Jensen Huang has resigned as president and chief executive of Nvidia and left its board, effective immediately, the chipmaker said on Thursday, Nov. 12, ending 33 years as its chief executive, according to Fortune's count. Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress will serve as interim CEO, and Nvidia shares plunged 14% at the start of trading in New York before halving the loss; the stock was down 5.3% as of about 11:45 a.m. Eastern time, the Associated Press reported. ABC News put the opening drop at more than 13%.

For investors in Asia, the departure removes the best-known face of the AI chip boom from a company whose orders drive revenue at suppliers from Taiwan's foundries to Korea's memory makers. Taiwan's Taiex fell 2.6% on Thursday and Hong Kong's Hang Seng lost 1.3% as concerns over Nvidia's leadership weighed on AI-related shares, the Associated Press reported, before the resignation was announced.

What Nvidia announced

According to a Form 8-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and signed on Nov. 12, the board accepted Huang's resignation on Wednesday, Nov. 11. The filing and the accompanying press release did not give a reason. Neither document mentioned severance, the treatment of Huang's equity awards or the board investigation opened earlier in the month, and the filing did not say whether his board seat will be filled.

Kress, 59, has been CFO since 2013 and will keep that role while she serves as interim CEO, the filing said. The board said it has begun a search for a permanent chief executive and will consider internal and external candidates. Capital Times is covering Kress's appointment in a separate article.

The board also named Harvey C. Jones, 73, as Nvidia's first board chair. Jones has been a director since 1993 and has run Square Wave Ventures, a family office, since 2004, according to the filing. The release called him the board's first-ever chair and said he previously served as CEO and executive chairman of Synopsys. Nvidia said it expects operations, customer commitments and its product road map to continue without interruption. It kept its schedule to report third-quarter fiscal 2027 results on Tuesday, Nov. 17, with a call at 2 p.m. Pacific time.

ABC News said the resignation came with reports of an alleged affair between Huang and a suspected Chinese spy. Huang has not been charged with wrongdoing.

How the scandal unfolded

The chain of events began on Oct. 29, when The New York Times, citing anonymous sources, reported that U.S. officials suspected Alice Huang, a former executive of Singapore-based Nvidia customer Megaspeed, of passing information to Beijing while she developed a close relationship with Jensen Huang. Nvidia rejected allegations that chips had been diverted through Megaspeed, and Huang described his dealings with her as normal business. The two are not related. On Nov. 4, three Republican House committee chairs asked Huang to attend a closed-door briefing on Nov. 18.

On Sunday, Nov. 8, the board opened an independent investigation led by a committee of independent directors with outside counsel, saying it had no reason to believe national security or Nvidia's secrets were compromised. Huang told employees the same day that he had been unfaithful to his wife and would cooperate with the review.

Late on Wednesday, Nov. 11, reports that the board was meeting to discuss Huang's situation sent Nvidia shares down 8.6% in after-hours trading, the AP reported. The stock had climbed 2.9% in the regular session that day. Fortune reported on Nov. 9 that experts saw two likely outcomes: the board could remove Huang after the investigation, or he could leave before it concluded.

Whether Huang will now attend the congressional briefing is covered in a separate Capital Times article.

Huang's stake and the market reaction

Fortune reported on Nov. 9 that Huang was Nvidia's largest individual shareholder, with a 3.56% stake, and no super-voting shares, so his influence as an owner rests on the size of that holding rather than special voting rights. Nvidia's filing did not say whether he plans to sell any shares. Fortune also reported that Nvidia has no chief operating officer and that about 60 executives reported directly to Huang, which leaves the interim leadership with a wide span of control.

Analysts quoted by the AP before the announcement said the company's commercial position does not depend on one person. "There is no credible way to put a precise revenue loss on his departure," Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote, told the AP. She said customers buy Nvidia's computing, software and networking ecosystem, and those advantages would remain without its CEO.

The AP also reported that some investors were buying Nvidia shares at what looked like a discount, while others worried about a wider slowdown in AI spending. The board has not said when the investigation will conclude or whether its findings will be published.

The next fixed date is Nov. 17, when Kress is due to present quarterly results as interim chief executive and finance chief.