Jensen Huang resigned as chief executive of Nvidia on Thursday (November 12, 2026), ending his 33-year run at the helm of the AI giant he co-founded after revelations he had two extramarital affairs, including with a woman accused of spying for China.

The company’s board said Mr. Huang had stepped down as president, chief executive and board member, effective immediately. Chief financial officer Colette Kress will serve as interim CEO while keeping her finance role, and the board will consider internal and external candidates for a permanent replacement.

Mr. Huang faced growing calls to resign after his affair with an alleged Chinese spy. Late Wednesday (November 11, 2026), media reports said Mr. Huang had another extramarital affair with an Nvidia employee who reports to him.

Shares of Nvidia, one of the largest companies in the world, plunged 10% in premarket trading on Thursday (November 12, 2026).

Mr. Huang, who co-founded Nvidia and is its fourth-largest ​investor with a stake of about 3.61%, will not remain on the ⁠board.

Mr. Huang’s exit plunges the $4 trillion company into uncertainty ‌and ⁠threatens to disrupt an AI ecosystem that he helped bankroll by pouring ⁠Nvidia’s swelling cash pile back into cloud providers, suppliers and the industry’s biggest labs.

The ‌departure could also have far-reaching consequences for U.S. chip export policy, given Mr. Huang’s push to preserve access to the Chinese market and his close ties with U.S. President Donald Trump.

Mr. Trump said on Sunday (November 8, 2026) that Mr. Huang had “done an amazing job for our country” and that ‌the Nvidia chief had told him he had no idea the Chinese woman ​he had an affair with was a spy.

For years, Nvidia was best known to gamers chasing top-tier graphics. But its chips’ ability ⁠to perform many calculations at once has made them the oil of the AI boom and a strategic prize in the US-China race to dominate the technology. It also made Nvidia the ‌world’s most valuable company.

That turned Mr. Huang into a rock-star CEO, mobbed by fans in Taiwan and South Korea who ask him to sign books, posters and sometimes even their bodies. Such is his pull that stocks moved at his mere mention of company names at events.

But scrutiny of his conduct has intensified in recent days after reports of his relationship with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based cloud company Megaspeed who U.S. authorities have concluded was ‌a Chinese intelligence asset.

The two, who have been photographed together in Taiwan, Singapore and California, are not ​related.

Washington has also investigated Megaspeed, a coveted official Nvidia cloud partner with priority access to its chips, over suspicions it helped China obtain advanced AI chips restricted ⁠under U.S. export controls, according to media reports. Beijing has denied Alice Huang is a spy.

Earlier ⁠this month, Nvidia’s board launched a probe, led by independent directors with outside legal counsel, into whether Jensen Huang had been targeted by a foreign intelligence operation. It ‌also expressed confidence in him at the time.

The controversy escalated on Wednesday when the New York Times reported Mr. Huang also had an affair with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice ​president of healthcare, who reported to him.

(With inputs from Reuters, AFP, AP)