It's over for the boss of Nvidia: the giant formalizes the departure of Jensen Huang, the man who multiplied his stock by more than 4,000, following his extra-marital affairs

Jensen Huang's fate seemed sealed anyway. Following a board meeting, Nvidia announced the departure of its iconic founder and CEO. In a press release published this Thursday, the board of directors of Nvidia formalized the resignation with immediate effect of Jensen Huang from his functions as general manager, president and director.

To succeed him on an interim basis, the American semiconductor giant has chosen Colette Kress, its financial director since 2013, previously with Microsoft and Cisco. She will retain her financial responsibilities during this transition period, while the board of directors has initiated the search for a permanent successor, reviewing internal and external candidates. Harvey C.

Jones, former director of Synopsys, was named chairman of the board of directors. On the New York Stock Exchange, Nvidia shares collapsed by 10.4%, erasing more than $450 billion in market capitalization. This dismissal follows several revelations of extra-marital affairs, including one with an executive from Megaspeed, a Singaporean company client of Nvidia, suspected of being a spy acting on behalf of China.

For Citi Bank, this marks “the end of an era”. “Under his leadership, Nvidia has become the dominant force in AI infrastructure, the largest beneficiary of the global AI spending cycle, and one of the most valuable companies in the world,” writes the American bank. Under his leadership, the company has notably seen its stock price increase by more than 10 since the end of 2022 and by more than 4.

000 since its IPO in 1999. Governance issues Jensen Huang remains the founder of Nvidia, which he created in 1993 and whose success he had obviously been the architect of, notably with the invention of the GPU in 1999. Initially used for video games, these graphics processors subsequently became essential for providing the computing power necessary for the development of large AI language models (LLM).

Strong demand for these chips has boosted Nvidia's results. In its last financial year, Nvidia posted a 65% growth in revenue while its profit also climbed 65%, to $120.7 billion. With the departure of Jensen Huang, the company will once again go through a zone of turbulence.

The problem is that beyond Jensen Huang's extramarital affairs, Megaspeed (the company employing Alice Huang, editor's note) clearly seems to have been created to circumvent the rules restricting exports (of Nvidia chips) to China," explains Charles Monoto, president of Monocle Asset Management. "Nvidia risks getting subpoenas (summons to appear before the American courts) from everywhere and the company risks spending half of its time over the next few months answering questions of the American government", he continues. The governance and succession of Jensen Haung also raise questions.

"Jensen is irreplaceable... No other member of the management team is able to smoothly take over as CEO, which highlights the risk that Jensen currently represents as a key figure for Nvidia; investors will factor this dynamic into the stock price movement," says Dan Ives of Yorkville Ives. “We believe that CFO Colette Kress could serve as interim CEO while the board evaluates external candidates,” Citi wrote Wednesday evening. “The market will realize how shaky Nvidia’s governance is.

One person, Jensen Huang, controls everything, with 60 people who report directly to him,” judges Charles Monoto, of Monocle AM. >> More information to come on BFM Business in a few moments. Also find the live BFM Business video and follow us on X.

Machine-translated from French