Investors worry the AI trade needs Nvidia’s Huang and its largesse

Investors fear an ouster of CEO Jensen Huang might dampen Nvidia’s willingness to bankroll the AI boom, in yet another pressure point on the global markets’ most crowded trade.

The board of the world’s dominant chipmaker, at the cutting edge of computing, was meeting late Wednesday to decide Huang’s fate as it grapples with reports of two extramarital affairs involving its longtime leader.

Traders’ first reaction was to punish Nvidia shares and those of its customers, including data-centre firms CoreWeave and Naver, while pushing shares of chipmaking rivals Broadcom and AMD higher.