Jensen Huang's exit leaves Nvidia and AI industry facing an uncertain future

The resignation of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Thursday (local time) amid a series of extramarital affair allegations is expected to send shockwaves through not only Nvidia but the broader AI industry.

The abrupt departure of the CEO who had led the company for 33 years as its undisputed driving force is all but certain to sap momentum from the AI ecosystem and trigger a major realignment.

Nvidia will continue producing GPUs without Huang, but whether the company can maintain its commanding position across the industry in the absence of the man who ran it since its founding in 1993 remains an open question.

Huang's role went far beyond GPU development. He had been instrumental in keeping Nvidia at the forefront of the AI industry, unveiling in rapid succession data center CPUs for the AI agent era, open-source AI models, an autonomous driving platform and a robotics platform.

Particularly notable was his grip on decision-making: with no clear second-in-command or designated successor, he received daily direct reports from roughly 60 executives and held near-total control over major decisions.

Steven Witt, who wrote Huang's biography, told CNBC that he could not say what Nvidia would be worth without Jensen. "Nvidia is Jensen Huang," Witt said.

Nvidia has also served as an accelerator for the AI industry itself.

Drawing on profits and cash generated from chip sales, the company has supplied liquidity across the industry — investing in and providing financial guarantees to AI developers such as OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as neo-cloud groups including CoreWeave.

Such circular transactions raise no concerns while the industry is growing, but analysts have warned they could become a detonator capable of dragging the entire sector into crisis if momentum stalls anywhere in the chain.

Nvidia's share price fell more than 10 percent immediately after Huang's dismissal was announced, and share prices across the AI sector — including neo-cloud groups — swung sharply.

Huang had also wielded influence over AI deregulation and the US-China technology rivalry through his close relationship with US President Donald Trump, meaning his absence is expected to carry significant policy implications as well.