Nvidia Directors Hire Outside Counsel as Shareholder Suit Lands

Nvidia's independent directors retained Joon H. Kim and his firm, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, on Tuesday, November 10, 2026, to run the board's independent investigation. Kim is a former acting United States attorney for the Southern District of New York. The appointment came one day after a shareholder filed a proposed securities class action against the company and Chief Executive Jensen Huang in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. [The American Quorum: Nvidia shareholder sues as board names outside counsel]

The suit, Kistenmacher v. NVIDIA Corporation, case number 5:26-cv-13448, alleges the company misled investors about its dealings with Singapore data center firm Megaspeed and about Huang's relationship with a Megaspeed executive. Nvidia shares fell 5.47 percent on Tuesday to $168.89.

The board opened its investigation on Sunday, November 8, after reporting that Huang had been the target of a foreign intelligence effort. Its statement said the directors had no reason to believe United States national security or Nvidia's confidential business information was compromised. The complaint, filed Monday, November 9, tells a narrower story about disclosure. It says Huang acknowledged an intimate relationship with the executive to the board by email, and that the company's public statements didn't carry that fact.

Three statements sit at the center of the filing. A company spokesman, John Rizzo, said in late October that Huang's interactions with the executive were “not unusual or unexpected.” The company had earlier said it found “no evidence of diversion” of its chips. Huang told Bloomberg on October 30 that Nvidia's dealings with Megaspeed were “normal and not unusual.” The suit argues those characterizations omitted the relationship. It seeks damages for everyone who bought Nvidia securities between October 9, 2025, and November 8, 2026. [TechCrunch: The race is on to sue Nvidia]

Nothing in the complaint has been tested in court, and Nvidia hasn't answered it. The executive at the center of the reporting, Alice Huang, hasn't been charged with any offense. United States officials reportedly concluded she acted as a Chinese intelligence asset; China's foreign ministry has pushed back on the allegation. The board's inquiry has published no findings and set no deadline.

The market has already voted twice. Shares fell $7.97, or 4.27 percent, to $178.67 on Monday, November 9, a drop Reuters valued at roughly $190 billion of market capitalization. They fell another $9.78, or 5.47 percent, on Tuesday. Across the two sessions the stock lost 9.5 percent, and it now trades about 30 percent below its recent peak.

The next date on the docket is mechanical: federal securities law gives rival plaintiff firms a 60-day window to compete for the lead plaintiff appointment, the role that controls the case. The board's investigators face no such clock. One of the two processes will produce a document first.