The Wall Street Journal reported on 14 November that Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, Travis Kalanick and Joe Gebbia are among the Silicon Valley billionaires who “have taken issue with Huang’s ouster” from Nvidia. Two trading days after the 8-K, the market had marked Nvidia down by $262 billion: Friday’s official close of $162.85 was $10.88 below the 11 November close of $173.73, on the 24.1 billion shares on its latest 10-Q, by our arithmetic.
One analyst had put a far larger figure on the founder. Dan Ives posted on X on 12 November: “We see the stock valuation at $225 without Jensen ($300 with Jensen as CEO)”. That $75-a-share gap comes to about $1.81 trillion on the same share count, so Friday’s markdown is 14.5% of it, about a seventh, by our arithmetic.
Business Pill · Concentration Explained
An evergreen Business Engineer explainer on concentration, the general idea behind relying heavily on a single position. It teaches the concept only and does not discuss Nvidia, its board or the founders quoted here.
The key insight: As we read it, the debate puts two numbers on the same founder: Dan Ives’s $75-a-share gap, about $1.81 trillion, and the market’s $262 billion markdown at Friday’s close, by our arithmetic. The billionaires quoted by the Journal argue about the board’s decision; the share price measures something narrower.
The Journal quotes Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao, who called it a “mistake for Nvidia to let Jensen resign”. Epic Games founder and chief executive Tim Sweeney said the exit at the hands of the board evidenced “serious corporate governance issues” and showed an “Apple firing Steve Jobs level of idiocy”, the Journal reports. On X, the Journal says, Musk “posted that he would sign a petition reinstating Huang”; our piece on the petition sets that post against Nvidia’s bylaws.
Telegram founder Pavel Durov wrote on X, as the Journal quotes: “Jensen made a rookie mistake” and “Founders: Don’t have a board”. The article lists the board removals that Huang’s peers cited: Sam Altman from OpenAI, Travis Kalanick from Uber and Steve Jobs from Apple. It notes that Jobs returned to Apple 12 years after being fired, Altman was back in five days, and Kalanick never returned.
Nvidia’s market value below its 11 November close of $173.73 at the 12 November open, the 12 November low and the 13 November close, from Nasdaq’s official prices, against the gap between Dan Ives’s $300 and $225 per-share valuations (Ives’s X post of 12 November). Each figure is the price difference times the 24.1 billion shares on Nvidia’s latest 10-Q, our arithmetic; Ives’s figures are an analyst’s view, not a market price.
What Was Posted on X
We expect Jensen to be removed as CEO of Nvidia at this point and it’s in the Board’s hands. We see the stock valuation at $225 without Jensen ($300 with Jensen as CEO). At this point, writing on the wall for Street as stock will now bake in Nvidia without Jensen going forward 👇
Technology analyst Dan Ives posted this at 09:47 UTC on 12 November. It says Ives sees Nvidia’s stock valuation at $225 without Jensen and $300 with Jensen as CEO, and that the stock will now bake in Nvidia without Jensen. The piece quotes it verbatim and turns the $75 gap into about $1.81 trillion on Nvidia’s 24.1 billion shares, our arithmetic.
A sad day for NVIDIA, developers, America, and all humanity. Jensen founded and ran one of the few companies to reach a massive scale while driving massive continued innovation and ubiquity, while others fell into the trap of ever-increasing extraction.
Epic Games founder and chief executive Tim Sweeney posted this at 14:31 UTC on 12 November, calling it a sad day for NVIDIA, developers, America and all humanity, and saying Jensen founded and ran one of the few companies to reach a massive scale while driving massive continued innovation. The piece quotes Sweeney’s other remarks as the Wall Street Journal reports them.
The Lesson: Value Without Control
The Journal says Huang’s stake in Nvidia is estimated to be worth about $140 billion, “but it only represents 3.6% ownership of the company”, which the article says leaves the founder exposed to shareholder and board sentiment. Nvidia went public in 1999, the Journal notes; our founder-control comparison sets its voting figures from the 2026 proxy against Meta’s.
That is the lesson the article draws for founders. It says many founders since Google’s 2004 IPO have used dual-class share structures “to enable themselves to maintain voting control without owning a majority of company equity”. It quotes Marc Andreessen in 2012: “It is unsafe to go public today without a dual-class share structure”. The Journal also gives the critics’ view, that supervoting shares are “a parting gift by venture investors” who often exit after an IPO.
What the Market Has Priced So Far
Nasdaq’s official price history gives the path. Nvidia closed at $173.73 on 11 November, its last close before the 8-K and release of 12 November announced the resignation. On 12 November the shares opened at $151.005, touched $148.80 and closed at $166.19. On Friday, 13 November, they closed at $162.85.
On 24.1 billion shares, the open was $548 billion below the 11 November close and the low was $601 billion below it, by our arithmetic. The Journal reports that at their nadir, Nvidia’s market capitalization “had fallen by more than $500 billion”. By Friday’s close the gap had narrowed to $262 billion, or 6.26%, by our arithmetic, as our piece on the opening drop first measured from the same base.
Ives’s $75 gap is an analyst’s valuation, not a market price. Ives added in the same post that the stock “will now bake in Nvidia without Jensen going forward”. The daily closes do not separate the leadership news from other market moves on those two days.
Nvidia’s official daily closes from Nasdaq’s price history, 6 to 13 November 2026. The 6.3% fall from the 11 November close to the 13 November close is our arithmetic.
The Other View: Ackman’s Apple Analogy
Bill Ackman, founder of Pershing Square, took a different line. Asked by Bloomberg on 13 November about key-man risk, Ackman said, according to the Bloomberg video’s transcript: “Nvidia will survive” and “Apple had an iconic CEO and the company did pretty well after”. Ackman also said in the interview: “I’m not an investor in Nvidia”.
Some Nvidia investors asked the board to slow down. The Journal quotes Brad Gerstner of Altimeter and Gavin Baker of Atreides Management asking for “a slow, measured, and deliberate process regarding the future leadership of Nvidia that leaves all options on the table”; our piece on the funds’ letter has their 13F stakes. Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg said, as quoted by the Journal: “In the fog of war, where there might be incomplete information, it’s helpful to give things a few days before drawing final conclusions”.
The Structural Read
As we read the price history, most of the first-day markdown did not hold: the shares opened $22.725 below the 11 November close and ended Friday $10.88 below it, so the gap was less than half its opening size two sessions later, by our arithmetic. Our piece on the opening drop measured the $548 billion from the same base.
As we read the Journal’s lesson, it is about ownership structure rather than about Nvidia’s business: a founder whose stake the article puts at 3.6% of the company was, in its words, “vulnerable to shareholder and board sentiment”, and the bylaws leave officers to the board. Our founder-control comparison has the proxy figures.
Dan Ives on X, 12 November 2026
“We see the stock valuation at $225 without Jensen ($300 with Jensen as CEO).”
Three Implications
FOR NVIDIA INVESTORS The board told CNBC on 13 November that it is selecting a search firm; the next fixed date is the third-quarter report on 17 November. Our explainer on how the board decides sets out the steps.
FOR FOUNDERS AND BOARDS The Journal cites earlier board removals at OpenAI, Uber and Apple, and the protection it describes founders using since Google’s 2004 IPO is dual-class shares that keep voting control without a majority of the equity.
The framework describes the AI Supercycle as having “a layered industrial stack of nine layers, running from energy at the bedrock to governance at the ceiling”.
As we read it, the fight over who leads a company in the silicon layer is a governance-ceiling event, and the market prices it in the layer below. The framework does not discuss Nvidia’s board, its former chief executive or the founders quoted here.
What Is Not Established
Nvidia’s bylaws say officers “hold office at the pleasure of the Board of Directors”, and the board told CNBC on 13 November it is selecting a search firm; our explainer on how the board decides sets out the steps. Names reported for the role are in our guide to the names reported.
How much of the $262 billion reflects the leadership change cannot be read from the closes alone. The $140 billion stake figure is the Journal’s estimate. We did not contact Nvidia, Ives, Ackman or the founders quoted, and we leave out personal material.
This Week In The AI Supercycle
AI Lost Its Central Banker, the Lab Oligopoly, and the Future of Open Source
This week’s issue: the Nvidia leadership change, read as the AI build-out losing its central banker: who now finances the GPU landlords, backstops the data centres and sponsors open models, and why two labs are becoming the bank.
The billionaires quoted by the Journal call the board’s decision a mistake and draw a lesson about founder control from a 3.6% stake. The market’s two-day markdown, $262 billion at Friday’s close, is about a seventh of the $1.81 trillion implied by Ives’s $300 and $225 targets, by our arithmetic. Nvidia reports third-quarter results on 17 November; our Nvidia hub tracks the search and the stock, and our first piece on the exit began the coverage.
A note on sourcing. The Wall Street Journal article (Rolfe Winkler, published 14 November at 5:30 a.m. ET) was read in full on 15 November in its Mint syndication, which carries the same text; we quote it for its governance and market content only. Dan Ives’s and Tim Sweeney’s X posts were read in full through api.fxtwitter.com. Bill Ackman’s remarks are quoted from the transcript on the Yahoo Finance page of Bloomberg’s 13 November video, which is not an official transcript.
Prices are Nasdaq’s official daily figures; the share count is the 10-Q cover figure from SEC XBRL data. Market-value changes, percentages and the $1.81 trillion figure are our arithmetic. Analyst valuations are views, not forecasts of ours. We leave out personal material. We did not contact Nvidia, Ives, Ackman or the founders quoted.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
