Shekhar Kapur — the globally celebrated director of Elizabeth (the 1998 movie was nominated for 8 Oscars), Bandit Queen and Mr. India, and a chartered accountant by training, raised an interesting point on the Nvidia Jensen Huang crisis on LinkedIn.

Earlier today, even as stories swirled about Huang's possible ouster after the discovery of a second affair, Kapur posted this on LinkedIn, "Here’s a question for you. If the valuation of one of the world’s most highly valued companies can drop so dramatically in a matter of days , where does the true value lie ?

I raised this point some time ago at a conference of chartered accountants ( I was a chartered accountant once) … when we sign on a balance sheet claiming that ‘to the best of our knowledge .. this balance sheet represents a true and fair value of our the state of the company’s affairs’ .. does it truly ?

In a world that changes on a dime .. can it ever ? Yes , we qualify the report .. but can we say that the 'Directors Report’ also represents the 'Moral Strength' of the CEO of the company ? Can auditors state that in the auditor’s report ? Obviously not. Then there is the question of ‘Branding’. Large companies are increasingly being associated with the ‘branding’ of their Leaders .. their CEO’s.. and so I raise the question of the ‘Valuation’ and ‘True Value’ of a company ... for in the modern world, they increasingly represent different things", adds Shekhar Kapur.

The question is interesting partly because of who asked it, one of the biggest names in film making and comics publishing. But for communications professionals, it is not abstract. PR has always argued that perception and narrative help shape what a business is really worth.

Reputation management moves a company’s value, and PR teams work hard to build the premium that a well-known CEO adds to a brand.

The valuation Jensen Huang built

Like many tech founders, Jensen Huang has a larger-than-life persona, and he rarely appears without his black Tom Ford leather jacket. One jacket he wore in 2023 sold at Sotheby’s for $960,000 (Fortune). His face is probably one of the most recognised in the world.

Huang’s personal brand and Nvidia have grown together. Nvidia’s value rose 71% in 2026, after 116% the year before (Transform). Kapur flagged the maths in December 2025, when Nvidia crossed $5 trillion. He compared AI valuations to the tulip mania of 1637 (LinkedIn).

Then the crisis hit. Earlier this week Huang admitted to an affair. The board opened an independent investigation into whether a Chinese intelligence operation had targeted him (Nvidia). Shareholders filed a lawsuit. The share price dropped 8%  hours after reports that the board was considering removing him (Indian Express). By one estimate, Nvidia’s India employees alone lost about $600 million on paper (Mint).

On 10 November, Nvidia’s independent directors said they had retained “former acting U.S. Attorney of the Southern District of New York Joon H. Kim and his firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to conduct a thorough and independent investigation as was announced on Sunday.” The statement was brief, and it did not express confidence in Huang.

Two days later, the board announced his exit. Huang has resigned as president, CEO and board member with immediate effect. CFO Colette Kress steps in as interim CEO, Harvey C. Jones becomes the board’s first-ever chair, and the board will search inside and outside the company for a permanent successor (Nvidia).

The market’s answer came fast. Nvidia sank 13% at the open and its value fell below $4 trillion (Yahoo Finance). CBS News reported that the company was on track to lose more than $700 billion since last week’s close (CBS News). The damage spread to companies that depend on Nvidia’s chips: CoreWeave fell nearly 12% and Nebius 17% (CNBC).

Kapur argues that no auditor’s report captures a CEO’s “moral strength”. This week the market priced it. Moral strength never appeared on the balance sheet, but it was in the valuation, and it left with Huang.

What comms teams should take from this

Keynotes, founder myths and the leather jacket build a premium that markets price in and no auditor can check. Nvidia has just shown what happens when that premium disappears. Four lessons follow.

1. Treat the CEO brand as an unaudited liability that sits off the balance sheet. If your valuation story rests on one person, you carry key-person risk and disclose none of it. Nvidia had no public succession plan (Yahoo Finance), and the market charged for that on day one. Infosys and Tata show that Indian markets punish uncertainty around a leader just as quickly.
2. Separate the man from the machine. Nvidia’s board did exactly this. Its announcement put Kress and the leadership team front and centre and promised that operations, customer commitments and the product roadmap would “continue without interruption” (Nvidia). The release did not quote Huang at all (CNBC). Analysts picked up the same line. Oppenheimer argued that Nvidia is more than its CEO, even as it downgraded the stock (Yahoo Finance).
3. Don’t let your principal describe facts that are still emerging. Nvidia called the matter “completely normal and not unusual”. Within a fortnight, those denials had become part of the evidence in the board’s probe (Fortune), and now the CEO has gone. People will quote a denial forever.
4. Nvidia-linked Indian brands should prepare now, not improvise later. The board has made the decision your plans should have anticipated. Next, watch for delivery disruptions, tighter export controls and Nvidia’s results on 17 November, and draft what you would say about each. Silence works only when it is a strategy, not when nobody has a plan.

Where does true value lie?

For communications professionals,  Nvidia is now our industry’s most public stress test. When the CEO is the brand and the brand is the valuation, who does the comms team owe its duty of care: the story, or the true value? Tell us what you think.