Nvidia board reportedly prepares to oust CEO Jensen Huang after executive affair report sends stock down 8 percent

Nvidia’s leadership crisis escalated sharply overnight into Thursday as multiple U.S. media reports said the artificial-intelligence chipmaker’s board of directors convened to weigh removing co-founder and Chief Executive Jensen Huang — erasing Wednesday’s regular-session stock rebound and knocking Nvidia shares down roughly 8 percent in extended trading.

According to The Wall Street Journal and Reuters, citing people familiar with the deliberations, directors began preparing for a potential leadership change after The New York Times reported Wednesday — citing five current and former employees — that Huang had carried on a workplace relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of healthcare. When reached by phone Wednesday regarding the allegation involving Powell, Huang reportedly replied, “I don’t think you should be talking to me directly,” before ending the call.

Nvidia did not immediately issue a public statement confirming a board decision, and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission records showed no new Form 8-K leadership filing as of early Thursday morning. Still, Bloomberg reported that Nvidia’s board is already working with an outside executive-search firm to evaluate potential replacements and is considering appointing an interim chief executive while conducting a permanent search.

Second relationship shifts board calculus after $600 billion weekly wipeout

The reported boardroom pivot marks an abrupt reversal for the roughly $4 trillion Santa Clara semiconductor giant, whose shares had climbed earlier Wednesday after retaining law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to conduct an internal security review and riding a wider AI-infrastructure rally sparked by CoreWeave’s upbeat quarterly revenue guidance.

Nvidia stock closed up 2.9 percent in Wednesday’s regular Nasdaq session before tumbling 7.9 percent after hours to roughly $160.03 once word of the board’s emergency discussions broke. Including the extended-hours selloff, Nvidia has shed nearly $600 billion in market capitalization since the start of the week, dragging U.S. equity futures and Asian chip suppliers including SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics lower in Thursday trading.

Until Wednesday evening, directors had largely stood behind the 63-year-old chief executive after Huang sent an internal note to staff acknowledging past marital infidelity tied to a woman — identified by The New York Times as Alice H., a former executive at Singapore-based data-center operator Megaspeed — whom U.S. intelligence officials reportedly suspected of links to Chinese intelligence. Beijing has dismissed the espionage allegations, while Nvidia and Huang were hit Monday with a proposed shareholder class-action lawsuit alleging the company failed to disclose governance and national-security risks.

Whereas a relationship with an outside executive primarily raised counterintelligence questions under external legal review, corporate-governance analysts noted that an undisclosed relationship involving an internal Nvidia vice president directly implicates workplace conduct codes that public-company boards enforce strictly.

Succession bottleneck ahead of November 17 earnings

Any immediate departure by Huang — who co-founded Nvidia 33 years ago, owns roughly 3.6 percent of its shares, and manages dozens of direct reports in an unusually flat executive structure — would test the operational stability of the company at the center of global AI data-center spending just five days before Nvidia reports fiscal third-quarter earnings on November 17.

“Huang being removed immediately could be challenging for Nvidia since it does not have a succession plan in place,” Gil Luria, head of technology research at D.A. Davidson, told Reuters, adding that directors would nevertheless feel compelled to act quickly if an internal inquiry substantiated violations of company policy.

Industry analysts and financial media cited Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress and Ian Buck, Nvidia’s vice president for hyperscale and high-performance computing, among potential internal interim stewards, alongside scenarios in which Huang transitions out of day-to-day management into a board chairmanship while external semiconductor executives are vetted.

Meanwhile, scrutiny on Capitol Hill continues to intensify. Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Chris Coons sent a letter urging the Trump administration to preserve all federal records tied both to Nvidia’s advanced AI chip exports to China and to intelligence assessments surrounding Huang’s overseas contacts, adding to threats of a congressional subpoena if the Nvidia chief declines a closed-door briefing with lawmakers.