Jensen Huang has resigned as CEO of tech giant Nvidia, the company's board says, with chief financial officer Colette Kress appointed interim boss.
Huang had been the company's chief executive, president and a member of its board.
The statement from Nvidia's board, announcing the resignation of Jensen Huang as its chief executive, praised his work at the helm of the company.
"Jensen’s contributions to Nvidia are profound," it says.
"Nvidia is one of the most consequential technology companies in the world," adding the board and company "thank Jensen for his immeasurable contributions to the company and the industry".
"We will continue advancing the work that has made Nvidia a leader in accelerated computing and AI, and execute on the opportunities ahead," the interim CEO Colette Kress says.
"Our focus remains on serving our customers, partners, developers and shareholders."
Nvidia has been crucial to artificial intelligence development, so the turmoil around its leader has rippled out to affect global AI and tech stocks.
South Korea’s tech and chipmaker-heavy Kospi index closed down 0.6% on Thursday, and the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company was trading down about 1.7%.
Bad news for Nvidia could be good news for some of its competitors, however.
Shares in Chinese manufacturers of graphics processing units rose, with Moore Threads, MetaX and Cambricon all surging by more than 8%. Shares in American chipmaker AMD rose by 4% in early trading.
It's hard to overstate how giant a figure Jensen Huang has cut on the global economic scene. Insatiable appetite for the chips the company he founded makes, huge investments in other AI related companies, and a personal talismanic brand and profile that has rivalled and possibly surpassed that of even Apple's Steve Jobs in his prime.
His trademark all-black outfits, and his mischievous charm at product launches gave him rockstar appeal.
But as an executive at a large financial institution told me, the allegations of an affair with an executive at the Singaporean firm Megaspeed with questions about her links to China, followed by reports of a second affair saw the halo slip and then underlying concerns to emerge.
Prominent among them was governance - in other words how Nvidia was run. He ruled over an unusually flat management structure with dozens of direct reports to him personally - "a ridiculous set up", according to one executive.
The promotion of his children to senior posts may work in a family business but are questionable in a $4 trillion publicly traded company.
Nvidia's role as a cornerstone lender to, and investor in, the rest of the AI industry has raised concerns about the circular financing in the AI industry. It is a fascinating parable to see how quickly the spell he cast over an entire industry was broken in a week.
