13/11/2026

FRIDAY | NOV 13, 2026

17

BIZ & FINANCE

Nvidia board meets to decide Huang’s future

AI boom powers Siemens to record annual profit FRANKFURT: German engineering giant Siemens posted record annual profit yesterday and said it saw growth ahead as the artificial intelligence boom sweeps up European companies in its supply chain. US tech giants such as Microsoft and Meta have together invested hundreds of billions of dollars in AI data centres, boosting the fortunes of companies like Siemens that make much of the electrical and cooling equipment needed to operate the sites. Swiss competitor ABB in October posted order growth of 40 percent for the three months to end-September, while France’s Schneider Electric in the same month said sales growth over the period had beaten expectations. Reporting results for its fiscal year to end September, Siemens said its core industrial profit, which strips out some effects such as last year’s sale of motor-maker Innomotics, rose 13 per cent to €13.3 billion (RM60 billion) for the year. Siemens said it expected further growth in the current business year, guiding for sales growth of between nine and 11 per cent across the company as well as broadly stable or higher profit margins at its two biggest divisions. In the longer term, Siemens said it was now targeting sales growth of between seven and 11 per cent a year, up from six to nine, as well as annual earnings per share growth of at least 10 percent, up from single-digit growth. “Fiscal 2026 was an outstanding year for Siemens,“ CEO Roland Busch said in a statement. “We are providing an ambitious outlook for fiscal 2027 and are raising our group-level mid-term targets.” For the fourth quarter, orders – an indicator of future sales – at Siemens’smart infrastructure business rose 40 per cent to €8.67 billion, helped by “numerous larger contract wins from data centre customers”, Siemens said. Orders at Siemens’ digital industries division, which makes software for engineering and automation, rose 16 percent over the same period to €6.41 billion. Under Busch, Siemens has pivoted towards higher-margin software products in recent years as part of its “Industrial AI” strategy. – AFP UK economy grows 0.7% in third quarter LONDON: Britain’s economy expanded in line with expectations in the third quarter, official data showed yesterday, as spending on the AI boom helped offset the fallout from the US-Iran war. Gross domestic product grew 0.7 per cent in the July-September period, up from a revised expansion of 0.5 per cent in the second quarter, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said in a statement. The growth was driven by the strength of the services sector, particularly computer programming, which has helped lift growth all year, according to the ONS. “Many of the businesses reporting the largest increases in turnover are involved in activities related to artificial intelligence and cloud computing,“ the ONS said. The Bank of England last week lifted its UK economic growth forecast for this year and next, citing strength in business investment linked to AI-related demand. The central bank delivered its forecasts as it raised its benchmark interest rate for the first time in more than three years as soaring energy costs push up global inflation. “The Middle East conflict has hit growth worldwide, yet Britain is showing stand-out resilience,“ Finance Minister John Healey said in response to yesterday’s figures. Along with Ukraine’s strikes on Russian refineries, disruptions to Gulf energy supplies owing to the US-Iran war have caused record-high diesel prices around the world. – AFP

SAN FRANCISCO: Nvidia’s board is meeting to decide whether to oust CEO Jensen Huang, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters, as the world’s dominant supplier of AI chips grapples with fallout from reports of two extramarital affairs involving its longtime leader. Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the board meeting, which went late into the night on Wednesday. The meeting marks a sharp shift from Sunday, when Nvidia’s board expressed confidence in Huang and his leadership team. Under Nvidia’s bylaws, Huang can be removed “with or without cause” by a majority vote of directors. Nvidia has 11 directors and considers all but Huang independent. Nvidia’s stock slid around 7% in early Frankfurt trading yesterday after the Wall Street Journal first reported that the company was preparing to fire Huang. If those losses hold, Nvidia will have lost about US$600 billion in market value since the board announced its investigation into his relationship with a businesswoman called Alice Huang alleged to be a Chinese spy. Revelations that US intelligence was probing Alice Huang for facilitating shipments of Nvidia chips to Chinese firms set off a series of events: Wall Street began raising questions about Nvidia’s governance and Jensen Huang’s personal conduct, while the company’s board launched an internal investigation and hired outside counsel. Lawmakers also began to push for tighter curbs on chip exports to China. China has denied the allegations. Reuters was not able to contact Alice Huang for comment. “The market is starting to price Nvidia without its founder as the likely outcome, not a tail risk,” said Armina Rosenberg, portfolio manager and co-founder of Minotaur Capital, which holds Nvidia shares. “Losing Jensen would be a real blow.” Bernstein and Oppenheimer both downgraded Nvidia following the latest developments and Citi cut its target. “A leadership transition creates an overhang on the stock given his central role in strategy, product vision, customer relationships, and investor confidence,” Citi analysts wrote. o Chip maker grapples with fallout from reports of two extramarital affairs involving CEO

Huang and President DonaldTrump at an‘Investing in America’ event in Washington last year. – REUTERSPIC

extramarital affair with a company executive who reported to him. The relationship was with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice-president of healthcare, the New York Times said, citing five people who worked at the company. When reached by phone on Wednesday and asked about his relationship with Powell, Huang said, “I don’t think you should be talking to me directly.” He then hung up, the New York Times reported. Nvidia and Powell did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Reuters could not immediately verify the report. US stock futures sank, with Nasdaq futures down 1%. Micron fell nearly 2% and CoreWeave dropped 6% in after-hours trading. However, shares of rival chipmakers AMD and Broadcom rose 4% and 3%, respectively. In Asia, Samsung Electronics rose about 1% while SK Hynix dipped 2%, as Nvidia partners and suppliers assess the potential ramifications of Huang’s possible ouster. Investors and analysts said while demand for Nvidia’s chips would be unlikely to drop in the near term, the broader universe of companies backed by Nvidia – largely customers building data centres that will use its chips – might suffer. “They are financing their customers. In these types of booms or bubbles, sometimes all it takes is a slowdown to shift it into the bust phase,” said Nick Ferres, chief investment officer at Vantage Point Asset Management in Singapore. – Reuters out requires massive investments. The rally in AI-related stocks that has buoyed markets this year was testament to investor confidence, but both equity and bond investors have recently grown more wary as inflation and high interest rates are making the endeavour even more expensive. Criteo works with OpenAI in 89 countries to develop advertising campaigns on AI chatbots. Komasinski said some 3,600 brands have trialled AI advertising campaigns and they have noted a modest increase in their spending on ChatGPT. He remains sceptical about AI agents being able to autonomously make purchases. “It’s actually really easy to order unimportant things, and things that are very important you would tend to not delegate to a bot,“ he said. – AFP

Huang’s potential departure would leave a leadership vacuum at the roughly US$4 trillion chipmaker he co-founded and built over more than three decades to become the top supplier of chips at the centre of the global AI boom and US-China technological rivalry. Huang, 63, has no obvious successor and owns about 3.6% of Nvidia’s stock. He also has dozens of direct reports, underscoring the tight control he maintains over the company. Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that Nvidia’s board has been working with an outside firm to identify potential replacements for Huang, citing a person familiar with the situation. Rosenberg said chief financial officer Colette Kress, who has held the role for more than a decade, would be the natural choice as an interim CEO, but said the bigger question was who would lead Nvidia’s technology roadmap longer term. Odds on prediction market website Polymarket shifted sharply to show an 88% chance that Huang would resign or be removed by the end of the year. Odds for his successor favoured Ian Buck, who oversees the business that serves Nvidia’s data centre clients. The leadership upheaval comes just days before investors are set to hear from the company on its financial performance and outlook, with its quarterly results due on Nov 17. Earlier on Wednesday, the New York Times reported that Huang had also had an

Many AI firms will adopt advertising: Criteo LISBON: Many AI platforms will end up eventually adopting advertising, the chief executive of the online advertising agency Criteo told AFP on Tuesday, as investors are focused on whether the technology will ever be profitable. colossal spending pushed OpenAI to begin testing advertising in ChatGPT in February in the United States for free and low-cost tier subscriptions. It has subsequently begun to progressively roll out ads worldwide, in cooperation with Criteo.

“I believe that a lot of AI platforms will find their way to advertising models over time,“ said the group’s chief executive Michael Komasinski on the sidelines of the Web Summit in Lisbon. “Advertising is the most scalable business model in the world. It has paid for most of the large platforms that we all use and enjoy today, whether it’s Google, Meta, Snapchat. “The ad formats will continue to become more interesting, more innovative, and certainly more native to that conversational experience,“ he added. Pressure to boost revenue to cover its

OpenAI’s rival Anthropic, which is set to imminently go public with a stock listing, has said it does not plan to integrate advertising in its AI tools due to data protection concerns as well as to protect the interests of its users. Microsoft has used ads in its public version of Copilot AI since 2023. Perplexity has experimented with ads in the United States since 2024. Google is considering integrating ads in Gemini. Developing AI models and rolling them