Nvidia's board is reportedly weighing whether Jensen Huang keeps his job

Nvidia's board met on Nov. 11, 2026, to decide the future of founder and CEO Jensen Huang, according to the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, and the stock fell more than 8% in after-hours trading while the company stayed silent.

Nvidia is the company the whole AI build-out runs through, and Huang is its strategy, its salesman and its org chart, with about 60 people reporting straight to him. Boards rarely fire a founder who built a multi-trillion-dollar company, which is why the after-hours drop says more about the missing succession plan than the scandal. Whatever the board decides, every lab and cloud buying Nvidia chips now has to price in a company that may have to learn to run without the person it was built around.

The Wall Street Journal first reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that board members were preparing to remove Jensen Huang. The Journal and the Financial Times reported the board was meeting as soon as Wednesday, Nov. 11, to decide his future. Nvidia did not respond to requests for comment, NBC News said. No decision had been announced as of Wednesday night. Those accounts are the newspapers', as CBS News, NBC News, TechCrunch, and the BBC carried them.

Shares fell more than 8%, to $159.51, in after-hours trading Wednesday, CBS News reported. After-hours is the trading that happens once the regular session has closed. Nvidia's market value had already fallen more than $450 billion since it announced the probe on Nov. 8, also per CBS. The stock was down about 11% over five days, TechCrunch reported. Those figures are the outlets'.

Nvidia's board, on Nov. 8, opened an independent investigation, overseen by a committee of independent directors with outside counsel. Independent directors are board members who are not the chief executive. The board said it acted after reporting that Huang had been the target of a foreign intelligence effort. It said it had "no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised," and that it had "confidence in Jensen." Those lines are the board's Nov. 8 statement. Huang said he supports the review. That line is in the same day's reporting of the probe. The intelligence effort, as described, is an allegation in that reporting. The board has not said a secret was taken.

Huang told employees on Sunday that he had been unfaithful to his wife, and he apologized: "There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry." The quotation is his. CBS News and NBC News reported that U.S. officials have linked the woman, a Chinese business executive, to China's Ministry of State Security. That link is what those outlets attributed to U.S. officials. China called the allegations "purely unsubstantiated." That line is China's. On Wednesday evening the New York Times reported a separate relationship with an executive who reported to him, citing five people who worked at Nvidia. That account is the Times's.

There is no obvious successor and no public succession plan, TechCrunch and the BBC reported. A succession plan is a named path for who would run the company if the chief executive left. Bloomberg reported that Nvidia is working with an outside firm to identify potential chief executive candidates, and TechCrunch carried that. Huang has about 60 direct reports, people who report straight to him. The BBC mentioned co-founder Chris Malachowsky as one possibility. That is the BBC's mention, not a board choice. Nvidia's board has 11 people, including Huang. The others are designated independent, CBS News reported.

The picture is Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang, gray-haired in glasses, a black suit and tie, smiling as he arrives at a White House dinner in November 2025. The credit is Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons).

In plain terms, two newspapers reported that Nvidia's board met Wednesday to decide the founder's future, and the stock fell more than 8% after hours, to $159.51, while the company stayed silent. The Nov. 8 statement opened an investigation and said the board has confidence in him. It did not announce that he is out, on leave, or staying. No successor has been named.