“Jensen is Nvidia,” says one analyst: Why the $4.5 trillion AI giant’s filings never name CEO Huang as a key risk, despite having no clear successor

Nvidia’s shares fell more than 4% on Monday, even as the broader market rallied sharply. The drop came a day after CEO Jensen Huang told employees in a message that he’d had an affair, and that the board was starting an investigation.

The board wants to find out whether Huang was targeted by a foreign intelligence agency. It said it has “confidence in Jensen” and sees no reason to believe national security or Nvidia’s secrets were compromised.

Huang is 63. He co-founded Nvidia and built it into a company worth about $4.5 trillion. That’s market value, the share price multiplied by the number of shares. It isn’t cash or profit.


The New York Times first reported that the Chinese businesswoman was a spy for China’s Ministry of State Security. It cited people briefed on intelligence that went around the Trump administration in a memo in the spring. China has called the allegation a smear.

Political pressure is growing. Leaders from both parties are asking for briefings. Democrats, who are poised to take control of both houses of Congress, want investigations and new legislation. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts wrote on X that the aim should be “to stop advanced AI chips from fueling China’s military.”

The stakes go beyond one company. Nvidia’s technology has powered the first four years of the generative AI boom. Huang is among the loudest champions of AI in the country and is critical to financing the wider infrastructure buildout. His close relationship with President Donald Trump also gives Nvidia a front-row seat in talks on AI policy, safety and regulation.

Nvidia is run top down, with no obvious number two

Analysts at Melius Research said in a Monday note that Nvidia has no clear successor to Huang. They had expected him to stay in the job for at least 10 more years.

Stacy Rasgon, an analyst at Bernstein, was blunter on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” “Jensen is Nvidia. Nvidia is Jensen,” he said. In his view, Huang runs the company largely from the top and keeps most of the control with himself.

Huang is the company’s only public face, and there’s no clear second-in-command. Besides being CEO and co-founder, he is also Nvidia’s president. He’s closely involved in day-to-day operations and often speaks for the company in front of world leaders and at industry conferences.

Nvidia has long described its structure as flat and non-hierarchical. In September 2025, Huang told CNBC’s Becky Quick that he had as many as 60 direct reports. Internal records reviewed by CNBC show he has 33 this week.

Limited ownership, and a vague line on succession

Compared with founders like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk at SpaceX, Huang holds little formal control. He owns just over 3% of Nvidia’s shares. He is one of 11 board members, and the board has no official chair. His influence, then, doesn’t come from the size of his stake, and he can’t carry a board vote alone.

The lack of a chair also means no single director formally leads the board that is now overseeing the investigation. Nvidia’s financial filings don’t name Huang as a key person either. The risk section says instead that the company is “highly dependent on the services of our longstanding executive team.” It also warns that poor succession planning, weak transfer of knowledge or rough transitions among executives and key employees could hurt its strategy, execution and long-term success.

Timm Schulze-Melander, an analyst at Rothschild & Co. Redburn, wrote in a Monday note that Huang could be forced to step back as CEO. That would happen if the board’s investigation turns up “something materially more serious” than an undisclosed relationship.