Nvidia co-founder and billionaire Jensen Huang resigned on November 12, 2026, ending a 33-year run that turned a small video-game graphics chipmaker into a nearly $4 trillion leader in artificial intelligence chips, while his 3.58% stake failed to protect his job. Nvidia appointed chief financial officer Colette Kress as interim CEO on Thursday.

His exit followed his public admission that he had been unfaithful to his wife. Nvidia’s board opened an independent investigation into Huang and the possibility that he had been targeted by a foreign intelligence operation.

The New York Times reported that Huang had a close relationship with a businesswoman whom U.S. intelligence identified as a Chinese spy. It also reported another affair with an Nvidia executive who reported to him.

Why didn’t Huang’s 3.58% stake protect his job?

In a January podcast interview with Jodi Shelton, Huang said: “In a well-governed company, the CEO was always designed to report to the board of directors and the board of directors report to shareholders... If the CEO doesn’t do his job according to 12, 13, 15 board members, however sized the board is, that CEO is let go.”

That description matches Nvidia’s bylaws, which allow the board to remove the chief executive for any reason at any time. Huang’s 870.6 million shares represented 3.58% of the company as of March, according to its 2026 proxy statement, the filing that lists major shareholders’ holdings.

He remained the largest individual shareholder, but Nvidia’s one-share-one-vote structure, in which one share carries one vote, gave him no founder-level voting privileges. His votes therefore matched his 3.58% ownership. Kress held 4.4 million shares, while Vanguard and BlackRock each owned more than 7%.

Huang lacked enough voting power to elect or remove directors independently. Founders with majority control can determine who sits on their boards; Huang needed support from other shareholders to wield the same authority.

That distinction separates Nvidia from technology companies whose founders retain decisive voting power.

• At Meta, the dual-class share structure gives chief executive and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg about 60% of voting power from a 13.4% stake. His Class B shares carry 10 votes each, against one for Class A, letting him effectively elect the board and decide most shareholder matters. Meta said last month it would add a third non-voting tier next year.
• At Snap, chief executive and co-founder Evan Spiegel controls 53% of the company’s voting power while owning about 9.3% of its shares.
• At Alphabet, Google’s parent, co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page retain majority voting control collectively and both remain directors, although neither runs day-to-day operations.

What does the succession mean for markets?

Nvidia shares plummeted as much as 14% on Thursday after the departure announcement, before rebounding. They were down about 4.7% at 1:30 p.m. EST, leaving the company with a nearly $4 trillion market capitalization.

With about 6% of the broad S&P 500 index and 10% of the technology-heavy Nasdaq 100, Nvidia’s governance and valuation risks now travel through broader market portfolios and everyday Americans’ 401(k) retirement accounts.

Huang’s departure also removes a central operator. Nvidia ran with a flat management structure, meaning fewer management layers, and Huang shaped product strategy while maintaining direct ties to suppliers and customers.

Over recent months, he had cultivated a close relationship with President Donald Trump, who has championed expanding the U.S. artificial intelligence industry and the infrastructure supporting it. Trump quickly backed former Apple chief executive Tim Cook as Huang’s successor on Thursday, although Kress received the interim appointment.

Who is running Nvidia now?

The board also changed its own structure. It previously had no chairman and relied on lead independent director Stephen Neal to oversee management. On Thursday, it appointed Harvey C. Jones chairman; Jones is a former semiconductor chief executive and has served on Nvidia’s board since 1993.

Kress, the chief financial officer since 2013, said in a Thursday statement that she planned to build on Huang’s legacy as interim chief executive. Nvidia did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

Yet Huang did not treat succession as a simple handoff. “There will never be one like me, and the reason for that is because I was raised by the company,” he said in January.

He also said that, although he did not love the job every day, he worked at his mightiest because he believed he was the best person for it and had to earn that standing every day.

Thursday’s transition leaves Nvidia with an interim chief executive, a new chairman and a founder who shaped its rise with 3.58% of the voting rights. That mismatch defines the succession: economic scale did not equal boardroom control.