Jensen Huang's Fall Clouds Anthropic's $1.4 Trillion IPO

Nvidia's $10 billion commitment to Anthropic's IPO now faces scrutiny after CEO Jensen Huang resigned on Thursday, just days before the AI company targets a $1.4 trillion valuation. Huang stepped down after news of two alleged extramarital affairs and an investigation by the company he led for 33 years. CFO Colette Kress now leads Nvidia on an interim basis.

The timing couldn't be worse for Anthropic. Nvidia's stock dropped Thursday, adding to a run of market jitters, and the industry loses its top AI financier and pitchman. For the wider AI world, Huang's ouster removes the executive who built the world's most influential chip company. Neither Anthropic nor Nvidia responded to requests for comment.

Will Nvidia's $10 billion IPO commitment survive?

Mandeep Singh, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst covering Anthropic, warned in a note published before the ouster that Nvidia's IPO-day investment "could face heightened scrutiny" if Huang were removed. "A leadership transition could prompt Nvidia's board to reassess the size, timing or strategic rationale of the commitment to Anthropic," Singh wrote. "Any delay or reduction could weaken an important signal of support for Anthropic's IPO pricing at around $1.4 trillion, though commitments from Google and other strategic investors might limit the financing impact."

Harrison Rolfes, an analyst for PitchBook, expects the deal to close as planned. "It has nothing to do with Jensen's overall control," he told Business Insider. "It's just: 'We made the investment, and we're good to go.'"

The bigger risk sits in Anthropic's compute supply. The IPO prospectus lists a $45 billion chip agreement with Nscale and a $41 billion agreement with Lambda — both for Nvidia chips, and both neocloud developers depend on Nvidia's financing support. Rolfes expects current deals to hold but future ones to arrive more slowly.

"Instead of, let's say, Dario or Elon Musk just calling Jensen to say, 'Hey, I need this by whenever,' it's now going to have to go through the bureaucracy of Nvidia," Rolfes said.

Kunjan Sobhani, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst covering Nvidia, also expects existing commitments to remain, though future rounds might slow given how instrumental Huang was in dealmaking.

How did Huang and Amodei clash in Washington?

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Huang fought publicly over chip export policy. In a 2025 Wall Street Journal op-ed, Amodei called export controls a "valuable tool in slowing China's AI development," arguing Trump's actions would "help determine whether democracies or autocracies lead the next technological era."

Huang lobbied the other way and secured Trump administration approval to sell H200 chips in China, with individual Commerce Department sign-offs. At Davos last February, Amodei likened allowing those China sales to "selling nuclear weapons to North Korea." Huang rejected the comparison as "lunacy" in a podcast shortly after.

Huang's exit weakens his Washington influence. The House Committee on Foreign Affairs is probing his relationship with Chinese executive Alice Huang, whose Singapore-based firm bought many Nvidia chips. Politico reported Thursday that the former CEO has agreed to testify. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle now back stronger chip export restrictions — a clear win for Amodei.

Huang also championed open-source models that compete with Anthropic's and OpenAI's closed ones. That promotion aligns with Nvidia's business strategy, Sobhani said, so he doesn't expect a full retreat, though "the investment in that area could slow down."

Does Anthropic's chip strategy now look smarter?

One pillar of the IPO pitch looks stronger amid Nvidia's turmoil: Anthropic doesn't lean too hard on Nvidia hardware. It also uses chips from Amazon Web Services, Google, Broadcom, and AMD. AMD and Broadcom, both Nvidia rivals, saw their stocks jump on Thursday's news.

Tighter export restrictions, if imposed, would likely push more Nvidia chips into American data centers — expanding the compute pool Anthropic buys as it scales. Sobhani said Huang's exit shouldn't affect Nvidia chips' performance, competitiveness, or supply in the short to medium term.

Nvidia reports earnings Tuesday, its first without Huang at the helm. Anthropic's IPO is expected in the days after. "We'll get more color next week about what really we should expect," Sobhani said.