Six Votes to Remove Jensen Huang: What Could Be at Stake for Nvidia’s Share Price?

More than 9% was wiped off Nvidia shares before losses eased to between 7% and 8%. The move came in after-hours US trading in the early hours of November 12. Earnings disappointment was not the cause. The Wall Street Journal reported that directors were preparing to dismiss co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang, with a meeting possible as early as that day to decide his future. Bloomberg later reported that an outside firm had been working with the board on potential successors. Directors were also considering whether an interim CEO should be installed ahead of a wider search.

The first disclosure came in Huang’s November 8 letter to employees, in which he admitted being unfaithful to his wife. An independent investigation followed that day. Despite launching the inquiry, the board expressed “confidence” in Huang and his leadership team, and he continued as CEO while it proceeded. The decision became more urgent after The New York Times reported on November 11 that a second alleged extramarital relationship involved a company executive. Adding to the sensitivity were suspected foreign intelligence agency ties involving the woman in the first relationship, together with compliance concerns over chip transshipments. Directors said that, at that stage, they had no reason to believe either national security or company secrets had been compromised. They nevertheless pledged to examine all available information.

Only three days separated the founder CEO’s admission of an affair and refusal to resign voluntarily from the prospect of a board vote on his future. A vote to remove him and an actual replacement are not the same, however. The gap between them turns on governance protections that Nvidia opted not to establish.

1999 Listing: No Governance “Moat” for Nvidia’s Founder

One share has carried one vote at Nvidia since its 1999 listing. Its single class of common stock provides no enhanced voting rights for the founder, setting it apart from many founder-dominated Silicon Valley businesses. At Meta and Google, dual-class structures increase founders’ voting power. Those arrangements offer substantial protection against challenges by directors and activist investors. Nvidia has adopted no equivalent mechanism.

A holding of approximately 870.6 million shares gave Huang 3.58% of Nvidia’s outstanding stock as of March 2026. He ranked first among individual shareholders, but below BlackRock at 7.43% and Vanguard at 7.31%. His 3.58% stake is too small to control shareholder votes on its own or obstruct board decisions.

At board level, dismissal is more straightforward. A majority of serving directors can remove any officer, with or without cause, under Article 32 of Nvidia’s bylaws. Huang alone is non-independent on the current 11-member board; the remaining 10 directors are independent. Six votes suffice to dismiss him. His own vote cannot veto the outcome.

That framework explains Huang’s position today. For 33 years, concentrated founder leadership has supported continuity in Nvidia’s strategy. No institutional safeguards were introduced to protect the founder from dismissal. With a personal scandal now putting his tenure before directors, he cannot draw on the structural bargaining leverage available to Meta’s or Google’s founders.

Six Votes to Remove Huang, No Named Successor

Securing six votes would settle the procedural question, not the operational one: who would assume control? Neither a succession plan nor a clear second-in-command has been publicly identified by Nvidia, and there is no chief operating officer. The company’s established flat management model puts that gap in context. Speaking publicly in 2024, Huang said he had 60 direct reports at the time. Bernstein analysts regard the missing COO role as a governance weakness. For Stephen Witt, author of The Thinking Machine, the uncertainty was more pointed: there was no obvious indication of who among those 60 people might be promoted.

Names raised by analysts and former employees suggest a temporary handover, rather than an established succession path. CFO Colette Kress is considered suitable for the interim CEO role by D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria. More than a decade at Nvidia has made her familiar to investors. Her expertise, however, is mainly financial, rather than the engineering background Huang brings. For a longer-term appointment, Vice President Ian Buck is seen as a potential candidate. A contributor to CUDA’s creation, he now oversees the data centre and computing business and works directly with major cloud providers. These are still possibilities discussed by analysts and former employees, not official appointments. No successor has been designated by Nvidia.

Finding a capable executive would not resolve the full succession issue. Investors still have no framework for assessing Nvidia’s present valuation and business narrative independently of its founder’s personal influence. As analyst Dan Gallagher saw it, imagining another leader was difficult; without Huang, nobody knew how to value Nvidia.

Apple provides the comparison used by the more optimistic camp. Dan Niles of Niles Investment Management cites its performance after Steve Jobs’ death, alongside Nvidia’s talent depth, in arguing that Huang is “not critical” to the company’s development over the next few years. Timing limits the comparison, even if it has merit. The iPhone and iPad were established, expanding core product lines when Jobs died. Apple therefore changed leadership within a relatively stable product cycle. Nvidia’s AI infrastructure cycle is still growing rapidly, with substantial reliance on personal ties to major customers and governments worldwide. Any interim CEO would have to keep supply chains, customer relationships and policy negotiations on course while taking part in an unprecedented competitive race.

92% Joint Ownership Adds to Nvidia’s Leadership Risks

Two risk assessments must run in parallel for directors. Defending a founder versus applying governance standards is only part of the decision.

Keeping Huang in office brings increasing exposure. Investors sued Nvidia and Huang in a securities class action on November 9. They allege that, before the scandal became public, company denials of the relationships amounted to “deceptive statements” that obscured their understanding of business risks. The action covers purchases of Nvidia securities between October 9, 2025, and November 8, 2026. Whether disclosure adequately addressed potential national security risks is central to the plaintiffs’ argument. They allege intelligence ties involving the woman in the first relationship and contend that earlier public denials by the company misled the market.

Replacing Huang creates exposure that is less measurable. No successor has been named, but a less visible governance issue also matters. Roughly 801 million of his approximately 871 million shares, or 92%, are beneficially owned jointly with his wife, Lori. Living trusts, irrevocable trusts and their foundation hold these shares, over which the couple share voting and investment authority. Unless their marital status changes, that voting authority remains joint. A change in marital status could require a fresh assessment of the authority. Directors have the power to dismiss the CEO under Nvidia’s rules. They cannot, however, predict the votes those jointly held shares would carry at the next director election.

Outside the boardroom, pressure continues to build. Huang’s resignation has been publicly sought by several US lawmakers. Discussions about tighter tracking of chip transshipments have also drawn his personal controversy into the policy debate on semiconductor export controls to China. Valuation concerns in the AI sector had already driven Nvidia shares down nearly 20% over the preceding month, before the scandal surfaced. The controversy has therefore struck a pricing environment that was fragile already.

An additional core asset sits alongside Nvidia’s GPUs and CUDA ecosystem: the informal trust network Huang has built personally with major cloud providers, governments and supply chain partners around the world. According to Reuters, Elon Musk and Oracle founder Larry Ellison were among those who contacted him directly to obtain scarce AI chips. This network works because participants regard Huang and Nvidia as inseparable.

That assumption is now less secure. The scandal has damaged credibility on three fronts at once. Personally, Huang faces questions over the affairs and the initial denials. In governance, the issues are whether directors were misled and whether the independent investigation is trustworthy. On compliance, suspected foreign intelligence connections and chip transshipment concerns remain in focus. Taken together, these pressures force a market reassessment of Nvidia’s governance and compliance risk premium.

The distinction helps account for an after-hours fall of between 7% and 9%, rather than a steeper decline. Neither chip demand, the order backlog nor Nvidia’s technology roadmap has changed as a result of the scandal. What investors are repricing is the governance risk around the founder, not the competitiveness of the products. How directors exercise those six votes will determine the scale and persistence of the valuation discount. A finding that Huang misled the board could cause it to widen quickly. Conversely, if the investigation finds no systematic concealment and he stays in office, some of the discount could unwind. Even in that outcome, the continuing prospect of dismissal by six votes could leave Nvidia with a lasting structural valuation discount.