agreed to testify before Thanksgiving, and Senate Banking chair Tim Scott has asked him to appear on December 3. Huang himself still holds a stake worth about $140 billion, mostly in trusts shared with his wife, according to CNBC: he has left the company, but he has not left its share register.