Nvidia’s share price plummeted in after-hours trading on Wednesday, as the company’s board considered the future of CEO Jensen Huang, a decision that could reverberate across global markets.
News of the board’s deliberations drove Nvidia’s stock down more than 8% late Wednesday, a move that would erase hundreds of billions of dollars in market value if the drop persisted into the official open of trading on the Nasdaq on Thursday. Trading after the market is closed can be thin, which can exaggerate moves in individual stock prices.
Huang, who cofounded Nvidia in 1993, has become one of the most influential forces in the artificial intelligence boom, which has helped to drive the stock market to repeated new highs in recent years.
The board’s deliberations on Wednesday follow revelations that Huang had an affair with an Nvidia executive who reports to him as well as with a woman whom U.S. intelligence has identified as a Chinese spy.
With the leadership of Nvidia in doubt, Wall Street faced new uncertainty about the AI trade and how the problems inside one of the world’s most important companies could affect the broader economy.
Nvidia’s stock is now down about a third from its peak at the start of October, a decline worth more than $1.5 trillion in market value. The sharp fall put the company deep in a bear market, defined as a drop of 20% or more from a recent high.
Nvidia became the world’s largest public company, by market value, for the first time in 2024, exerting an outsize influence over major indexes like the S&P 500. The rapid run-up in Nvidia’s share price put it at the forefront of an exclusive club of tech giants known as the “Magnificent Seven,” that had fueled the stock market’s gains in recent years. Analysts expect Nvidia to make a profit of well over $200 billion this year, with its chips in high demand as tech companies rush to build giant AI data centers.
During last week’s market turmoil, Nvidia fell below Apple as the world’s biggest company. Including Wednesday’s after-hours decline, the company’s shares have lost roughly 15% of their value this year.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.