NVIDIA CEO Exit, AI Trade Fallout and Tesla-SpaceX Deal Talk

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1:00Welcome to Closing Bell. I'm John Ford in for Scott Wapner. And we begin this hour with breaking news and that bombshell announcement from NVIDIA that CEO Jensen Wong is out. The news sending shockwaves across the entire AI trade and beyond today. Full team coverage standing by with reactions, starting with Seema Modi kicking us off with the latest. Seema. Fast moving situation here. Reports now indicate there wasn't just one, but two employees who had a relationship with former CEO Jensen Wong. The first, Kimberly Powell, that was reported yesterday. The second employee is being reported by Reuters, quoting sources in the last hour.

1:36Reuters is not naming the second employee, but it does follow news of Wong's affair with former Megaspeed employee, an alleged Chinese spy. This morning, NVIDIA's board announcing Wong's resignation as CEO and president, naming CFO Colette Kress as interim chief executive officer. Harvey Jones, who previously led Synopsys as the company's new chair. Now, Crest is said to have conducted a meeting with high-level executives today at the company's headquarters, just as the firm hired a company to help find a permanent leader. It's said to be evaluating internal and external candidates. John, a number of analysts weighing in, DA Davidson's Gil Luria, writing Wong's departure will change NVIDIA in a similar manner that Steve Jobs' departure impacted Apple.

2:19Luria expects NVIDIA to maintain product leadership, but he thinks it is unlikely to orchestrate the AI ecosystem in the manner Wong has been able to and responsible for over the last 10 years. This leadership uncertainty certainly embedded in the valuation. We've seen the stock currently down about 5 % off the lows of the day, I might add, John. Well, we'll see how much of it is in the valuation. Seema, thanks. So the White House weighing in on today's news. Megan Casella is live in Washington with the latest on that. Megan. John, that's right. President Trump putting his finger on the scale in terms of who he wants to see lead NVIDIA next.

2:53He posted on True Social this morning, now that NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, who has done a fantastic job, has resigned, there is only one man to take his place, Tim Cook of Apple. A legend replaces a legend. John, we have not heard anything from Apple on that, but the other news stemming from the White House today on this is this Reuters reporting that senior White House officials are discussing whether Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick should be pushed out. Before that story posted, a White House official told me earlier this morning that the president had complete confidence in Lutnik, but we will see where that discussion goes.

3:25And then finally, we're also expecting to see Jensen Huang here in Washington next week. That's according to House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast, who had asked Huang last week to come and testify. Mast told CNBC that Huang has agreed to come and that he's in negotiations with Congress for just which day it would be. The initial expected date had been next Wednesday, the 18th. Mask now says it likely will not be that day, but it should be before Thanksgiving break. And next week is Congress's last week in town before the holiday. And John will just add that across Capitol Hill, lawmakers today are calling for all sorts of investigations into both NVIDIA and the Trump administration's handling of policies that may have benefited NVIDIA.

4:04North Carolina Republican Tom Tillis just told CNBC he wants to see Lutnik on Capitol Hill next week as well. All right, Megan, thank you. Let's get to our all-star panel. Yorkville, Ives is Dan Ives, Plexo Capital's Lo Tony, Requisite Capital's Bryn Talkington, and FunStrat's Tom Lee. Lo, Bryn, and Tom are CNBC contributors. All right, I want to start, Dan, with you and Tom on the question of the impact on NVIDIA. This seems nothing like the transition at Apple, where Steve Jobs was dying from cancer, handed the baton to Tim Cook, had set up Apple University to teach future generations the way of Apple, and deliberately told Tim Cook in Tim Cook's telling that he didn't want Apple thinking about what Steve Jobs would do.

4:53We're not even sure at this point that Jensen wants to completely step away from NVIDIA or will. He was recently saying he wanted to run this company for another 20 years. Yeah, look, comparing Apple and going back to Jobs, Cook, Succession, that is dramatically different than what we have here. Because essentially, NVIDIA didn't have a Succession plan. That's the reality. Colette, clearly the one that should be the interim CEO. She's the face of the street, someone strategically that's so important to NVIDIA. But the reality is this is a dark day for NVIDIA. It's a black eye moment for Jensen.

5:28This is obviously the dark trap that he ultimately goes out. And now the question is, it's not just even NVIDIA. It's about the U.S. technology industry. Because as me and you know, he played such an integral role there. And even all the spider web of companies that he is involved with, I think that's a big question. But our view is, many are thrown in the towel. We are still bullish in NVIDIA because without Jensen, the value is$225 per share. That's our view. And I think now - That's up quite a bit from where we're at$164 at the moment. So you're saying it's down to 225 and we're well below that now.

6:03Yeah. So, and we've talked about it. Jensen was worth a trillion dollars essentially to the valuation of NVIDIA. He's gone. Now he ripped a bandaid off. Board needed to do it. They move forward. Who's going to be the CEO? And we could talk about it. Is it external? We've talked, is it a cook and the cash and pow out to some others? Is it internal? But at the end of the day, it is a washout type event. Okay. But it doesn't change. NVIDIA is the one chip in the world fueling the AI revolution today. Tom Lee, how should investors gauge whether NVIDIA is weathering this storm as a company? I don't think it's going to be obvious in the first even maybe six months, maybe even year.

6:45But is it the progress on the roadmap? Is it a quick selection of a new CEO or the executive team sticking around? Something else? John, I think there is something the viewers can watch. To me, NVIDIA as a culture has a very, very storied culture of ownership culture. Half the employees are worth$25 million or more. They own a ton of stock and they've attracted the best people routinely. That is a very prestigious place to work. And that doesn't change with Jensen stepping down. How do you know? Why wouldn't it change? Because people in the past have gone to work for Jensen Wong and for a company that had no scandals.

7:28People were proud to say, you know, I went to go work at NVIDIA. Now you're going to get questions about, oh yeah, that company who's running it. Isn't that the one where the guy did the thing? Well, I mean, John, I think, you know, I don't think a single NVIDIA customer is going to cancel an order because Jensen had an affair. And I think unless these employees have a better place to go, a company with a bigger lead than NVIDIA, I think they're going to stay. And actually, as Dan points out, they're going to wait to see who is the successor. But I think the thing we can all watch is really LinkedIn jobs postings.

8:03You're right. If there's a lot of people planning to leave, that's going to be an adverse sign. So I think it's going to be really important for NVIDIA to make sure that they retain all their talent. Interesting. Hello, Tony. I certainly agree with Tom Lee that nobody's canceling NVIDIA orders over this. There's too much of a shortage of AI compute. But as an investor, are you going to be more likely to tell companies to make sure you diversify your AI stack? Maybe just don't bet on one company because we're seeing now even the ones that look the most solid can end up with questions in their roadmap and you don't want your roadmap to get caught holding the bag.

8:41I think that's a really good point. And number one, is just good discipline to have procurement diversity in general when you have a situation where there's such a concentration of power with a company like NVIDIA. Let's take a Plexo Capital portfolio company, Anthropic. I think Anthropic has done a really good job of identifying multiple sources. They use NVIDIA, but they also use TPUs from Google, Traniums from Amazon. And you look at a company like OpenAI, who's working with Broadcom to design their own chip. And so I think those are the types of things that are important for companies to realize is that it is actually very important to have that level of diversification.

9:25And Bryn, let me ask you about market impact here. If I remember correctly, you've been using NVIDIA stock to kind of harvest income and invest in some other things. Does your view from an investment perspective of of NVIDIA's stability and role in your portfolio have to change? Well, I mean, I had been selling calls, you know, on NVIDIA and Tesla and other companies with high premium. I think like Elon to Tesla is Jensen to NVIDIA. If Elon left Tesla, would I be buying Tesla as a new shareholder? No. And so I think that I've heard a lot of like clients and people saying, well, NVIDIA has a 12 Ford PE or it's historically cheap.

10:08Like PEs are a terrible metric for future catalysts. And so I'm in the wait and see mode. I think that the board, shareholders like myself and the employees let Jensen for, what, 33 years just be in control. And they have a negative succession plan. And so unless we have a Tim Cook or something, someone magnanimous like that, I'm really questioning. I think a year and a half, for the next year and a half, they have a wonderful earnings and revenue. And so I think that the stock can do just fine. But longer term, you have lost the visionary that has consistently been able to look around corners.

10:45And just finally, I think it's really sad for the smaller companies, the private companies like the Lambdas, Hugging Face, et cetera, that he really cultivated to try to have a really broad AI universe. And now who's that person? Because we have Dario saying, well, no one's going to work. And so there's no counterbalance to some of the nonsense that Dario says about how what's going to happen. Jensen was such a comforting. Yeah. Anyway, for sure. Everybody hold tight. We got some breaking news. Let's get to Eamon Javers, I believe in D.C. Eamon.

11:16John Ford: Yeah, John, that's right. CNBC has learned of a surprising connection between Alice Wong, the Chinese tech executive at the center of the NVIDIA sex and spying scandal, and Huawei, the Chinese tech company that's NVIDIA's biggest competitor in that country. Now, Alice Wong may have simultaneously owned stakes in companies up until 2024 that benefited Huawei, even as she was having an affair with Jensen Wong of NVIDIA. Now, that's according to the private intelligence firm Tesari. The firm, analyzing Chinese corporate records and news articles, concludes that the complicated tangle of interlocking corporations connected to the alleged spy ultimately provided computing power to Huawei in China.

11:58John Ford: Now, Huawei is considered a key part of the Chinese government's push for global technical dominance and is closely linked to the Chinese Communist Party. Tesari shared its findings exclusively with CNBC. Tesari, by the way, provides intelligence research to private companies and the U.S. government. This activity, which surfaced through our analysis of Alice's network, warrants a national security and counterproliferation investigation. That's from Brian Anderson, Tesare's vice president for national security applications and a former supervisory special agent with Homeland Security Investigations.

12:33John Ford: He said, if the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry Security and Homeland Security's investigations found evidence that anyone transferred controlled equipment to Huawei without authorization, potential charges might include export control violations, conspiracy and smuggling. According to documents reviewed by CNBC, at the end of a chain of companies is a data center in Shenzhen, China, which was part-owned by an Alice Wong entity and received loan guarantees from a firm that was linked to her. That data center's key customer was Huawei Cloud, a subsidiary of the broader company. Now, we've reached out to Huawei, NVIDIA, and the corporate entities associated with Alice Wong for comment, but we've not heard back from any of them just yet.

13:16John Ford: Back over to you. Eamon, question here. I'm pretty sure that Megaspeed, the company that we first heard of associated with Alice Wong, she was sort of running or in a position to have very much influence there. It's also tied to Alibaba. Now, this is a tie to Huawei. Those are two of the dominant, if you can say to have dominant tech companies in China. A couple of the biggest, sort of like a Microsoft and a Google, at least size-wise. Yes. So how unusual would it be for someone to have holdings or connections to companies that have a lot of tentacles throughout the economy of Asia? Well, it certainly shows a deep degree of connection to the top Chinese companies in China.

14:03John Ford: Right. This is a company in Megaspeed that was set up in Singapore and was ostensibly safe to export to because it was a Singaporean company. But at the same time, you're seeing now this connection between Alice Wong and Huawei at this Shenzhen data center in mainland China. And so you can start to connect the dots between Alice Wong and mainland China. And the question will be, did the NVIDIA chips make their way to that data center in mainland China? And was that illegal, right? That's what investigators are going to want to look at. And the question here is, will investigators ever get a chance to question Alice Wong?

14:43John Ford: It's not entirely clear where she is right now. The chances of her ending up back on U.S. soil, obviously pretty slim. So investigators are going to have to do a lot of this research from a distance and from a remove. But they're going to want to look at the flow of ownership, as we just laid out for you, of these shell entities and interlocking entities and the data center in China. And then also the flow of chips. Where did the chips actually physically go? is going to be one of the big questions here. And then who at NVIDIA knew about any of that, if anyone, including Jensen Wang? A dizzying exercise in connecting dots and new dots seem to appear every hour.

15:21Eamon Jabbers, thanks for helping us with those. You bet. Dan Ives, I think about Microsoft in the late 90s, not because they had a scandal like this, But because they had an antitrust case that many now argue derailed their focus and really affected the balance of power in technology and changed Microsoft's trajectory for a long time. Stepping back and trying to get away from the salaciousness for a moment of this entire episode and look at the impact on investors and the tech economy. How likely is it that this is one of those moments where we're going to see years of investigations and hearings and new dots appearing about this and this issue of exports and AI dominance between the U.S.

16:09and China not going away? And we've thought it's a moment of truth for the U.S. technology industry, because the reality is China. This is the opportunity for China to ultimately accelerate and close that gap. And I think that's the concern in terms of the overall U.S. technology. technology relative to the AI revolution. And I think when you look at NVIDIA, this is the time now they need to keep innovating, focus on physical AI, the strategic roadmaps out there in terms of the new family of chips. If they, to your point, get caught up in the spiderweb and 202 area code, they regress, they go into defensive mode, then that becomes a Microsoft moment, which I agree with the parallels going back to late 90s.

16:53That really set the company back for decades. Tom Lee, what are the chances that we're in that sort of situation? How do investors position themselves based on what we know so far and the idea that this could turn into a sprawling investigation environment that makes a fast moving area, at least some in it perhaps, move slower? John, that's a very important point. And everyone's going to need to be vigilant because AI is a national security initiative. You know, it's strategically important to the U.S. But I do think getting lost in a lot of these conversations is the idea that the U.S. is filled with a lot of N of 1 innovators, a lot of great thinking.

17:39There are a lot of, and there's even articles about how many people have brought ideas to Jensen, which he quickly self-actualized. I think that U.S. leadership in AI is going to be untouched, even with the loss at Jensen. I think that there is sort of a bench across America. So I think the stock market's muted reaction overall and the fact that memory stocks and the bottlenecks and the AI supply chain is trading well this week really shows a lot of bad news is priced in. I know it doesn't sound great, but I'd say a lot of bad news is already priced in. OK, well, hold on. Hold on again. We've got some more breaking news this time on Tesla and SpaceX.

18:17Mackenzie Sigalos has that for us, Matt. Hey, John, so you've got SpaceX and Tesla apparently making progress in merger negotiations. That's according to Bloomberg, citing people familiar with those talks. Now, Elon Musk's two largest companies could announce a deal as soon as December. According to this report, the combination, of course, would be the largest merger in history, setting a new record for global dealmaking. What I will say is that this story says that the boards and advisors are apparently working on the terms as we speak, as well as the governance structure of how this combined entity would work.

18:50along with other matters. They're citing the people that are close to this deal. The aggressive timeline here, of course, reflects what we tend to expect from Elon Musk's leadership moving quickly on major corporate transactions. At this point, no deal has been announced. And Bloomberg's report did specify that this is something that, well, it could happen as soon as December. This is something that could also potentially be pushed into 2027. We saw Tesla pop on this news out to both Tesla and SpaceX. No word back yet, though, John. All right, Mackenzie Sigalos, thank you. Bryn Talkington, your thoughts on this, especially because we're in an environment where, safe to say, there are more governance questions than there were a couple of weeks ago around transactions, for sure, and around multibillion -dollar transactions where there's a key man, in this case, Elon Musk, not Jensen Huang.

19:41How do you feel as an investor about this combination in this environment? How important might it be for them to get this done before the Democrats take control of Congress? Well, you just said it at the very end. I mean, I think that the blue wave that occurred definitely probably spurred this to happen sooner than later as the political winds are changing. I'm sure Elizabeth Warren, et cetera, they won't like it for whatever reason. It seems like it's going to happen. I'm a Tesla shareholder. I think it would be great. There's a lot of synergies with these companies. And so it does make sense.

20:12There's great leadership at SpaceX with Gwen and a great team at Tesla. So I think it'd be great for investors. I own Tesla. I think Tesla still has that premium to pop as SpaceX has a larger market cap. So it'd be wonderful if it happened, you know, before the end of the year, Q1 of 2027. Dan Ice? We say 90 percent chance this deal is going to happen. I think ultimately Tesla needs to be, I think, north of 500 for it to happen. but it's a matter of when, not if, relative to what Musk needs to do. And I think, as Bryn talked about, clock's ticking here. Wow. Okay. Dan, Lowe, stick around. We'll see you after the break.

20:49Tom, Bryn, thank you. Up next, breaking developments on the AI race to go public. New numbers from OpenAI as we await Anthropics debut. We'll bring you the latest. We are live from the New York Stock Exchange. You're walking Colton Bell on CNBC.

21:05John Ford: With the Discover Cashback Card, it's payback time when you earn cash back on everyday purchases. Activate and earn 5 % cash back at different categories each quarter on up to$1 ,500 in purchases. That's 5 % cash back at different places each quarter, like grocery stores, on gas, and at restaurants. It pays to Discover. Terms apply. See discover.com slash 5 for details. This holiday, all plans, even unlimited, are just$15 a month. A holiday deal this good obviously deserves an enormously expensive holiday song, like All I Want. Right. Okay, we can't afford that. You know what? Forget the music budget.

21:45John Ford: We're going to stick with whatever's in the public domain. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for a 12-month plan required,$15 per month equivalent, taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. Which NHL teams are scoring big off the ice? CNBC Sports' Michael Ozanian has the numbers. If a dot margin in the NHL is right there with the NBA. Official NHL team valuations revealed Friday in Squawk Box on CNBC. Well, look there, NVIDIA stock's still down about 5%.

22:21We are back on Closing Bell. New reporting this hour on OpenAI's valuation as we await Anthropics IPO. Kate Rooney following the money for us. Kate. Hey there, John. So OpenAI, from what we're hearing, is right now plowing ahead with its latest private fundraise. We have been reporting on this over the past couple of weeks. Sources telling David Faber this morning OpenAI has now raised$15 billion in its latest round. So that's slightly more than the$11 billion that others had reported last week. But it had been up to$30 billion when this round was first reported. So lower than that, of course, as we have reported, the valuation here is$1.25 trillion.

23:00That is pre-money, so before this new cash injection. It is a significant step up in price tag from where the company was last valued from its last fundraise earlier this year. I am told by one source the round has not officially closed, and it'll wrap up in the next couple weeks here. I'm also told by multiple people that this has been sort of an opportunistic funding round. It's seen as a bridge to an IPO, which is now expected in 2027. It does come as OpenAI's biggest rival, Anthropic, is set to list on the Nasdaq next week. It's going to be a major test of investor appetite for these AI labs.

23:33We have also gotten some numbers in the last week of what OpenAI's growth rate has looked like and some of the differences between OpenAI and Anthropic, especially on profitability. Two sources telling us OpenAI brought in about$10 billion in the third quarter. In terms of revenue, it's up nearly 50 percent from the prior quarter. This company is growing quickly, but from what we're seeing, is not by any means profitable. According to the Wall Street Journal this week, operating losses were around$10.9 billion. Adjusted operating margin, it was negative, negative 109 percent. That is better than the negative 150 percent from the quarter before.

24:07Anthropoc, meanwhile, positive adjusted margins of about 15 percent. But, John, these adjustments are a big question in terms of what they're stripping out when both companies are public, it'll be a little easier to get the apples to apples comparison. A lot in the adjustments. Yes, Kate, thank you. Let's get back to Yorkville, Ives, Dan Ives from Plexo Capitals. Lo, Tony, guys, great to have you here on set. Lo, not putting specific numbers behind this right now, but it feels like some air has come out of the AI excitement lately, both on the valuation that Anthropic is seeking, the amount of money that OpenAI is able to raise, certainly what's happening with NVIDIA.

24:47How much hinges on how these IPOs come out? And what are the ripple effects for the broader ecosystem? Yeah, well, I think without question, this anthropic IPO is the most consequential IPO that we will have seen at least in the past decade at a minimum, especially because so much is riding with the AI trade on a small number of companies with a small number of leadership. And so it's important to separate the companies themselves because Anthropic and Open Air are amazing companies when you look at what they've been able to achieve from what the market wants to see as the clearing price for the Anthropic IPO since it's going first.

25:31So I think that's important. Anthropic is doing an amazing job. Their run rate now is 81 billion, which is billion above the prior run rate. They've got 11 ,900 or so folks that are paying over 100 ,000 a year, and I think almost 2 ,000 that are paying over a million a year. So, I mean, these are incredible businesses. They're growing extremely fast. But the market prior to even the blue wave had already started to look at the underlying cost to run these businesses and try to determine the return and then add in the risk. And so now I think even tying back to NVIDIA, we see a little bit of a risk as well, because when we think about the role that NVIDIA has played as the bank of AI, right, investing$100 billion, half into public companies, half into startups, being able to provide a financial backstop on the credit side for a lot of these deals to get done.

26:30And just the ability for Jensen to be able to coordinate across customers and suppliers and to just make things happen. I think that is now a factor to what investors are looking at as well. Dan, do you agree on, you know, this sentiment thing that I'm positing? And is the question, does that sentiment really start to show up in valuations? No doubt. Yeah, look, we went through the blue tidal wave and the white knuckles we saw last week with just a sell-off that I almost compared March 2020 in terms of COVID and what we saw liberation in April 2025. Now you have the Jensen Black-Eyes situation, the ripped the Band-Aid off moment from the board, and he's done.

27:12When it comes to Anthropoc, you have seen digestion more from an evaluation perspective. Think about what we were talking about a month ago, two weeks ago, and now maybe more something that's digestible for investors. But, John, I just view this as we're still in a 1997 moment. This is not a 1999, 2000 bubble moment. We're at the end of the cycle. But as you greatly put, anthropic, it's foundational. It's part of the hearts and lungs of this AI revolution. Right. They will set the stage, then ultimately open AI probably first half of next year. and it's just important for transparency, important for liquidity and what we see.

27:51But I think appetite is still there and I actually think it's healthy to what we're seeing rather than the opposite. Well, I wonder if we're going to look back on this week as the death of founder mode. This idea that's been out for a couple of years now, Brian Chesky, some others have talked about it, that really what you need is to oversimplify an authoritarian founder who knows how to make things happen at the company, doesn't have a bunch of managers running things, but things run through that person and things just sure happen a lot more snappy that way. NVIDIA was founder mode. And right now in this situation, from the board to investors to customers, there are a lot of people who wish they knew what the managerial structure was and that it weren't 60 people reporting to one man.

28:36Is there going to be another layer of governance questioning and a filter that the excitement's going to have to go through before we end up with the valuations that we used to? Without a doubt, this has been a changing moment for how we think about looking at companies and investing into them, especially from the private side in Silicon Valley. To your point, we have always been about the authoritarian type of leader who can actually just get things done. That's always been most important to have that presence and that gravitas and the ability to be a life that's a bigger than life figure. Right.

29:11And so that's also very important, though, for attracting the right talent and being able to get that bench, keep them motivated and then retain them. But I think now we are going to, on the governance side, need to think more clearly about how do we institutionalize that role so that it's very clear that there is a capable bench because we know NVIDIA has a capable bench. Right. But that's because we well, I was just going to say, but that's because like people like me and people have been prepared. Well, see, this is not prepared. Right. And I think what I've heard is that Jensen deliberately did that to kind of keep morale so that there wasn't going to be infighting and jockeying and positioning.

29:56But the thing that we go back to the secession plan at Apple, I mean, that was a very well orchestrated secession plan. Right. We had good visibility into Tim Cook. We understood his power, superpower, and his ability to be able to take that vision forward and add a tremendous amount of value to the company. I noticed that Apple needs to do a clinic for everyone else in Silicon Valley. How you actually do a succession plan and the right way to do it. You know how much Apple would charge? A trillion dollars. They're really good with the margins. Guys, got to leave it there. I wish I could have you here all hour.

30:32Thank you, Dan and Lowe. Coming up, Jensen Huang out at NVIDIA sending shockwaves through Wall Street. What his sudden departure means for the markets, and could it change the course of the entire AI trade? We've been talking about it. We're going to keep talking about it. Closing Bells back after this quick break.

30:49John Ford: With the Discovered Cashback card, it's payback time when you earn cash back on everyday purchases. Activate and earn 5 % cash back at different categories each quarter on up to$1 ,500 in purchases. That's 5 % cash back at different places each quarter, like grocery stores, on gas, and at restaurants. It pays to discover. Terms apply. See discover.com slash 5 for details. This holiday, all plans, even unlimited, are just$15 a month. A holiday deal this good obviously deserves an enormously expensive holiday song, like all I want. Right. Okay, we can't afford that. You know what? Forget the music budget.

31:28John Ford: We're going to stick with whatever's in the public domain. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for a 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. Which NHL teams are scoring big off the ice? CNBC Sports' Michael Ozanian has the numbers. If a dot margin in the NHL is right there with the NBA. Official NHL team valuations revealed Friday in Squawk Box on CNBC. I can see we're taking a leg lower there on the Dow, continuing to.

32:05Markets stabilizing as investors begin to look past the departure of NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, though that stock has been down considerably today, around 5 % or 6%. But investors betting it's not going to derail the whole AI trade. Let's bring in CNBC contributor Payne Capital's Courtney Garcia and JPMorgan's Jordan Jackson. Guys, welcome. So, Courtney, is this part of your thesis, I believe, finally playing out that maybe there was a little bit too much tech focus and concentration with the big tech names? Jordan, I know that you've had a bit of that opinion, too. I mean, what's the broader impact of some of this controversy that we're seeing around NVIDIA and questioning of the AI trade?

32:48Yeah, so just to clarify, yeah, I think our thesis was, yeah, maybe people were over-concentrated on AI. I don't think my thesis was that Jensen Wong was going to be out as CEO. I don't think any of us saw that coming. But I do think realistically here, you know, I don't think the AI story is over. I think if this was last week and we were talking after the midterm elections and people were really, you were getting this knee-jerk reaction that these data centers weren't going to get built out. And then today when you got the news that Jensen Wong was being removed as CEO, you saw the markets reacting pretty negatively to that.

33:15But after people have had some time to digest that, the markets are holding up pretty well here, which I think is a good sign. because there was a genuine question of can the broader markets hold up without an NVIDIA or without the semiconductors? And they are. That's exactly what I like to see here. And it's exactly why as an investor, you want to be broadened out. So not just owning one company like NVIDIA or just the semiconductors, you want to make sure you have that entire exposure because plenty of things are holding up well here. And it's a perfect example of that. Jordan, what I wonder about on behalf of investors is just how interconnected all of this is.

33:46If we look at previous financial crises, We're always wondering if there's going to be another one. There's a surprise about, oh, boy, I didn't realize how entangled all of that debt was or those bets were. We know that when it comes to AI, including NVIDIA, there is a lot of entanglement in the leverage, in the investments, etc. How much do investors need to think about that, even if they're investing in broad baskets of stocks? And are there places to go that are safer?

34:18John Ford: Yeah, so there's a number of pieces to that. I think the first is what investors are grappling with is the circularity of the deal flow. And that has been a risk to the market for quite some time. I mean, when you have a company that's selling shovels, but also financing the guy and gal purchasing the shovels, that circularity becomes a little bit of a concern. So certainly something to watch for. But I think as we look at broadening out, if we look at what we're hearing from other companies, there has been not a single company that has suggested that demand for compute is waning. The dynamic continues to be a very robust backdrop for demand for compute, that was just continued demand for chips.

34:54John Ford: And I think this is actually presenting itself as a buying opportunity where we've seen valuations across these cohorts of names come down quite significantly. I mean, you look at the queues, valuation-wise, they're down about 25%, 30%. so far in the year. And so perhaps a lot of the risks that investors are worried about are already in the price. Courtney, what I wonder about when I hear that makes a lot of sense. It's not as if in late 99, early 2000, 2001, the internet buildout was slowing down. It's not as if people stopped buying stuff on Amazon or slowed down buying stuff on eBay. There really was a move toward that technology.

35:32And yet there was also a dot-com bubble and a dot-com crash. What are the signals that investors should be looking for beyond the existence of demand to understand whether the market's going to continue to respond as excitedly with as high valuations as it has up to this point? Well, I don't think the valuations at this point in time are anywhere near what we saw before the tech bubble burst. And I think that is the reality here. And especially like when you bring up semiconductors, those valuations have actually come down quite a bit. When you look at the PE multiples, they're looking attractive, not at bubble values.

36:05And I think here when you're looking at the overall ecosystem, the question is who is going to benefit and who is not. So when you have something like a core weave, you have people are questioning. When you have a company like that that has a lot of leverage on their balance sheet, now interest rates possibly going up, that may not be a good thing as a longer term investment if the buildout slows down. But a lot of your bigger players here who have these diversified businesses to sustain that even if this buildout is slower than people expect, they can continue to move forward and finance these buildouts.

36:33Those are the kind of companies you want to look at. And I don't think any of these valuations, though they're high, are not stretched to what we saw previously. So, you know, I'm hard-pressed to say that we're at those levels. Still, Jordan, how should investors look at international exposure?

36:47John Ford: Well, I'm not going to be the person that's going to pound the table and say international is going to outperform the U.S. like it did in 2025. I just don't have that much conviction in that call. But what I will say is that as we've been talking about, U.S. markets become more and more concentrated in the AI theme, whether that be hyperscalers, semis, power, hardware, software. As that concentration continues to grow, we're talking about more companies going, you know, IPO-ing, that further increases potentially that concentration risk. I would say that international is that area where you can look to find that truly diversified, uncorrelated equity return stream.

37:21John Ford: And particularly markets like Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia, more of those real-world economy type of value indices and benchmarks where you're getting industrials and financials and more of that cyclical value play. And that has really proven to be a nice uncorrelated return stream relative to the U.S. Helped to balance out some of that AI exposure. Maybe a little less exciting, maybe a little more safe. We'll see. Jordan, Courtney, thank you. Thanks, Hannah. Up next, we are tracking the biggest movers on the back of this NVIDIA news. Pippa Stevens is standing by with that. Hey, John, so there's chips, neoclouts and power stocks all moving, but in different directions.

37:59The names to watch coming up next. Ten minutes to the closing bell. Let's get back to Pippa Stevens for a look at the key stocks to watch. Pippa. Well, John, we're looking at the A.I. trade outside of NVIDIA, starting with the chips. AMD is jumping as William Blair takes the stock to outperform, saying it can take market share from competitors Intel and NVIDIA as AMD stays, quote, focused on execution. Broadcom is also higher, though AI infrastructure named Supermicro is dropping. On a Bloomberg report, the DOJ is investigating whether Alice Wong was involved in smuggling products. Neocloud names, including CoreWeave, are in the red, giving back some of yesterday's gains after earnings.

38:34Nebbi is tumbling some 18 percent after hiking its 2026 forecast for CapEx spending. NVIDIA holds a stake in both companies. AI Energy and infrastructure names on the move as well. Riot Platforms and TerraWolf in the red. alongside Qantas Services and Eaton. Hot 8, though, is in the green with some of the AI-adjacent independent power producers, including Vistra, Constellation, NRG, also in the green, clawing back some of their post-midterms losses. John? All right, Pippa, thank you. Up next, more fallout from Jensen Huang's departure from NVIDIA as we count down to critical earnings from Applied Materials.

39:10That and a lot more when we take you inside the market zone. Be right back. We are now in the closing bell market zone. Mike Santoli and CNBC contributor Neuberger, Vernon's Shannon Sikosha are here to break down these crucial moments of the trading day. Plus, Oliver Rennick standing by live from the CBO Global Markets in Chicago. And Seema Modi looking ahead to applied materials earnings in overtime. Mike, we've been talking for a while. It seems like all year, maybe beyond, about how there's a baton pass from one group within the S &P to another. One that hasn't dropped the baton in a while has been NVIDIA, at least not like this.

39:51That's right, John.

39:52John Ford: And, you know, it's impressive, but maybe not entirely surprising that the market is working its hardest to essentially create another one of those kind of seamless rotations. There's some wear and tear on the overall index at this point as the day has gone on. But one way that the market's been able to mitigate the effect of NVIDIA is NVIDIA this week is down about$530 billion in market cap. Broadcom and AMD together up 540. So it's essentially a direct offset. That being said, the macro is not cooperating today. You do have yields higher. This sort of notion of tightening financial conditions, the majority of stocks are in the red on the day.

40:28John Ford: You know, look, we're still working off this bounce that we got going, you know, starting from Thursday's low. It still has to kind of prove itself from here. I wouldn't say today sort of changes that whole trajectory. but it's sort of the first few percent are easier than the next, I would say. Lots of November surprises for sure. We'll see if that calms down. Now let's get over to Oliver Rennick over at SIBO. Oliver. Hey, John, NVIDIA's time under Jensen Wong is ending with the same explosive options trading that powered much of this stock under his watch. Almost 9 million options traded today, second only to SPY by volume.

41:08and for a total options premium of nearly$6 billion, more than the dollar amount traded in SPY, QQQ, and IWM combined. The biggest trades today in NVIDIA were mostly bulls rolling down their call strikes, but in many cases, keeping or upping the size of their bets, a trade I'd describe as neutral, leaning, bullish. What's very telling is the 6 % to 7 % implied move for next week's earnings, meaning if those numbers are good, NVIDIA stock could easily recoup today's losses. Perhaps a bigger takeaway, though, is that NVIDIA competitor AMD was the third most traded single name by volume, thanks mostly to aggressive retail call buyers.

41:53And Intel also showed up with some big put sellers betting on a bottom for that stock, John. All right, Oliver, thank you. Now to Seema Modi with a final look at Applied Materials. Speaking of chips, ahead of the print there, Seema. So, John, Applied Materials sliding today after rallying earlier this week, along with its peers in the semi-equipment space. AMAT specializes in wafer fab equipment, earnings sort of seen as a good proxy on demand for AI chips and the health of China's semiconductor market at a time when questions have emerged on whether Chinese companies have become more self-sufficient, relying less on U.S.

42:25suppliers. Applied Materials makes about 20 percent of its total sales in China. And the stock has fallen about 45 percent from its recent high, driven in part by ongoing supply constraints and this broader turn that we've seen in chip stocks as of late earnings after the bell, John. Just seeing those numbers, Seema, thanks. I know you are, too. Let's bring in CNBC contributor Newbergers, Shannon Sakosha. Shannon, wow, this news, when you digest it, is this really just an NVIDIA story or at what point does it become a market story? Well, I think it's a market story because NVIDIA is such a big part of the market, John.

43:01I mean, I think we can deny that. I mean, we see the rotation today into other semiconductor stocks. We came into this news on a bit of a rocky path for AI into this day. If we look at the course of the last several weeks, you know, you only have two sectors of the S &P 500 that are down this month, and it's energy and technology. And so I do think that there's a lot underneath the surface that gives us some comfort that this broadening out trade is starting to take hold and may alleviate some of the pain from NVIDIA. But I think it also speaks to governance. And we've talked about this in terms of what are these new IPOs that are going to be potentially launching over the course of the next couple of months?

43:42What is the governance structure look like for those? Are there going to be increased questions? We have a lot of changes coming in Washington in January. and how will that impact the longer-term AI buildup, it just speaks to a lot of potential ripple effects in and around AI. Shannon, Jensen Huang, over the last couple of years, seemed tireless. He was showing up either in person or virtually at every tech conference, it seemed like, supporting all sorts of partners, as well as talking up NVIDIA's own pipeline and then making these investments on NVIDIA's behalf, but propping up the AI trade.

44:17If he stops doing that, should investors believe that it didn't really matter that much to begin with? Well, I think he's been both an ambassador and a financier, right? And so if we think about the concerns about circular financing, if there is, you know, NVIDIA has to pull back on some of that spending, it's likely to be filled elsewhere in the capital stack. I think that's an important point. I think the interest, the investor interest and the liquidity is there to continue investing in AI. And maybe NVIDIA is not, you know, sort of the front edge of that any longer, but there are going to be other people.

44:53OK, OK. Well, you know who's not down in this market is this group here for the closing bell. They are excited to see how much that excitement changes into the last day of the trading week. That's what you do. For closing down, not standing into overtime is known for me. And that can't hold.

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