Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO, Abruptly Steps Down…'AI Empire' Founder Era of 33 Years Comes to an End

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, has stepped down. On the 12th (local time), Nvidia announced that CEO Huang had resigned "effective immediately" from his positions as President, CEO, and board member. The founder-led regime that began when the company was established in 1993 has ended in a single day—33 years later. The press release contains no reason for resignation. There is no comment from CEO Huang himself. For an announcement regarding the replacement of a leader at a company competing for the top spot in global market capitalization, this silence is unprecedented, and the silence itself speaks to the nature of this crisis.

Cress Interim Regime, Quarterly Earnings Report Five Days Later as First Test

According to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, the board approved CEO Huang's resignation on the 11th and appointed Colette Cress (59), Chief Financial Officer (CFO), as interim CEO. Cress will continue in her CFO role, and the board has begun searching for a permanent successor among internal and external candidates. Cress, who joined in 2013 and has worked at Cisco and Microsoft, will face the market at the quarterly earnings report scheduled to take place on the 17th as planned. The board appointed Harvey Jones, former CEO of Synopsys and an 11-year member of the board since 1993, as board chairman—the first time in company history. The structure in which the founder essentially led the entire board has been dismantled.

Four Days of Developments: 'Resignation' in Name, Dismissal in Substance

The confirmed timeline is as follows. On the 8th, the board initiated an independent investigation into CEO Huang. On the 9th, CEO Huang publicly admitted to infidelity and apologized, stating "I have been unfaithful to my wife." The person identified as the other party is Alice Huang, an employee at Nvidia customer company Megaspeed, a person whom U.S. intelligence authorities have suspected to be a Chinese spy—a detail that added weight to the crisis. On the 10th, the board appointed former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York June H. Kim and the law firm Wachtell, Lipton to lead the investigation. On the 11th, the resignation was approved. There are assessments that a New York Times report of another inappropriate relationship involving a company executive served as the decisive factor. Whether CEO Huang was aware of circumstances involving export control circumvention is also under investigation. While all official documents use the term 'resignation,' the four-day pace from investigation initiation to approval is widely interpreted as tantamount to a dismissal. Speculation about health issues or board conflicts has found no basis in evidence.

"Jensen Was Nvidia"…Stock Falls 10% in After-Hours Trading

The market responded immediately. Nvidia's stock plunged approximately 10% in after-hours trading. From a company that saw its stock price surge 14-fold following ChatGPT's appearance—once reaching a market capitalization of $5 trillion—investors have in one day wiped out the 'founder premium' they had assigned. Bernstein's Stacy Rasgon said, "Jensen was Nvidia." CEO Huang, who became the face of the AI era through keynote addresses in a leather jacket, has led the company in a single-person system controlling technological vision, supply chain diplomacy, and government lobbying all at once. That concentration was a premium until yesterday; from today, it is a risk.

What Changes for Korea

The consensus in the domestic securities industry is that the supply of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) to Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix will face limited immediate impact due to demand structure. There are two variables. Whether the momentum of the 'Physical AI' Korean alliance (shipbuilding, defense, and robotics cooperation) that CEO Huang personally brought in will be maintained, and whether the export control dispute surrounding this incident escalates into regulatory tightening. Coincidentally, until four days before Huang's resignation, Nvidia was issuing press releases on cooperation with Korean companies. How the promises made by a signatory who is now gone are fulfilled will be a point of interest for Korea's industry.

A company synonymous with one man's name for 33 years is facing its first morning without that name. The leather jacket that opened the AI era has stepped down from the stage, leaving a $5 trillion question behind. Is Nvidia still Nvidia without Jensen Huang?