Author: Wang Lu, Investment Circle
At 63 years old, Jensen Huang may never have thought he would say goodbye in such an undignified manner.
Today (November 12), the NVIDIA board announced that Jensen Huang has resigned from his positions as President, CEO, and Director, effective immediately.
Little did anyone expect that within just a few days, the situation would take a dramatic turn. Since the turmoil began, NVIDIA's market value has shrunk by approximately 450 billion dollars. According to estimates from Wall Street, with a leadership change, the company's market value could evaporate by another trillion dollars.
A founder who led the company to the top of the global market value rankings appears invincible, but he may also be teetering on the edge of a cliff due to personal issues. For thirty-three years, NVIDIA has never changed its leader. Now, this chip giant must seriously confront the prospect of "losing Jensen Huang" for the first time.
Just now, Jensen Huang quietly stepped down
This is the darkest week in Jensen Huang's life.
Looking back to November 8, Jensen Huang sent an internal letter apologizing to family, colleagues, the board, partners, and shareholders. "I have been unfaithful to my wife. My actions have harmed her and our children. There is no excuse for my behavior."
This was a storm long in the making. As early as the end of October, The New York Times reported on Jensen Huang's close interactions with an external corporate executive. NVIDIA's response at the time was quite calm, stating that meetings with customer executives were within the normal duties of a CEO and there was nothing unusual about the interactions.
The day the apology letter was made public, the NVIDIA board simultaneously issued a statement: launching a special investigation supervised by the independent director committee and engaging external independent legal advisors for assistance. Notably, at the end of that statement, the board still expressed confidence in Jensen Huang and his leadership team.
However, the situation quickly deteriorated.
Today, media reports stated that Jensen Huang was accused of having an extramarital affair with an executive who reported directly to him. That evening, the NVIDIA board held a meeting to discuss whether to revoke his CEO position, while already seeking potential successors from external sources, and considering appointing an interim CEO during the search for a permanent successor.
Following the news, NVIDIA's stock plunged significantly in after-hours trading. Statistics show that since this latest turmoil began, NVIDIA's total market value has evaporated by approximately 450 billion dollars.
Silicon Valley tech analyst Dan Ives previously predicted: once Jensen Huang is removed from his CEO position, NVIDIA's valuation could face a further decline of 25% to 30%. Based on a market value of around 4 trillion dollars, this means potential market value losses could exceed 1 trillion dollars.
Simply calculated, if Jensen Huang's wife files for divorce, under California's community property laws, the potential property settlement could be as high as 62.6 billion to 81.1 billion dollars. This could set a record for the most expensive divorce settlement in history.
Currently, the company's existing Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress will serve as interim CEO. Until a formal successor is determined, Kress will also concurrently serve as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer along with her interim CEO duties. The board has commenced the selection process for a permanent CEO, considering both internal and external candidates. Additionally, the board appointed Harvey C. Jones as NVIDIA's first-ever Chairman of the Board.
NVIDIA stated that Jensen Huang had made extremely profound contributions to the company, and NVIDIA is now one of the most influential technology companies in the world. The board and the company thank Jensen Huang for his immeasurable contributions to the business and the industry.
Thirty Years of Career
For the past thirty years, NVIDIA has almost been synonymous with Jensen Huang.
In 1993, the 30-year-old Jensen Huang founded NVIDIA with partners in a restaurant not far from home. Years later, he explained why he chose that location: the restaurant was open 24 hours, coffee could be refilled indefinitely, and no one would rush them out.
The early days of entrepreneurship were perilous. Jensen Huang later reminisced that by 1997, due to the wrong technical direction taken by the first two generations of products, the company had only about six months of cash left. The newly developed RIVA 128 became the only lifeline.
They had time for just one last chance to get it right.
To save time, the team used simulation tools for early testing. Jensen Huang remembers staying in the lab, watching the Windows screen unfold frame by frame on the simulation system. Even before getting the physical samples, he decided to send the chip directly for mass production.
This gamble paid off. Four months after launching, RIVA 128's shipments broke one million units, and the company survived.
Another turning point that determined NVIDIA's fate occurred in 2006.
At that time, Jensen Huang pushed forward the CUDA architecture against opposition, allowing developers to harness the parallel computing power of GPUs for general scientific computations. Initially, Wall Street viewed this as a bottomless pit devouring profits, but beyond gamers, researchers began to become significant supporters of the company. Six years later, scholars used two NVIDIA graphics cards to train the AlexNet neural network, winning a major image recognition competition, and thus opening the door to the era of deep learning.
Everyone knows the rest of the story. From gaming graphics and scientific computing to artificial intelligence, the enormous demand for computing power has pushed NVIDIA to the center of the global technology industry.
In 2023, Jensen Huang specifically returned to that restaurant to unveil a plaque commemorating the starting point of NVIDIA's founding. At that time, NVIDIA's market value had just surpassed 1 trillion dollars.
To maintain the agility of a large empire like a startup, Jensen Huang has implemented a uniquely flat organizational structure: the company does not have a conventional "number two," with as many as 60 business executives reporting directly to him, and there is still no publicly known succession plan.
This highly concentrated model has demonstrated remarkable execution in an era of rapid technological advancement for NVIDIA, but it has also exposed vulnerabilities in the current crisis. The company lacks a visible succession pipeline, and should the soul figure depart suddenly, it will inevitably face turbulence from the leadership transition.
Who Can Bear the Loss of Jensen Huang
The outside world inevitably feels a sense of regret.
From zero to founding a company, through over thirty years of technological evolution, and taking the company to the top of the global market value rankings, there are not many Chinese entrepreneurs who have reached this level. That black leather jacket has also become a distinctive symbol amidst this wave of AI fever, as each generation of chips has been launched.
It is not uncommon for top tech companies to be deeply tied to their founders. The same is true for Musk with Tesla and SpaceX, and Zuckerberg with Meta. The founders long shape the company's direction, and the market has become accustomed to placing expectations for enterprises on specific individuals.
However, unlike Zuckerberg and others with super voting rights, Jensen Huang, while the largest individual shareholder of NVIDIA, holds only about 3.58% of the shares, and the company adopts a one-share-one-vote structure, which does not allow him to control the board through equity.
Furthermore, those heavily reliant on NVIDIA are no longer just the shareholders. Oracle founder Larry Ellison once recalled that during a dinner with Musk, they had asked Jensen Huang to "take our money" in exchange for more GPUs. Ellison described the situation as a "plea." This joke among several tech tycoons left a vivid impression in this round of competition for computing power.
Whether it’s Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, or Anthropic, substantial investments have been made in procuring NVIDIA chips, totaling hundreds of billions of dollars. It can be said that whether these tech giants' AI visions can be successfully realized hinges significantly on NVIDIA’s chip delivery and technological evolution.
In this light, the question of Jensen Huang's departure or retention has transcended mere internal company affairs.
The subtlety lies here. A founder can accumulate significant business influence through decades of management. But when controversies arising from personal relationships enter the board's review process, he still needs to be measured against the rules of corporate governance. Past achievements and current outcomes each carry their own weight.
However, after the storm settles, the most practical question remains: is the entire AI industry really prepared to welcome a "NVIDIA without Jensen Huang"?
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到[email protected]，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
