Nvidia’s stock seemed headed for a historic freefall after CEO and co-founder Jensen Huang resigned Thursday in the wake of his confession about an extramarital affair with an alleged Chinese spy.
However, after dropping 13 percent from the stock market’s closing bell Wednesday to opening bell Thursday, the tech company, which supplies critical microchips to the AI industry, topped its slide. By noon, Nvidia’s stock price was approaching $167.
The stock’s rebound appeared driven by optimism about Nvidia’s ability to pull through the scandal and investors buying shares, ABC News reported.
But Nvidia’s scare punctuates a tough month for the tech industry. AI stocks tumbled last week after Republicans - seen as having a largely positive relationship with the industry - suffered heavy midterm losses. On October 29, Google’s stock fell 12.6 percent, its worst day since it began trading more than 20 years ago, after the company missed earnings expectations.
While Nvidia escaped a historic stock tumble Thursday, other companies - including Nvidia - haven’t been so lucky in the past.
Nvidia holds the record for the biggest one-day loss in U.S. trading history, shedding $593 billion in value on January 27, 2025, as investors worried about competition from China-based AI chipmaker DeepSeek, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Google’s late October slide was the second-largest one-day loss in the record books, when the company saw $475 billion in value evaporate. Coincidentally, October 29 is known as “Black Tuesday” after the historic day in 1929 when the U.S. stock market crash was so devastating it sparked the Great Depression.
The third biggest loss was on January 29, 2026, when Microsoft’s disappointing earnings report tanked the company’s valuation by $357 billion, CNBC reported.
Apple’s $311 billion loss at market close on April 3, 2025, marked the fourth-largest, one-day loss ever. Investors dumped the stock over fears of the impacts from President Donald Trump’s tariffs announced earlier that day, The New York Times reported.
Nvidia’s losses may linger until the company finds a permanent replacement for Huang, Stacy Rasgon, a senior analyst at asset management firm Bernstein, told CNBC’s Squawk Box Asia Thursday.
“Jensen is Nvidia, right?” Rasgon noted. “He is the visionary. The reason they’re in the position that they’re in today is because he made decisions 10 years ago. Who is the right person now to make the decisions for the next 10 years? I don’t intuitively know who that person would be.”
With reporting from The Associated Press
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