Jensen Huang resigned as Nvidia’s chief executive, Nvidia said in a statement Thursday, leaving the most influential corporate voice in the U.S.-China fight over A.I. chips silent. The sudden exit followed two reported extramarital affairs involving the erstwhile CEO. Huang was a key interlocutor on A.I. policy between the two capitals, even helping win a reversal of the Trump administration’s ban on chip sales to China in 2025.
Huang co-founded and led the company for more than three decades. He oversaw Nvidia’s growth into the world’s most valuable semiconductor chip designer. Nvidia’s CFO and executive vice president, Colette Kress, was named interim chief executive on Thursday, as confirmed in Nvidia’s 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Harvey Jones, a director at Nvidia since 1993, became the board’s first-ever chair. Jones said in a statement Thursday, “The Board has full confidence in Colette and the leadership team, and we expect the company’s operations, customer commitments and product roadmap to continue without interruption.”
Nvidia’s market cap still hovers around $4 trillion, according to data from TradingView, second only to Apple. That valuation has endured a nearly $2-trillion loss from its record highs in early October.
On Oct. 29, the New York Times reported that U.S. officials were aware of Huang’s connection to Alice Huang (no relation), an executive at Singapore-based Nvidia customer Megaspeed, and concluded she was passing information to Beijing, an allegation denied by the Chinese Foreign Ministry. At the time, Nvidia spokesperson John Rizzo described the interactions as “not unusual or unexpected.” In a Nov. 8 memo to staff, Huang admitted he had been “unfaithful.” The same day, the board opened an independent investigation into reports that Huang had been the target of foreign intelligence efforts, while saying it had “confidence in Jensen and his leadership team.”
The Times reported on Nov. 11 that Huang also had a relationship with an Nvidia executive who reported to him. Huang’s resignation swiftly followed.
Wired reported Nov. 9 that Huang had retained the services of a crisis-communications firm, headed by Risa Heller, as early as October 2025. Heller’s PR firm was described by TechCrunch as having a history of handling high-profile sex scandals.
Washington-Beijing A.I. trade policy in question
By December 2025, Huang’s lobbying had helped win Nvidia renewed access to China’s A.I. market, and his standing at the White House appeared intact as recently as this month.
Huang attended the state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping held in Washington in September. President Donald Trump called Huang “an honorable guy” while speaking to reporters on Nov. 8, the day Huang admitted the affair.
Reps. Brian Mast, John Moolenaar and Rick Crawford, who chair the House Foreign Affairs Committee, House Select Committee on China, and Intelligence Committee, respectively, had asked Huang to attend a closed-door briefing Nov. 18. Mast had told ABC News he would subpoena Huang if he didn’t respond to the briefing request. House Speaker Mike Johnson said Huang “did the right thing” by stepping down, CNN reported.
Nvidia’s 10-Q filing showed that customers headquartered in China accounted for $7.9 billion, or roughly 8 percent, of Nvidia’s revenue during the three months ended July 26, 2026.
The potential intelligence and trade implications now at play share parallels to a 1987 incident that uncovered sales of high-tech equipment to the Soviet Union by a Toshiba subsidiary amid the Cold War. That scandal led to the resignation of Toshiba’s chairman and president within hours after a Senate vote to block the company from selling products in the U.S. for at least two years.
Neither Huang nor Nvidia has been accused of such wrongdoing, though the Commerce Department has investigated Megaspeed over possible chip smuggling, according to the New York Times. Nvidia has said it investigated earlier diversion allegations and found no evidence, and Huang told Bloomberg on Oct. 29 that Nvidia had counted every GPU deployed at Megaspeed.
Nvidia, the Chinese Embassy, and the offices of the three committee chairs did not respond to requests for comment from Observer as of Friday afternoon.
How the markets reacted to Huang’s exit
Nvidia shares closed down nearly 9 percent for the week ended Nov. 13 at roughly $162 per share. The company’s shares have now tumbled 29 percent over the past month. Prior to the revelations about Huang that led to his departure, much of the focus on Nvidia had been about its central place in the heavily discussed “A.I. bubble,” as well as its crucial role at the nexus of Sino-American trade relations. The decline matters beyond Nvidia, whose shares have driven much of the U.S. stock market’s gains over the past two years.
What comes next
Nvidia will release quarterly earnings on Nov. 17, Kress’s first earnings report as interim CEO. The closed-door briefing the three chairs had requested falls on Nov. 18; it was unclear Friday whether the briefing would go ahead. The company’s press office did not respond as of Friday afternoon when Observer asked if its independent investigation into Huang as a target of foreign intelligence would continue.
What effect, if any, Kress’s elevation to interim chief executive has on the company’s sales of graphics processing units, or GPUs, to China remains unclear. She will remain CFO during the leadership search, which the board said would consider both internal and external candidates.
Huang is still the largest individual shareholder of Nvidia stock with about 3.5 percent ownership of shares outstanding, according to TechCrunch. He held no supervoting rights, so the board could have removed him at any time. According to Nvidia’s 2026 proxy statement, Huang and his wife, Lori Huang, held more than 528 million Nvidia shares in family trusts the couple oversees as co-trustees, as of March 2026.