1. A Month That Undid a Year
Nvidia stock fell to $166.95 on Tuesday, November 10, leaving it down 18.42% for the month and erasing every gain the chipmaker had made in 2026. The slide deepened after House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast said he was prepared to subpoena Chief Executive Jensen Huang unless Huang responds by Wednesday, November 11, to a request for a closed-door briefing.
The request concerns Huang's reported relationship with a woman whom U.S. authorities have reportedly investigated as a suspected Chinese intelligence operative. No subpoena had been issued as of Tuesday. The threat nonetheless added a congressional dimension to a matter that has already produced an independent board investigation and a shareholder lawsuit within the span of three days.
For a company that has served as the most visible beneficiary of spending on artificial intelligence, the combination has been costly. Tuesday's decline followed a 4.3% fall on Monday, and the two sessions together were on course to remove more than $470 billion from Nvidia's market value.
2. Why Is Nvidia Stock Going Down?
Nvidia stock is going down for two reasons that have arrived at the same time: a governance and national security controversy surrounding its chief executive, and a broader reassessment of how long the AI boom can keep rewarding the company at its recent pace.
The first is the more immediate. Over a few days, the reported relationship between Huang and a suspected intelligence operative moved from a news report to a board-level investigation, then to a proposed class action from investors, and finally to a threat of compulsory process from Congress. Each step raised the possibility of further disclosures and made it harder for shareholders to judge how long the matter will hang over the company.
The second reason predates the controversy. Investors have been questioning how long the current level of data center spending can continue, and rivals are putting cheaper alternatives to Nvidia's chips in front of the same customers. Those doubts were already weighing on sentiment, and the events of the past week landed on a stock that had less of a cushion than its long run of gains might suggest.
3. Measuring the Decline
Several reference points show the scale of the move. At $166.95, the shares were about 10.5% below the $186.50 at which they closed 2025, which is what it means to say the year's gains are gone: an investor who bought on the last trading day of last year is now sitting on a loss. Measured from the recent peak of $243.37, the decline is steeper still, at 31.4%.
Tuesday's fall exceeded 6% in afternoon trading. If the monthly loss holds near its current level, November would be Nvidia's worst month since September 2022, when the stock lost about 19.6%. The company has endured sharper drops before, including a fall of about 32% in April 2022, so the present decline is severe without being unprecedented in its own history.
The dollar figures are large because the company is. A two-day loss of more than $470 billion in market value is a consequence of Nvidia's size as much as of the percentage move, and it explains why the stock's direction matters well beyond its own shareholders. Nvidia carries heavy weight in major equity benchmarks, and sharp moves in its shares tend to shape sentiment across technology and other risk assets.
Not every observer regards the fall as excessive. Some analysts still view the stock as overbought on a long-term basis. On a purely technical reading, taken in isolation from the news, a further decline of 20%, which would put the shares roughly 43% below their October level, would be considered healthy and would still leave the price above its long-run average. The logic behind that view is that prices sitting far above a long-term average usually reflect investors' fear of missing out more than they reflect fundamentals.
4. The Subpoena Threat From Congress
Mast's warning set a short clock. The House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman said on Tuesday that he was ready to subpoena Huang if the chief executive did not respond by Wednesday, November 11, to the committee's request for a closed-door briefing.
The underlying request came from three lawmakers. Mast and two other Republican committee chairs asked Huang to appear on November 18 to explain his dealings with Alice Huang, a former executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based buyer of chips. Their letter also sought details about the safeguards Nvidia maintains against foreign espionage.
A subpoena is the formal tool a congressional committee uses to compel testimony or documents when a voluntary request is refused or ignored. Committees usually prefer to obtain cooperation without one, and a public threat of this kind is often intended to produce a response rather than to signal that compulsion is inevitable. A closed-door format, as opposed to a public hearing, is commonly used when the subject touches on sensitive national security information.
The sequence of dates leaves Huang little room. A response is due on November 11, a full week before the requested appearance, which means the committee expects an answer on whether he will attend well before the briefing itself would take place. For shareholders, the practical question is whether the matter is resolved through a voluntary session behind closed doors or escalates into a formal dispute between one of the world's most valuable companies and a congressional committee.
5. What the Allegations Do and Do Not Establish
The facts that have been reported are narrower than the market reaction might imply. U.S. authorities have reportedly investigated whether Alice Huang passed information to Beijing. She has no family relation to Jensen Huang, despite the shared surname.
The allegations do not establish that Jensen Huang knowingly disclosed confidential information, and they do not establish that he broke export rules. Those distinctions matter because Nvidia's most advanced processors are subject to U.S. export controls, and any suggestion that restricted technology or sensitive company information reached a foreign government would carry consequences far beyond reputational harm.
Nvidia's board has addressed the question directly. In announcing its investigation, it said it had no reason to believe that national security or company secrets had been compromised. The lawmakers' letter, with its request for information about anti-espionage safeguards, indicates that Congress wants to examine that assurance for itself.
Much therefore remains unknown. The reporting describes an investigation into one individual and a relationship with the chief executive, not a finding of wrongdoing by Huang or by the company. Until the board's inquiry or the congressional process produces more detail, investors are pricing a risk whose size they cannot yet measure, and that kind of open-ended uncertainty tends to weigh on a share price more heavily than a known and bounded problem.
6. A Board Investigation and an Investor Lawsuit
Inside the company, the response began on Sunday, November 8. Nvidia's board announced an independent investigation into whether Huang had been targeted by a foreign intelligence operation, and said it would examine the available information even though it had no reason to believe secrets had been compromised.
The framing is notable. The board's inquiry treats the chief executive as the possible target of an operation, not as a participant in one. Nvidia has reportedly hired Joon H Kim, a former U.S. prosecutor, to lead the internal investigation. Bringing in outside counsel with a prosecutorial background is a common step for boards that want findings to be seen as credible by regulators, investors and lawmakers.
Legal pressure from shareholders followed a day later. On Monday, November 9, investors filed a proposed class-action lawsuit alleging that Nvidia and Huang failed to disclose risks tied to the reported relationship. Suits of this type typically argue that a company's public statements were misleading because they omitted information a reasonable investor would have wanted, and that shareholders suffered losses when the information emerged. The claims are allegations, and a proposed class action must clear several procedural stages before any court considers the merits.
7. The Competitive Threat From Google
Separate from the controversy, Nvidia is facing sharper competition in the market it dominates. Google introduced new AI chip configurations on Monday and announced a new line of tensor processing units, or TPUs, for select customers. Those chips compete directly with Nvidia's products.
The more consequential development may involve one of Nvidia's best-known customers. OpenAI was reportedly considering the purchase of Google's TPUs. Neither company has confirmed a purchase. Even so, the prospect of a leading AI developer sourcing processors from a rival supplier speaks to a concern that investors have held for some time: that the largest buyers of AI hardware will diversify away from a single vendor as alternatives improve and prices fall.
These pressures feed the wider debate about the durability of AI spending. Nvidia's valuation rests on the expectation that data center operators will keep buying its chips in very large quantities. If that spending slows, or if a meaningful share of it shifts to competing hardware, the growth assumptions built into the share price become harder to sustain. The controversy over Huang has therefore arrived at a moment when the market was already inclined to question the company's premium.
8. What Happens Next
Three dates now define the near-term calendar. The first is Wednesday, November 11, the deadline Mast set for Huang to respond to the briefing request. A reply that satisfies the committee would likely remove the immediate threat of a subpoena; silence or a refusal would test whether the chairman follows through.
The second is November 17, when Nvidia is scheduled to report quarterly earnings. The results will give investors fresh evidence on demand for the company's chips and on whether data center spending is holding up, and management will face questions about both the competitive landscape and the investigation.
The third is November 18, the date on which the three Republican chairs asked Huang to appear. That request falls one day after the earnings report, meaning the company's financial performance and its chief executive's conduct will be under scrutiny in consecutive sessions. Alongside those dates, the board's independent investigation and the proposed class action will proceed on their own timelines, with no end date announced for either.