Nvidia closed below $4 trillion in market capitalisation on Friday for the first time since July 2025.
The shares finished at $162.85, down 2.01% on the day, valuing the company at about $3.93 trillion. Roughly $573bn of market value was erased in the week to 13 November.
The number that complicates the story
Over the trading week the stock fell 12.75%. That was its sixth straight weekly decline — the longest such run since 2012. It had already fallen more than 20% over the previous month.
Read those two sentences together and the obvious narrative weakens. Jensen Huang resigned on Thursday 12 November. The losing streak began five weeks before that.
So the scandal did not start this decline. It arrived in the middle of one, and accelerated it. The sell-off that began in October was about AI spending, the Nasdaq's wobble after the midterms, and the question of whether the buildout pays off — all of which we have covered, and none of which has gone away.
What the scandal itself cost
Thursday, the day of the resignation, closed about 4% lower — having recovered from much steeper losses earlier in the session. Friday took another 2.01%.
Before Huang resigned, several Wall Street analysts told CNBC his departure could cost Nvidia as much as 20% of its market value. On the week's evidence that was too pessimistic, at least so far.
Stephane Houri, head of equity research at ODDO BHF, told CNBC's Squawk Box Europe that the AI industry's architecture had depended heavily on Huang's vision and expertise.
A campaign to bring him back
A petition called "Stand with Jensen" asks the board to reinstate Huang while an independent investigation runs, or to explain with evidence why not. By early Saturday it had 55,078 names, up from about 36,000 late on Friday — including 3,574 self-described current Nvidia employees, 30,524 shareholders and 566 former employees.
Named signers include Elon Musk, Epic Games chief executive Tim Sweeney, Y Combinator's Garry Tan and Replit's Amjad Masad.
Two cautions belong with that. Affiliations on the petition are self-reported, and neither Nvidia nor Huang has endorsed it. And a separate letter circulating on X that threatened mass resignations was reported to be fake.
The investor letter, and what it is worth
Brad Gerstner of Altimeter Capital and Gavin Baker of Atreides Management wrote to the board on Friday asking it to slow the search for a new chief executive. Gerstner described the letter as setting out "minimum standards it owes shareholders".
Here the arithmetic is worth doing. Altimeter's holding was worth about $1.53bn at Friday's close and Atreides' about $203m — together roughly 0.04% of Nvidia's shares. Two well-known investors are making a great deal of noise with a very small stake.
The board says it is still selecting a search firm, has not formally approached candidates, and considers speculation "premature".
What actually settles this
Nvidia's quarterly results are expected after the close on 17 November. That is the first report with Colette Kress as interim chief executive — and the first hard number on whether the order book held through the week its founder walked out.
Everything before Tuesday is sentiment. The orders are the fact.
