Jensen Huang Resigned From Nvidia Four Days After Its Board Said It Had Confidence in Him. The CFO Is Now Doing Both Jobs, the Board Just Created Its First Chairman, and the Market Bought AMD
About This Episode
Nvidia announced on Thursday November 12 that Jensen Huang has resigned as president, CEO and board member, effective immediately, after 33 years; a regulatory filing says the board accepted the resignation Wednesday, the day the New York Times reported a second relationship, with an Nvidia vice president who reported to him. CFO Colette Kress becomes interim CEO while keeping the CFO job, director Harvey Jones becomes the board's first-ever chair, and a search will consider internal and external candidates. Nvidia stock fell 14% at the open and closed down 4.3% while AMD and Broadcom rose nearly 6%, leaving the S&P 500 down only 0.4%; CNBC reports Huang personally signed off on the financing deals that underwrite much of the AI buildout, and Nvidia reports earnings Tuesday.
Our Take
The board removed the man it could not replace within four days, and the market's answer was to buy the other chipmakers: the chips have substitutes, but the job only Huang did, deciding who gets chips and whose loans Nvidia backs, now sits with a CFO doing two jobs.
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Direct match: the article's picture of Nvidia as the seller that also finances and guarantees its own buyers explains what actually left the building with Huang, the one signature on the deals that decide who gets chips and credit.
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Its single-point-of-failure frame, and its lesson that systems with more than one center survive a fallen palace, fits a week in which the market rerouted to AMD and Broadcom while Nvidia itself had no second person to hand the pen to.