Nvidia Shares Plunge 7% as Board Weighs CEO Jensen Huang's Future

Nvidia shares fell 7.6% to $160.50 in premarket trading on Thursday — a drop of $13.23 from Wednesday's close of $173.73 — after a Wall Street Journal report said the company's board met Wednesday to consider removing CEO Jensen Huang.

The number tells the story. One of the world's most valuable chipmakers lost ground in minutes on a report about leadership, not earnings or products. By shortly before 8 a.m. ET, the sell-off had spread across the artificial intelligence trade and was dragging on U.S. stock futures, according to market data cited in the report.

Nasdaq 100 futures fell 0.86% Thursday morning, while S&P 500 futures declined 0.4%, according to data cited by Reuters. Dow futures were little changed, edging up 0.03%. The gap between the Dow and the tech-heavy Nasdaq futures shows where investors placed the blame: AI and semiconductors, not the broader market.

What triggered the sell-off?

The Wall Street Journal reported that Nvidia's board met Wednesday to consider whether to remove Huang, the company's co-founder and chief executive since its earliest days. According to the report, the deliberations came amid scrutiny of two extramarital affairs involving the longtime executive — including one with a woman suspected of having ties to Chinese intelligence.

Nvidia has not publicly announced a decision to replace Huang. That gap between the report and any confirmed action left investors trading on uncertainty, which is often worse for a stock than bad news itself.

The reports connecting the affair to a suspected Chinese intelligence link elevated the story from corporate governance to potential national security territory, and that is precisely the territory where Washington has already been watching Nvidia closely. Democratic senators have demanded Nvidia records from the Trump administration over the alleged Chinese spy ties, adding a political dimension to what began as a boardroom question.

How far did the damage spread?

The selling extended well beyond Nvidia to companies tied to the AI industry. The premarket moves, according to the market data, included:

• Intel: down alongside its peers
• Marvell Technology: fell between 2.7% and 3.5%
• Micron Technology: fell between 2.7% and 3.5%
• CoreWeave: dropped approximately 7% — nearly matching Nvidia's decline
• Nasdaq 100 futures: down 0.86%
• S&P 500 futures: down 0.4%

CoreWeave's roughly 7% drop deserves attention. The AI infrastructure company's fortunes are tightly coupled to Nvidia's chips, and its shares traded almost in lockstep with the chipmaker's on Thursday morning — a signal of how concentrated investor exposure to the AI buildout has become.

Not every chip stock fell. Nvidia's rivals moved in the opposite direction. Advanced Micro Devices gained 2.3%, and Broadcom rose 1.4% in premarket trading. Investors appeared to be rotating toward companies that could pick up demand if Nvidia stumbled, treating AMD and Broadcom as partial hedges against the leader's turmoil.

What has Nvidia actually said?

The company has spoken, but not about the board's deliberations.

Nvidia announced Sunday that it had launched an independent investigation into reports that Huang had been targeted by a foreign intelligence operation. A committee of independent directors, assisted by outside counsel, is overseeing the review.

In its statement, Nvidia said it had no reason to believe national security or company secrets had been compromised. The company also expressed confidence in Huang and his leadership team.

That Sunday statement and Wednesday's reported board meeting now sit in uncomfortable tension. A public vote of confidence paired with a private discussion about removal is the kind of ambiguity markets punish, and Thursday's premarket action was the punishment.

Why does Huang's position matter so much?

Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and has served as its chief executive throughout the company's rise to become a dominant supplier of AI processors. He is not a replaceable component. In the eyes of the market, he is the person who built the company whose processors are central to the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence infrastructure.

The potential departure of Huang would raise immediate questions about leadership continuity at Nvidia. Data centers being built for AI run on the company's chips, and the investors funding that buildout have priced in a degree of stability at the top that a sudden CEO exit would call into question.

Thursday's sell-off made that dependence measurable. A 7.6% premarket drop on a leadership report — before any confirmed decision — is the market's estimate of how much of Nvidia's value is tied to continuity in its leadership and to confidence in its position at the center of the AI economy.

What comes next?

Two dates and processes now matter. Nvidia is scheduled to report its fiscal third-quarter results on Nov. 17, when investors will be watching for updates on AI chip demand and the company's data center business. The leadership uncertainty arrives at a closely watched moment for the business, with investors preparing to assess demand for its AI chips and data center products in the upcoming quarterly results.

The independent investigation also continues, overseen by a committee of independent directors and outside counsel. Its findings, and whatever the board decides about Huang, will determine whether Thursday's premarket plunge was an overreaction to a preliminary report or the first repricing of a company about to lose the founder who has run it for more than three decades.

Until one of those shoes drops, every Nvidia-adjacent stock — from Micron to CoreWeave — will keep trading on the same question: is Jensen Huang still the CEO, and for how much longer?