Huang's Exit Puts Nvidia's $99 Billion Web of AI Investments in Question

Nebius dropped about 17% and CoreWeave about 12%, CNBC reported, and IREN fell 8%. Nebius also reported quarterly results on Thursday. CoreWeave's slide wiped out part of a 25% rally the day before, according to TechCrunch. AMD gained about 3% and is up nearly 17% since Monday, while Broadcom added more than 5%. Intel and Marvell each fell more than 4%. Daniel Newman, an analyst quoted by CNBC, called AMD "clearly the immediate beneficiary."

The reaction reflects how far Nvidia under Huang went beyond selling chips. The company has used its balance sheet to support the customers that buy its processors, in effect helping to finance demand for its own products. With no permanent chief executive and a board chair appointed only this week, investors cannot yet tell whether that approach will survive its architect.

Where the Money Went

At the end of its fiscal second quarter, Nvidia reported $99 billion of investments and another $25 billion of commitments, TechCrunch reported. It also had $36 billion in cloud service commitments, under which it agrees to buy computing capacity from AI cloud operators that are themselves buying Nvidia hardware, and can share in their revenue.

The largest positions are in the labs whose models run on its chips: $30 billion in OpenAI and $10 billion in Anthropic, which is preparing a Nasdaq listing targeted for November 19. Nvidia also backed Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab in a deal involving at least 1 gigawatt of its Vera Rubin systems, and put $3.5 billion into MediaTek to develop custom AI chips that work with Nvidia systems.

In infrastructure, it invested $2 billion in CoreWeave in January and $2 billion in Nebius in March. It has agreed to provide up to $105 billion of credit guarantees for an OpenAI data centre campus in Ohio, and was reported to be considering acting as guarantor for Nscale's planned West Virginia data centre. Investors were already uneasy about the debt being raised to pay for AI data centres, and those guarantees and compute contracts are a large part of what supports some of that borrowing.

Who Decides Now

Nvidia has said nothing about changing its investment programme. In her first statement as interim chief executive, Colette Kress said the company would "execute on the opportunities ahead" and stay focused on customers, partners, developers and shareholders. Kress keeps her job as chief financial officer, so the person who has managed the company's finances and its relationship with Wall Street since 2013 now also holds the top job.

That matters because of how Huang ran Nvidia. He had about 60 direct reports and no chief operating officer, and people familiar with the company told WIRED that even executive vice presidents do not necessarily control their own budgets. The result, according to that reporting, is that few people inside Nvidia understand its finances as well as Kress does. Harvey C. Jones, a director since 1993 and now the board's first chair, is expected to lead the search for a permanent chief executive. The board says it will consider internal and external candidates.

The chipmaker's market value has fallen by more than $2 trillion since early October, according to CNBC, and its shares are on course for a sixth straight weekly decline, the longest run since 2012. That leaves less room for the kind of balance-sheet support Huang used to keep customers buying.

Nvidia reports fiscal third-quarter results on Tuesday, November 17, two days before Anthropic's planned market debut. The earnings call will be the first chance for analysts to ask Kress directly whether the investment and guarantee commitments made under Huang still stand.