Author: Zhou, ChainCatcher

The whole world is talking about Jensen Huang!

In just a week, this founder who has led NVIDIA for 33 years has transformed from the most dazzling CEO of the AI era into the protagonist of a corporate governance crisis.

First, he admitted to infidelity, and the NVIDIA board immediately launched an investigation to check whether he had become a target of foreign intelligence operations. Subsequently, The New York Times revealed that he also had an extramarital affair with a company vice president who reported directly to him.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the board is preparing to remove Huang. The probability of "Jensen Huang announcing his resignation or being dismissed by the end of the year" on Polymarket even rose to 90%.

Some Wall Street institutions have started to downgrade NVIDIA's rating. According to Reuters statistics, including the after-hours drop, NVIDIA's market value has evaporated by about $600 billion since the board announced the investigation.

If Jensen Huang really steps down as CEO, who will take over? What will NVIDIA be like next? What kind of impact will the capital market endure?

The board holds the power to remove him, and there is still no conclusion on the successor

Recently, the focus of external attention has been Huang's relationship with former Megaspeed executive Alice Huang. Megaspeed is a data center operator in Singapore and a client of NVIDIA, and the U.S. government is investigating whether it illegally transferred NVIDIA chips to China.

However, since Alice Huang is not an NVIDIA employee, the board has time to wait for the investigation conclusion. From November 9 to 11, the probability of Huang leaving by the end of the year on Polymarket remained around 15%.

The turning point occurred on November 11. The New York Times cited five current or former employees claiming that Huang had an extramarital affair with Kimberly Powell, the vice president of medical business, who reported directly to him.

It's important to note that the relationship between a CEO and direct subordinates is usually seen as a governance red line in American companies. Former Intel CEO Brian Krzanich and former McDonald's CEO Steve Easterbrook both left due to relationships with employees that violated company policy.

The key issue is that Huang does not have sufficient leverage to resist the board. NVIDIA operates on a one-share, one-vote basis, without a dual-class share structure. According to the company's proxy statement released in May 2026, Huang holds about 3.58% of the shares. Among the 11 board members, he is the only non-independent director. Under the company’s articles, the board can remove executives at any time by a majority vote.

According to Bloomberg, the board has hired an external search firm to find candidates and is considering appointing an interim CEO. Semafor cited informed sources saying that some directors prefer CFO Colette Kress to take over.

Kress joined NVIDIA in 2013 and previously worked at Microsoft, Cisco, and Texas Instruments. She has long attended earnings calls with Huang and is one of the most familiar NVIDIA executives on Wall Street.

Traders in the prediction market are more optimistic about Ian Buck. After the dismissal report was released, the probability of Buck becoming the next CEO of NVIDIA on Polymarket and Kalshi significantly led. As of 6 PM on the 12th, Polymarket showed Buck with a 25% probability of leading, followed closely by Kress with 22%.

Buck joined NVIDIA in 2004 and is one of the main developers of the CUDA software framework. He currently oversees large-scale and high-performance computing operations.

Some analysts also suggested that Kress could stabilize the business and finances, while Buck could take charge of products and technology, transitioning as co-CEOs.

Among external candidates, Arm CEO Rene Haas worked at NVIDIA for seven years and is familiar with the company culture, but he is also the international CEO of SoftBank Group, making it costly to poach. According to Semafor, Apple hardware chief Johny Srouji is also considered. AMD CEO Lisa Su is mentioned, but AMD is a direct competitor of NVIDIA, and she has a familial relationship with Huang, making it unlikely.

In a previous Bloomberg documentary, Huang himself stated that he hopes the next CEO of NVIDIA is already within the company but he will not hand the position to his children. He said that just as he could be fired at any time, the next CEO must also earn their appointment based on merit.

Of course, not everyone supports a change in leadership. Seaport analyst Jay Goldberg, who gave a sell rating, believes that forcing Huang to step down would be a mistake for all parties, and he doesn't see anyone who could easily replace Huang.

The Kobeissi Letter suggested the board hold a special shareholders' meeting for a consultative vote, and Elon Musk also expressed support for giving shareholders a voice. However, consultative votes are non-binding, and the final decision still rests with the board.

Orders and ecosystem remain, but Jensen Huang's decision-making power and political capital are hard to replicate

NVIDIA's business will not stop due to a change in leadership, as global developers deeply rely on the CUDA ecosystem, and cloud vendors' procurement plans have already been set. Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon believes this turmoil is due to NVIDIA's internal issues, and customers are unlikely to reduce orders because of it.

Bernstein downgraded NVIDIA's rating to market perform, cutting the target price from $400 to $200, but maintaining its profit forecast, only halving the valuation multiple to about 12.7 times expected earnings for the fiscal year 2028. Rasgon stated that the downgrade was due to leadership uncertainty, and he would rather observe from the sidelines.

Baird also downgraded its rating to neutral, reducing the target price from $500 to $200, citing government investigation and export restriction risks as reasons. Morgan Stanley removed NVIDIA from its preferred stock list based on stop-loss rules but maintained an overweight rating and a $300 target price. Yorkville Ives senior managing director Dan Ives believes that if Huang is forced to step down, NVIDIA's stock price may initially drop by 25% to 30%.

The truly difficult aspect to hand over is Huang's decision-making style. Tianfeng International Securities analyst Guo Mingqiang stated that Huang's value lies in transforming the technology deemed feasible by engineers into products that the company must commit resources to deliver, providing strong visibility for the supply chain and forcing competitors to follow suit. In his view, it will be difficult for Huang to exit completely, and a more realistic approach is to gradually reduce NVIDIA's dependence on his personal decisions while preparing for succession.

Another asset that is hard to transition is in Washington. Over the past two years, Huang has frequently communicated with the Trump administration to seek relaxation of chip export restrictions to China. In December 2025, Trump announced that NVIDIA would be allowed to sell H200 chips to China, with the U.S. government collecting 25% as a fee.

Current pressures mainly come from Congress. Three Republican House committee chairs have requested Huang to attend a closed-door briefing on November 18, and Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Brian Mast stated that if there is no response, they will consider issuing a subpoena.

According to The New York Times, the Commerce Department's investigation into Megaspeed has been handed over to the Justice Department, shifting to a criminal investigation.

These issues will not disappear with a change in leadership; the successor will face them without Huang's political capital.

NVIDIA's turbulence is spilling over into the entire market

NVIDIA's stock price volatility is no longer just related to NVIDIA's shareholders. As of October 28, NVIDIA accounted for 7.81% of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF. According to calculations by Benzinga, NVIDIA's stock price fluctuating by 10% would approximately lead to a change of 0.78 percentage points in the S&P 500 index.

This Monday, NVIDIA fell by 4.27%, with about 463 million shares traded, approximately four times the usual volume, accumulating a 9.5% drop over Monday and Tuesday. Following the Wall Street Journal's dismissal report, Nasdaq futures fell about 0.8%, and S&P futures dropped about 0.3%. Selling pressure concentrated in the AI supply chain affected companies like Supermicro, Oracle, and CoreWeave, while AMD saw a countervailing rise of 3.8%. NVIDIA suppliers in Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, which have a high weight, were the first to trade on this news in the spot market.

Market-cap-weighted index funds will not be forced to sell due to stock price declines; NVIDIA's weight in the index will automatically shrink as the stock price falls. The real selling pressure arises from active funds adjusting their risk controls and funds that specifically bet on founder-led companies. According to Axios, Founder ETFs have indicated they will sell NVIDIA if Huang steps down.

According to Reuters, some lawmakers are pushing to tighten chip export controls to China as a result. If the situation continues to deteriorate, for instance, if the Justice Department criminal investigation involves NVIDIA or export controls tighten further, the impacts will spread from just NVIDIA to the entire AI hardware supply chain.

In the crypto market, NVIDIA (NVDA) has now become the largest HIP-3 market on Hyperliquid in terms of outstanding contracts, and the fourth-largest market on the platform, only behind BTC, ETH, and HYPE.

Over the last weekend before the U.S. stock market opened, perpetual contracts and tokenized NVIDIA stocks on Hyperliquid and Binance first dropped by about 3% to 4%. Bitcoin also briefly fell below $74,000 that same weekend, with some analysts suggesting this was a typical leveraged response to seek safety.

Additionally, many Bitcoin mining companies have shifted to become AI computing power providers, with IREN signing a $3.4 billion five-year AI cloud service contract with NVIDIA in May of this year, while NVIDIA also obtained warrants to purchase up to 30 million shares of IREN stock at $70 per share, provided certain conditions such as GPU delivery milestones are met.

If NVIDIA changes leadership, whether the pace of such collaborations will change is an issue that transitioning mining companies will have to face.

Conclusion

Bernstein analyst Rasgon once described Jensen Huang as NVIDIA, and NVIDIA as Jensen Huang. For more than thirty years, this has been NVIDIA's greatest advantage, and now it has become its biggest uncertainty.

Huang's fate is no longer just a matter concerning NVIDIA but the fate of an entire ecosystem. From the S&P 500 index to the Asian chip supply chain, to the on-chain markets that are still trading over the weekend, global capital is all waiting for this answer.