HONG KONG — Asian shares mostly declined Friday as investors assess what Jensen Huang's resignation as Nvidia CEO means for the global artificial intelligence industry.
U.S. futures edged lower following earlier losses on Wall Street, which saw Nvidia falling more than 4% after Huang’s exit from the company.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.5% to 61,142.35. Shares of chip equipment maker Tokyo Electron were up 1.7%, while memory maker Kioxia Holdings dropped 2.3% and OpenAI investor SoftBank Group lost 5.1%.
South Korea’s benchmark Kospi index declined 1% to 5,290.53. Samsung Electronics, one of South Korea’s most valuable companies, was down 1%. Memory chipmaker SK Hynix fell 3%.
Taiwan’s Taiex was up 1.4%, with its leading chipmaker TSMC, or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., adding 0.4%.
The resignation of Jensen Huang, who co-founded the company and had been a key architect of Nvidia's AI strategy and the broader global AI boom, has raised questions about how his departure could affect AI development. Huang had been the face of Nvidia and was deemed by some in the industry as bigger than Nvidia itself.
The announcement of his resignation came Thursday after his affair raised U.S. national security concerns, with Nvidia's longtime chief financial officer Colette Kress stepping in as interim CEO.
Many AI hardware stocks across Asia have been highly dependent on the speed of AI infrastructure development in the U.S.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was down 1.6% to 23,629.58. The Shanghai Composite index slid 0.6% to 3,634.35.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 slipped 0.7% to 9,082.20.
India’s Sensex fell 0.6%.
On Thursday, Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 slipped 0.4%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.4%, while the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite also declined 0.4%.
Shares of some of Nvidia’s rivals rose on Thursday. AMD, or Advanced Micro Devices, rose 5.9%.
Stocks were also under broad pressure from an increase in oil prices after U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday the U.S. didn't "need a deal with Iran" even as the conflict in the Middle East drags on.
“We don’t need a deal with Iran,” he posted on social media. “Those days have long since passed. We’ve got their money, Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we’ve got their Strait!”
Early Friday oil prices stabilized, with Brent crude, the international standard, edging up 0.5% to $96.31 a barrel. It was roughly at $72 per barrel in late February before the Iran war began.
Benchmark U.S. crude was down 0.1% to $88.69 a barrel.
The U.S. dollar fell to 159.82 Japanese yen from 159.84 yen. The euro was trading at $1.1064, up from $1.1055.
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AP Business Writer Stan Choe contributed to this report.