12 min read
Jensen Huang resigns as Nvidia CEO, and NVDA opened 13.09% lower on November 12, 2026, at $150.99. He left his roles as president, chief executive and board member effective immediately. That came four days after he told employees he had been unfaithful to his wife, and CFO Colette Kress is now interim CEO.
Is your money safe? Nvidia says operations, customer commitments and the product roadmap continue without interruption. Even so, the stock has lost 17.81% since the November 4 close, and the next real test is the earnings report on Tuesday, November 17.
Key takeaways
- NVDA opened at $150.99 on November 12, a 13.09% drop from the $173.73 close a day earlier (Yahoo Finance).
- A $10,000 NVDA stake held since the November 4 close was worth about $8,219 at 10:37 a.m. ET on November 12, a $1,781 hit (our math on Yahoo Finance prices).
- Third-quarter fiscal 2027 results arrive Tuesday, November 17, at about 1:20 p.m. PT. It’s the first report under interim CEO Colette Kress (Nvidia 8-K).
- The S&P 500 slipped only 0.21% the same day (Yahoo Finance), so index fund holders absorbed a fraction of what direct NVDA owners took.
Why did Jensen Huang resign as Nvidia CEO?
Officially, Nvidia hasn’t said. The press release Nvidia filed with the SEC (Form 8-K, exhibit 99.1) states that “Jensen Huang has resigned as President, Chief Executive Officer, and a member of the Board, effective immediately.” It gives no reason and reports no findings from the board’s investigation.
What’s on the record is this. On November 8, the board opened an independent investigation “in light of recent reporting that founder and CEO Jensen Huang has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort.” A committee of independent directors oversees it, working with outside counsel. The board said then that it had “no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised.”
The same day, Huang sent an email to employees saying he had been unfaithful to his wife. He apologized to his family and colleagues and took full responsibility. Fox Business quoted him: “My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry.”
What Fox Business reported about the resignation
Fox Business reported on November 12 that Huang resigned after an internal investigation into his relationship with an alleged Chinese spy, and that he is also leaving the board. That’s the outlet’s account. Nvidia’s filing doesn’t make that link, and no official finding has confirmed the spy allegation. China denied the reports and called the alleged intelligence plot a smear campaign against Beijing, according to Fox Business.
For investors, the hard part is the distance between the silent filing and the loud headlines. Markets price uncertainty harshly. The 13.09% opening gap is what that looks like in practice.
Jensen Huang resigns: the day-by-day timeline
It took six days to go from the first New York Times story to a founder of 33 years walking out. Here is the sequence, using only dated events from the sources:
- November 5: Three House Republican committee chairs sent Huang a letter asking him to attend a closed-door briefing on November 18, citing “significant national security concerns” (CNBC).
- November 6: The New York Times published its first report on an alleged Chinese intelligence effort aimed at Huang.
- November 8: Nvidia’s board launched its independent investigation, and Huang’s apology email went out. (We covered that day in our piece on the probe opening.)
- November 11: The Times reported a second relationship. The Wall Street Journal reported that the board was preparing to remove Huang, as cited by Korean outlets. NVDA closed at $173.73.
- November 12: Huang resigned all three posts. Kress became interim CEO and Harvey C. Jones became the board’s first-ever chair.
Why the speed matters to NVDA shareholders
Boards usually take weeks or months over a CEO change. This one moved in days, and that tells you the directors weren’t willing to let the story drag into the November 17 earnings call. I read that as a defensive move to stabilize the company. It doesn’t show what the investigation found, and the filing doesn’t say whether those findings will ever be made public.
What’s confirmed and what’s only reported in the Nvidia CEO scandal
Keep two lists in your head and don’t let them merge. A lot of the noise online comes from treating a newspaper report as if it were a finding.
Confirmed by Nvidia or official records
- Huang resigned as president, CEO and director, effective immediately (8-K, November 12).
- Colette Kress, CFO since September 2013, is interim CEO and stays CFO until a permanent successor is named.
- The board will consider internal and external candidates.
- Huang admitted to being unfaithful to his wife (his November 8 email).
- Earnings are still scheduled for November 17.
Reported by The New York Times and other outlets
The New York Times reported on November 6 and 8, citing people briefed on the matter, that a memo shared with Trump administration policymakers identified Alice Huang as having been recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security to gather information on Jensen Huang. She is an executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed and is not related to him. This is a report, not a finding.
The Times also reported that Megaspeed had become one of Nvidia’s largest buyers, purchasing about $4.8 billion of equipment, as cited by Al Jazeera. CNBC describes Megaspeed as a company the U.S. has suspected of helping China get around AI chip restrictions.
On November 11, the Times reported that Huang also had an extramarital relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care, who reported directly to him. That account comes via Korean outlets including News1 and Seoul Shinmun. In the sources we checked, neither Nvidia nor Powell is quoted confirming it.
What has not been reported
None of the sources we checked state how many Nvidia shares Huang still holds after resigning. The spy allegation hasn’t been confirmed by Nvidia or by any official finding. Rumors that go beyond these reports don’t belong in an investment decision.
How much did Nvidia stock fall after Huang quit?
According to Yahoo Finance daily data, NVDA closed at $200.13 on November 4. A week later, after the first reports and the apology, it had slipped to $173.73. On resignation day it opened at $150.99, then partly recovered to $164.49 at 10:37 a.m. ET.
| NVDA price point | Price | Move | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close, November 4, 2026 | $200.13 | Starting point | Yahoo Finance |
| Close, November 11, 2026 | $173.73 | Day before resignation | Yahoo Finance |
| Open, November 12, 2026 | $150.99 | -13.09% vs. Nov. 11 close | Yahoo Finance |
| 10:37 a.m. ET, November 12, 2026 | $164.49 | -5.32% on the day, -17.81% vs. Nov. 4 | Yahoo Finance |
Did the whole market sell off with Nvidia?
Not really. Here’s NVDA next to the rest of the market on November 12:
| Asset | Level (Nov. 12) | 1-day move | 1-month move |
|---|---|---|---|
| NVDA (10:37 a.m. ET) | $164.49 | -5.32% | n/a |
| S&P 500 | 7,603.73 | -0.21% | -1.49% |
| Nasdaq Composite | 25,353.93 | -0.44% | -5.02% |
| Dow Jones | 52,500.19 | +0.03% | +1.70% |
| Bitcoin | $71,309.07 | -3.59% | -14.18% |
| Gold (per ounce) | $3,861.80 | -3.47% | -5.99% |
| US 10-year Treasury yield | 5.07% | +1.52% | -2.24% |
All figures are from Yahoo Finance. The yield row shows the percentage change in the yield itself, not in a bond price. The Dow ended flat while the Nasdaq dipped 0.44%. The selling hit one company and didn’t spread into a full risk-off day, which is when investors dump anything risky at once.
Why the open was worse than the morning price
Between the $150.99 open and 10:37 a.m., NVDA recovered $13.50 a share. A gap down at the open often reflects overnight orders hitting a thin market. I wouldn’t read that bounce as a verdict on anything. It shows that buyers exist at lower prices, and that’s about all.
Who runs Nvidia now that Jensen Huang is gone?
Colette Kress, interim CEO and still CFO
Kress has been Nvidia’s executive vice president and CFO since September 2013. Before that, she spent nearly 25 years in finance roles at companies including Cisco and Microsoft. She’ll hold both jobs until the board names a permanent CEO. In the release, she said she will build on “the extraordinary foundation Jensen created over the last 33 years.”
Having the CFO step in has one practical upside for shareholders: the person reading the numbers on November 17 already knows them better than anyone. The downside is obvious. Nvidia was co-founded in 1993 by Huang, Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem, and Huang ran it from the start, according to Fox Business. It has never had to sell its strategy without him.
Harvey Jones, the first-ever board chair
The board appointed Harvey C. Jones, former CEO and executive chairman of Synopsys, as Nvidia’s first board chair. Jones said operations, customer commitments and the product roadmap are expected to continue without interruption. Splitting the chair from the CEO role is a governance change, and in my view a healthy one, whoever ends up in the top job.
Who could be Nvidia’s next permanent CEO?
Nvidia hasn’t named anyone. Its board says it will look at internal and external candidates. The names circulating so far are media speculation only: Korean outlets mentioned Apple hardware chief Johny Srouji as an outside name heard in the market, and Taiwanese media mentioned AMD CEO Lisa Su. Nobody knows yet how long the search will take.
What Huang’s exit means for your 401(k), index funds and crypto
Start with the rate backdrop, because it decides how patient investors are. The effective federal funds rate was 3.88% on November 10 (New York Fed), and the 10-year Treasury yield was 5.07% on November 12 (Yahoo Finance). When a 10-year government bond pays more than 5%, a stock has to justify its price every quarter. A growth stock with a sudden leadership gap gets less benefit of the doubt.
That pressure was already showing before the resignation. The Nasdaq is down 5.02% over the past month. The dollar index rose 0.24% to 103.16 while gold fell 3.47% in a day, which means money moved toward the dollar and away from even traditional havens.
Index fund and 401(k) holders
Nvidia is one of the heaviest weights in S&P 500 and Nasdaq index funds, so you own some through almost any broad U.S. fund. Still, the S&P 500 fell only 0.21% on the day. Diversification did its job. If you want the mechanics, our guide to how an S&P 500 index fund works explains why one stock’s crash gets diluted, and our 401(k) drop math shows what a broader 5% fall would actually cost.
Crypto holders
Bitcoin fell 3.59% to $71,309.07 on November 12 and is down 14.18% over a month (Yahoo Finance). Crypto has been trading like a high-beta tech asset, meaning it moves more than the market in both directions.
A shock to the biggest AI name doesn’t help that mood. Nvidia didn’t cause bitcoin’s monthly slide, though. That started well before November 6.
By the numbers
- A $10,000 NVDA position at the November 11 close ($173.73) opened November 12 about $1,309 lighter, given the 13.09% gap down.
- A $10,000 position bought at the November 4 close ($200.13) had lost about $1,781 by 10:37 a.m. ET on November 12, a 17.81% decline.
- That leaves the November 4 stake worth about $8,219.
- To get back to the November 4 close, NVDA would have to climb $35.64 a share from its 10:37 a.m. price of $164.49.
How we calculated: we used NVDA’s November 4 close ($200.13), November 11 close ($173.73), November 12 open ($150.99) and the 10:37 a.m. ET price on November 12 ($164.49), all from Yahoo Finance, applied to a round $10,000 example position.
Key-person risk: mistakes I’d avoid with NVDA this week
Key-person risk is the chance that a company’s value depends too much on one individual. Nvidia just turned that textbook idea into a 13.09% gap. Here are the mistakes I’ve seen people make, myself included, after a shock like this.
Treating reports as findings
The spy allegation is a newspaper report that China denies. Nvidia hasn’t confirmed it, and its board said on November 8 it had no reason to believe secrets were compromised. If you trade on the worst version of the story, or wave the whole thing away, you’re betting on facts nobody has published.
Assuming the open was the bottom
I’ve bought on the morning of bad news before and watched the price keep sliding for weeks. The $13.50 recovery by 10:37 a.m. doesn’t show the selling is over. The full picture comes from the November 12 close and the reaction to the November 17 numbers, and neither is in yet.
Forgetting concentration
Anyone who let NVDA grow into a big slice of their account during the AI run just got a lesson in single-stock risk. Index holders lost a fraction of what direct owners lost on the same day. That gap is what diversification is for.
Nvidia earnings on November 17: what to watch
The earnings report and call
Nvidia will report third-quarter fiscal 2027 results on Tuesday, November 17, at about 1:20 p.m. PT, with the call at 2 p.m. PT, as scheduled before the resignation. The numbers themselves won’t change because the CEO left.
What can change is the tone. Listen for whether Kress or Jones addresses the investigation and the CEO search directly, and whether anything is said about customer relationships, including Megaspeed.
The November 18 congressional briefing
The House Republican chairs asked Huang, by name, to a closed-door briefing on November 18. Nobody knows yet whether it still happens now that he’s no longer CEO, or who would attend for Nvidia. Any news on that front could move the stock, since the letter cited national security concerns.
The investigation and the CEO search
Two open questions will hang over NVDA until they’re answered: whether the board publishes its investigation findings, and who becomes permanent CEO and when. The board has given no timeline for either.
FAQ
Why did Jensen Huang resign from Nvidia?
Nvidia’s SEC filing gives no reason. Fox Business reported he resigned after an internal investigation into his relationship with an alleged Chinese spy. Four days earlier, he had admitted to employees that he was unfaithful to his wife. The spy allegation hasn’t been confirmed by Nvidia or any official finding.
Who is the new CEO of Nvidia?
Colette Kress, Nvidia’s CFO since September 2013, is interim CEO and remains CFO. The board is searching for a permanent CEO among internal and external candidates. Harvey C. Jones, former CEO of Synopsys, is the board’s first-ever chair.
How much did Nvidia stock drop after Jensen Huang resigned?
NVDA opened at $150.99 on November 12, 13.09% below the prior close of $173.73, per Yahoo Finance. At 10:37 a.m. ET it traded at $164.49, down 5.32% on the day and 17.81% below the November 4 close.
Was the Chinese spy allegation against Jensen Huang proven?
No. The New York Times reported, citing people briefed on the matter, that a memo named a Megaspeed executive as recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security. That is a report, not a finding. China denied it, and Nvidia’s board said on November 8 it had no reason to believe secrets were compromised.
When is Nvidia’s next earnings report?
Tuesday, November 17, 2026, at about 1:20 p.m. PT, with the earnings call at 2 p.m. PT. Nvidia confirmed the date in its resignation release. It will be the first call with Kress as interim CEO.
Does Jensen Huang still own Nvidia stock?
The sources we checked don’t say how many shares Huang holds after resigning. Until a filing or official statement shows it, any number you see is a guess.
What I’m watching before the November 17 call
First, the November 12 close against the $150.99 open. That shows whether the morning buyers held their ground. Second, whether Nvidia says anything before the call about the November 18 briefing or about publishing the investigation’s findings.
Third, the 10-year yield at 5.07%. If it keeps rising, every growth stock, Nvidia included, has a harder time recovering, whoever is running it.
This is not financial advice. Do your own research before you make any move with your money.
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Sources sec.gov · nvidianews.nvidia.com · foxbusiness.com · news1.kr
This article is for information only and is not financial advice. Crypto assets are volatile; you can lose all of your money.