Analysis
As of November 12, 2026, Jensen Huang is no longer Nvidia's CEO. Nvidia's board announced that Huang has resigned as president, chief executive officer and a member of the board, effective immediately, according to the company's CEO transition release. Colette Kress, Nvidia's executive vice president and chief financial officer since September 2013, becomes interim CEO and keeps her CFO duties, and the board appointed Harvey C. Jones, former CEO and executive chairman of Synopsys, as Nvidia's first-ever board chair. Nvidia shares were down 13% on Thursday morning, taking the company's market value below $4 trillion, CNBC reported.
What changed since the board was reported to be preparing an ouster
Pulse's lead story on Wednesday night covered The Wall Street Journal's report that the board was preparing to remove Huang, with no decision announced. That decision has now arrived, framed as a resignation. CBS News reported that two sources confirmed on Wednesday night that the board had been preparing to oust him. Before the announcement, CBS News had put the value lost since the scandal began at more than $450 billion, as Pulse reported on Wednesday.
The chain of events is short. Huang told staff on November 8 that he had been unfaithful to his wife, in a relationship with Alice Huang, an executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed International whom U.S. officials believe is an agent of China's Ministry of State Security, per AP reporting cited by Fortune, as Pulse reported on November 9; the two are not related and no one has been charged. On November 11, The New York Times reported a second relationship, with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of health care, who reports to Huang, per CNBC. Huang acknowledged the first relationship to staff; the Powell report rests on The New York Times's reporting and has not been confirmed by either person.
“Before the announcement, CBS News had put the value lost since the scandal began at more than $450 billion, as Pulse reported on Wednesday.”
Who is running Nvidia now?
Kress leads the company until the board names a permanent CEO, and the board said its search will consider internal and external candidates, per the release. Jones said the board has "full confidence in Colette and the leadership team" and expects operations, customer commitments and the product roadmap to continue without interruption. Splitting the chair role from the CEO role is itself new: Huang, who co-founded Nvidia in 1993, ran it with roughly 60 direct reports and no chief operating officer, as Pulse noted in its securities-suit coverage.
The first test comes fast. Nvidia said it will still report third-quarter fiscal 2027 results on November 17, with the call at 2 p.m. Pacific, as previously scheduled. Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon summed up the market's worry to CNBC: "Jensen is Nvidia, right? He is the visionary."
Why private AI markets feel this
Nvidia is not only a supplier to the AI startups Pulse covers; it is an investor in them. In the last 72 hours alone, Pulse reported Nvidia joining SoftBank's $500 million round in Agile Robots at an $8.5 billion valuation.
CNBC reported that Nvidia held about $329 million of Nebius shares at the end of June. Anthropic's IPO book is being built this week against an AI index that Nvidia anchors, and Nvidia is about 6% of the S&P 500's market value, per the Reason Foundation figure Pulse cited on Wednesday.
Value Add VC data
Nvidia is public, so there are no private rounds to list. The leadership crisis by date, from the sources linked above:
- Nov 8, 2026 -- Huang tells staff he was unfaithful; a board investigation follows (Pulse)
- Nov 11, 2026 -- reports that the board is preparing to oust Huang; more than $450 billion of value lost since the scandal began, per CBS News (Pulse)
- Nov 12, 2026 -- Huang resigns; Kress named interim CEO, Jones named chair (NVIDIA); shares down 13% (CNBC)
- Nov 17, 2026 -- Q3 fiscal 2027 earnings, unchanged date
The risk the resignation does not remove
However, a fast exit settles who is in the chair, not what the board's investigation will find. The Megaspeed questions, the securities suit and any government scrutiny continue without Huang, and an interim CEO who is also the CFO is a holding pattern, not a succession plan. Nvidia did match half of the McDonald's precedent Pulse cited on Wednesday, naming a leader the same day: McDonald's named Chris Kempczinski CEO the day it removed Steve Easterbrook in 2019. The difference is that Kempczinski was permanent; Nvidia's leader is interim, and the search has no stated end date.
