Jensen Huang Resigns As Nvidia CEO After 33 Years — The Godfather Of AI Falls In One Week
The most powerful man in artificial intelligence is out — and it took about a week.
Nvidia announced Thursday that Jensen Huang has resigned as president and CEO, effective immediately. In a regulatory filing reported by Reuters and TechCrunch, the company said its board accepted Huang’s resignation on Wednesday. He is also leaving the board entirely. CFO Colette Kress takes over as interim CEO while the board searches for a permanent successor, and longtime director Harvey C. Jones becomes the company’s first-ever chairman.
Huang, 63, co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and ran it for 33 years, turning a gaming-graphics company into the engine of the entire AI boom — at its peak last month, the most valuable company on Earth at $5.88 trillion.
So what brought him down this fast? According to Reuters, the collapse started with reports of Huang’s affair with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based cloud company Megaspeed. U.S. authorities have concluded she was a Chinese intelligence asset, according to Reuters, and Washington has investigated Megaspeed over suspicions it helped China obtain restricted AI chips; Beijing has denied she is a spy. The two are not related. Nvidia’s board had already opened a probe, led by independent directors with outside counsel, into whether Huang had been targeted by a foreign intelligence operation. Then on Wednesday, the New York Times reported a second affair — with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of healthcare, an executive who reported directly to him. The board met that same day to consider removing him.
The market reaction was immediate: Nvidia shares fell more than 12% on Thursday, and the stock is down as much as 19% since Friday — a slide TechCrunch puts at more than $855 billion in market value erased.
And because this is 2026, the story has a presidential subplot. On Sunday, President Trump said Huang had “done an amazing job for our country” and that Huang told him he had no idea the Chinese woman was a spy. On Thursday, Trump weighed in on the replacement: “NOW THAT Nvidia CEO JENSEN HUANG, who has done a fantastic job, has resigned, there is only one man to take his place – TIM COOK of Apple. A Legend replaces a Legend!”
Nvidia’s own statement kept it gracious: “Jensen’s contributions to NVIDIA are profound… The Board and the company thank Jensen for his immeasurable contributions to the company and the industry.” But behind the statement is a company with no succession plan and no heir apparent, reporting earnings on Tuesday, November 17, with the whole AI economy watching.
The man in the leather jacket WAS Nvidia — its face, its salesman, its strategy. So the question now hanging over the entire tech world: can Nvidia, and the AI boom it powers, survive without him? And be honest — is Tim Cook really the answer?
