Nvidia market value sinks below $4 trillion as stock drops 14%

Nvidia shares fell as much as 14% at the open on Thursday, November 12, after co-founder Jensen Huang resigned as chief executive. The drop pushed the chipmaker's market value below $4 trillion for the first time since 2025, Bloomberg reported. The stock reached its lowest level since June 2025, and the decline erased as much as $601 billion in market value. According to Bloomberg, that would be the largest one-day loss of market capitalization for any stock if it held through the close.bloomberg.com

The selloff spread across Wall Street. The S&P 500 ↘ 0.30% fell 0.7% and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 1.5% as AI stocks weakened, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average edged higher, the Associated Press reported. Some of Nvidia's rival chipmakers gained.barchart.com

A sudden leadership change

Huang stepped down right away as CEO and as a board member. Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress will serve as interim CEO until a permanent successor is named, and former Synopsys ↘ 0.16% chief Harvey C. Jones will become the board's first chair, CNBC reported. Nvidia has hired an outside firm to find a permanent replacement, Schwab noted, citing Bloomberg.cnbc.com+1

The resignation came after a week of revelations. On Sunday, Huang admitted to an affair with Alice Huang, an executive at cloud company Megaspeed whom U.S. intelligence officials believe is a Chinese spy. On Wednesday, The New York Times reported a second relationship, with an Nvidia vice president who reports to him, according to CNBC. Before Thursday, the stock had already lost 9.6% over Monday and Tuesday, CBS News reported. Schwab put the decline from the stock's October 6 peak at about 30%.cbsnews.com+1

Analysts cut targets as rivals gain

Bernstein halved its price target to $200 from $400. Its senior analyst, Stacy Rasgon, told CNBC that "Jensen is Nvidia" and said he did not know who could make the company's decisions for the next 10 years. Evercore cut its target to $186 from $330, Seeking Alpha reported.cnbc.com+1

AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. ↗ 0.81% and Broadcom ↗ 4.38% rose in premarket trading. Intel ↘ 3.92%, Marvell ↘ 1.74%, Arm ↘ 2.24% and Qualcomm ↗ 1.34% fell, according to CNBC. "Governance is now an investment risk," Saxo strategist Charu Chanana told Trustnet. She said the divergence suggested investors were pricing in risks specific to Nvidia rather than turning on AI as a whole.newcms.trustnet.com+1

Questions about the fallout

Some analysts expect the business to hold up. "Customers buy Nvidia's computing power, software and networking ecosystem, and those advantages wouldn't disappear with its CEO," Swissquote's Ipek Ozkardeskaya told the AP. Others warned that investigations into Huang's relationship with the alleged spy could take months and keep weighing on the stock, Schwab noted.schwab.com+1