Why Nvidia Is Still A Buy Even Without Jensen Huang: Dan Niles Zack Guzman Thu, November 12, 2026 at 8:30 AM EST 3 min read AAPL +0.61% NVDA -12.58% Explore stocks 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.
Nvidia investors may be focused on the possibility of losing Jensen Huang, but veteran tech investor Dan Niles says they're overlooking a prime moral of another story: Apple was just fine after Steve Jobs.
As questions surrounding Huang's future at Nvidia cast uncertainty over the AI chip giant, Niles argues that the company's earnings power and product pipeline matter far more than any one executive — even one as influential as Huang.
"The analogy I would tell people is this is like Apple," Niles, founder of Niles Investment Management, told Coinage in a new interview. "If you had come into 2011 bullish on Apple, what happened? Well. Steve Jobs in January took medical leave of absence. He passed away in October of 2011."
Despite the loss of its visionary co-founder, Apple shares finished that year up roughly 26%, according to Niles, outperforming a broader market that went nowhere. "Why? Because they have so much product in the pipeline that it didn't really matter," he said. "And it's the same thing with Nvidia."
The comparison comes as Wall Street weighs the potential fallout from Huang's departure amid a wider selloff in AI-related stocks. Some analysts have warned that losing Nvidia's longtime leader could trigger another sharp decline in shares, with analyst Dan Ives raising the possibility of another 20% move to the downside still to come.
Niles isn't buying that argument. "I think that's completely wrong," he said.
Nvidia shares fell by another 8% in pre-market trading Thursday as the New York Times reported on a second affair Huang had with an employee.
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But for Niles, the central question isn't whether Huang is important to Nvidia's success. It's whether his potential departure would fundamentally change the demand for the company's products.
"There's like 40,000 employees at Nvidia. Is Jensen ridiculously important? Is he a generational CEO like Steve Jobs? Absolutely," Niles said. "But with the stock trading at 11 times, 12 times earnings ... Microsoft and all the other companies, Amazon, Google, they're not changing orders from Nvidia because of this."
That distinction has become increasingly important as Nvidia's fortunes have become intertwined with the broader AI investment cycle.
Huang has played a central role not only in the company's chip development but also in building relationships with the hyperscalers, AI startups and infrastructure providers spending billions to expand computing capacity.
Still, Niles argues that the underlying demand for AI isn't dependent on Huang remaining at the helm.
"The world is bigger than one man," he said. "Somebody else will step up. There's enough products in the pipeline at Nvidia because of Jensen to sustain that company for at least two years."
The investor is also skeptical that markets would continue punishing Nvidia over leadership uncertainty if the company delivers strong earnings.
"What happens if they beat and raise next week?" Niles asked, referring to Nvidia's upcoming earnings report.
"Decades from now, they'll still remember him as being a generational CEO," Niles said of Huang. "But this is more than one person."
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