Jensen Huang lost his job, but not his stock. Soon, investors may not be able to see him sell it.
Nvidia’s (NVDA) board accepted Huang’s resignation on Nov. 11. He walks away from about $108 million in unvested stock awards, pocket change next to the roughly 812 million shares he keeps, worth about $132 billion at Friday’s close. That makes him Nvidia’s largest individual owner.
When an insider sells, Wall Street sometimes reads it as a vote of no confidence in the company. When the founder of the world’s most important AI chipmaker sells, the whole market can follow.
“This is no doubt an overhang on the trade for the foreseeable future,” Liz Thomas, SoFi’s chief market strategist, told Yahoo Finance on Thursday.
Investors are already voting. Nvidia stock closed Friday at its lowest level since July 2025, about 32% below its Oct. 6 record.
The clock starts now
Legally, Huang can sell now. For three months after leaving, he still counts as a company insider, so any big sale needs a public notice filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The legal cap on those sales won’t slow him down. Based on trading before the scandal, it’s about 600 million shares every three months, by Yahoo Finance calculations. That’s more than eight times the shares he holds in his own name.
But only his own shares are easy to sell, and the insider-trading rules don’t expire in February.
The concern with hidden sales is that a former CEO might know bad news before the public does. Trading on that is still illegal, notice or no notice, and brokers keep records of every trade, which regulators can check.
Most of the pile isn’t his to move alone
About 70 million shares, worth about $11 billion, are in Huang’s own name, according to his SEC filings. The other 740 million or so, worth about $121 billion, sit in family trusts, including one he runs with his wife, Lori. That setup makes a quick fire sale hard.
Even a full exit is smaller than it looks. His whole stake equals less than six days of typical Nvidia trading before the scandal, and Nvidia had $235 billion left on its buyback as of Sept. 28, enough to soak up every share he owns.
Why a 2-week window in February has come into focus
Nvidia typically reports fourth quarter results and files its annual report in late February. That leaves a gap of about two weeks after Huang’s insider period ends, and that has drawn attention online.
Selling ahead of bad news he knew about would still be illegal.
Leaving doesn’t erase his signature, either. Huang signed off on Nvidia’s financial statements every quarter as CEO, and the quarter it reports Tuesday ended Oct. 25, on his watch.
