Nvidia’s Board Backed Jensen Huang on Sunday. By Thursday He Was Gone.

On November 12, 2026, Nvidia announced that Jensen Huang had resigned as president, CEO and board member, effective immediately. I want to walk through what Nvidia has confirmed, what major newspapers have reported from unnamed officials, what the people involved say, and what the market did. This story involves named people and serious accusations, so I attribute every contested claim and I leave out anything I could not trace to a reliable outlet.

What Nvidia has confirmed

The Nvidia press release is dated November 12, 2026. It says the board announced that Huang resigned as President, CEO and a member of the Board, effective immediately. CFO Colette Kress is interim CEO while she remains CFO. Harvey C. Jones becomes the first Chair of the Board, and the board is searching for a permanent CEO from inside and outside the company.

The Form 8-K filed with the SEC adds a detail on timing. It says the board accepted the resignation on November 11, 2026, and appointed Jones, who is 73 and has served on the board since 1993, as chair that day. Kress is 59. Neither document gives a reason for the departure. The press release adds that Kress joined Nvidia in September 2013 after nearly 25 years in finance roles at Cisco and Microsoft, and that Jones is a former CEO and Executive Chairman of Synopsys. Nvidia also said it will report third quarter fiscal 2027 results on Tuesday, November 17, at about 1:20 p.m. Pacific, with its call at 2 p.m. Pacific, as previously scheduled.

The reporting that led to it

Everything about why this happened comes from news reports, so I treat it that way. According to the Wall Street Journal’s account republished by To Vima, Alice Huang, a former reporter for Chinese state media, joined Megaspeed in 2023. Megaspeed is a Singapore based company that spun off from the Chinese firm 7Road and advertised itself as a cloud provider of Nvidia hardware. She is not related to Jensen Huang. The WSJ reports they met at an Nvidia event in California in March 2024, and that an attending executive heard her call him a friend at a Taipei trade show bar in June 2024. The paper also reports they were photographed at a Taipei dinner in May 2025.

Sovereign Magazine’s summary of the later reporting says the New York Times reported on October 29 that Trump was briefed about a year earlier and chose not to act. On November 6, it says the Times reported that a classified US memo says she was recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security, and the Financial Times reported that the same memo describes a romantic relationship between her and Huang. The WSJ adds that Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly oversaw a classified memo in spring 2026 warning of Huang’s personal relationship with a suspected Chinese spy.

These are reports of what officials believe. The WSJ notes that its account of US conclusions comes from reporting by several outlets and that efforts to reach Alice Huang were unsuccessful. No public document I found shows evidence beyond what unnamed officials told reporters.

From a California event to a resignation in 32 months. The reported dates run from a March 2024 meeting to the November 12 announcement. Source: Nvidia 8-K, WSJ, NYT and FT as relayed by Sovereign Magazine, November 2026

A short seller flagged Megaspeed 6 months earlier

The paper trail started before any of the November headlines. On May 13, 2026, Culper Research published a 40 page report titled NVIDIA (NVDA): The China Problem, according to OfficeChai. Culper disclosed a short position, which means it profits if the stock falls, and OfficeChai notes the report leaned on anonymous sources including former Nvidia and Supermicro employees and a current Megaspeed employee. Treat it as an advocacy document and weigh it that way.

Its central claim, as roic.ai summarized it, was that more than 20% of Nvidia’s fiscal 2026 compute revenue stayed tied to China through GPU diversion via Southeast Asian intermediaries. The report named Megaspeed and alleged hidden financial links to Alibaba. AI Chief, citing TechCrunch says the report also raised questions about Jensen Huang’s unusually close relationship with Alice Huang, and that the diversion allegations have not been independently verified. Nvidia had previously said it found no evidence of diversion in its global data center checks.

The market did little with it. OfficeChai reports Nvidia shares rose about 3% that day. The same week, per a Benzinga summary, Huang boarded Air Force One during a refueling stop in Anchorage to join President Trump’s Beijing summit at the last minute, just as the report appeared.

The warning signs were public for 6 months. Each signal below was reported before the November 12 resignation. Source: OfficeChai,roic.ai, Sovereign Magazine, Axios, MarketWatch, Nvidia

What Huang and the board said

On Sunday, November 8, the WSJ reports that Huang apologized to staff for infidelity in a memo and wrote that he loves the country and the company. Sovereign Magazine quotes the memo as saying he was “deeply sorry” and would cooperate fully with the national security review. The same day, the board opened an independent investigation run by a committee of independent directors with outside counsel. It said it had no reason to believe national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised, and it expressed confidence in Huang and his leadership team.

4 days later he was gone. Whether Huang told the board about the relationship earlier has not been made public, and Sovereign Magazine describes it as a question for the investigation. Nvidia spokesman John Rizzo had said the news would not slow the company.

What the other parties say

Nvidia told reporters, according to the WSJ, that US intelligence never gave Huang a defensive briefing. The company says its ban on sales and shipments to Megaspeed from June 2025 remains in place, and that it has obtained Commerce permission to send parts and replacement components since then. Sovereign Magazine reports Nvidia says the diversion allegations were investigated and debunked last year, and that Megaspeed has no China shareholders.

Megaspeed says it is legitimate and compliant. It says the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, Malaysia’s trade ministry and Nvidia each found no evidence of illicit chip transfers, and it has hired outside counsel. Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs denies investigating Alice Huang over alleged China ties, according to the WSJ. China’s foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun called the allegation groundless and a smear.

President Trump said Huang told him he had no idea the person was a spy, and said he did not recall receiving the classified memo, according to the WSJ. Sovereign Magazine reports he also called Huang an honorable guy before the resignation.

5 parties, 5 different positions. Each statement below was reported in November 2026. Source: WSJ, Sovereign Magazine, November 2026

The chip diversion question is still open

The Megaspeed question has 2 layers. Sovereign Magazine reports that Megaspeed’s Malaysian sister company bought at least $4.8 billion of AI equipment containing Nvidia chips between June 2024 and February 2026. FourWeekMBA, relaying a Techmeme summary says Bloomberg reported on November 9 that Megaspeed’s imports of Nvidia products top $4.6 billion, so the public figures sit in the $4.6 billion to $4.8 billion range depending on the source and the entity counted. It also says Commerce officials visited the Malaysian data center in late 2024 and found Nvidia equipment still in its boxes, and that the case later went to the Justice Department. Senator Tom Cotton had asked Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on October 13, 2025, to examine Megaspeed’s ownership and ties.

On the other side, the same summary says no one has been charged and no public finding shows chips were diverted. The WSJ reports that the Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security responded to a New York Times report that it dropped an investigation after an Nvidia executive reached out. A BIS spokesman said it conducts all enforcement strictly by the book. I cannot settle that from the public record, and I would treat anyone who claims to have settled it with caution.

What is on the record and what is not. Only the resignation itself is confirmed by Nvidia filings. Source: Nvidia 8-K, WSJ, NYT, FT as relayed by Sovereign Magazine

What the market did

Sovereign Magazine reports Nvidia closed at $186.64 on Friday, November 6, then opened at $173.04 on Monday, about 7% lower. BeInCrypto reported that shares fell 11.3% to $154.10 in premarket trading on November 12. Quartz reported the stock then traded about 8% lower shortly after the open, and that Nvidia was on track to have lost almost three quarters of a trillion dollars of market value since the scandal broke. Quartz also notes the stock had already fallen by more than a fifth in the past month.

Nvidia shares were about 17% lower by Nov 12 premarket. The premarket figure is a quote before the opening bell. Source: Sovereign Magazine, BeInCrypto, November 2026

The succession gap

The exit also exposed a planning question. Axios reported on November 9 that Nvidia had no obvious successor, with Kress as the highest profile member of the executive team, and quoted Georgetown ethics professor Peter Jaworski saying the board looked “asleep at the wheel.” MarketWatch made the same point on the same day, noting that apart from Kress few Nvidia executives are well known to investors. IBTimes adds that Nvidia has not publicly disclosed a detailed CEO succession plan, although the board could have confidential arrangements for an emergency.

Mitrade puts Huang’s equity stake at about 3.58% and argues his control rests mainly on being co founder and CEO. The board’s answer, 3 days later, was an interim CEO who keeps her CFO job, a new chair who has sat on the board since 1993, and an open search.

What happens next

3 dates are on the calendar. The House Foreign Affairs, China Select and Intelligence committee chairs asked Huang to attend a closed briefing on November 18, and Sovereign Magazine says they had not issued a subpoena. Nvidia reports earnings on November 17, the first test of investor confidence under an interim CEO. The board’s independent investigation has no published end date, and the CEO search is open to outside candidates.

2 things from this generalize

The first is how to read a story built on unnamed officials. The newspapers named their sources as US officials and the people accused deny the central claim, so the sound approach is to hold the claim at the strength it has. A report that officials believe something tells me what officials believe, and it turns into a finding when documents, charges or on the record statements arrive.

The second is what a leadership exit does to the numbers. Shares sat about 17% lower within 4 trading days, before any proof of diversion or compromise was made public, which shows how much of a stock price rests on trust in a single executive. Investors who own Nvidia through index funds are exposed to that risk without having chosen it.

This week, I would read the November 17 earnings release and any board statement about the investigation, and update my view only from filed documents.