Nvidia's out-of-hour shares fall as firm probes CEO Jensen Huang

Nvidia shares fell in out-of-hours trading on Monday (Nov 9) after an internal investigation into whether CEO Jensen Huang had been targeted by a foreign intelligence effort put his future at the AI chipmaker under scrutiny.

The internal probe followed a media report that Huang had a close relationship with a Chinese businesswoman who allegedly passed information to Beijing. Huang told Nvidia's employees that he had been unfaithful to his wife, without disclosing details of the relationship.

The investigation, announced on Sunday, has put a spotlight on Huang's future given Nvidia's status as the world's most valuable chipmaker and the CEO's role as the most prolific salesman of the AI boom.

The fallout extended to South Korea, where Madison Huang, Huang's daughter and an Nvidia executive, cancelled a planned visit to Seoul for an Nvidia conference that was set to begin on Monday, according to companies she had been scheduled to meet.

Perpetual futures trading on the Hyperliquid exchange and after-hours shares trading on the Blue Ocean system showed Nvidia prices around US$180.30 a share, down about 3.4 per cent from Friday's Nasdaq closing price of US$186.64.

"The market's probably telling you now this does no favours to the stock whatsoever in a time when there's a lot of conjecture as to the build out of data centres," said Chris Weston, head of research at brokerage Pepperstone in Melbourne.

But Weston said he did not think Huang, whom he described as the "godfather of AI", would be replaced.

"If we genuinely thought he was going to step down ... the stock would be down — it would be an absolute bloodbath, to be honest,” he said.