Nvidia Shares Plunge 9% to $160 as Board Prepares to Oust Jensen Huang

Nvidia Corp. shares tumbled as much as 9% in extended Wall Street trading on Wednesday, sliding to $160.8 after boardroom disclosures revealed directors are preparing to remove Chief Executive Jensen Huang. The after-hours bloodbath erased a fragile 3% rebound logged during regular hours and drove the semiconductor giant down 8% year-to-date.

The reaction was brutal.

Selling accelerated across electronic exchanges within minutes of revelations detailing an escalating internal inquiry into Huang, who has helmed the chipmaker since co-founding it in 1993. The board's push toward an ouster follows the disclosure of a second workplace relationship involving Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s Vice President of Healthcare, months after Huang acknowledged an earlier relationship with Alice Huang, an individual facing allegations of ties to Chinese intelligence.

Boardroom Reckoning and Internal Governance Rupture

Directorial deliberations reached a breaking point Wednesday following video documentation captured at a San Jose hotel during Nvidia's March corporate conference, showing Huang and Powell in an intimate encounter. Company personnel confirmed that internal friction over Powell’s tenure had simmered for years, driven by questions over how an executive lacking a technical health or medical science background secured control over the company's critical healthcare computing vertical.

Huang admitted to his relationship with Alice Huang over the weekend. But he pointedly declined to relinquish his executive post, stating in a staff communication that he would commit himself to rebuilding internal confidence. Capital Hill pushed back immediately, with several members of Congress demanding his immediate resignation on ethics grounds.

Institutional desks quickly repriced the governance premium that had long protected Nvidia's market valuation.

"This second shoe to drop is likely going to force the board's hands," said Matt Maley, Chief Market Strategist at Miller Tabak + Co. "It looks like he’ll be lucky to survive the week after this disclosure."

Silicon Contagion Across Tech Portfolios

The rout refused to stay contained to Nvidia's order books. Tech benchmarks buckled worldwide as Nasdaq futures shed nearly 300 points in evening trade, reflecting the outsized weighting the Santa Clara designer carries across global momentum indices.

Sympathy liquidation swept the hardware ecosystem. High-density infrastructure partner CoreWeave saw an intraday 24% surge unravel into a 5% after-hours loss. Server makers Dell Technologies and Super Micro Computer surrendered between 3% and 4%, while legacy rival Intel slid by an identical margin.

Market Context: The leadership vacuum strikes Nvidia at its most vulnerable operational junction since the artificial intelligence capital expenditure boom began. Investors had already knocked 10% off the company's equity value across the prior two trading sessions as the initial espionage inquiries surfaced. The stock's total reversal into negative territory for the year alters institutional allocation models that treated the stock as bulletproof.

All eyes now pivot to regulatory filings and the upcoming quarterly earnings release scheduled for Tuesday, November 17, where directors will face an uncompromising grilling from institutional shareholders over management succession and operational control.