Micron stock drops 5% amid Nvidia CEO resignation fallout

Nvidia lost its founding CEO this week, and the semiconductor sector felt the shockwave almost immediately. Micron Technology shares fell between 5% and 5.8% as investors reacted to Jensen Huang’s sudden resignation.

Huang stepped down on November 12, 2026. He had run Nvidia for 33 years. His exit took four days from the start of a board investigation to the door.

How four days unraveled 33 years

The sequence moved quickly. Nvidia’s board opened an internal investigation into Huang on November 8, 2026, after allegations of an extramarital affair surfaced.

That same day, Huang acknowledged his infidelity in a memo to staff. The investigation reportedly involved two affairs.

One allegedly involved a businesswoman who reportedly had ties to China’s Ministry of State Security, the country’s intelligence agency. The Motley Fool described the matter as an investigation into an alleged affair with a Chinese spy.

The second allegedly involved an Nvidia executive. According to The Motley Fool, reports of that second relationship leaked, and Huang resigned within hours.

The market’s verdict

Nvidia shares fell between 10% and 13% in early trading after the resignation, and session losses exceeded 12%.

The damage spread beyond Nvidia. Micron, which makes memory chips rather than the graphics processors Nvidia is known for, slid approximately 5% to 5.8% in the same reaction.

Who is running Nvidia now

Nvidia moved to fill the gap quickly. Chief financial officer Colette Kress was named interim CEO, and she will keep her finance responsibilities while doing so.

The board also named Harvey C. Jones as chair. He is the first person to hold that title at Nvidia. A search for a permanent successor is underway. No timeline has been given.

Background: a founder-led giant

Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and led it for its entire existence. Over that stretch, the company went from a graphics card maker for gamers to the dominant supplier of AI hardware.

What this means for investors

The China dimension deserves attention on its own. Nvidia operates in one of the most geopolitically sensitive corners of the tech industry. Reported ties between a former CEO’s partner and a foreign intelligence service could draw scrutiny from regulators or lawmakers, even if no wrongdoing involving company secrets is ever shown.

For Micron and other chip names, the selloff looks like contagion rather than company-specific bad news. Key signals to track include who Nvidia picks as its permanent CEO, whether Kress signals any shift in strategy during her interim stint, and how Harvey C. Jones shapes the new board structure.