Nvidia leadership change puts Asian chipmakers on watch, analysts say

What the leadership change means now

Nvidia's leadership shake-up, with Jensen Huang leaving and Colette Kress taking over as interim chief executive, has unsettled parts of the chip industry. According to CNBC, analysts do not expect immediate disruption for the company's major Asian suppliers, including Samsung Electronics and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.

The deeper concern is whether Nvidia can keep up the pace of innovation and the close partner relationships that Huang built as the firm became dominant in artificial intelligence chips. That question now matters to investors and suppliers alike.

Analysts see supply ties holding steady

In a research note published on Friday 13 November 2026, Nam Dae-jong and Kim Yeon-mi of South Korean brokerage Daol Investment & Securities argued that Huang's exit should not change the semiconductor industry's near-term outlook. They did, however, flag uncertainty about Nvidia's medium- to long-term product roadmap and how new leadership will work with partners across the AI ecosystem.

The analysts expect the foundry relationship with TSMC to stay as it is, given how established the partnership is. They also expect cooperation with Samsung's foundry business to continue, pointing to manufacturing on Samsung's 4-nanometer process and joint work on next-generation high-bandwidth memory, a type of fast memory used alongside AI processors.

Markets react with caution

Shares of SK Hynix, another key Nvidia supplier, gave up earlier gains to close 3.03% lower on Friday, according to CNBC. South Korea's Kospi index also turned lower during the session.

Shinhan Securities said in a note that investors had at first set aside worries about the leadership change and concentrated on the wider outlook for the AI industry. iM Securities judged the effect on the broader semiconductor sector to be limited, noting gains in AMD and Broadcom shares in the previous United States session and continued investment demand for AI companies.

Partners seek answers from new leadership

ASUS co-chief executive S.Y. Hsu told CNBC's Squawk Box Asia that the change was unlikely to alter Nvidia's competitive advantages in the near term. He said the Taiwanese company, which works with Nvidia on graphics cards and AI servers, would monitor any impact on product quality, service costs and deliveries.

Hsu said ASUS had not yet interacted with interim chief executive Colette Kress and was seeking a meeting to understand any possible strategic changes. Over the longer term, he credited Huang with helping Nvidia and its partners speed up innovation, and said he would watch whether that pace can continue without him.

Competition and what comes next

Daol's analysts noted that custom AI chips, known as application-specific integrated circuits or ASICs, are emerging as alternatives to Nvidia's graphics processors. They said this trend could speed up diversification in the AI chip market.

At the same time, they warned against reading rising competition as a sign of weaker demand for memory semiconductors, particularly high-bandwidth memory. For now, the main open question is Nvidia's longer-term roadmap, given how central Huang was to business strategy and how resources were allocated.