Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s net worth fell by around $10 billion on Tuesday after the AI chip leader’s stock plummeted by nearly 10% amid a global selloff.
Huang, the 61-year-old Taiwanese-born executive who cleaned bathrooms and worked as a busboy at Denny’s before co-founding Nvidia more than 30 years ago, saw his fortune shrink to $94.9 billion, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
His fortune, which has soared by $51 billion just this year, declined after the largest one-day loss in Nvidia’s history, shaving nearly $280 billion off of its market capitalization.
As of Tuesday, Nvidia’s market cap was $2.6 trillion, putting it behind Apple ($3.35 trillion) and Microsoft ($3.02 trillion).
Nvidia’s stock tumbled after Bloomberg News reported that the Justice Department served the company with a subpoena as part of its ongoing investigation into alleged antitrust violations.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company, which is notorious for its demanding workplace culture where employees labor for up to seven days per week and at times until 1 or 2 a.m., is alleged to have strong-armed customers by penalizing them if they didn’t exclusively buy their chips.
The investigation is looking into whether Nvidia charges its customers more for networking gear if they want to buy AI chips from rivals such as Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Intel.
Intel’s stock fell nearly 9% after Reuters reported CEO Pat Gelsinger and key executives are expected to present a plan to the company’s board of directors to slice off unnecessary businesses and revamp capital spending at the struggling chipmaker.
DOJ is taking the lead in probing Nvidia as the agency divvies up Big Tech scrutiny with the Federal Trade Commission, according to Reuters.
The FTC is headed by Lina Khan, whose aggressive antitrust crackdowns on big business have prompted several titans of industry such as media mogul Barry Diller and tech billionaire Reid Hoffman to demand that Vice President Kamala Harris oust her from the position if she wins the White House in 2024.
Nvidia, whose chips are used both for artificial intelligence and for computer graphics, has seen demand for its products jump following the release of the generative AI application ChatGPT.
But the company’s business practices have prompted regulators in the US as well as in Europe to look into alleged monopolistic behavior.
The European Union, France and China have all sought information from Nvidia about its graphic cards.
Government regulators have grown wary of Nvidia’s market dominance, which is predicated on companies’ reliance on its CUDA chip programming software — the only system that is 100% compatible with the graphics processing units (GPUs) that power gaming, content creation, AI and scientific research.
The Post has sought comment from Nvidia.
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