NVIDIA Board Moves Toward Ousting Jensen Huang as Shares Slide

NVIDIA's board met late on November 11, 2026, to decide whether to remove founder and CEO Jensen Huang, Reuters reported, citing a source familiar with the matter. Shares fell more than 8% in extended trading after The Wall Street Journal first reported the company was preparing to fire him.

The meeting marks a sharp reversal from the board's November 8, 2026 statement. That statement announced an independent investigation into reporting that Huang had been targeted by a foreign intelligence effort. It also expressed confidence in Huang and his leadership team. A committee of independent directors, assisted by outside independent counsel, was set to oversee the inquiry. The board said it had no reason to believe national security or NVIDIA secrets had been compromised. Huang committed to cooperating.

How much power does the board actually hold?

NVIDIA's bylaws give directors the authority to remove Huang "with or without cause" by a majority vote. The board has 11 members. Every director except Huang counts as independent, which removes a structural shield many founders enjoy. NVIDIA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the meeting.

The mechanics matter more than the drama here. A founder with 3.6% of a roughly $4 trillion company, dozens of direct reports, and more than three decades at the top cannot be replaced by a simple announcement. His exit would leave NVIDIA with no obvious successor, and the board knows it.

Who would run NVIDIA next?

Bloomberg reported that the board has been working with an outside firm to identify potential replacements, citing a person familiar with the situation. Armina Rosenberg, portfolio manager and co-founder of NVIDIA shareholder Minotaur Capital, named Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress as the natural interim choice. Kress has held the CFO role for more than a decade.

But the interim question is the easy one. Rosenberg said the larger question is who would lead NVIDIA's technology roadmap over the longer term. That roadmap, not the org chart, is what the market is repricing.

What did investors do?

The numbers were immediate. NVIDIA's market-value loss since the investigation announcement would reach about $600 billion if the after-hours decline held. To put that in scale, the drop approaches the total value of most companies in the S&P 500.

Rosenberg framed the shift bluntly: "The market is starting to price Nvidia without its founder as the likely outcome, not a tail risk."

The wider reaction split along competitive lines:

• Nasdaq futures fell 1%
• Micron slipped nearly 2%
• CoreWeave dropped 6%
• AMD rose 4%
• Broadcom rose 3%
• Samsung Electronics gained about 1%; SK Hynix dipped nearly 1% in Asia

Rivals gained what NVIDIA's ecosystem partners lost. CoreWeave, a data-center customer, took the hardest hit among the named names.

Does the chip demand hold up?

Investors and analysts said near-term demand for NVIDIA's chips was unlikely to drop. The bigger risk sits one layer downstream: companies backed by NVIDIA itself, largely customers building data centers that will use its chips.

Nick Ferres, chief investment officer at Vantage Point Asset Management in Singapore, pointed to the exposure created when a supplier finances its customers. A slowdown, he warned, could shift a boom into a bust. That is the mechanism worth watching. NVIDIA's capital has helped fund its own demand, and a leadership shock could tighten that loop from both ends.

What comes next?

NVIDIA reports quarterly results on November 17, 2026. Investors will get a financial update while the leadership question remains unresolved. The succession decision reaches beyond the chief executive role. It determines who sets the technology roadmap and how investors assess the financing relationships around NVIDIA's AI data-center customers.