Nvidia shares fell more than 8 per cent at one point in US after-hours trading on Wednesday as CEO Jensen Huang’s prospects of hanging onto his role became more clouded after media reports of a board meeting and another extramarital affair.
The drop in the American AI chip giant’s share price erased a 2.9 per cent rebound in the regular trading session, after the stock lost over 9.5 per cent in trading on Monday and Tuesday.
It came as speculation mounted over whether Huang would keep his job. Nvidia’s board was preparing to remove him and could meet as soon as Wednesday to decide his future, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing informed sources.
Separately, The New York Times reported that Huang – who had already admitted to marital infidelity, with media reports linking him to Chinese businesswoman Alice Huang – also had an extramarital relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice-president of healthcare, who reported to him. The newspaper cited five people who had worked at the company as sources.
Nvidia declined to comment.
Dan Ives, a partner and senior managing director at US-based merchant bank Yorkville Ives & Co, said in a note issued on Wednesday that Jensen Huang might not last long.
“In our view, the writing is on the wall that Jensen’s days at Nvidia could be numbered and we would expect this to be a very fluid situation over the next 48 hours,” he said.
“Jensen has created a black-eye moment for himself and Nvidia and now has created a spider web of complexity that Wall Street, Silicon Valley, [Washington], and the global tech ecosystem are trying to figure out what is next.
“While Jensen is the hearts and lungs of the Nvidia story, the company and its leading edge GPU technology will go on and it does not change the entrenched position Nvidia has in the ‘AI Revolution’ chip arms race.”
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk weighed in on X, saying that it would be “an honor” to hire Jensen Huang if the Nvidia board ousted the company’s founder.
@zerohedge That would be an honor— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 12, 2026
On Sunday, Nvidia’s board announced an independent investigation after Jensen Huang admitted to an extramarital affair, amid reports that he had allegedly been targeted by a foreign intelligence operation.
The public storm has threatened to undermine Jensen Huang’s standing as one of corporate America’s most visible champions for preserving US semiconductor trade ties with China.
It could also intensify Washington’s tech blockade on China following the Democratic Party’s victory in midterm elections this month, which analysts said could give the US Congress the political momentum needed to plug loopholes in existing semiconductor restrictions, accelerating efforts to curb third-country chip smuggling and cutting off Chinese tech firms from overseas cloud computing clusters.
Brian Colello, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar, said the fallout had not crept into Nvidia’s financial outlook, because near- and medium-term demand for its chips remained high amid the artificial intelligence boom.
“We think Nvidia’s wide moat is underpinned by high switching costs around its CUDA AI software ecosystem, and hardware and networking product design expertise,” Colello said. “These assets should enable Nvidia to keep building best-of-breed data centre products, regardless of the CEO.” -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
