Jensen Huang’s Nvidia Resignation Leaves An Opening For Hungry Rivals

In March 2025, then-privately held chip company Cerebras held a swank party at a small event space in downtown San Jose hoping to lure in customers in town for Nvidia’s massive annual four-day developer conference GTC. “They’re the big dog,” Cerebras’ CEO Andrew Feldman told Forbes an hour before the party started. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t be smart as the David to their Goliath.”

Nineteen months later, Goliath’s leader is anything but invincible. On Thursday, Nvidia CEO and founder Jensen Huang resigned following several days of crisis. On Sunday, he admitted to an extramarital affair with a woman that US intelligence officials allege is a Chinese spy. Then on Wednesday night, it was revealed that he reportedly had a second affair with an Nvidia executive that reports to him. (After the ouster, a third affair was reported.) CFO Colette Kress will take over as interim chief while the board searches for a permanent successor.

Nvidia is still the undisputed giant in the chip space, but the departure of Huang, one of the most powerful and influential people in the tech industry, leaves a massive void at the company he cofounded 33 years ago. Now, the once-impenetrable fortress that has long been Nvidia has a crack in its armor; its stock plummeted more than 10% after Huang’s resignation, pushing it to the second most valuable company in the world behind Apple. Huang had earlier dropped out of the world’s top 10 richest people as the scandal began to unfold.

With a $23 billion market cap, Cerebras, which went public last year, is part of a spate of companies that could benefit from Huang’s failings (its stock price up almost 13% since Monday, the day after Huang admitted to his affair with the alleged spy). The company declined to comment.

AMD, Google, Amazon and OpenAI didn’t respond to requests for comment.

“The bigger question is what happens two or three years from now,” he says.

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