Now that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, the man whose chips powered the AI boom, has resigned, investors are left asking whether the boom can survive without him. Nvidia shares sank more than 10% on Thursday.
Nvidia reports earnings in five days without him. The 10 biggest US companies make up 36% to 40% of the S&P 500, so an AI selloff reaches millions of American retirement funds.
The cracks started before he quit. Nvidia entered a bear market, down 20% from its peak, on November 9.
How Far Have the AI Boom’s Biggest Winners Fallen?
Huang resigned from Nvidia Thursday after admitting an affair with a woman US officials suspect is a Chinese spy.
His exit adds a risk of its own. Like Intel in 2018, Nvidia has handed the top job to its finance chief as interim CEO.
Intel stock then lost 11.7% that year, while the S&P 500 gained 6.8%.
On November 5, after Democrats swept the midterms, the S&P 500 lost about $3 trillion in a day. The Nasdaq 100 fell 6.36% in that day’s crash.
CoreWeave now sits 55.96% below its 2026 high, and Oracle is down 47.89%.
Who Is Paying for the AI Boom?
Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta and Oracle are expected to spend $660 billion on AI infrastructure this year. That is 60% more than in 2025, FactSet and Goldman Sachs estimates show.
Anthropic’s IPO filing shows about $895.4 billion in data-center commitments through 2045, Fortune reported.
Some of that money moves in a circle. Broadcom can lend Anthropic up to $42 billion to pay rent on computing power, much of it Broadcom hardware. Broadcom is the supplier, the lender and a possible future shareholder.
Nvidia sits at the center of that circle, a Bloomberg map of AI deals shows. It invests in, sells to or buys from OpenAI, Anthropic, CoreWeave and others.
That is why Huang’s exit could matter beyond Nvidia. Investor and analyst Nic Puckrin says Huang negotiated nearly all of those deals. He asks whether a successor could build similar ones.
“Replacing Jensen as CEO of Nvidia could backfire on the ENTIRE AI boom. Why? Because of this chart. Jensen has been one of the biggest architects of circular financing. This has been propping up those valuations and nearly all of these deals were negotiated by him. Would a successor be able to engineer similar structures? And does uncertainty with Nvidia’s direction call into question this broader gambit?”
Columbia professor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh named the catch.
“Supplier financing supports construction; ultimately, paying for it requires revenue from end customers.”
CoreWeave’s bonds due 2032 yield above 16%, Bull Theory says.
Is the AI Boom a Bubble or a Buying Chance?
Market research account Bull Theory called the bubble early in February. Its new scorecard rates six of eight warning signs “late,” though it still sees the peak in 2027 or 2028.
The S&P 500’s cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings (CAPE) ratio, which compares prices with 10 years of profits, is near 40. The 2000 record was 44.2.
Borrowing to buy stocks has stalled. Margin debt, the money investors borrow from brokers, was $1.48 trillion in September, FINRA data shows. That is below June’s record of $1.502 trillion.
Cheap money has gone, too. Hotter-than-expected October inflation pushed the 10-year Treasury yield back to about 5%. Now, CME FedWatch odds stand over 90% for a December Fed hike.
Buyers have not walked away. Anthropic aims to raise up to $64.4 billion next week at a valuation of up to $1.4 trillion.
AMD stock climbed 40% from its November 5 low.
The S&P 500 still sits 2.5% from a record high.
Where Would the Money Go if AI Stocks Crack?
When the dot-com bubble burst, the Nasdaq fell about 78% from March 2000 to October 2002. Bonds rallied as the Fed cut rates, and gold began a decade-long climb.
Bull Theory argues gold, bonds and Bitcoin (BTC) could catch the money. Gold sits 25.67% below its January record, and BTC is down 16.76% this year.
“…crypto doesn’t carry the bubble risk tech carries now…If AI stocks crack and the Fed is forced to cut rates, money will look for assets that have already corrected and still have a growth story. Crypto fits both.”
Gold advocate Peter Schiff argued last week that Bitcoin, not AI, is the real bubble risk.
What happens to the AI boom without Huang? On the evidence, it does not end with him. However, his exit raises the stakes for three dates:
- Nvidia reports on November 17
- Anthropic is expected to list on November 19 and
- The Fed decides on December 9.
