On Wednesday, Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) shares declined 8% after hours following reports that the board of directors is preparing to remove Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang.
The development follows an internal memo issued on Sunday in which Huang admitted to having an extramarital affair and stated he was cooperating with a board investigation.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the board is moving to oust the chief executive, while The New York Times published additional allegations citing five unnamed former employees who stated Huang had a second affair with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care.
- Jensen Huang saw Nvidia shares drop over 8% after hours as reports emerged regarding the CEO.
- Supply chain partners also retreated, with TSMC dropping over 2%, Micron declining nearly 3%, Supermicro falling close to 5%, and CoreWeave dropping more than 4%.
- The Nvidia board retained the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, with partner Joon H. Kim leading the probe into the executive’s conduct.
- RUM Group provided a fourth-quarter 2026 revenue outlook of $88M to $94M in its November 11 results release for the upcoming fiscal quarter, while also reporting record third-quarter revenue, positive Adjusted EBITDA, $68.2M of Quake AI revenue with approximately 85% GPU utilization, a WWE Main Event partnership, a $79.9M net loss attributable to shareholders, and $113.8M used in operating cash over nine months, alongside noting that part of 250-megawatt capacity may be pushed beyond 2027.
The board hired elite Wall Street firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to conduct the inquiry, appointing former U.S. attorney Joon H. Kim to lead the legal team. The New York Times previously reported that U.S. intelligence officials believed Alice Huang, a tech executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed, was recruited to gather information for Beijing.
Days before disclosing his first relationship, Huang told Bloomberg that his interactions with Alice Huang pertained strictly to business dealings and were “all completely normal and not unusual.” Nvidia declined to provide a statement to The New York Times regarding the allegations involving Powell.
Nvidia has not publicly disclosed a formal succession plan, though the board informed businessinsider.com on Sunday that “Jensen is committed to continuing to lead Nvidia as CEO without interruption.” Analysts and former employees pointed to several potential internal candidates to take the helm if a leadership transition occurs, including chief financial officer Colette Kress and Huang’s two adult children, Madison and Spencer, who also work at the company.
According to discussion tracked on Stocktwits, prospective candidates include Chief Scientist Bill Dally—who chaired Stanford University’s Computer Science department, led research on parallel computing architectures at MIT and Caltech, is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and received the IEEE Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award—alongside Vice President of Hyperscale and High-Performance Computing Ian Buck—creator of the CUDA software platform—and Senior Vice President of GPU Engineering Jonah Alben.
| Company | Ticker | After-Hours Stock Move |
|---|---|---|
| Nvidia | NVDA | Down over 8% |
| Supermicro | SMCI | Down nearly 5% |
| CoreWeave | Private | Down over 4% |
| Micron | MU | Down nearly 3% |
| TSMC | TSM | Down over 2% |
Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
