Business Brief: (Almost) everything you need to know about Nvidia

Detailed summary

How one man’s downfall is weighing on the world

Good morning. Today, we’re on AI bubble watch after the shock resignation of Nvidia Corp.’s founder deepened fears of stress across the sector.

Also on our watch: If you use Microsoft apps like Outlook or Copilot, you might know the company isn’t doing the tech world any favours.

The news: Nvidia will begin its first search for a chief executive in its 33-year history.

Founder and chief executive Jensen Huang resigned following revelations of extramarital affairs – two involving his employees and one involving an alleged Chinese spy.

The scandal has thrown the US$4-trillion chipmaker into a deep crisis, rattled the artificial intelligence industry and prompted congressional inquiries into how senior Trump administration officials – including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick – handled the American company’s chip sales to China.

The market fallout: Since Nvidia’s board announced on Sunday that it was launching an investigation into the reported affair with the alleged spy, the company has lost as much as $600-billion in stock market value.

It’s possible Huang’s departure couldn’t have come at a worse time, Joe Castaldo and Murad Hemmadi write. Stocks tied to AI development had been sliding even before the Nvidia scandal, reflecting some investors’ and analysts’ concerns about the massive spending on data centres to fuel AI development and the financial returns needed to justify it.

And John Rapley wonders whether Nvidia’s tangled political and corporate webs could bring the whole market down with it. “It’s hard to overstate just how central to the AI boom Huang was,” he says.

Nvidia shares continued their run of daily losses yesterday, but retail investors seeing an opportunity to “buy the dip” helped prop up the stock.

Opening of the article, excerpted from The Globe and Mail (Report on Business). To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.