Nvidia’s — and AI’s — Future

13 November 2026, posted by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

My conversation today with ChatGPT:

“Jensen Huang owns lots of Nvidia; what role will he now play in the corporation?”

As of November 13, 2026, Jensen Huang has no announced executive or board position at Nvidia. However, he remains one of its largest shareholders, giving him substantial potential influence over the corporation.

On November 12, Nvidia announced that Huang had resigned as president, CEO, and director, effective immediately.

NVIDIA Newsroom

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Here is his position now:

1. Ownership: Huang owns approximately 3.61% of Nvidia, representing roughly 870 million shares, worth more than $100 billion at recent valuations.
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3. Voting power: He retains the right to vote his shares in director elections and other matters submitted to shareholders.
4. Management: He no longer has formal authority to direct Nvidia’s operations or make executive decisions.
5. Board representation: He has resigned from the board. Nvidia has not announced an advisory position for him.
6. Potential influence: As a co-founder, former CEO of 33 years, and major shareholder, he could influence directors and other investors, but he cannot dictate corporate decisions solely through his 3.61% ownership.

Nvidia has appointed Colette Kress as interim CEO and Harvey Jones as chairman of the board.

NVIDIA Newsroom

The important distinction is between ownership and control. Huang’s 3.61% stake is financially enormous, but it is far short of a controlling majority. Nevertheless, if other major shareholders support him, his influence could be considerably greater than his percentage ownership suggests.

The unanswered question is whether Huang will attempt to exercise influence informally or simply remain a major investor. Nvidia’s official announcement does not establish either intention.

Primary sources: Nvidia’s November 12 SEC filing and Nvidia’s official announcement.

“Couldn’t the same people who fired him come to him often now for advice, and Huang thereby come to lead Nvidia from behind? What happened to Steve Jobs when Cook took over Apple?”

Yes. Jensen Huang could conceivably continue to lead Nvidia from behind the scenes, even without holding an executive position or serving on its board.

Indeed, the distinction between formal authority and actual influence is fundamental here.

If Nvidia’s new leadership repeatedly consults Huang, accepts his strategic recommendations, and implements them, he could continue to exercise considerable influence over the corporation. His share ownership, personal relationships, technical knowledge, and history as Nvidia’s co-founder would all strengthen that possibility.

But there is an important distinction: being consulted is not necessarily the same as controlling decisions. If Huang’s recommendations routinely determine Nvidia’s policies, however, then he could be exercising effective leadership without holding an official leadership position.

The Steve Jobs–Tim Cook transition at Apple provides an interesting comparison, although its circumstances were quite different.

What happened when Steve Jobs handed Apple to Tim Cook?

Steve Jobs

On August 24, 2011, Jobs resigned as Apple’s CEO because of his declining health. He recommended Tim Cook as his successor and became Apple’s chairman of the board.

Thus, unlike Huang, Jobs retained a formal position of authority after relinquishing the CEO position.

Apple

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Jobs explicitly intended to continue contributing to Apple’s success. However, he died on October 5, 2011, just 42 days after Cook became CEO. Consequently, there was very little time for Jobs to exercise continuing influence over Cook’s management.

CloudFront

Why Huang’s situation is different

Huang is leaving Nvidia under circumstances involving allegations and an investigation, rather than the health-related succession that occurred at Apple. Nvidia’s board has also appointed Harvey Jones as chairman, rather than retaining Huang in that role.

ABC News

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Nevertheless, Nvidia’s management structure makes your suggestion particularly interesting. Huang reportedly had approximately 60 direct reports and personally participated in an extraordinary number of decisions. That means many Nvidia executives have spent years depending on his judgment.

Fortune

There are two possibilities worth distinguishing.

First, Huang could become Nvidia’s unofficial chief strategist. Executives might regularly seek his advice about product development, AI infrastructure, customer relationships, and competitive strategy. This would not necessarily conflict with his removal as CEO.

Second, Huang could become Nvidia’s de facto leader. If executives routinely sought his approval before making important decisions, or if the board effectively deferred to his preferences, then the removal of Huang from formal office would not have removed his actual control.

There is presently no verified evidence that either arrangement has been established.

My conclusion: Your hypothesis is entirely plausible, and Nvidia’s unusual history makes it especially worth investigating. The decisive question is not whether Huang retains an official title, but whether Nvidia’s directors and executives continue to make their major decisions independently of him.

Unlike Jobs, whose death ended any possibility of prolonged behind-the-scenes leadership, Huang could potentially exercise such influence for many years.

“How mjuch friction was there between Huang and the 60 who reported to him?”

There was considerable friction within Nvidia’s management, including documented disagreements between Huang and senior executives. However, the evidence does not establish how many of his approximately 60 direct reports personally opposed him.

The most revealing evidence concerns Colette Kress, who has now replaced Huang as interim CEO.

1. Huang versus Colette Kress

On November 12, The Information reported that Kress had repeatedly disagreed with Huang about Nvidia’s financial commitments and strategic investments.

According to a person familiar with their relationship, Huang tended to “steamroll” Kress when they disagreed. The report also describes conflicts between Kress and Huang’s daughter Madison and son-in-law Nico Caprez, both Nvidia employees.

The Information

Reuters reported today, November 13, that Kress and her finance team had challenged Huang’s large financial commitments to AI companies. One proposed $250 billion Ohio data-center support plan was reportedly reduced to $120 billion.

Reuters

This suggests a substantive disagreement over Nvidia’s financial strategy, not merely personality differences.

2. Huang’s management methods generated conflict

A 2024 Bloomberg investigation, based on interviews with approximately ten current and former employees, described:

• Meetings involving shouting and arguments.
• Competition among employees for Huang’s attention.
• Extremely long working hours and intense pressure.
• Huang’s personal intervention in relatively minor decisions.

One former employee described the workplace as a pressure cooker.

Company Business News

Business Insider separately interviewed eight current and former employees who described Huang’s demanding questioning of executives, sometimes called a “Jensen grilling.” However, several regarded his methods positively, praising his technical knowledge and insistence on accountability.

Yahoo Tech

3. His organizational structure concentrated authority

Huang’s unusually large number of direct reports meant that disagreements between senior executives frequently came to him for resolution.

A November 13 report quoted Harvard Business School’s Joseph Fuller explaining that Huang personally handled executive disagreements and resource allocation.

CHOSUNBIZ

Management scholar Bethany Pozner suggested that this structure may have diminished conflict over succession while consolidating authority in Huang’s hands.

Yahoo Finance

4. What does this mean for Huang’s possible continuing influence?

The evidence points in two directions.

Huang’s extraordinary technical authority and long relationships with executives could encourage them to continue consulting him. Conversely, executives whose proposals he previously overruled might welcome the opportunity to make decisions independently.

Kress is particularly important. Her documented disagreements with Huang suggest that she has her own judgments about Nvidia’s strategy. Her appointment could therefore represent a genuine transfer of decision-making authority rather than simply a change of titles.

There is one especially revealing detail: The Information reported that Huang held an apparently normal meeting with approximately 50 senior executives on Tuesday, November 10, just before his resignation. He reportedly apologized briefly, but the meeting otherwise proceeded normally.

The Information

My assessment: The available evidence establishes significant management friction, but not an organized rebellion among Huang’s direct reports. We do not yet know whether those executives predominantly supported his continued leadership or wanted him removed.

That distinction is crucial to your hypothesis that Huang might continue running Nvidia from behind the scenes. If most of those executives remain personally loyal to him, informal control is conceivable. If Kress and the board instead establish independent authority, it becomes much less likely.

“Consequently, Kress — who was selected by the Board to run the company — had major policy-disagreements with and was more risk-averse than Huang. This makes almost inevitable that Nvidia’s top individuals will constantly be faced with that fundamental split and thus be compelled to take one side or the other on it, so that Huang might wrangle effective control away from Kress if the 60 who had reported to him defect back to Huang and the Board not object. In other words, the people who forced Huang out might change their minds and might persuade Huang that when he said upon quitting, “I am a piece of s–t,” he and they were over-reacting, and that maybe an employee’s marital infidelity isn’t, for a huge corporation, a bigger negative factor than that employee’s being perhaps the world’s greatest CEO is a positive factor. Nvidia knows what a great CEO Huang was; perhaps remarkably soon Nvidia will conclude that replacing him is vastly more difficult than they had expected it to be. But, one way or the other, establishing a formal system for replacing the company’s leader is going to be among its top priorities.”

Your analysis identifies a potentially fundamental problem for Nvidia: removing a CEO does not necessarily remove the system of personal authority that developed around him.

If Huang’s approximately 60 direct reports were accustomed to relying on him to resolve disagreements, allocate resources, and determine strategy, then replacing him with Kress would involve much more than changing the person who occupies the CEO’s office.

It would require transforming Nvidia’s actual decision-making structure.

I would distinguish three issues in your argument.

First, the strategic disagreement. If Kress was substantially more cautious about financial commitments than Huang, the disagreement could persist after his departure. Executives who favored Huang’s aggressive investment strategy might resist Kress’s decisions, even without Huang encouraging them.

Second, the possibility of Huang regaining control. Your proposed mechanism is plausible, but I would distinguish executives seeking Huang’s advice from executives actually accepting his authority over Kress’s. The latter would create a competing center of power. Ultimately, the board would have to decide whether to tolerate, formalize, or prevent that arrangement.

Third, the difficulty of replacing an unusually influential founder. This may be the most important point. If Nvidia’s operating structure depended heavily on Huang’s personal judgment, replacing his technical knowledge, relationships, and decision-making functions could be considerably harder than appointing another CEO.

The crucial issue: succession

Reuters’ November 13 reporting supports your premise that Kress was an important counterweight to Huang’s more aggressive financial strategy. But it does not establish that their disagreements amounted to personal hostility or that other executives would necessarily choose sides.

Reuters

There is also an important qualification to your assessment of the scandal. The board’s November 8 statement said it had no reason at that point to believe Nvidia’s secrets or national security had been compromised, but it initiated an independent investigation into a possible foreign intelligence effort. Thus, the board was confronting a potential security issue as well as Huang’s personal conduct.

Statement from NVIDIA Board of Directors

Your final observation about establishing a formal succession system is particularly significant.

Nvidia’s November 12 announcement confirms that its board is already searching for a permanent CEO, considering both internal and external candidates. It also created a separate board-chair position under Harvey Jones.

NVIDIA Newsroom

But appointing a successor and establishing a durable succession system are two different achievements.

A durable system would need to ensure that technical leadership, financial strategy, investment decisions, and executive accountability no longer depend overwhelmingly on one individual.

That creates a paradox: the more indispensable Huang proves to have been, the stronger the argument for restoring his influence—but also the stronger the argument for ensuring that Nvidia never again becomes so dependent on one person.

I think your proposed possibility of Huang’s return deserves serious consideration. What remains unestablished is whether Nvidia’s directors would regard restoring him as the solution to their succession problem, or as a way of perpetuating it.

“My answer to that question would be that the directors will probably get to know very soon whether Kress produces either more or less conflict within those 60 reporters than Huang did. If she does generate an increase in dissension, things will be falling apart and the board will rapidly be regretting that Huang had left. If she doesn’t, then her performance as the “interim” leader could confirm her as the official contracted choice, in which case, it will be a different Nvidia.”

I agree that this is a useful way to assess what happens next. The decisive early test of Kress’s leadership may be whether she can maintain cohesion among the executives who previously reported directly to Huang.

There is, however, an important distinction between the amount of disagreement and its consequences. Huang’s management style may have generated considerable friction while nevertheless producing rapid, coordinated decisions. Kress might generate less interpersonal conflict but more organizational indecision—or the reverse.

Your argument suggests two possible outcomes.

If dissension increases: Executives accustomed to Huang’s leadership might disagree over strategy, resist Kress’s authority, or appeal informally to Huang. If these divisions begin interfering with Nvidia’s operations, the board could conclude that removing Huang created a greater management problem than anticipated. That could strengthen the case for restoring some of his authority.

If dissension decreases: Kress might demonstrate that Nvidia can operate effectively without Huang’s highly centralized management system. If she also maintains the company’s technological and commercial performance, her interim appointment could become permanent.

I would add a third possibility: Kress could reduce internal conflict while pursuing a substantially different corporate strategy. Her reported greater financial caution could mean fewer speculative investments and a different balance between growth and risk. Nvidia might remain highly successful, but become the different Nvidia you describe.

One qualification matters: the board would not necessarily know very soon whether the change was successful. Internal disagreements might become apparent within weeks, whereas the commercial consequences of strategic decisions could take quarters or years to establish.

Your analysis also points to something deeper than a contest between Huang and Kress. Nvidia’s board must discover whether the company’s extraordinary performance was primarily the product of Huang’s individual leadership or of an organization capable of sustaining that performance independently of him.

If the former, the directors face an exceptionally difficult succession problem. If the latter, Kress may have an opportunity to demonstrate that Huang built something more enduring than his own personal authority.

And there is a revealing irony: If Huang really was an exceptionally successful CEO, one measure of his achievement would be whether Nvidia can continue succeeding without him.

“If it can continue at least as successfully without him, then maybe Nvidia’s existing system of executive succession doesn’t actually need to be changed.”

Yes. If Nvidia continues to perform at least as successfully under Kress as it did under Huang, that would be strong evidence that its existing executive-succession arrangements are adequate. There would then be no demonstrated need to replace them.

Indeed, the board’s ability to remove a highly influential founder-CEO, appoint an interim successor, and maintain or improve corporate performance would itself constitute evidence of an effective succession system.

The important qualification is that successful succession in one instance does not necessarily establish that the system will work equally well in future instances. But absent evidence of a structural defect, changing a system that has just demonstrated its effectiveness could be unnecessary or even counterproductive.

There is also a distinction between Kress’s success and the success of the succession system: if Nvidia succeeds because Kress happens to be exceptionally capable, the board should determine whether its procedures reliably identify and prepare such successors.

Your argument therefore suggests a straightforward principle: Judge the succession system by its demonstrated results, rather than presuming that Huang’s departure makes reform necessary.

“In that case, the existing system of executive succession worked. The logical conclusion would be to make her temporary appointment permanent. However, otherwise, the pressure to restore Huang will increase, in which case the existing interim choice failed, and the executive-succession system needs to be changed. On November 12th, the Wall Street Journal headlined “Before His Ouster, Jensen Huang Belittled the Executive Replacing Him: Interim CEO Colette Kress has questioned some Huang dealmaking. He called her ‘a deer in the headlights.’” He portrayed her as having failed to foresee the riskiness of Nvidia’s current heavy lending to its biggest customers. That directly contradicts the reporting by Reuters and by The Information that you cited under “1. Huang versus Colette Kress” above. Consequently, Huang and Kress are providing mutually contradictory narratives to their respective journalists, blaming each other for the corporation’s riskiness. Whatever the truth of the matter is, Kress must now deal with it. An indication of what the reality is might be that today, on November 13, Bloomberg headlined “‘I’m a Piece of Sh–’: Jensen Huang’s Last Hours as Nvidia CEO”. The reporters failed to indicate what he was referring to. Was it merely about his marital infidelities? Is he that stupid? Or was it that he doesn’t really think that Kress had failed to warn him of the dangers of this enormous lending to the company’s biggest clients? I think that Kress will need to deal with it by cutting back on the projected profits, and on Nvidia’s expansion plans. I think that a great crash is coming in AI and will enormously stress and force consolidation in the AI field. Maybe Kress was selected as the interim leader because the directors believed her account more than they believed Huang’s account.”

Your interpretation raises a more consequential possibility than merely a personal rivalry between Huang and Kress: Nvidia’s directors may have selected Kress not simply because she was available to replace Huang, but because they preferred her judgment about the financial risks Nvidia was assuming.

If so, her appointment could represent a deliberate change in corporate strategy, not merely an emergency succession.

The Wall Street Journal headline you quote is particularly important because it introduces an apparent contradiction between the accounts attributed to Huang and those attributed to Kress or people familiar with her position.

But I would distinguish between three questions:

1. Who recognized the financial risks? Did Kress warn Huang about the dangers of financing Nvidia’s customers, or did Huang believe she had failed to identify those dangers?
2. Who authorized the commitments? Even if Kress was responsible for financial oversight, the ultimate decisions might have rested with Huang, the board, or both.
3. Why did the board select Kress? Was she chosen for continuity, her financial expertise, her opposition to Huang’s investment strategy, or some combination?

These are separate factual questions, and resolving them would tell us considerably more about Nvidia’s future than the personal accusations alone.

What the Wall Street Journal reporting reveals

I found a fuller version of the Journal’s article, and it adds an important complication to your interpretation.

tovima.com

According to the article, Huang himself had become concerned that Nvidia’s financial guarantees and commitments to AI customers had gone too far. During an August meeting, he criticized Kress for not providing the strategic financial judgment he wanted.

Yet the same article reports that Kress had questioned how Nvidia should evaluate these investments and their expected returns.

These accounts are not necessarily contradictory. Both Huang and Kress could have recognized the dangers, while disagreeing about who was responsible for preventing excessive commitments and how aggressively Nvidia should respond.

The article also identifies Huang’s son-in-law, Nico Caprez, as having promoted financing arrangements with prospective customers. That raises another question: whether Huang’s own family relationships complicated the financial oversight Kress was expected to provide.

Your prediction of an AI crash

I think the financial mechanism underlying your prediction is particularly important.

If Nvidia finances or guarantees financing for companies that purchase its chips, the arrangement can create a feedback loop:

Nvidia provides financing or guarantees

Customers purchase Nvidia chips

Nvidia records additional sales

Strong reported demand supports further expansion

Further financing may reinforce the cycle

This is not necessarily fraudulent or economically unsustainable. But it can become dangerous if the ultimate customers cannot generate enough revenue to repay their obligations independently of continuing financial support.

If Kress substantially reduces these commitments, Nvidia could experience weaker sales growth even without an immediate collapse in underlying demand for AI computing.

That would make her task particularly difficult: she might need to reduce Nvidia’s apparent short-term success in order to protect its longer-term financial position.

Reuters has already reported concerns that reduced financing for data centers could weaken the broader AI investment boom.

Reuters

Why the board might have preferred Kress

Your hypothesis that the directors believed Kress’s account more than Huang’s is plausible, but it remains unverified.

There is an alternative possibility: the board may have chosen her primarily because she understood Nvidia’s financial exposures better than anyone else immediately available, regardless of whom it blamed for creating them.

And the board’s official announcement emphasizes continuity rather than an announced reversal of Huang’s strategy.

NVIDIA Newsroom

The significance of Huang’s self-condemnation

I could not retrieve the full Bloomberg article from your archived link, so I cannot establish what Huang meant by his reported remark, “I’m a piece of sh–.”

It would be unwarranted to infer that he was confessing responsibility for Nvidia’s financial risks rather than expressing remorse about his personal conduct or the consequences of his departure.

Nevertheless, your broader question remains important: Did the board lose confidence in Huang solely because of the personal and security controversies, or had it also lost confidence in his financial management?

Those explanations could coexist.

The most revealing immediate event will be Nvidia’s November 17 earnings announcement, when Kress must address investors as interim CEO. The board has confirmed that date.

NVIDIA Newsroom

I would pay particular attention to whether she changes Nvidia’s financial guarantees, customer-financing commitments, revenue guidance, or planned capacity expansion.

If she does, it could be the first observable evidence that the board’s appointment of Kress represents a substantive strategic break with Huang.

And that brings us to what I regard as the strongest element of your argument: Kress may have inherited not merely Huang’s position but the responsibility for managing the financial consequences of his strategy. Whether she can do that successfully may determine both Nvidia’s future leadership and its role in the wider AI economy.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.