Nvidia chief Huang quits over affair tied to alleged Chinese agent
Jensen Huang has resigned as chairman, chief executive and director of Nvidia after 33 years at the helm, the board announced, handing interim control to finance chief Colette Kress. The trigger was extramarital relationships, one of which turned the affair into a national security matter: it involves a businesswoman US authorities consider an agent of Chinese intelligence. Beijing rejects that accusation.
The woman was an executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore firm that bought billions of dollars of Nvidia chips and has been investigated over their possible diversion to China, which the company also denies. The market hit is considerable. From its 6 October peak of $5.78 trillion, Nvidia has lost about $1.8 trillion, roughly 31 per cent of its value, closing down 4.3 per cent after falling as much as 14 per cent in the session.
The sell-off began with doubts over the returns on artificial intelligence investment and deepened after the US election; the scandal added pressure to a company already under scrutiny. The damage reaches investors who never bought Nvidia shares: its weight of more than 6 per cent in the S&P 500 puts it inside funds tracking that index. The forward risk sits in Nvidia's financial role. It carries guarantees and commitments of up to $164.5 billion backing infrastructure projects, including up to $105 billion tied to a data centre complex for OpenAI, support that fuels demand for its processors.
The market is already sorting exposures. AMD and Broadcom, Nvidia's competitors, rose more than 5 per cent, while CoreWeave, which relies on its backing, fell almost 7 per cent; the S&P 500 slipped just 0.35 per cent. In Washington, Huang was the most visible champion of the case that selling chips to China serves US interests, and the Trump administration authorised sales of the H200 chip to Chinese firms in exchange for 25 per cent of revenue for the government. John Moolenaar, who chairs the House Select Committee on China, urged Nvidia's new leadership to make national security its top priority and called for export controls to be passed in the year-end defence law; proposals are already in the Senate package.
Stacy Rasgon of Bernstein Research warned that China could be the main beneficiary of Huang's exit, and Chinese processor makers' shares rose nearly 10 per cent. Nvidia's immediate revenue impact would be limited, since its guidance already excludes data centre computing sales in China. Semaform reported three Justice Department investigations that could reach the company, one over antitrust practices, with no indication of criminal charges against Nvidia or Huang. Kress presents quarterly results on Tuesday, and Huang has agreed to testify before the House before Thanksgiving.
What it means for Pakistan: Pakistani investors hold US tech exposure mainly through mutual funds and robo-advisory portfolios that track the S&P 500, so Nvidia's slide feeds directly into the returns of those savings even for people who never bought the stock. The bigger question is the financing model: if Nvidia's successor pulls back from the guarantees and commitments that underwrite AI data centre projects, the build-out of the computing capacity Pakistani firms and freelancers rent for AI work could slow, and any tightening of US export controls on advanced chips would shape which processors reach markets like Pakistan.
