Nvidia’s shares plummeted Thursday, sending tremors through global markets, as the company’s chief executive, Jensen Huang, stepped down from his role.
Shares in Nvidia dropped as much as 14 percent when markets opened for trading on Thursday, extending a drop that has wiped out more than $1 trillion from the company’s market value this month alone. The stock began to reverse some losses by late morning.
The company’s board named Colette Kress, the company’s chief financial officer, as its interim chief executive.
With the change in Nvidia’s leadership, investors face uncertainty about one of the poster children of the artificial intelligence trade and how its problems could affect the broader economy.
The fallout could be seen in markets around the world, although the spillover effects appeared limited. Major market indexes in Asia, where many of Nvidia’s partners and rivals in the artificial intelligence industry are based, mostly declined. Taiwan’s TSMC, which produces chips designed by Nvidia, fell nearly 2 percent. But South Korea’s Samsung, which competes with Nvidia on some business lines, gained 1 percent.
European stock indexes, which are less heavily exposed to A.I., were flat on Thursday. But shares in the region’s largest tech company, ASML of the Netherlands, fell 3 percent.
In the United States, the tech-heavy Nasdaq slipped more than 1 percent when markets began trading on Thursday.
Shares in some of Nvidia’s U.S. rivals climbed: AMD rose more than 3 percent and Broadcom gained nearly 5 percent on Thursday. The broader S&P 500 index opened slightly lower.
Mr. Huang, who co-founded Nvidia in 1993, has become one of the most influential forces in the A.I. boom, which has helped to drive U.S. stock markets to new highs in recent years.
Nvidia’s board deliberations came after revelations that Mr. Huang had an affair with an executive who reports to him as well as with a woman whom U.S. intelligence has identified as a Chinese spy.
Some market analysts covering Nvidia have begun to downgrade their forecasts for the company’s stock. Though the chipmaker is expected to remain a critical part of the A.I. build-out, some noted rising concerns about the company’s governance and lack of a clear succession plan. They argued that these revelations have fundamentally changed Mr. Huang’s position in the tech world and it was unclear what the implications of a change in his role at Nvidia could be.
Analysts at Bernstein downgraded Nvidia and sharply lowered their target for its share price. “Our gut tells us that we probably haven’t yet fully probed the depths of what might be found here,” they wrote. “We’ve had enough, and prefer to watch from the sidelines.”
Analysts at RBC Capital Markets also slashed their forecast for the stock, citing the lack of formal succession plan for the chief executive position. “Whether any individual can replicate Huang’s singular combination of technical vision, ecosystem-building acumen and ability to serve as the global face of the A.I. revolution remains an open question,” they noted.
Other analysts, including those at Wells Fargo and Mizuho, maintained their bullish views on Nvidia.
“This is an Nvidia problem before it is an A.I. problem,” said Mark Malek, chief investment officer at Siebert Financial. But he added Nvidia’s woes could trickle through to other companies.
“Where I would be careful is with the smaller A.I. cloud companies that leaned on Nvidia’s checkbook,” he said. “If the new regime gets more conservative about financing its own customers, that is where it shows up first.”
Nvidia’s stock is down about a third from its peak at the start of October, putting the company deep in a bear market, defined as a drop of 20 percent or more from a recent high.
Nvidia became the world’s largest public company, by market value, for the first time in 2024, exerting an outsize influence over major indexes like the Nasdaq Composite and the S&P 500. Analysts still expect Nvidia to make a profit of well over $200 billion this year, with its chips in high demand as tech companies rush to build giant A.I. data centers.
During last week’s market turmoil, Nvidia fell below Apple as the world’s biggest public company.
