Jensen Huang Resigns After 33 Years at the Helm
NVIDIA co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang announced his abrupt resignation on November 12, ending his 33-year tenure at the helm. Huang admitted to extramarital affairs, with one of the individuals, Huang Le, suspected by the U.S. of being a spy for China's Ministry of State Security; Megaspeed, her employer, allegedly smuggled advanced chips into China and helped DeepSeek obtain GPUs, triggering a U.S. national security investigation and congressional subpoena concerns. He was subsequently revealed to have had a second affair with direct subordinate Vice President Powell, in violation of the company's conflict-of-interest code of conduct. Under pressure from political subpoenas, Wall Street losing patience, and an emergency board meeting, Huang resigned as president, CEO and director, with CFO Colette Kress serving as interim CEO. Due to the long-standing lack of a clear succession plan and operations highly concentrated on Huang himself, his departure sent the stock plunging, wiping hundreds of billions of US dollars off market value, and casting a shadow over chip export controls and the global AI supply chain outlook.
Hon Hai Q3 Net Profit of 775.24 Billion Yuan Hits Record High
Hon Hai reported its third-quarter results on the 12th, with quarterly after-tax net profit reaching 775.24 billion yuan, up 29% quarter-on-quarter and 34% year-on-year, EPS of 5.51 yuan, with quarterly revenue, operating profit and net profit all hitting record highs; cumulative after-tax net profit for the first three quarters was 1874.17 billion yuan and EPS was 13.35 yuan, also a record for the same period. The momentum mainly came from AI infrastructure driving explosive demand for AI servers and racks, lifting cloud networking products revenue share to 54%. Chairman Young Liu said that despite tight chip and memory supply challenges, overall AI demand will continue to exceed supply, and the share of AI-related cloud products in group revenue is expected to rise further to over 60% within the next 3 to 5 years.
TSMC Joins AI Closed-Loop Investing With 1 Billion US Dollars
The board of TSMC approved a major strategic investment on November 10, agreeing to subscribe for Anthropic common shares in connection with its initial public offering and OpenAI Group preferred shares for up to 500 million US dollars each, for a combined maximum of 1 billion US dollars, and to allocate up to another 500 million US dollars to establish an investment company to build out the semiconductor ecosystem. This is TSMC's first entry into AI closed-loop investing, and a rare large single strategic investment in its history. Bullish analysts say directly investing in its two major chip customers shows confidence in the AI outlook and secures visibility into top-tier market demand; cautious analysts warn that binding the ecosystem through investments could create risks if the industry shifts, and future advanced-process capacity allocation also bears continued attention.
China Surplus Tops 1 Trillion and SoftBank Swings to Loss
Data from China's General Administration of Customs showed October exports in US dollar terms rose 35.2% year-on-year to 4123 billion US dollars, with imports up 41.6%, both beating market expectations. The cumulative trade surplus for the first 10 months surged to 1.04 trillion US dollars, the fastest breach of the 1-trillion-dollar mark on record. The momentum was mainly driven by global AI infrastructure, chip and server hardware demand, offsetting weak domestic consumption and a sluggish property sector. Among them, October exports to the US grew 32.9%, and the surplus with the EU expanded to 3107 billion US dollars in the first 10 months, with Xi Jinping and Trump set to meet next week at the APEC summit. Separately, SoftBank Group reported a net loss of 1.12 trillion yen for the second quarter of fiscal 2026, a sharp reversal from a 2.5 trillion yen profit a year earlier, mainly due to about 5972 billion yen in impairments from changes to US AI data-center power equipment investments and large prepayments, plus financing costs climbing to 4619 billion yen; its shares once plunged 11%, down nearly 60% from the June high, while maintaining its Ohio data-center project with OpenAI.