Key points
- Nvidia's independent directors hire Wachtell Lipton for Huang investigation
- Nvidia's two-day decline nears 10%
- Trump heard about Nvidia CEO's ties to suspected spy in May, NYT reports
Nvidia's (NVDA) independent directors have hired Joon H. Kim, a former acting US attorney for the Southern District of New York, and his law firm, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, to run their investigation of chief executive Jensen Huang. Nvidia posted the one-sentence statement on Tuesday, two days after the board announced the investigation into reporting that Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort.
Nvidia shares fell 6.6% to $166.91 as of 3:00 p.m. ET on Tuesday, after dropping 4.3% on Monday. The two-day decline of 10.6% from Friday's $186.64 close comes to about $476 billion in market value, based on the 24.1 billion shares Nvidia reported in its latest quarterly filing.
Update, Nov. 10, close: Nvidia ended the day at $168.89, down 5.5%, for a two-day decline of 9.5% from Friday's close. That comes to about $428 billion in market value. At the close, Nvidia was worth about $4.07 trillion, and Microsoft, which finished at $533.16, was worth about $3.96 trillion.
Nvidia's statement names the investigator but gives no timeline
The statement says Kim and Wachtell Lipton will conduct a "thorough and independent investigation as was announced on Sunday." It doesn't say when the investigation will finish or whether the findings will be made public.
On Sunday, the board said it had "no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised," and that it would provide updates "as appropriate." Huang acknowledged an affair in a separate message to the company the same day and said he would cooperate fully.
Trump was told about the intelligence on the way to China, the Times reports
Secretary of State and national security adviser Marco Rubio told President Donald Trump aboard Air Force One in May that US intelligence showed Huang was in a relationship with a woman whom US officials suspected of spying for China, The New York Times reported on Tuesday. Huang then joined the trip to Beijing at Trump's invitation. The Times said it was at least the second time in seven months that Trump had been told about the intelligence.
That account conflicts with what Trump said at a news conference on Monday. Asked whether he knew about the relationship when he went to his summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Trump said, "No, I didn't hear about it then." Later on Monday, Trump said he had asked Huang whether he knew the woman was a spy, and that Huang told him he had no idea.
Microsoft briefly passes Nvidia in market value
Microsoft (MSFT) overtook Nvidia on Tuesday as the world's second-most valuable company, Reuters reported, for the first time since June 2025. Reuters had Microsoft at $543.25 and Nvidia at about $167.11 at the time. At those prices, Microsoft's 7.43 billion shares were worth about $4.034 trillion, just ahead of Nvidia's $4.027 trillion.
The lead didn't hold through the afternoon. By 3:00 p.m. ET, Microsoft had slipped to $534.06, about $3.97 trillion, while Nvidia's value was about $4.02 trillion. Apple (AAPL) stayed first, at more than $5 trillion.
Nvidia's next dates are Nov. 11, 17, and 18
Three House Republican committee chairmen asked Huang to give them a closed-door briefing on Nov. 18, or to propose another date by Nov. 11. Nvidia reports fiscal third-quarter results on Nov. 17.
Update, Nov. 11: Nvidia was up 4.0% in premarket trading as of 7:36 a.m. ET on Wednesday as CoreWeave's results lifted AI cloud stocks.
Update, Nov. 11, evening: Nvidia closed at $173.73, up 2.9%, then fell 8.6% in after-hours trading on reports that the board is preparing to oust Huang.
Market values multiply each company's share price by the shares outstanding on the cover of its latest quarterly filing with the SEC: 24.1 billion for Nvidia and 7.43 billion for Microsoft.
In Korea, the government expects contracted Nvidia GPUs to arrive on schedule despite the investigation.
We're tracking key developments in our Jensen Huang scandal timeline.
Cover photo: Peter Dasilva / European Union, 2024, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0, cropped.
