“The Don Has Fallen.” Michael Burry Says Nvidia Is Losing Its “Enforcer,” Warns “The Key-Man Risk at NVIDIA Always Was a Worry” and Cites Reports Jensen Huang Had as Many as 60 Direct Reports and Delegated Little
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Michael Burry, the investor made famous by The Big Short, did not wait for Nvidia’s announcement. At 12:06 AM ET on Thursday, more than eight hours before Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) said Jensen Huang had resigned, Burry posted to his Substack, Cassandra Unchained, under the title “The Don Goes Down: What Jensen’s Fall Means.”
“The Don has fallen,” he wrote.
By 8:47 AM, it was official. Nvidia said Huang had resigned as president, CEO and a member of the board, effective immediately. Chief financial officer Colette Kress is interim CEO, as we profiled earlier, and director Harvey C. Jones became the board’s first-ever chair. We covered what history says about companies left without a permanent CEO here.
Nvidia opened at $151.01, fell as low as $148.80, about $2.18 trillion below its October 6 record value, and was at $166.11 at 11:15 AM ET, down 4.4% from Wednesday’s close and 31% below its record.
What Burry wrote
Burry’s case is about how Nvidia was run. “According to reports out of TechCrunch and Axios, the Don had as many as 60 direct reports and delegated little,” he wrote. Huang has described his setup himself in interviews: about 60 people reporting directly to him and no one-on-one meetings, with problems worked through in groups.
That structure is why Burry doubts a smooth handoff. Kress may step in, he wrote the night before the announcement, “presumably as there is evidently no direct operating report with global knowledge of the company.” And: “I do not see Colette or any new CEO replacing the Don seamlessly.”
His bluntest line was about what Huang was to the company. “The Don was the Enforcer. NVIDIA is losing both.” And the one investors will remember: “The key-man risk at NVIDIA always was a worry.”
Where Burry stands on Nvidia
Burry has bet against Nvidia before. His firm Scion’s filing for the third quarter of 2025 showed put options on 1 million Nvidia shares, a position that profits if the stock falls. In September 2026 he said he had closed his December 2026 Nvidia puts. The public part of Thursday’s post does not say whether he holds a position now, and he no longer files the quarterly reports that would show it.
What key-man risk means for your money
Key-man risk is the chance that a company’s value depends on one person. Investors priced some of it in on Thursday. At $166.11, Nvidia is worth about $4.01 trillion, and it has never had another CEO in its 33 years.
The next test comes fast. Nvidia reports third-quarter results on November 17, its first report since Huang left. Kress has walked Wall Street through Nvidia’s numbers on its earnings calls for 13 years; this time she is also the interim CEO.
For a retiree, the question is less whether Burry is right and more how much of your money rides on the answer. Nvidia is about 6% of the S&P 500 and a larger share of the Nasdaq-100, so most index-fund and target-date investors own it without picking it. Add that to any shares you hold directly. If the total is more than about 10% of your portfolio, a CEO search with no timeline is a reason to trim, ideally inside an IRA, where selling does not trigger a tax bill.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
AJ spent 10 years writing about financial markets at The Motley Fool. His coverage centers on technology stocks and the broader macroeconomic trends, from interest rates to geopolitics, that shape where markets are headed next. AJ is drawn to the stories where big-picture economics and individual companies collide.
