Nvidia Board Weighs Replacing Jensen Huang as Stock Slides
Nvidia's board meets on whether to replace CEO Jensen Huang, oil jumps after Trump says the US doesn't need an Iran deal, the UK economy grows 0.7% with a lift from AI, and Ukraine says Starshield speed limits are hurting its drone defenses.
Transcript
Alex: Welcome to Finance TL;DR Daily, the podcast where we break down the biggest stories in finance. It's Thursday, November twelfth. Nvidia's board is weighing whether to replace CEO Jensen Huang, and the stock is sliding on it.
Riley: Here's what's moving today: the Nvidia leadership question, oil jumping on Trump's Iran remarks, a UK growth print that beat last quarter's pace, and Ukraine's complaint about SpaceX's Starshield limits.
Alex: Stocks rallied at Wednesday's close, the S&P 500 up more than one percent, but futures are sliding this morning, the Nasdaq 100 down more than one percent.
Riley: And that slide is mostly one company. Who's in the frame to replace him?
Alex: First, why you care: if you own an index fund, you own a big slice of Nvidia, so a leadership question at the market's biggest AI bellwether reaches your portfolio. The board met Wednesday to weigh removing Huang, after reports tied to his admitted affair with a woman US officials believe is a Chinese asset.
Riley: Bloomberg says the board has been working with an outside firm on successors. One report has the CFO, Colette Kress, favored as interim chief.
Alex: Interim being the key word. Analysts say there's no ready replacement for a leader who has driven the AI business for decades.
Riley: Then I'd say the missing succession plan is the real story, more than the scandal. A board can survive a headline. It's harder to survive having no obvious successor.
Alex: Shares fell after hours, close to eight percent in one report, and Bernstein cut its price target in half, from four hundred dollars to two hundred.
Riley: Halving a target is a statement, not a nudge. Commentators are asking how much of the AI trade rests on this one company and this one man.
Alex: Answering a ZeroHedge post urging him to hire Jensen, Elon Musk wrote, "That would be an honor."
Riley: With no details of any job offer. That's a pleasantry, not a position. I'd watch the boardroom, not the replies.
Alex: Fair. The thing to hold on to: the risk isn't the scandal itself, it's an AI giant that may have no ready successor.
Riley: Staying with Musk-adjacent volatility for a moment, oil. If you drive, heat a home, or hold a bond fund, energy prices feed straight into inflation and into what central banks do next. Brent crude reversed an early decline Thursday and rose 1.4 percent to above ninety-four dollars a barrel.
Alex: What turned it?
Riley: A Truth Social post from Trump: "We don't need a deal with Iran. Those days have long since passed." He added that the US has their money and, in his words, their Strait. Both Brent and US crude briefly gained nearly two dollars at the peak.
Alex: Which came right after a sharp selloff.
Riley: Brent had fallen 3.6 percent to around ninety-four as Qatar's prime minister took an Iranian proposal on the Strait of Hormuz to the White House. That extended last week's sixteen percent slide.
Alex: So oil went from pricing a deal to pricing no deal in about a day.
Riley: Iran's foreign minister says the offer to reopen Hormuz within two days stands, if the war ends on all fronts. Marco Rubio called Iran's demands "outrageous and ridiculous" and said the sides aren't close.
Alex: Hormuz flows are the swing factor.
Riley: And the 10-year Treasury yield is up to about five point oh five percent this morning. A sustained oil climb would complicate rate expectations further.
Alex: So the lesson: crude now trades on headlines about Hormuz, not on barrels alone.
Riley: Agreed, though barrels do get a vote.
Alex: Across the Atlantic, the UK economy grew faster than last quarter, which matters if you hold sterling assets or a UK mortgage, because it bears on interest rates. The Office for National Statistics says GDP rose 0.7 percent in the July to September quarter, up from a revised 0.5 percent in the second.
Riley: That matched the Reuters poll of economists, so not a shock. But output is 1.9 percent higher than a year earlier, the strongest reading since the fourth quarter of 2024.
Alex: Where did it come from?
Riley: Services rose 0.9 percent, production edged up 0.1, and construction fell 0.7. Inside services, computer programming and consultancy jumped 4.4 percent, which the ONS links to AI and cloud computing.
Alex: So AI is lifting GDP.
Riley: Some of it. Investec's Sandra Horsfield estimates 0.2 percentage points of the 0.7 is down to AI. But the ONS itself says its data can't quantify how much of that turnover is AI-related.
Alex: So close to a third of the growth is a contested estimate.
Riley: The rates angle is firmer. The Bank of England raised its benchmark to four percent on November fifth, and LSEG data put a 73 percent probability on another hike in December.
Alex: So the takeaway: a solid quarter keeps another Bank of England hike on the table, and AI may be part of why.
Riley: Last story, and it's where tech and geopolitics meet.
Alex: Last one, and it connects to SpaceX, so investors are watching its defense business. Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, says speed restrictions on Starshield, the military version of Starlink, are back and disrupting drone interceptions.
Riley: He wrote on X: "Systematic speed restrictions are being imposed on Starshield, limiting it to 161 kilometers per hour (100 miles per hour)."
Alex: Why does speed matter?
Riley: Ukraine says its interception systems can't reach sufficient speeds to intercept in time, so some strikes have gotten through. The restrictions were first recorded overnight on October thirteenth to fourteenth.
Alex: Who's responsible?
Riley: That's still open. Musk says decisions on speed limits were made by the US military and ultimately the president. Trump denies ordering a slowdown, and SpaceX hasn't commented on the renewed disruptions.
Alex: Meanwhile, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff reached Moscow Thursday to meet Putin, after two days of trilateral talks in the UAE with no breakthrough, though a prisoner exchange was agreed.
Riley: For markets, there's no price or revenue data tied to the restrictions yet, so the link is attention to SpaceX's defense exposure, not earnings.
Alex: Fair. The one thing to remember: Ukraine's air defense leans on a network it doesn't control.
Riley: A leadership gap at Nvidia and a supply question in the Gulf. Both come down to who's in charge.
Alex: This has been Finance TL;DR Daily. If it was useful, follow the show wherever you're listening. We'll see you tomorrow.
In this episode
- Nvidia's board meets to consider replacing CEO Jensen Huang, and the stock slides. Elon Musk says hiring Huang would be 'an honor'. — source
- Oil jumps after Trump says the US doesn't need a deal with Iran — source
- UK economy grows 0.7% in the third quarter, with AI described as an 'extra engine of growth' — source
- Ukraine says new speed restrictions on SpaceX's Starshield network are hampering its drone defenses, as US envoys meet Putin in Moscow — source
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