Jensen Huang's departure from leadership positions at Nvidia triggered a collapse in exchange quotations: within a few hours the capitalization of the company, one of the leaders of the global artificial intelligence industry, fell by hundreds of billions of dollars. This was reported by RIA Novosti.
On Thursday, November 12, Nvidia announced that its founder Jensen Huang is leaving the positions of president and CEO and also stepping down from the board of directors. The decision took effect immediately. The reasons for the resignation were not stated.
Interim leadership of the company has been assigned to Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress, who has worked at Nvidia for 13 years. She will combine both posts while the board of directors searches for a permanent head of the corporation.
Huang led the business for 33 years. During this time Nvidia shares rose in value by more than 700,000 percent.
The dismissal was preceded by a series of high-profile investigations in the American media.
Huang's personal fortune, estimated at 140-145 billion dollars, has also been hit. It is concentrated in family trusts that he owns together with his wife Lori. In the event of a divorce, the largest division of property would be inevitable.
Nvidia produces powerful graphics processors on which modern neural networks are trained and run - from smart translators and image generators to voice assistants in smartphones. After the appearance of ChatGPT in November 2022, demand for such equipment soared: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta* are building data centers, and everyone needs accelerators for artificial intelligence. As a result, Nvidia's capitalization exceeded five trillion dollars.
The founder's resignation immediately sent quotations on the exchange plunging. In trading on November 12, Nvidia shares fell 13%, and capitalization dropped to 3.646 trillion - falling below the four trillion mark for the first time since June 2025. And yet in recent years the company had been battling Apple for the title of the most valuable in the world.
Analysts had warned that if Huang left, the business could lose up to a trillion dollars - and their worst forecasts came true.
For ordinary people this corporate drama will not pass without a trace either. First, turbulence at Nvidia could lead to supply disruptions and higher prices for graphics cards and laptops. Second, the speed at which chips are produced determines how quickly familiar neural networks will become smarter and cheaper. Finally, the fall of such a large company drags down the entire global stock market.
The nearest checkpoint is Nvidia's reporting for the third quarter of fiscal year 2027, which will be published on November 17. Board Chairman Harvey Jones expects that work with clients and production plans will not suffer during the change of leadership.
Donald Trump offered his own version of a successor on the day of the resignation - in his opinion, only former Apple CEO Tim Cook is capable of taking Huang's place. "One legend replaces another!" he explained.
Elon Musk did not stay on the sidelines either. On the social network X he responded as follows to a call by one financial blogger to take in the disgraced top manager: "It would be an honor for him."
In Russia, State Duma Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Information Policy Anton Gorelkin reacted to the news, recommending that domestic tech giants take a closer look at the vacated top manager. "Perhaps a more generous gift to Nvidia's competitors would be hard to imagine," Gorelkin noted. The deputy also advised Russian companies to closely monitor the development of events.
* Recognized as an extremist organization and banned in Russia.