Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is no longer one of the world’s 10 richest people.
Huang’s net worth has been sliding in lockstep with Nvidia’s share price in recent weeks, but revelations that he may have been targeted by a “foreign intelligence effort” in recent days pushed the stock even lower.
Nvidia stock fell as much as 9% on Monday, before paring the loss to end 4.3% lower at $178.67 per share. At the same time, Huang’s net worth dropped $6.5 billion to $148 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The index ranked Huang as the world’s 12th wealthiest person after markets closed on Monday — one spot below Rob Walton, the former Walmart chair.
Huang was 10th when markets closed on Friday, and as recently as October, he was ranked 7th, with a net worth roughly $60 billion higher.
Huang’s net worth is tied to Nvidia’s stock, as he owns over 870 million shares, according to the company’s latest annual report. The company’s stock has been hit hard by the recent tech sell-off, dropping 21% over the past month and nearly 27% from its October 6 peak of $243.37.
Tech’s sell-off has been driven by investor worries that AI infrastructure won’t be developed as quickly as hoped. This was first sparked by neocloud companies’ high debt levels, and then by last week’s election of several Democrats at the state and federal levels who have spoken out against data center construction.
Last week, Huang briefly dropped out of the top 10 during the worst of the sell-off before returning by the end of the week.
Huang scandal compounds Nvidia’s stock fall
Monday’s Nvidia slide was triggered after Nvidia’s board of directors said on Sunday that it had opened an investigation into whether Huang was the target of a “foreign intelligence effort.”
The CEO also sent a note to staff apologizing for being “unfaithful” to his wife of over 40 years, Lori Huang.
It followed a New York Times report in late October that said American intelligence agencies found that the Nvidia CEO had a close relationship with Alice Huang, a Chinese citizen and one-time executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based data center company.
US officials suspected her company was steering Nvidia’s advanced AI chips to China, and concluded that she was a Chinese intelligence asset, the report said.
As its longtime CEO, Huang is seen as instrumental to the firm’s success, so investors are likely pricing in the risk that the board’s investigation could trigger his departure from Nvidia.
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