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Nvidia's Board Is Reportedly Preparing to Remove Jensen Huang as CEO — Shares Fall After Hours

By FreshSynapse Editorial · · 5 min read

A printed stock-market chart with jagged line graphs and red and green bars on a wooden desk

Photo: Hippopx (public domain). Illustrative image.

What is reported. Nvidia’s board is preparing to remove founder and chief executive Jensen Huang, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday 11 November 2026, citing people familiar with the matter. The report says directors could meet as soon as that day to decide his future. Reuters, which carried the Journal’s report, said it could not immediately verify the account, and Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment. As of early Thursday, Nvidia had made no announcement, its newsroom carried no new board statement, and its latest filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission was dated 6 November. Nothing in this article should be read as confirmation that Huang is being removed: the ouster is reported, not established.

The market moved first. Nvidia shares fell 8.6% in after-hours trading after the report broke, closing the regular session at $173.73 and sliding to $158.76 by 7:59 p.m. Eastern. The stock had already fallen 4.27% on Monday 9 November and 5.47% on Tuesday 10 November — the latest wobble in an AI trade that wiped out $2.5 trillion in a single day earlier this month. Nvidia reports third-quarter results on 17 November, with or without Huang in charge — the next fixed date in a week with no fixed answers.

How the week unfolded. The board’s own position has shifted sharply in four days. On Sunday 8 November, it opened an independent investigation “in light of recent reporting” that Huang had been the target of a foreign intelligence effort, overseen by a committee of independent directors assisted by outside independent counsel. The same statement said the board “has no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised” and that it “has confidence in Jensen and his leadership team”. That day Huang told employees in an email that he had been unfaithful to his wife, apologised to his family and colleagues, and said he supports the investigation and will cooperate fully. On 10 November the independent directors retained Joon H. Kim, a former acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and his firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to conduct the inquiry. Neither statement mentioned any change to Huang’s role.

What the reports allege. The Journal linked the possible removal to two alleged extramarital affairs, including one with a woman US intelligence officials suspect of spying for China. The New York Times first reported on 6 November that a memo shared with Trump administration policymakers last spring identified Alice Huang, an executive at Megaspeed, an Nvidia customer, as having been recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security to gather information on Jensen Huang. The Times also reported that a Megaspeed-linked company in Malaysia bought at least $4.8 billion in AI hardware, including Nvidia chips, between June 2024 and February 2026. On Wednesday the Times reported a second alleged affair, with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of healthcare. Nvidia has not publicly addressed the Powell allegation, and none of the underlying allegations has been proved. A shareholder class-action lawsuit has been filed in federal court in San Jose, alleging Nvidia and Huang made false or misleading statements about the affair, and the Republican chairs of three House committees have requested a private briefing with Huang on 18 November.

Why removal would be complicated. Nvidia carries no public succession plan. The board’s lead independent director, Stephen Neal, is among the names mentioned as a possible interim leader, and investors have also mentioned chief financial officer Colette Kress and Ian Buck, who leads Nvidia’s accelerated computing work. Under Nvidia’s bylaws, a majority of its directors can remove the chief executive with or without cause; removing him as a director would require a shareholder vote. Analysts quoted by Reuters noted that an immediate removal would be challenging precisely because no successor is lined up.

Why it matters. Nvidia is the company at the centre of the AI build-out — its chips power the data centres behind nearly every frontier model, and its customers are now so entangled with it that TSMC has approved up to $1 billion in stakes in Anthropic and OpenAI to keep the supply chain close. Its valuation rests heavily on Huang himself, who founded the company in 1993 and has run it ever since. The board’s investigation was already the biggest governance story in AI; a reported move to remove him turns it into a leadership crisis for the industry’s most important supplier, days before earnings. For now, the confirmed facts are narrow: an investigation is open, Huang remains chief executive, and the board’s last public word was confidence. Everything else is a report waiting for a decision.

Sources

  • Nvidia
  • Jensen Huang
  • AI business
  • AI chips
  • stock market

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