Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang resigned on Thursday morning, triggering a sharp sell-off in chip stocks and leaving a sudden vacancy at the center of the global artificial intelligence boom.
The leadership crisis sent Nvidia shares tumbling as much as 14% after the market opened before recovering to trade down about 5%. The board named finance chief Colette Kress as interim CEO.
Huang has led Nvidia since co-founding it in 1993 and built it into a cornerstone of the modern technology sector.
Because Huang previously said that he does not believe in succession planning, no clear permanent successor was waiting in the wings. Prediction markets floated names of company insiders, while investors tried to calculate how much of the enterprise value was tied to its leader. Nvidia’s board met overnight to manage the crisis before announcing the resignation and Kress’s appointment.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk stated on social media that hiring Jensen Huang would be “an honor.”
The turmoil wiped hundreds of billions of dollars off Nvidia’s market value, swelling past $600 billion at its overnight low and pushing the stock to its lowest level since July 2025. The drop dragged down the PHLX Semiconductor Index and disrupted a fragile four-session recovery in chip stocks. Nasdaq futures came under pressure, underperforming the Dow and S&P.
Wall Street firms reacted swiftly to the management shake-up by cutting price targets and revising ratings:
- Bernstein slashed its price target to $200 from $400 and cut the stock to market-perform.
- Baird cut its price target to $200 from $500 and downgraded the stock to neutral.
- Wells Fargo lowered its target to $300 from $315 while maintaining an overweight rating.
- Citi reduced its target to $285 from $315 and kept a buy rating.
- Morgan Stanley removed the stock from its “Top Pick” list.
Yorkville Ives estimated that Nvidia shares hold a valuation of $300 per share with Huang at the helm, dropping to $225 without him.
Political scrutiny on the company intensified alongside the market pressure. The office of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, (D) Massachusetts, asked the Trump administration to preserve all documents related to Nvidia’s exports of advanced artificial intelligence chips to China. Meanwhile, Sen. Kevin Cramer, (R) North Dakota, has called on Jensen Huang to resign.
While Nvidia shares remained under pressure, investors shifted capital toward competing hardware makers and hyperscale tech buyers. Advanced Micro Devices and Broadcom both posted gains in early trading, with AMD shares rising 4% and Broadcom gaining 5%, supporting the market as investors assessed the shock's impact.
Nvidia’s fate as one company is one thing, but this AI revolution is way bigger than that.
Jed Ellerbroek, portfolio manager at Argent Capital Management
“This is a golden opportunity for Amazon, for Google, for AMD, for Broadcom, for OpenAI and Anthropic, who are hiring chip experts to help them design their own chips,” said Jed Ellerbroek, portfolio manager at Argent Capital Management.
“If Nvidia falls from grace and their chips are no longer the best, and AMDs are better or Google’s are better, then people will switch over and buy them,” he said, adding that overall demand for specialized processors remains high.
Other market observers viewed the sudden leadership change as a potential market clearing event. “There has been forced selling in AI stocks and this Nvidia news is likely to clean out the rest,” wrote Dan Niles, founder of Niles Investment Management, on social media.
Earlier coverage: Nvidia Shares Slide as CEO Controversy and Inflation Hit Markets
Given NYT article, I think Jensen is gone at $NVDA, potentially by tomorrow morning with my guess the CFO as interim-CEO. But I think the stock bottoms on a RELATIVE basis compared to the semi index post earnings next week at the latest. The new interim CEO will probably want to…
