Jensen Huang leaves Nvidia: day-by-day timeline of the 15 days that led to it

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On Wednesday, Oct. 28, Nvidia shares closed at $215.38, and Jensen Huang was CEO of the company he had founded thirty-three years earlier. Fifteen days later, Nvidia has an acting CEO, the first board chair in its history, and a stock price down 22.8 percent. I put these two weeks together day by day, from company filings, from session-by-session closing prices and from what journalists have reported. What emerged is more than a chronicle of a scandal. It is a record of how the market spent nine days refusing to believe Nvidia was in trouble, and then, in three days, stopped believing in its CEO.

Editorial report. As of Nov. 12, 2026, after the close in New York. The espionage allegations are an assessment by U.S. intelligence as described by the media on the basis of anonymous sources: nobody has been charged in this matter, and China denies it. Stock prices are closing prices from Yahoo Finance. This article is not investment advice.

The New York Times article the market misread

On Oct. 29, the New York Times published a piece by six reporters, including Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman and Paul Mozur. According to the paper, U.S. officials concluded that Alice Huang, a Chinese citizen and an executive at the Singapore cloud company Megaspeed, was passing information to Beijing, and that surveillance revealed her close relationship with Jensen Huang. The paper also wrote that President Donald Trump had known about the matter earlier and took no action, and that Huang himself never received a so-called defensive briefing, the warning intelligence agencies give to people targeted by a foreign intelligence service.

Nvidia responded in its usual style: briefly and without emotion. Spokesman John Rizzo wrote that the CEO’s contacts with Ms. Huang were “not unusual or unexpected,” and that Megaspeed is an ordinary regional customer with no access to sensitive information. The Chinese embassy in Washington called the reports baseless slander. According to Bloomberg, Huang said the contacts concerned Megaspeed’s business and were entirely normal.

That day Nvidia stock fell 0.8 percent. The Nasdaq lost 1.4 percent and the SOX semiconductor index lost 1.4 percent. In other words, a company whose CEO had just been described as a target of Chinese intelligence did better on the exchange than its industry. The next day Nvidia lost 4.2 percent, but the SOX lost a full 7.2 percent. The market had a different worry at that point: after the records of early October, investors were leaving the entire chip sector, and Nvidia was going down with it.

This is the first thing to understand about these fifteen days. Through Friday, Nov. 6, Nvidia lost 13.3 percent from Oct. 28. The SOX fell 19.6 percent over the same period, and the Nasdaq 7.4 percent. The drop was painful, but there was nothing company-specific in it: investors were pricing the semiconductor cycle, not the CEO. DataNasdaq closing prices, Yahoo Finance chart API, editor’s calculations.

First week: politics, not the stock market

In the first week of November the story lived in Washington. On Nov. 5, the House Select Committee on China, chaired by John Moolenaar, called Alice Huang a “publicly described asset of Chinese intelligence.” Three Republican committee chairs asked Huang for a closed-door briefing on Nov. 18. Brian Mast, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he would issue a summons if the CEO did not respond.

Nov. 5 was also the worst day for the whole industry in this period. Nvidia lost 9.3 percent, but the SOX lost 12.2 percent and the Nasdaq 5.5 percent. Anyone looking only at that day’s chart would have concluded that Nvidia was holding up better than its peers. On Friday, Nov. 6, the Financial Times reported that the U.S. government considers Huang’s relationship with Alice Huang to be romantic. Nvidia stock rose 2.8 percent that day.

There is an explanation for this indifference. Throughout the first week, every hard piece of information came from the media and politicians, not from the company. Nvidia confirmed nothing except that its CEO knows a customer’s executive. Institutional investors tend to have a simple reflex: until a company announces changes in its filings, a rumor about the CEO does not change the revenue forecast. And the forecast was a record. For the third quarter of its fiscal year, Nvidia guided to $108 billion in revenue, compared with $96.2 billion in the previous quarter.

As long as the company is silent, the market prices chips. Once the company starts talking, the market prices people.

Sunday, Nov. 8: the memo that changed everything

On Sunday, Nov. 8, two messages arrived at once, and both came from inside Nvidia. The board published a statement: it was launching an independent investigation in connection with reports that the CEO had been the target of foreign intelligence activity. A committee of independent directors was to lead it, with the help of outside lawyers. In the same statement, the board wrote that it had no reason to believe national security or Nvidia’s secrets had been compromised, and that it had confidence in Huang.

The same day, Huang sent employees a memo. In it he admitted he had been unfaithful to his wife, that he had hurt her and their children, and that there was no excuse for it. He did not name the woman. He promised full cooperation with the investigation. Over the following days, CNBC and the Financial Times reported that the independent directors had hired the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and according to the FT the investigation is being led by Joon H. Kim, a former acting U.S. attorney in New York.

That weekend changed investors’ calculations. Until then, the story was about spies, and nobody had confirmed it. From Sunday on, it was a story in which the CEO himself had admitted to part of what the media had described, and the board itself had admitted it needed to investigate. On Monday, Nov. 9, Nvidia lost 4.3 percent while the SOX gained 6.9 percent. For the first time since Oct. 29, Nvidia stock moved in a different direction from the industry, and by more than 11 percentage points at once.

Washington steps back, Nvidia is left alone

On Monday, Trump told reporters he would “take a look” at the matter and that the FBI was examining something in a different context. He also called Huang a man of honor. Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the matter as an internal corporate affair. The Singapore government, according to CNBC and Reuters, said it had not investigated Alice Huang’s alleged intelligence ties. China’s foreign ministry spoke of slander. Each of these voices pushed the matter further away from itself.

That left Nvidia and its board. And with every day it became clearer how poorly prepared that board was for a day without Huang. On Nov. 9, Semafor calculated that the average tenure of an Nvidia director is almost 15 years, roughly twice the S&P 500 average, that none of the directors is a current or former CEO of a company in that index, and that the word “succession” does not appear once in the company’s annual report. Nvidia had no chief operating officer, and according to Semafor more than 50 people reported directly to Huang.

On Tuesday, Nov. 10, the stock closed at $168.89, its lowest since March 30, down 5.5 percent from the day before. That day Yahoo Finance attributed part of the market’s declines to higher-than-expected inflation, but the SOX ended the day essentially flat, and Nvidia did not. From its record close of $239.24 on Oct. 6, the company had lost 29.4 percent.

Who knew what

This is the hardest part of the story, because the answers come almost entirely from anonymous officials quoted by the New York Times. I collect them in one place because together they show that Nvidia was the last player to find out and the first to pay.

• The U.S. government. According to the NYT of Oct. 29, Trump was briefed on the matter about a year earlier. According to the NYT of Nov. 10, he learned of it in May. The two versions do not match, and the paper, according to the accounts I have read, did not reconcile them. The NYT also wrote on Nov. 6 about a memo for administration officials prepared in the spring of 2026, and on Nov. 8 that Marco Rubio oversaw it.
• Huang. According to the NYT, he received no warning from the intelligence agencies. The officials the paper relies on disagree on whether he knew who Alice Huang was. Huang himself admitted only infidelity on Nov. 8, without naming anyone.
• The board. On Nov. 8 it wrote that it had no reason to believe the company’s secrets had been compromised and that it trusted the CEO. On Nov. 11, according to the Wall Street Journal, it was preparing his removal.
• Nvidia as a company. According to the NYT of Nov. 9, as reported by Yahoo Finance, the Commerce Department’s investigation into Megaspeed was halted after Nvidia intervened. This is a single-source report, and the company has not confirmed it publicly.

One thing follows from this list that cannot be ignored. The people who had the most information, the officials in Washington, did nothing with it that the market could see. The people who had the least information, the investors, had to guess. And in its statements the board did not show that it knew any more about the matter than newspaper readers did.

Wednesday, Nov. 11: two stories in one evening

On Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, the worst seemed to be over. Morgan Stanley did remove Nvidia from its top picks list, but on Nov. 11 the stock rose 2.9 percent, to $173.73, and the SOX gained 5.7 percent. Then the evening came.

At about 5:30 p.m. New York time, the Wall Street Journal reported that the board was preparing to remove Huang. According to Reuters, the board met that evening. Nvidia’s bylaws allow the CEO to be removed by a simple majority of directors, with or without cause, and of the eleven board members, everyone except Huang was independent. The same evening, the New York Times described a second relationship of the CEO, this time with an Nvidia vice president who reported directly to him. The paper cited five former employees. Nvidia did not comment, and Reuters wrote that it could not immediately verify the report. I am not naming this person.

Bloomberg added that the board was working with an outside firm on a list of successors. Semafor reported that some directors would see chief financial officer Colette Kress as acting CEO. In after-hours trading, Nvidia shares fell 7.4 percent, to $160.95, according to Yahoo Finance.

For the board, the second relationship was a different matter from the first. The first involved a woman from outside the company and a question of security. The second involved a subordinate and a question of rules that apply to every manager at most large companies. It was on rules of this kind that Brian Krzanich left Intel in 2018, which analyst Patrick Moorhead recalled in those days as the closest analogy.

Thursday, Nov. 12: the 8-K filing

On Thursday, Nov. 12, Nvidia filed a Form 8-K with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. It is a short document that a public company must file when something material happens. The event it describes is dated Nov. 11, and the signature is dated Nov. 12. The board accepted the resignation of Jen-Hsun Huang as president and chief executive officer and from his seat on the board, effective immediately. No reason was given. There is also no mention of a separation agreement or severance.

Colette Kress, Nvidia’s chief financial officer since 2013, became acting CEO and is to keep that role until a permanent CEO is chosen. Harvey C. Jones, a board member since 1993 and a former Synopsys CEO, became the first board chair in the company’s history. The board wrote that it is looking for a successor among internal and external candidates. The date of the quarterly results, Nov. 17, stayed unchanged.

At the open, the stock fell 13.1 percent, to $150.99. The low of the day was $148.80. Then the market began to recover: at the close the stock stood at $166.19, down 4.3 percent from the day before. Brian Mast, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told CNBC that Huang had agreed to testify before Congress before Thanksgiving, that is, before Nov. 26. Trump wrote on Truth Social that Huang should be replaced by Tim Cook, now chairman of Apple’s board. Senator Elizabeth Warren said Huang’s resignation “does not absolve him of responsibility.”

For nine days the market priced semiconductors. For the next three it priced Jensen Huang.

What the numbers say, and what they don’t

From Oct. 28 to Nov. 12, Nvidia lost 22.8 percent, the SOX 10.1 percent and the Nasdaq 4.5 percent. The gap between Nvidia and the semiconductor index is therefore 12.8 percentage points. All of that gap was created after Nov. 6: before then Nvidia was falling more slowly than the industry, and then in four sessions it lost 11.0 percent while the SOX gained 11.9 percent.

Does this mean the scandal cost Nvidia a double-digit percentage of its value? It is tempting to write that, but it would be a simplification. In those same days, analysts were cutting ratings for reasons that were only partly tied to the scandal. Bernstein downgraded the stock to Market-Perform, a neutral rating, and cut its price target from $400 to $200, writing that it was hard to imagine the board leaving Huang in his post. Stifel cut its price target from $315 to $205 but kept its Buy rating. Dan Ives of Wedbush has long estimated that without Huang the company would be worth 25-30 percent less. The market has not fallen that far, which can be read two ways: either investors believe Nvidia will defend itself with hardware, or they are waiting for the Nov. 17 results.

For more on how much of the decline belongs to the scandal and how much to the market, see my analysis of Nvidia’s stock price, and for why the company was so vulnerable to the departure of one person, my column on succession.

What happens next

The next two weeks have three dates that will settle something.

• Tuesday, Nov. 17. Results for the third quarter of fiscal 2027, release at about 22:20 CET, call at 23:00 CET. These are the first results Nvidia will present without Huang as CEO. The pre-scandal guidance was $108 billion in revenue, plus or minus 2 percent.
• Wednesday, Nov. 18. The closed-door congressional briefing that the chairs of three committees asked for.
• Before Nov. 26. Huang’s testimony before congressional committees, according to Brian Mast probably under oath. The date is being negotiated.

Two more matters have no date: the choice of a permanent CEO and the outcome of the board’s investigation. The 8-K does not say whether the investigation has concluded. Nobody has been charged in this matter. If one lesson remains from these fifteen days, it is this: a company worth trillions of dollars had no plan for a day without its founder, and when that day came, the plan had to be put together in a single evening.

I collect the stories of CEOs who left in similar circumstances, from Krzanich at Intel to Travis Kalanick at Uber, in the series Tech CEO scandals. All of my Nvidia coverage is on the page Nvidia: stock, chips and the Huang case.

Day-by-day timeline

Frequently asked questions

Why did Jensen Huang leave Nvidia?

Nvidia has not given a reason. The 8-K says only that the board accepted his resignation as CEO and from the board, effective immediately. The resignation came after the New York Times reports about his relationship with Alice Huang, whom U.S. intelligence, according to the paper, regards as a Chinese source, after the memo in which Huang admitted infidelity, and after the article about a second relationship with a vice president who reported to him.

Who is running Nvidia after Huang?

Colette Kress, Nvidia’s chief financial officer since 2013, is acting CEO. Harvey C. Jones is chair of the board. The board is looking for a permanent CEO among candidates from inside and outside the company.

How far did Nvidia stock fall during the scandal?

From the close on Oct. 28, the day before the NYT article, to the close on Nov. 12, the stock fell 22.8 percent, to $166.19. From the record on Oct. 6, the decline is 30.5 percent. The SOX semiconductor index lost 10.1 percent from Oct. 28.

Is Huang accused of espionage?

No. Nobody has been charged in this matter. The assessment that Alice Huang cooperated with Chinese intelligence comes from anonymous officials quoted by the media. China denies it, and Nvidia’s board wrote on Nov. 8 that it had no reason to believe the company’s secrets had been compromised.

When does Nvidia report earnings?

On Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2026, at about 22:20 CET. The analyst call starts at 23:00 CET.

Kinetyra