Jensen Huang's Ouster of Nvidia is Roiling Markets. Stocks Fell. Demian Bio Thu, November 12, 2026 at 4:07 PM EST 3 min read NVDA -3.35% ^DJI -0.36% ^GSPC -0.35% ^IXIC -0.39% 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.
Stocks fell on Thursday as markets were roiled by the ouster of Jensen Huang as Nvidia's CEO following a flurry of scandals.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.36%, while the S&P 500 did so 0.35%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite declined 0.39%.
Nvidia's stock fell more than 4% following the news. It has declined around 13% since the scandal began, its market capitalization going from more than $5 trillion in mid September to less than $4 trillion on Thursday.
Huang will be temporarily replaced by company CFO Colette Kress. "Kress will continue to serve as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer while serving as Interim Chief Executive Officer until a permanent successor has been named. The Board is initiating a search for a permanent Chief Executive Officer and will consider internal and external candidates," the company said in a statement.
"We will continue advancing the work that has made NVIDIA a leader in accelerated computing and AI, and execute on the opportunities ahead. Our focus remains on serving our customers, partners, developers and shareholders," Kress said when reacting to the development.
Kress has held the position since September 2013 and regularly represents Nvidia during earnings calls and investor conferences. She previously held senior finance positions at Microsoft, Cisco and Texas Instruments and has helped oversee Nvidia's finances through the rapid expansion of its data-center business.
Her experience is primarily in finance rather than chip design or engineering, although she is among the company's longest-serving senior executives.
Huang had admitted to an affair with Alice Huang, an alleged Chinese spy, on Sunday, apologizing to his family. China has denied the claims.
As the FBI opened a probe on the matter, Huang sought to continue with his daily activities at the company. But on Wednesday, The New York Times detailed that Huang had another affair with Kimberly Powell, vice president of health care at the company. She reported to Huang.
Huang, 63, oversaw Nvidia's strategy, product development and relationships with major technology customers. The company has become particularly important as demand for AI chips has surged among companies building data centers.
The investment debate now centers on whether Nvidia's existing business can keep delivering without the founder whose judgment helped shape its dominance. Shay Boloor, chief market strategist at technology research firm Futurum, argued that customers' computing needs would survive the leadership change.
"You're going to get a lot of AI FUD [fear, uncertainty, and doubt] today with Jensen's resignation but just remember that Meta, Amazon, Google, SpaceX, and Microsoft aren't suddenly going to stop building capacity, enterprises aren't going to abandon AI adoption and inference workloads aren't going to disappear because NVIDIA has a new CEO."
Boloor's argument separates an immediate leadership shock from demand for the infrastructure needed to develop and run AI. "Jensen wasn't simply Nvidia's CEO but the person who has consistently identified where computing is going before customers even realize they need those tech and replacing that strategic vision at a company built around ~60 direct reports and no obvious second-in-command is an enormous challenge."
Investors buying future earnings are also making assumptions about Nvidia's ability to anticipate new markets, defend its competitive position and maintain customer relationships. Ryan Zurrer, founder and director of investment firm Dialectic, sees the selloff as an opportunity. "You're buying this thing at 10 times forward-looking earnings for a company that, for all intents and purposes, seems irreplicable in the global AI infrastructure base."
