Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang crashed out of the $100 billion club this week after his net worth suffered its biggest single-day blow on Tuesday, then took another hit on Wednesday.
Huang’s fortune shrunk by $9.9 billion on Tuesday, then another $1.6 billion on Wednesday, to $93.4 billion, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The upshot is he’s no longer one of the world’s dozen or so centibillionaires — a select group that includes Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett.
The wealth decline dropped Huang from 14th on the rich list to 18th, behind Indian industrialist Gautam Adani (worth $102 billion) and Walmart founder Sam Walton’s three surviving children: Jim (worth $99.5 billion), Rob (worth $97.2 billion), and Alice (worth $96.6 billion).
The chipmaker’s chief sunk to an 11-digit net worth because Nvidia stock tumbled 9.5% on Tuesday, slashing the group’s market value by $279 billion — the biggest one-day decline for a US company in history.
The shares slid another 1.7% on Wednesday for a two-day loss of 11% that erased $323 billion of market capitalization — more than the entire market value of Bank of America ($314 billion) or Coca-Cola ($313 billion).
Nvidia tanked on Tuesday amid a wider rout in chip stocks, and after Bloomberg reported the semiconductor titan had received subpoenas from the Department of Justice as part of an antitrust probe.
Huang’s company has become the preeminent supplier of microchips to the artificial-intelligence boom, counting Elon Musk’s Tesla and Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta among its customers.
Even after this week’s hit, Huang has still added about $49 billion to his net worth this year. That’s been fueled by a 114% rise in Nvidia stock since the start of this year, which has boosted the company’s market value to $2.61 trillion. Only Apple ($3.4 trillion) and Microsoft ($3 trillion) are worth more.
Huang cofounded Nvidia more than 30 years ago in 1993, but the company’s value has only really taken off since late 2022, when ChatGPT’s release sparked the AI craze.
Nvidia’s split-adjusted stock price has skyrocketed by more than 600% since then, from below $15 to $106 at Wednesday’s close.
