Nvidia Falls 8.8% After Hours as Board Meets on Huang's Future

Nvidia shares dropped as much as 8.8% in extended trading after Reuters reported the company's board met late on Wednesday, November 11, 2026, to decide the future of CEO Jensen Huang. He still held the job on Thursday morning. Nothing in the cited reporting says he's been removed, and no final decision has been announced.

Reuters' Morning Bid column, first published at 12:37 a.m. on November 12 and updated at 12:55 a.m., framed the day around one question: can the chipmaker at the center of the AI boom absorb a boardroom crisis without dragging the wider market down? Futures, analyst notes and trading desks opened with exactly that question.

What's confirmed and what isn't

A source cited by Reuters said the board met late Wednesday to decide Huang's future. The board had already said it would investigate his relationship with a businesswoman alleged to be a Chinese spy. Separately, the New York Times reported Huang had an affair with another company executive who reported to him. Neither Nvidia nor Huang has responded to that report in the cited coverage, so it remains a reported allegation.

Reuters also named two possible interim-CEO candidates: Ian Buck and CFO Colette Kress. Reports add that Nvidia has no clear public succession plan. Those names are contingency chatter, not decisions.

• Board met late Wednesday on Huang's future — Reuters, source-based
• Board to investigate the alleged spy relationship — reported
• Affair with a direct report — New York Times, not independently confirmed
• Shares down more than 8%, and 8.8% in a separate Reuters print — reported
• Buck and Kress as interim candidates — nothing decided
• Huang removed — unconfirmed by any outlet
• Final dollar value lost — unconfirmed; expect conflicting headlines

How should you read the 8.8%?

The two Reuters figures don't conflict. One captures a moment, the other a later print. After-hours markets are thin, spreads are wide, and a few large orders can swing a quote by a point within minutes. The number measures fear, not a settled price.

Brokers downgraded the stock during the slide, per Reuters. Baird cut its target earlier in the week over the affair reports. Downgrades of this type usually reflect governance risk, not fading AI demand — analysts with no model for a CEO transition build one by widening discount rates. Notes tend to cluster, and that wave can keep pressure on the shares even if the board resolves things quickly.

Why one boardroom moves the whole market

Nvidia is the dominant supplier of AI processors. IDC's Semiconductor Market Outlook put its share of the AI accelerator market at 85.2% in Q2 2025. Gartner's January 2026 release said worldwide semiconductor revenue totaled $793 billion in 2025, up 21%, with AI semiconductors accounting for nearly one-third of sales. Nvidia generated $125.703 billion in semiconductor revenue, a 15.8% worldwide share. A further Gartner analysis found AI infrastructure spending drove more than 75% of the absolute increase in 2025 chip revenue.

That's the transmission channel. Cloud providers plan data-center capacity around chip deliveries; model labs plan training runs around cloud capacity. A leadership shock raises the odds of schedule slips and renegotiated terms even if nothing breaks today.

What does this change for buyers?

For teams building AI models, the near-term risk is planning, not supply — existing orders don't vanish because a board meets. Three practical steps: review contracts for allocation guarantees and change-of-control language; test whether your inference stack runs on a second accelerator type; keep a model-portability (the cost of moving workloads between vendors' software stacks) budget. Reporting behind the Morning Bid also flagged investor worry that a leadership change could reduce Nvidia's willingness to finance data-center expansion, which would hit neocloud operators and smaller labs before the largest hyperscalers.

What comes next

The next scheduled test is Nvidia's earnings report, placed by previews on November 17. The call now doubles as a leadership event: if Huang speaks, his tone moves the stock; if he doesn't, who speaks becomes the headline. Watch for a board statement at any hour, broker rating changes, and any government inquiry tied to the spy allegation — no charges against Huang appear in any cited source, but the national-security angle invites scrutiny in a charged export-control environment.

The fundamentals didn't change overnight. The narrative did. Until the board speaks, treat every claim about Huang's departure as unconfirmed.