Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s Ousted CEO, Was the Face of the A.I. Boom Powering the U.S. Economy

As investors have pumped trillions of dollars into artificial intelligence companies, chipmakers and data center developers, the economy has come to rely on the industry as its primary — some would argue only — reliable driver of growth.

No company has been more central to that growth than Nvidia, whose chips fill the data centers that power A.I. and whose money helps to finance them. And, at least until this week, it was impossible to imagine Nvidia without Jensen Huang, its high-flying, leather-clad co-founder and chief executive.

All of which means that Mr. Huang’s resignation on Thursday, following a made-for-Hollywood series of scandals, matters not just for the company and its investors, but for virtually every American.

Or, as Aaron Klein, an expert in financial regulation at the Brookings Institution, put it: “Can one C.E.O.’s sex life take down the economy?”

The answer, in a literal sense, is almost certainly no. No one believes that Mr. Huang’s resignation will, by itself, bring the A.I. boom to an end, let alone plunge the economy into a recession. Nvidia’s stock price tumbled on Thursday, but the broader market barely budged.

But Mr. Klein’s quip spoke to the unique role that Mr. Huang played at Nvidia, and that his company has played in the A.I. build out.

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