[UPDATE] Nvidia's Board Weighs Pushing Jensen Huang Out

Four days ago Nvidia's board announced an investigation into its chief executive and, in the same breath, declared its confidence in him. That confidence appears to have collapsed. On Wednesday evening, the Wall Street Journal reported that the board was preparing to remove Jensen Huang as chief executive, and Reuters said it had confirmed the directors met late that night to decide his future. Bloomberg reported that the board has been working with an outside firm to line up possible successors and is weighing an interim chief while it runs a broader search.

The trigger, according to the reporting, is a second relationship. The New York Times, citing five people granted anonymity, named Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of worldwide healthcare, who reports directly to Huang. That followed an earlier affair Huang had already acknowledged in an internal memo, the one involving Alice Huang, whom US officials reportedly tied to Chinese intelligence. China has rejected the espionage claim.

Markets did not wait for a decision. Nvidia shares fell more than 8 percent in after-hours trading on Wednesday as investors tried to price in a version of the company without the man who has run it since 1993.

A sharp reversal in four days

The speed of the turn is the striking part. When the board opened its independent probe on Sunday, it said it had no reason to believe that company secrets or national security had been compromised, and it kept Huang in place. By midweek the question had shifted from whether he had been targeted to whether he could stay at all.

Two names have surfaced as possible caretakers: chief financial officer Colette Kress and lead independent director Stephen Neal. Neither Nvidia nor Huang had commented publicly as of Wednesday night, and Reuters noted it could not independently verify the original Journal report. So this is reported, not settled. A board can meet, weigh an exit, and still decide to keep its chief executive, particularly one as closely identified with the company as Huang is.

Why the stakes run wide

Nvidia sits at the center of the entire AI build-out, which is what makes a leadership wobble ripple so far. The same board now has to manage a succession question while US-China chip policy keeps tightening around it. Nvidia's China-bound H200 chips are piling up in Hong Kong, and Congress is moving to fold fresh export curbs into the defense bill. Losing a founder-chief executive in the middle of that would be a lot for any company to absorb at once.

For now, the facts that hold up are these. The board met. Outside advisers are involved. A second affair has been reported by a major outlet. And the stock has already moved. Whether Huang is still running Nvidia by the weekend is the part nobody can answer yet. We will update this story as the board acts.