Nvidia collapses on the stock market due to the espionage scandal involving the CEO

BarcelonaThe scandal over the possible espionage of Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang, by a Chinese agent is already having repercussions on the market. Shares of the microchip giant recorded a decline of nearly 4.7% in after-hours trading around 8:45 a.m., local time, after the board of directors announced an investigation into Huang. The shares of the world's second most valuable company fell to $177 during the early hours of Monday, far from the more than $186 they marked at last Friday's close.

In a statement, the board assures that it "prioritizes the national and economic security of the United States". According to the independent directors, "there is no reason to think that national security or Nvidia's secrets have been compromised". Nevertheless, the market has punished the company, which had already wavered on New York stock indices amid a wave of investor criticism of companies most focused on artificial intelligence. According to the same statement, Huang "gives his full support to the investigation".

The initiative of the board of directors comes, it is worth remembering, from an investigation by The New York Times that pointed out that Huang had allegedly maintained a relationship with a Chinese intelligence agent, thinking she was a senior executive at a data center company based in Singapore. As reported by the portal Axios on Sunday, Huang himself allegedly admitted to the affair in an internal company message.

The second most valuable company

Nvidia had held the crown as the most valuable company on the planet for a good part of the artificial intelligence boom. Since mid-October, however, the company has recorded a substantial setback, and according to the portal Companies Market Cap, which analyzes the evolution of the stock market capitalization of the world's leading companies, it stood at the close of the last session at around 4.5 trillion dollars in valuation, far from the highs of over 5.5 trillion it had reached just a few weeks earlier.

The devaluation, linked to the negative investor sentiment regarding massive capital expenditures in infrastructure for artificial intelligence, has served to crown a new leader: Apple has regained the leadership of the large technology corporations, with a total capitalization close to 5 trillion dollars. The apple company is less tied to the AI segment than other tech firms, such as Nvidia itself, Alphabet, or Amazon.