Jensen Huang Resigns as Nvidia CEO in Shock Move... 33-Year Founder Era of 'AI Empire' Comes to End

Jensen Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia, has stepped down. On the 12th (local time), Nvidia announced that CEO Huang had resigned from his positions as president, CEO, and board member "effective immediately." The founder-led structure that had continued for 33 years since the company's founding in 1993 has come to an abrupt end. The press release contains no stated reason for the resignation. There is no comment from CEO Huang himself. For an announcement of a leadership change at a company competing for the top spot in global market capitalization, the silence is unprecedented, and that silence itself speaks to the nature of this situation.

Cress Takes Interim Post; First Test Comes Five Days Later With Earnings Report

According to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings, the board approved CEO Huang's resignation on the 11th and appointed Colette Cress (59), chief financial officer (CFO), as interim CEO. Cress will continue to serve as CFO, and the board has begun searching for a permanent successor among internal and external candidates. Having joined in 2013 and previously held positions at Cisco and Microsoft, this finance expert will face the market at the scheduled quarterly earnings announcement on the 17th. The board has appointed Harvey Jones, former CEO of Synopsys who has served as a board member since 1993, as board chair for the first time in company history. The structure in which the founder essentially led the entire board has been dismantled alongside this transition.

Four Days of Developments: 'Resignation' in Name, Removal in Reality

The confirmed timeline is as follows. The board initiated an independent investigation related to CEO Huang on the 8th. On the 9th, CEO Huang publicly admitted to and apologized for infidelity, stating he had been "unfaithful to his wife." The person identified as the other party was Alice Huang, who works at Nvidia client company Megaspeed, adding weight to the situation given that U.S. intelligence authorities have suspected her of being a Chinese spy. On the 10th, the board appointed former Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jun H. Kim and law firm Wachtell Lipton to lead the investigation. On the 11th, the resignation was approved. The New York Times' reporting of another inappropriate relationship involving an executive within the company was deemed the deciding factor. It is also under investigation whether CEO Huang was aware of circumstances involving export control circumvention. While all official documents use the term "resignation," the consensus view is that the four-day pace from investigation initiation to resignation approval amounts to a de facto removal. Unsubstantiated speculation about health issues or board conflicts has not been confirmed.

'Jensen Was Nvidia'... 10% Plunge in After-Hours Trading

The market's response was immediate. Nvidia's stock plunged approximately 10% in after-hours trading. At a company that saw its stock surge 14 times since the emergence of ChatGPT and once reached a market capitalization of $5 trillion, the "founder premium" investors had assigned evaporated in a single day. Bernstein's Stacy Rasgon said, "Jensen was Nvidia." As the face of the AI era through his keynote addresses in a leather jacket, CEO Huang had led the company as a one-man operation controlling technological vision, supply chain diplomacy, and government lobbying all at once. That concentration had been a premium until yesterday; from today, it is a risk.

What Changes for Korea

The consensus among domestic securities analysts is that the impact on Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix's high-bandwidth memory (HBM) supply will be limited given current demand structure. There are two variables. Whether the momentum of the "Physical AI" Korea alliance (shipbuilding, defense, and robotics cooperation) that CEO Huang personally brought in will be maintained, and whether the export control concerns tied to this incident will expand into regulatory tightening. Notably, Nvidia had been issuing press releases about cooperation with Korean companies right up until four days before the resignation. How these commitments, now lacking their signatory, will be implemented is the key point of focus for Korea's industry.

For 33 years, a company synonymous with one man's name faces its first morning without that name. The leather jacket that opened the AI era has left the stage, and a $5 trillion question remains. Is Nvidia still Nvidia without Jensen Huang?