Wall Street closed higher on Tuesday, November 11 — the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500, and the Nasdaq Composite all gained ground. Nvidia did not. The chipmaker’s stock fell roughly 8% in after-hours trading the same evening, on reports that its own board was meeting to decide whether to remove co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang, after a week in which the company’s market value had already dropped by hundreds of billions of dollars over his personal conduct and a reported national-security entanglement.
Tuesday’s close, by the numbers
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 254.60 points, or 0.49%, to close at 52,486.49. The S&P 500 gained 98.45 points, or 1.31%, to 7,619.38 — still about 2.55% below its record close. The Nasdaq Composite added 1.60%, finishing at 25,466.19. It was a broadly positive session: Advanced Micro Devices rose 4.3% and Broadcom gained 2.4%, showing investors were still willing to buy chip stocks that weren’t Nvidia.
Nvidia’s regular session didn’t match its after-hours session
During Tuesday’s regular session, Nvidia shares actually gained about 2.9%, clawing back part of a prior-session decline. That reversed within hours of the close. CNBC and other outlets reported that Nvidia’s board of directors was convening to discuss Huang’s future as chief executive, citing the Wall Street Journal, and the stock fell approximately 8% in after-hours trading on the news. Separately, the New York Times reported a second allegation: that Huang had an affectionate encounter with Nvidia executive Kimberly Powell, who has led the company’s healthcare business since joining in 2008, at a hotel during a company conference in March, and that a security guard intervened and offered the two of them a non-disclosure agreement after a bystander photographed them. By midweek, data cited in market coverage put Nvidia’s loss in market capitalization at roughly $700 billion since the controversy began, with the stock down about 12% since Huang’s initial affair admission became public and roughly 14% for the month of November to that point.
What the board actually said it’s investigating
Nvidia’s board of directors issued a statement on November 8 saying it was opening an independent investigation “in light of recent reporting that founder and CEO Jensen Huang has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort.” The board said a committee of independent directors, assisted by outside independent counsel, would oversee the review, and that it had “no reason to believe” national security or Nvidia’s trade secrets had been compromised — language the company was careful to frame as an open inquiry, not a finding. The same week, Huang told employees in an email that he had been unfaithful to his wife and apologized, while saying he intended to keep leading the company and would cooperate fully with the board’s review.
The $7.5 billion question
The reporting outlet The Information added a more specific allegation on top of the original story: that Alice Huang (no relation to Jensen Huang), a former Megaspeed executive whom U.S. intelligence reportedly assessed as a Chinese intelligence asset, had a relationship with the Nvidia CEO dating back to at least 2023 — and that the rapport between them could have helped facilitate at least $7.5 billion worth of Nvidia chip shipments into China through Chinese companies. Megaspeed is a real Nvidia customer. Nvidia has not issued a public response specifically addressing the chip-shipment claim, and no evidence of an actual information or technology transfer has been confirmed or substantiated in reporting so far.
Washington is paying attention too
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said this week that Congress needs more answers, calling the situation a matter of “real concerns that need to be addressed.” Three House Republican committee chairs separately requested a closed-door briefing with Huang on November 18 covering his dealings with Alice Huang and Nvidia’s anti-espionage procedures. Asked about the matter, President Trump said he had not personally discussed the allegations with Huang but that “we’ll look into it,” adding that the FBI was examining the relationship.
The bottom line
Two things are true and verified as of this week: the broad market closed higher on November 11, and Nvidia — one of the handful of stocks large enough to move the entire index on its own — is now navigating a boardroom crisis over its CEO’s personal conduct and an unresolved national-security question, on top of a reported second affair allegation involving another named executive. None of that is a signal about where Nvidia’s stock goes next; the board’s investigation has produced no findings yet, the chip-shipment allegation is unconfirmed, and nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security.
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Featured image: an Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics card. Photo by Nana Dua on Unsplash.
