Nvidia’s stock fell sharply in out-of-hours trading after new reports dropped concerning CEO Jensen Huang late on Wednesday.
The Wall Street Journal reported the Nvidia board was preparing to remove Huang. Days earlier, the board said it was investigating whether Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort after the CEO acknowledged having an extramarital affair.
The New York Times also reported new allegations on Wednesday, saying Huang had a second extramarital affair with an executive at Nvidia who reports to him, citing five unnamed sources who worked at the company. The Times said the executive was Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of healthcare.
Nvidia declined to provide a statement to The New York Times.
On Thursday morning, Nvidia’s stock remained significantly lower in premarket trading and looked set to drop as much as 8% at the open. That would represent a fall of around $340 billion from the company’s closing market value on Wednesday.
Other stocks with direct ties to Nvidia also seemed to move in response to Wednesday’s news.
CoreWeave, a cloud computing company that uses Nvidia chips and counts Nvidia as an investor, jumped 25% during Wednesday’s trading but was set to drop 5% on Thursday morning.
Micron, which supplies memory used alongside Nvidia’s chips, was down nearly 3% in premarket trade, while Supermicro, which builds servers, was down nearly 5%. TSMC, which manufactures the chips Nvidia designs, was down over 2.5%.
After Wednesday afternoon’s reports on Huang, Bernstein, a global equity research and brokerage firm, downgraded Nvidia’s stock and slashed its price target in half to $200.
“We admit to struggling mightily with this call, and can sympathize with the case to buy the dip,” researchers at the firm wrote in their report. “But our gut tells us that we probably haven’t yet fully probed the depths of what might be found here; we’ve had enough, and prefer to watch from the sidelines.”
On Sunday, Huang admitted to having an affair in a memo to employees and said he was cooperating with the board’s investigation. He did not name his affair partner. The New York Times had previously reported that US intelligence officials believed Alice Huang, a tech executive who had grown close to the CEO, was recruited to gather information for Beijing.
Days before disclosing his affair, Huang told Bloomberg his interactions with Alice Huang were related to their business dealings and “all completely normal and not unusual.”
Alice Huang, a Chinese national who is not related to the Nvidia CEO, has worked as an executive at Megaspeed, a cloud computing company in Singapore that was also an Nvidia customer.
Nvidia’s board hired Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, an elite Wall Street law firm, to carry out the investigation, with partner Joon H. Kim, a former US attorney, tapped to lead it.
Lawmakers last week also sent a letter to Huang requesting he testify about his relationship with Alice Huang, citing “significant national security concerns.”
Nvidia succession plans
Nvidia’s CEO has become nearly synonymous with the company he cofounded, but the question of succession at one of the world’s most valuable companies has gotten major attention this week.
Nvidia has not publicly shared a succession plan. On Sunday, the board told Business Insider that “Jensen is committed to continuing to lead Nvidia as CEO without interruption.”
Analysts and former employees said there were several potential successors, including vice president Ian Buck and chief financial officer Colette Kress.
Huang’s two adult children, Madison and Spencer, also work at Nvidia.
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Kelsey Vlamis is a senior reporter for Business Insider, where she covers business and tech news. She also writes business stories about travel, luxury, and culture. Previously, she covered the environment, outdoors, and indigenous issues.Her feature story “Disaster at 18,200 feet” received awards from the New York Press Club and the North American Travel Journalists Association, as well as honorable mention from the Society of American Travel Writers. She has also received an American Journalism Online Award for her coverage on missing and murdered Indigenous people in Wyoming.She’s appeared on CBS, NPR, NBC, and other outlets to discuss her reporting. She previously worked on the world news desk at the BBC in London and received a master’s in journalism from Northwestern University.She can be reached by email at kvlamis@businessinsider.com or via the encrypted-messaging app Signal at kelseyv.21.
Geoff Weiss is a senior reporter on Business Insider’s tech team, where he covers Nvidia and AI infrastructure. His reporting focuses on the business of AI compute, emerging startups, and the people and strategies shaping the industry.Previously, Geoff was on the media desk, covering YouTube and Netflix, and themes like the intersection of Hollywood and the creator economy. His work on Netflix’s video podcasting ambitions and Mr Beast’s lessons for Hollywood won second and first prize, respectively, at the 2025 LA Press Club Awards.Prior to joining Business Insider, Geoff was the senior editor of Tubefilter and a staff writer at Entrepreneur. He graduated from New York University with a degree in English Literature.He can be reached at gweiss@businessinsider.com, on Signal @geoffweiss.25, and on LinkedIn. Have a tip? Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here’s our guide to sharing information securely.
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