A once-in-a-generation executive scandal will now leave Nvidia (NVDA) without its co-founder and longtime chief.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang stepped down Thursday morning following accusations of not one but two extramarital affairs, the second of which came to light Wednesday night. A mere couple of weeks ago, the New York Times broke a story detailing the now-former executive’s extramarital relationship with Alice Huang, an alleged Chinese intelligence asset. Then yesterday evening, new reporting revealed a second relationship, this time with an Nvidia exec (Kimberly Powell). Soon after, NVDA shares slumped in after-market trading as additional reports suggested the company’s board was looking to oust Jensen Huang.
By morning, Nvidia announced Jensen Huang had stepped down from both the captain’s chair and the board. Management installed Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress as interim CEO, and former Synopsys CEO and board member Harvey Jones ‌as its board chairman, as the reeling chipmaker and keystone of artificial intelligence infrastructure starts its search for new permanent leadership.
NVDA shares have lost roughly a quarter of their value since the original infidelity story broke. Wall Street’s analyst community had been largely positive regardless, with some even seeing the resultant downturn in shares as a potential buying opportunity. However, last night’s news of Jensen Huang’s likely ouster (and today’s confirmation) cracked the dam, with a few experts starting to cool on shares.
Today, we’ll go over some of the analysts’ new views on NVDA stock.
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5 Analyst Takes on NVDA Stock
S&P Global Market Intelligence provides us with a good illustration of the souring mood on Nvidia stock. They boil down all known analyst ratings of a stock down to a numerical system in which …
1-1.5 = Strong Buy
1.5-2.5 = Buy
2.5-3.5 = Hold
3.5-4.5 = Sell
4.5-5 = Strong Sell
In short: The lower the number, the better the overall consensus view on the stock.
NVDA’s score was 1.33 (Strong Buy) yesterday and has already risen to 1.52 (Buy) today following a number of downgrades. Right now, the stock enjoys 50 Buy calls, 11 Holds, and no Sells. That’s still an overwhelmingly bullish sentiment. However, I follow Nvidia’s ratings fairly closely because it frequently shows up in our stories, and if memory serves, it has been at least a year since NVDA stock has garnered double digits in the Hold category.
Now, let’s look at some of the earliest takeaways on NVDA stock, delivered between last night and this morning as Jensen Huang’s exit became increasingly likely … then certain.
William Blair Downgrades NVDA to Market Perform
- Rating: Market Perform (Hold)
- Price Target: N/A
William Blair’s Sebastien Naji and Ana Bilbao lowered their rating on Nvidia shares to Market Perform last night amid a Wall Street Journal report that the chipmaker’s board was preparing to remove Jensen Huang.
“What is already clear is that Huang’s likely departure and heightened scrutiny of the company will be a significant overhang on NVDA shares in the near term,” they said. “Meanwhile, the potential for a slower AI buildout and more intense competition from other chipmakers will only add to execution risk.”
While they expressed their belief that Nvidia will still have a leadership role in AI’s buildout and noting the possibility that the stock might not have much more room to fall, “governance and regulatory pressure, the potential for more serious fallout, and a sudden change in management are likely to muddle both execution and sentiment.”
| Nvidia (NVDA): Quick Stats | |
|---|---|
| Market cap | $4.0 trillion |
| Dividend yield | 0.6% |
| Forward price-to-earnings (P/E) | 11.0 |
| Price/earnings-to-growth (PEG) | 0.2 |
| Source: Yahoo! Finance. Data is as of Nov. 12, 2026. | |
A core part of their thesis goes back to Jensen Huang’s relationship with Alice Huang, an executive at Singapore-based AI infrastructure firm Megaspeed who U.S. intelligence believes was recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security. The NYT reported that Megaspeed bought more than $4.8 billion in Nvidia chips over two years, and that the Commerce Department was probing the company until Nvidia’s general counsel contacted Commerce investigators about the case, after which the probe was transferred to the Department of Justice.
“Nvidia maintains that its dealings were proper, and its board has opened an independent investigation,” Naji and Bilbao write. “Our concern is that, whatever the outcome, the policy response will create additional hurdles for Nvidia and the broader chip industry. We see the potential for tighter licensing for Southeast Asian and sovereign buyers, a revival of diffusion-style country caps, or broader entity listings to gate access to key growth markets outside the U.S. and weigh on Nvidia’s top line.”
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Oppenheimer Downgrades NVDA to Perform
- Rating:Â Perform (Hold)
- Price Target: N/A
Oppenheimer analysts Rick Schafer and Trevor Bowers also announced their downgrade, to Perform, following allegations of Jensen Huang’s second extramarital affair and reports of Nvidia’s board readying for a removal, saying the “‘one-two’ punch appears to have forced the board’s hand.”
“Huang’s role as the ‘face of AI’ cannot be overstated,” they write. “His uniquely skillful, forward-thinking, steady and tireless leadership has been critical to NVDA’s success in becoming the undisputed AI leader and world’s largest company. Huang is a hands-on leader with dozens of direct reports. We believe he is deeply involved in all strategic decision making. We see massive shoes to fill and no obvious successor. His departure presents a material, potentially thesis-changing event.”
While Schafer and Bowers note that Nvidia has “an incredibly deep bench of talent,” they believe the company could suffer from brain drain, “threatening NVDA’s pace of innovation—a critical competitive advantage.”
They believe fundamentals will take a backseat to the executive upheaval, and have removed their price target alongside their downgrade. They also add that perceived beneficiaries of any NVDA dislocation include Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Marvel Technology (MRVL), and Broadcom (AVGO).
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Stifel Lowers Its Price Target on NVDA Stock
- Rating: Buy
- Price Target: $205 (+18% from Wednesday close)
A team of Stifel analysts remained generally bullish on NVDA stock last night but noted that the most immediate near-term concerns revolved around not whether Nvidia’s board executed a change, but how it went about doing so.
“We would look for (1) a named interim or permanent leader, where an internal appointment would likely read as continuity and an extended external search as added uncertainty; (2) whether Mr. Huang retains a board or advisory role; (3) retention of the senior engineering, operations and field leaders who report to the CEO; and (4) whether the 11/17 date and call format hold.”
The team sharply lowered their price target on NVDA shares to $205 from $315 previously, but they retained a Buy share on the stock.
“We believe NVDA remains the primary beneficiary of the shift from general-purpose to accelerated compute, and that its positioning has moved beyond merchant silicon in ways not yet reflected in the shares,” they write. “The company increasingly sells rack-scale systems rather than components, organizes rather than absorbs the third-party capital funding the buildout, and is beginning to attach software and networking economics to installed compute on a per-GPU and utilization-linked basis. We think that combination supports a durable revenue trajectory and a more defensible margin structure than a merchant supplier would command.
“Much of that advantage is embedded in the organization rather than any one individual: a multi-generation roadmap through Rubin, Rubin Ultra and Feynman, the CUDA developer base, supply commitments and rack-scale customer engagements.”
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Wedbush Maintains Buy Rating and PT
- Rating: Outperform (Buy)
- Price Target: $345 (+99%)
This morning, Wedbush’s Matt Bryson and Tuo Ma wrote this morning (before news of Jensen Huang’s departure broke) that a CEO ouster appeared to be the most likely resolution. Regardless, they kept intact both their Buy rating and $345 price target—the latter of which implies a near doubling from Wednesday’s closing price.
“Our view is that while an executive transition would necessarily increase uncertainty for NVDA, both the current valuation and near-term sales/demand setup moderate risk for the company and provide some leeway for NVDA to find its way and that at ~10X FY 2028 [earnings per share], almost any level of uncertainty is already baked into the stock,” they write.
But who stands to benefit if Nvidia stumbles?
“We see AMD as the clearest likely beneficiary with its Instinct platform offering the most similar solution today. In addition, we would see any misexecution by NVDA as creating an opportunity for Cerebras (CBRS), which as of today remains the only other party with significant traction at large customers for its accelerators. And while private companies (Tenstorrent, Samba Nova, Etched, etc.) could also eventually fill this role, it necessarily will take any of these companies time to scale into any meaningful role (particularly given the current lack of flexibility in the supply chain).”
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Argus Lowers PT, Still Thinks NVDA Is a Buy
- Rating: Buy
- Price Target: $220 (+27%)
Argus Research analyst Jim Kelleher wrote yesterday that while an (at the time) potential Jensen Huang ouster would be problematic, we’ve seen other companies succeed in somewhat similar events.
“Investors are concerned about key-man risk, given the possibility that the CEO may need to resign at some points,” he says. “We believe key-man risk would be heightened if Nvidia and the AI revolution were at an earlier stage of development, although this risk is not to be minimized. Examining the fall-out from other key-man events, Apple has grown exponentially since the death of Steve Jobs. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Microsoft’s Bill Gates had affairs, and both eventually stepped down as CEO. Both companies have thrived under new leadership.”
But Kelleher also points to the political aspect of this scandal.
“Argus wears no political hats, but it is next to impossible to completely steer clear of politics in analyzing this issue,” he says. “Opposition to data centers played a role in the Blue Tsunami, while the president is all-in on AI data centers with CEO Huang at his side for important announcements. We expect each data center to be negotiated at the local level in a tedious process that does not garner headlines. CEO Huang, on the other hand, could be cast as the poster boy of reckless AI.”
While Kelleher kept his Buy rating intact, he reduced his price target on NVDA stock to $220 from $270 previously.
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