Nvidia shares fall 3% as CEO Jensen Huang resigns over affairs revelations
Nvidia shares fell 3% in extended trading after chief executive Jensen Huang resigned on Thursday over revelations of extramarital affairs, including one involving a suspected Chinese spy. The exit of the man who drove the global AI boom puts the chipmaker's role in GPU financing and infrastructure deals under scrutiny.
JPMorgan analysts said the departure leaves a vacuum that will be difficult to fill. "We do not assume existing commitments change, but new deals could take longer or require more compensation as investors look for reassurance about Nvidia's role," they wrote in a note, adding that the bigger implications are for the rest of the AI trade, particularly GPU financing and infrastructure deals in which Nvidia would presumably be involved as a supplier, investor or provider of contractual support.
Customers felt the strain. South Korea's Naver fell 2.75% on Friday, while Citi's head of specialist sales Jon Zauderer said competitors such as AMD, Arista and Broadcom could benefit. "If you think about the uncertainty that's created about a potential management change, investors are going to look for alternatives," he said. US Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott sent letters to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Huang asking them to testify over recent developments at Nvidia.
Broader markets steadied after a turbulent week. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.26%, South Korea's Kospi added 2.35% and Japan's Nikkei gained 1.4%, while Nasdaq and S&P 500 futures rose more than 0.2% each. The 2-year US Treasury yield peaked at 4.8920% and the 10-year hit 5.1433%, lifting the dollar towards a 0.9% weekly gain, its biggest in more than a month. Investors now price a 14.5% chance of a 50-basis-point Fed hike in December, up from zero a week ago, according to the CME FedWatch tool.
Concerns over the AI outlook spilled into metals, with London copper hitting a four-month low in the previous session and Australia-listed Capstone Copper falling more than 5% on Friday. Brent crude fell more than 0.3% to $95.45 a barrel and US crude to $88.39, after attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure escalated. Spot gold was up 0.3% at $3,888.01 an ounce.
What it means for Pakistan: Nvidia's turmoil matters beyond the chip trade for Pakistan's technology and investment landscape: any slowdown in global AI infrastructure spending could temper demand for outsourced IT services and the data-centre and cloud capacity Pakistani firms and freelancers rely on. A firmer dollar, meanwhile, makes dollar-priced imports and external debt servicing costlier for Pakistan, though it lifts the rupee value of remittances sent home from the Gulf and the West.
