Nvidia Shares Slide Premarket as Board Weighs Jensen Huang's Future; Bernstein and Baird Cut Targets to $200

Nvidia shares fell sharply in premarket trading on Thursday, Nov. 12, 2026, as investors waited for the outcome of a board meeting on whether to remove co-founder and Chief Executive Jensen Huang, following reports of two extramarital relationships, one of them with a woman U.S. intelligence officials believe is a Chinese spy. The stock was down 6.9% as of 6:23 a.m. ET, CNBC reported, and no decision had been announced by early Thursday.

How the week unfolded

On Sunday, Huang told Nvidia employees in a message that he had been unfaithful to his wife and apologized. The Financial Times reported that the relationship was with Alice Huang, an executive at cloud company Megaspeed, and NBC News reported that U.S. intelligence agencies had determined she was a Chinese intelligence operative. China's Foreign Ministry rejected the allegations as "purely unsubstantiated," spokesperson Mao Ning said Thursday, according to NBC News.

Nvidia's board opened an independent investigation into the espionage-related reports and hired the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, CNBC reported. Then, on Wednesday evening, The New York Times reported, citing five people who had worked at the company, that Huang had also had a relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of health care, who reports to him. Minutes later, The Wall Street Journal reported that the board was preparing to force Huang out. CNBC confirmed the board met Wednesday to discuss whether to oust him. Nvidia and Powell did not respond to CNBC's requests for comment.

Stock moves

Nvidia had closed Wednesday's regular session up 2.9% at $173.73 as AI stocks rallied on CoreWeave's results. Within about two hours of the close, the shares were trading near $157.99, down about 9.1%, according to a Coinspeaker report on Yahoo Finance. NBC News said that if the after-hours decline held through Thursday's open, it would erase more than $350 billion in market value. Before this week's after-hours drop, the stock was already down 7% for the week and on pace for a sixth straight weekly decline, CNBC said, and it has fallen more than 20% over the past month.

Rivals moved the other way. AMD and Broadcom were up 3.9% and 3%, respectively, in premarket trading, while Intel, Marvell, Arm and Qualcomm traded lower, according to CNBC. In Europe, ASML was down 1.9% in late-morning trading, Euronews reported.

Analysts cut targets

Several brokerages lowered their price targets on Thursday, according to CNBC's Morning Squawk. Bernstein halved its target to $200 from $400 and cut its rating to market-perform. Baird lowered its target to $200 from $500 and downgraded the stock to neutral. Morgan Stanley removed Nvidia from its "Top Pick" list, Wells Fargo trimmed its target to $300 from $315 while keeping an overweight rating, and Citi cut to $285 from $315 while maintaining a buy rating.

Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon told CNBC that the reported relationship with a direct report makes it "much tougher for the board to leave him in position," and said it is unclear who could succeed him. In a note earlier in the week, Rasgon wrote that Huang "IS NVIDIA." Several analysts told CNBC that the stock could fall about 20% if Huang is removed.

Political pressure

Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Chris Coons, D-Del., wrote to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Wednesday asking that the Commerce Department, State Department and White House preserve all records related to exports of Nvidia's advanced AI chips to China and to the reported intelligence operation, NBC News reported. Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., has called on Huang to resign, according to CNBC. Democrats will control both chambers of Congress in the coming months after last week's midterm elections, giving them subpoena power.

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean for leadership studies at the Yale School of Management, told NBC News the board should remove Huang, saying he had lost legitimacy internally and credibility with customers. President Donald Trump, asked this week whether Huang could join him on an upcoming Asia trip, said, "I don't know, but I'd certainly take him."

Ownership and background

Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and has led it since, guiding its shift from gaming graphics to the chips at the center of the AI boom. Trusts co-owned with his wife, Lori Huang, hold about 800 million Nvidia shares, and he holds about 70 million shares on his own, CNBC reported. Ben Barringer, head of technology research at Quilter Cheviot, told Euronews there is no natural successor, though Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress would be the most obvious choice.