NEW YORK: Nvidia shares plunge 13% at open after CEO Jensen Huang resigned on Thursday.
The company's board in a statement said Huang had stepped down as president, chief executive, with immediate effect.
Huang, 63, also gave up his seat on the board. The company did not give a reason for his departure.
Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress will serve as interim CEO while retaining her finance role. The board will consider both internal and external candidates for a permanent successor.
The board said it had appointed Harvey Jones, a former chief executive of chip design software firm Synopsys, as its first-ever chair.
World shares were mixed on Thursday as concerns over leadership at chipmaker Nvidia weighed on artificial intelligence -related stocks.
In after-hours trading, Nvidia's shares fell 8.6% after reports said Nvidia's board was meeting late Wednesday to discuss the situation surrounding its CEO, Jensen Huang, whose affair with a Chinese woman has raised national security concerns in the U.S.
Nvidia 's shares climbed 2.9% on Wednesday. Its shares have fallen after the company said it was investigating Huang, who has admitted to a relationship with a businesswoman who reportedly fed intelligence and advanced chips to China.
The future for the S&P 500 slipped 0.4%, while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average was nearly unchanged.
In early European trading, France's CAC 40 added 0.7% and the German DAX rose 1.0% to 26,939.92. Britain's FTSE 100 jumped 0.3% to 10,868.98.
In Asian trading, Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 shed 0.7% to 60,819.36.
In South Korea, the Kospi gave up early gains to slip 0.6% to 5,342.73. Taiwan's Taiex lost 2.6%. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 declined nearly 0.1% to 9,146.80.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng lost 1.3% to 24,008.55, while the Shanghai Composite fell 0.7% to 3,655.83.
Apart from Nvidia's situation, investors are worried about a potential slowdown in the overall AI industry given longstanding questions about whether it will prove profitable enough to make massive investments in the technology worthwhile.
Analysts also said people might still be taking a risk, snatching up Nvidia shares at what appears to be a discount because of uncertainty over what Huang's woes might mean for the company.
"There is no credible way to put a precise revenue loss on his departure," said Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote.
"Customers buy Nvidia's computing power, software and networking ecosystem, and those advantages wouldn't disappear with its CEO," she said.
Benchmark U.S. crude rose 0.8% to $87.26 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, added 0.8% to $93.53 a barrel. Brent has vacillated within a range of $72 to $120 since the war with Iran pushed prices much higher.
In currency trading, the U.S. dollar fell to 159.64 Japanese yen from 159.79 yen. The euro cost $1.1095, up from $1.1091.
