NVIDIA shares fall 8% after hours as board meets to discuss Huang’s future
Key Facts
NVIDIA shares rose 2.9% in regular trading on November 11, then fell 8% after the closing bell, after a Wall Street Journal report said the board was preparing to oust CEO Jensen Huang. Reuters said the report was based on people familiar with the matter, while the board was meeting Wednesday evening to discuss Huang’s position and decide whether to remove him. The meeting was not an announcement of a final decision, as the company had not announced his dismissal. The Associated Press estimated the extended-hours decline at 8.6% after reports of the board meeting. The contrast between the regular-session gain and the subsequent selling underscored how quickly attention shifted to leadership risks at the company.
NVIDIA’s decline followed a rising session for technology stocks, with Reuters linking market gains to an upbeat report from CoreWeave that bolstered optimism about AI trades. CoreWeave shares climbed 24.7% in the same session, the agency said. But after-hours trading moved in the opposite direction as the report of NVIDIA’s board meeting came to the fore, and the turmoil spread to U.S. futures Wednesday evening. S&P 500 futures fell 0.4%, while Nasdaq 100 futures slid 0.8%, according to The Block. Gains tied to optimism about AI activity during the session thus coincided with later pressure on stocks and futures after the leadership report.
Leadership concerns coincided with broader investor worries that the AI industry could slow and that returns on the technology’s massive investments may not be sufficient to justify the scale of spending, according to the Associated Press. The agency reported that NVIDIA shares fell 4.3% on Monday after the company announced an independent investigation, and had lost 23% in the 30 days preceding that Monday. Those earlier moves put the after-hours drop in the context of a period of pressure on the stock, but came on different days from the November 11 session. On Thursday morning, Asian stocks were broadly lower and U.S. futures were mixed, as concerns over NVIDIA’s leadership extended pressure to AI-related shares. The Taiwan Taiex fell 1.2% and the Hang Seng Index dropped 0.9% on November 12, the agency said.
NVIDIA’s board began an independent investigation on November 8, saying in its statement that it saw no reason to believe company secrets or national security had been compromised. On November 10, the board’s independent members announced the appointment of John Kim and the firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to conduct the investigation. The Associated Press reported that Huang said he had more than 60 direct reports, and that the succession plan was unclear. The agency named co-founder Chris Malachowsky and CFO Colette Kress as possible candidates if Huang resigned or was dismissed by the board. Those names remain possibilities reported by the agency, while Wednesday’s meeting was set to discuss the CEO’s position.
NVIDIA closed at $173.73 a share on November 11, and the S&P 500 closed at 7,619.38 points, according to EL7 data. These were regular-session closing levels on the day the company’s shares rose 2.9% during the session before retreating after the bell. Among upcoming dates, NVIDIA scheduled a call to discuss its fiscal 2027 third-quarter results for November 17 at 2 p.m. Pacific time. The quarter ended on October 25, 2026. The call is the next announced date for discussing financial results, while no announcement in the available information said the board had resolved the question of Huang’s position.