Jensen Huang’s departure from Nvidia has put the leadership behind the artificial intelligence boom under scrutiny, exposing a risk for miners counting on new data centres and power projects to lift metals demand.
Huang resigned Thursday as Nvidia’s (Nasdaq: NVDA) CEO, president and director, with chief financial officer Colette Kress taking over on an interim basis. His departure followed reports of affairs that raised questions about corporate governance and US national security.
“This kind of situation would be damaging at any company but is exacerbated by just how strong the key person risk is perceived to be at Nvidia,” Russ Mould, investment director at UK-based AJ Bell with £126 billion ($167 billion) under administration, said by email before the resignation. “Huang is the man who led the business to become the poster child of the [artificial intelligence] story and for a time the largest company on earth.”
For miners, the exposure lies in the construction and financing behind that growth. A prolonged loss of confidence could delay buildings, electrical connections and power generation, pushing metal purchases into later years. The scale of any demand loss would depend on which projects are postponed or cancelled.
Confidence and spending
Nvidia shares fell as low as $148 (C$210) Thursday morning, about 30% below the $210 level seen last week, before recovering to trade 7.7% weaker on the day.
BMO Capital Markets cut its Nvidia share-price target by 29% to $240 from $340 and removed the company as its top pick in a note issued late Wednesday. It maintained its outperform rating.
“We remain bullish on [artificial intelligence]; however, the latest scandal is an overhang,” BMO semiconductor analyst Harsh Kumar wrote.
Kumar said a leadership transition could remove distractions, but wanted clarity on a successor before reassessing his position. His note preceded both Huang’s departure and Kress’s appointment.
BMO projected Nvidia revenue of $410.9 billion in the fiscal year ending January 2027 and $698.9 billion the following year, an increase of 70%. Those forecasts concern chip and related technology sales, not metal purchases, but show that a sharply lower share-price target can coexist with expectations for substantial business growth.
Watch the builders
The scale of existing spending helps explain why an immediate collapse in physical demand is far from certain. Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) invested $45.2 billion, including finance leases, in the quarter ended Sept. 30. It expects calendar-year spending of about $170 billion and more than $50 billion in the December quarter, chief financial officer Amy Hood said on its Oct. 28 call.
Alphabet (Nasdaq: GOOGL) maintained its $195-billion to $205-billion spending forecast for 2026 and expects a significant increase in 2027, chief financial officer Anat Ashkenazi said on its earnings call the same day. Those forecasts predate Huang’s departure and could still be revised.
For miners, the composition of those budgets matters. About three-quarters of Microsoft’s quarterly spending went to shorter-lived assets, mainly processors, including higher memory and storage costs. Alphabet put about 65% of its technical infrastructure investment into servers and networking equipment and the rest into data centres, the companies said.
A dollar cut from a chip order cannot be translated directly into a proportional loss of copper demand. Moving workloads to another chip supplier could preserve much of the infrastructure requirement, although equipment designs and metal use would differ. The relevant changes would be fewer buildings, smaller electrical connections or delayed power projects.
More than AI
Copper has one of the clearest connections to the building boom because it carries electricity through power systems and data centres. But AI is only one part of the demand growth on which the mining industry is betting.
Global copper consumption could rise from 28 million tonnes in 2025 to 42 million in 2040, S&P Global forecast in its January study. AI, data centres and their associated power generation account for about 2 million tonnes of the increase; broader economic development and electrification remain the largest drivers.
Those figures suggest a sustained AI slowdown could weaken an important source of copper growth without removing the metal’s wider demand base. They are long-range projections, however, and cannot measure the effect of one executive’s departure on next year’s purchases.
Timing may prove more important than cancellation. Copper bought for a substation or cooling system is needed during construction. A delay can move that demand into another year even if the eventual computing capacity remains unchanged.
Different risks for other metals
Aluminium would also be exposed to a slower construction cycle. Data-centre development supports North American demand in electrical and other industrial applications, consultancy CRU said in an October presentation. The relevant test is whether planned buildings and electrical systems proceed, rather than Nvidia’s valuation alone.
Silver offers a warning against treating AI as the whole market. AI infrastructure supported consumption in 2025, yet total industrial silver demand fell 3% as solar manufacturers reduced silver use and adopted substitutes, the Silver Institute said in April, citing research by Metals Focus.
For uranium, the link runs through decisions to restart, expand or build nuclear reactors. Microsoft’s 20-year agreement supports Constellation Energy’s (Nasdaq: CEG) planned restart of the 835-megawatt Crane plant in Pennsylvania. Constellation currently targets 2027 for its return to service.
A restart creates fuel requirements that differ from a data-centre contract redirecting electricity from an existing reactor. A prolonged investment slowdown could make speculative new nuclear projects harder to finance, but would not by itself remove the needs of operating reactors.
China policy risk
Nvidia’s board opened an independent investigation on Nov. 8 into reports that Huang had been targeted by a foreign intelligence effort. The board said then that it had no reason to believe national security or company secrets had been compromised.
The controversy could also have consequences beyond Nvidia’s management. Eurasia Group president Ian Bremmer anticipated major US government investigations and questioned Huang’s argument that selling chips to China increases American influence in a Nov. 9 commentary. China already sees American chip supplies as vulnerable to political restrictions and is working to develop its own capabilities, he argued.
The metals implications would depend on the policy response. Restrictions that delay data centres would postpone purchases, while a shift to other chip suppliers or locations could preserve much of the demand.
Financing test
“Data centre investments have grown too large to be funded from company balance sheets alone,” the International Energy Agency said in an April assessment.
The IEA projected in April that global data-centre electricity use would roughly double from 485 terawatt-hours in 2025 to 950 in 2030. It also identified constraints in grids, energy equipment and chip supply. Huang’s departure adds another potential execution risk to a buildout already facing physical limits.
Nvidia’s Nov. 17 results offer the next scheduled test of orders, deliveries and management’s outlook. For metals producers, subsequent revisions to customer spending, construction schedules and power contracts would provide stronger evidence of a demand change than the first stock-market reaction.
Nvidia’s new chairman, Harvey Jones, said Thursday that the company expected its operations, customer commitments and product development to continue without interruption. BMO’s assessment before the resignation also left room for the buildout to proceed despite the leadership shock.
“A leadership transition is likely the appropriate course of action to remove distractions,” Kumar wrote before Huang’s departure.
Source: https://www.mining.com/nvidia-turmoil-tests-metals-demand-boom/
