I interviewed Mr. Huang three weeks ago. Now NVIDIA faces a world without him.

I was the last person to interview Jensen Huang live on CNBC.

At that time, Huang still seemed untouchable. But weeks later, NVIDIA is facing questions investors haven’t had to face in more than 30 years. It’s about what the company would be like without him.

I spoke with the company’s founder on October 22nd. NvidiaHis remarks at a GTC event in Berlin, Germany, came weeks after he admitted to having an affair with a woman who U.S. intelligence agencies say may be a Chinese spy.

“Jensenmania,” as I like to call it, and what has come to define the CEO’s appearance, was in full force at the Berlin event. The Nvidia merchandise store displayed clothes with Huang’s face on them, and when he appeared on stage, there was a loud cheer, and attendees did their best to take photos with the Nvidia founder.

Fan was like a rock star with a fan base that rivaled his in every city he visited around the world. In 2025, I accompanied Mr. Hwang on his visit to Europe. Attendees eagerly waiting to catch a glimpse of Mr. Huang at the London event likened the Nvidia boss to “Iron Man,” a reference to the popular character of Tony Stark, the Marvel superhero and billionaire technology inventor.

These moments that I experienced truly exemplified the larger-than-life figure Juan has become at the center of the excitement around artificial intelligence. More people, not CEOs, will promote AI and become evangelicals about the technology and its transformative power.

He had the qualifications to back it up. Since co-founding Nvidia in the early ’90s, Huang helped grow the company from a startup taking over established companies to a powerhouse in AI chips. Over the past 30 years, he saw the change coming and invested in turning chips originally designed to render game graphics (GPUs) into general-purpose AI computing semiconductors, along with the software that gave Nvidia a powerful position.

Nvidia stock has risen nearly 500% over the past five years, driven not only by its incredible growth but also by the endorsement of Huang’s vision.

“NVIDIA without Jensen is something we never thought about,” said Storm Uhl, co-head of the global innovation team at Liontrust Asset Management, which has invested in NVIDIA since 2017.

Now it’s a reality. Huang has stepped down, leaving behind one of the greatest figures in technology history, with no clear succession plan in place.

But maybe now is the right time for someone new to that operator type of leadership. We’ve seen it before with tech giants like: apple or alphabetat least if you look at the stock price, a visionary leader steps down and a new CEO takes over and takes the business to new heights. Sure, they may not be flashy founders, but they’re innovating in other ways.

Nvidia’s new product roadmap is set for the next few years. The reality is that AI companies and hyperscalers are still in desperate need of scarce computing power. Nvidia also remains the gold standard for AI chips. Competition is certainly increasing, but the market dynamics that have supported Nvidia won’t disappear overnight. This gives a permanent successor some breathing room.

“He and the company will have to respond to his actions, but he has already left an indelible mark on Nvidia and will be successful for years to come as a result,” Ben Ballinger, director of technical research at Quilter Cheviot, told me.

This report is from this week’s The Tech Download newsletter. See what you see? You can subscribe here.

Jensen Huang’s departure from Nvidia is not only due to his status as a “singular figure,” but also raises serious questions about the future of the AI ​​industry.

Nvidia’s interconnected status as the “central bank of AI” raises the possibility that the semiconductor giant’s internal issues will have broader implications for the AI ​​boom, writes my colleague Matt Peterson. Nvidia supports OpenAI and intel.

If Nvidia can’t live up to its promises, this circular financing model could cause problems for the AI ​​companies it backs and the banks that loaned money to build the AI.

— Caleigh Keating, Digital Rotation Associate