Dan Ives warns removing Jensen Huang as Nvidia CEO could wipe $1.2 trillion from the company's value Joseph Zeballos-Roig Wed, November 11, 2026 at 9:30 AM EST 5 min read NVDA +2.95% Trade NVIDIA on Coinbase Trading disclosure Trading disclosure The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational.
Has the AI boom made Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang the first chief executive deemed "too big to fire?" At least one tech analyst seems to think so.
"We believe if Jensen was removed as CEO, Nvidia is worth a lot less (25%-30%) as a company/stock and would change the future direction of the company and create a dramatically different competitive environment around AI GPUs globally especially for China," Dan Ives, a tech stock analyst and partner at Yorkville Ives, a self-launched merchant bank, said in a Nov. 9 post on X.
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The comment comes as Huang grapples with the fallout of an extramarital affair with an alleged Chinese spy that could jeopardize his job. Ives estimated there's a roughly 15% chance that Jensen is removed.
Nvidia didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Moneywise.
In a Nov. 8 email to staff, Huang admitted he was unfaithful to his wife, and multiple outlets have reported the affair was with Alice Huang (no relation), a woman accused of being a Chinese intelligence operative. She was an executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based company that the U.S. has suspected was helping China get around AI chip sale bans.
"You deserve better from me," Huang said in the email. "My responsibility is to serve you and be worthy of your trust. I have fallen short of that responsibility. I am fully committed to NVIDIA and will work to earn back your confidence."
On the same day, Nvidia's board of directors announced it was launching an investigation into reports that Huang was the target of foreign intelligence efforts, though the company said it has no reason to believe its CEO had "compromised" American national security.
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It's difficult to overstate Nvidia's significance in the frenzied AI buildout. The AI behemoth is a prominent developer of the graphics processing units (GPUs) powering AI infrastructure like the data centers springing up across the U.S.
Its market capitalization hit approximately $5.79 trillion at the start of October, though it has slid to about $4 trillion, still leaving it as one of the most valuable firms on earth. If Ives' prediction did come to fruition, Huang's ouster could knock off between $1 trillion to $1.2 trillion from Nvidia's overall value.
Nvidia also planted itself in the AI boom's financial ecosystem by partnering with Wall Street firms in a $500 billion gambit to marshal new capital and streamline chip financing, so Nvidia's customers can better afford them.
Huang has served a critical role in Nvidia's meteoric rise from a chipmaker for video games to a manufacturer of the cutting-edge chips now supplying the AI boom. Some AI observers, though, argue Huang is not indispensable to the AI age.
"Jensen has no choice but to resign. This goes beyond having an affair. His credibility is gone. A cloud of suspicion will forever follow him," Samuel Hammond, an AI expert at the right-leaning Foundation for American Innovation think tank, wrote in a Nov. 9 X post. "He must step aside for the sake of his family, his country, and his shareholders."
Investors have punished Nvidia in the days since the scandal became public. By midday on Nov. 10, Nvidia was trading at about $168 per share, a roughly 10% drop since Friday.
Huang can count on a powerful backer: President Donald Trump. Nvidia had reportedly donated $25 million to Trump's ballroom project and Huang had persuaded Trump to ease back on a strict ban on advanced chip sales to China, a geopolitical rival in the AI race.
"I asked him that question: 'Did you have any idea that she was a spy?'" Trump told reporters at the White House on Nov. 9. "He said, 'I had no idea that she was a spy,' and I really believe him."
The president later said he believed Huang would "be in good shape" once all was said and done.
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This article originally appeared on Moneywise.com under the title: Dan Ives warns removing Jensen Huang as Nvidia CEO could wipe $1.2 trillion from the company's value
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