The most valuable company in the world may be about to lose the man who built it. The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Nvidia's board of directors is preparing to oust co-founder and chief executive Jensen Huang, and that the board was planning to meet as soon as Wednesday to determine his future. Nvidia shares fell about 8% in after-hours trading on the news.
The report, citing people familiar with the matter, says the board's move follows two extramarital affairs. One involved a woman U.S. officials believe was recruited by Chinese intelligence because of her access to the chip company's chief — Alice Huang, a top executive at Megaspeed International, a Singapore-based cloud provider and Nvidia customer. The other, first reported by The New York Times, involved an Nvidia employee who reports to Huang. China's foreign ministry has denied the espionage narrative, calling it groundless speculation.
Huang, 63, acknowledged on Sunday in a letter to staff that he had been unfaithful to his wife and apologized for violating his family's and his employees' trust. The board said the same day that it had no reason to believe either national security or Nvidia's secrets were compromised, expressed confidence in Huang and his leadership team, and launched an investigation overseen by a committee of independent directors with outside counsel. Three days later, the Journal reported the board was preparing to remove him.
A Week Of Falling Shares
The market has been pricing in trouble for days. Nvidia shares slid as much as 8% in Monday morning trading after the board announced its investigation, and the stock was on track to lose more than $220 billion in market value that day, which would have taken its market capitalisation below $4.3 trillion. Wednesday's after-hours drop of about 8% extended the slide. Rival chipmakers moved the other way after hours: Advanced Micro Devices rose about 4% and Broadcom gained about 2.8%, while Intel slipped 2.7%.
Wall Street is already repositioning. Baird analysts wrote that Huang might have to step down, downgraded Nvidia stock to neutral, and slashed their price target by 60%, to $200. The analysts said the odds of a CEO transition are increasing heading into 2027 and favoured an outside hire over an internal promotion. Bettors on the prediction market Polymarket put 77% odds on Huang leaving his position by resignation or removal by the end of the year, according to the Journal's live coverage.
Why This Is Bigger Than One CEO
Huang is not a typical chief executive. He co-founded Nvidia in 1993, has run it ever since, and is its largest individual shareholder, owning about 3.6% of the company. He has said openly that he does not believe in succession planning, preferring a flat structure in which leaders pass on knowledge continuously — he has roughly 60 direct reports. Nvidia's own proxy statement warns that the company is highly dependent on its longstanding executive team and that a failure of succession planning could hinder its strategy and execution. It was not immediately clear who would succeed him.
The investigation also reaches beyond the boardroom. Huang has been called to testify before Congress, and the chairmen of three House committees wrote to him on Monday raising what they called significant national-security concerns about China's access to sensitive U.S. technology. U.S. and Singaporean authorities are scrutinising Megaspeed over allegations that the company potentially moved billions of dollars' worth of export-restricted Nvidia AI chips to China. Taiwanese authorities have revoked Alice Huang's entry permit, and Singaporean authorities detained her in the summer of 2025 and prevented her from leaving the country, according to people cited by the Journal.
The contrast with just a few days ago is striking. As recently as Sunday, the board's public position was confidence in Huang and his leadership team, with an investigation that would examine all available information. By Wednesday, the Journal was reporting that the board was preparing to remove him — and that a second affair, reported by The New York Times, had come to light. Something changed the board's calculus in between, and the market is now trading on the assumption that the change is not finished.
That matters because of what Nvidia has become. The company sits at the centre of the global AI boom: its chips power the data centres behind the most advanced AI systems in the world, and its market value — above $4 trillion before this week's slide — makes it the most valuable company on earth. Huang has been its public face and its chief salesman for the technology, the executive in the black leather jacket who turned a graphics-card maker into the engine of an industrial revolution. Losing him would not just be a leadership change. It would be the AI industry losing its most recognisable figure at the exact moment the boom faces its hardest questions.
What Happens Next
The board's meeting is the near-term trigger. If it decides Huang must go, Nvidia — the company at the centre of the global AI boom — would face a leadership transition with no named successor and a chief executive who has spent three decades making himself, by design, very hard to replace. If the board backs him, the investigation and the congressional scrutiny continue anyway. Either way, the story that dominated Nvidia's week is no longer about chips. It is about whether the man who turned a graphics-card company into the engine of the AI era keeps his job — and what the most valuable company on earth looks like without him.
