Nvidia lost $550 billion in market value in the five days Jensen Huang's scandal dominated headlines, the BBC reported.
Huang had hired his own crisis communications firm, Heller, about a year before any of it went public, according to Wired.
Nvidia's press staff were then told to copy Heller on every inquiry about Huang, personal or professional.
The board has since hired law firm Wachtell Lipton for its inquiry and an outside search firm to find Huang's replacement.
The company's communications otherwise run through an in-house team of roughly 70 to 80 people, Business Insider reported in October.
Huang resigned on Nov. 12, four days after he apologized for being "unfaithful to my wife."
Reports had linked him to a businesswoman suspected of spying for China.
Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress is now interim CEO while the board searches for a permanent replacement.
More than $400 billion of the loss came in the first two trading days after Huang's apology, CBS News reported.
Companies that let one founder speak for the brand need a crisis communications plan to shorten the days between a first report and a board decision.
A PR agency can build this plan with pre-approved statements and a stakeholder map, so every audience hears one consistent message on day one.
A typical PR agency retainer runs $5,000 to $15,000 a month.
A global company like Nvidia sits in the enterprise tier, where retainers run $15,000 to $40,000 or more a month.
This fee buys an agency that already knows the company's investors, lawmakers, and reporters, so it can draft a first statement within hours.
With over $400 billion gone in the first two trading days alone, Nvidia's case shows how every day a board waits for a crisis plan carries a real price tag.
Heller Signed On After the Megaspeed Report
Huang brought Heller in shortly after an October 2025 New York Times report on Nvidia chip sales to Megaspeed, a Singapore data center firm.
This report showed the businesswoman, Megaspeed executive Alice Huang, standing beside him at a Taipei gathering of Nvidia customers.
Founder Risa Heller has advised prominent men through personal scandals, including former congressman Anthony Weiner and chef Mario Batali.
Wired reported it remains unclear whether the firm's work for Huang involved the affair.
Mylene Mangalindan, a Brunswick Group alum, has led Nvidia's corporate communications since joining as vice president in 2023.
The order to copy Heller on every Huang question gave a firm working for him a seat in her team's press process.
With Huang gone, Kress now has to steady customers, employees, and investors through the CEO search.
She'll have to do it for a company whose public voice for 33 years was Huang.
Companies in Nvidia's position can keep investor and customer updates with their in-house communications team.
But they also need a PR agency that reports to the company itself, hired well ahead of any scandal.
This agency can start exit planning at the first warning sign and media-train a successor before investors panic.
Remember that a founder's personal crisis firm protects the founder first, which leaves the company's side of the story to the in-house team.
Wired's Heller report was released a day after Huang's apology, so the firm hired to manage his story also became part of it.
The hire raised questions about whether Huang saw trouble coming a year early, and Nvidia's own press team had to field them.
Dan Ives Prices Huang at 25% of Nvidia's Value
Corporate reputation drives 23.8% of S&P 500 market value, or about $14.9 trillion, Echo Research's 2026 Reputation Dividend report found.
Analyst Dan Ives estimated that Nvidia was worth $225 per share without Huang and $300 with him, a 25% gap.
Newsweek put that gap at roughly $1.8 trillion of Nvidia's hypothetical value, all riding on one executive.
Founder-led companies carry this exposure whenever the founder fronts keynotes, ads, and announcements.
Nvidia's share price shows what this exposure costs once the founder becomes the entire story.
Lawmakers have asked Huang to appear on Dec. 1 and Dec. 3 and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Dec. 10, keeping Nvidia in the news.
Each date gives a company-side agency a fixed deadline for prepared statements and press briefings.
Founder-led brands can take three lessons from Nvidia's week into their next crisis communications review.
Audit Executives Against Your Own Code
Agencies should run a confidential reputation audit on top executives, testing their conduct against the company's own code.
Governance experts told CBS News that Huang's relationship appeared to breach Nvidia's own code of conduct.
Put the Successor in Front of Investors Early
Agencies should give the likely interim CEO regular airtime on earnings calls and at investor events, so markets already know the voice.
Kress, Nvidia's CFO since 2013, is expected to speak on the company's Nov. 17 earnings call five days after Huang's exit.
Brief Employees Before Reporters Do
A crisis plan should include an internal briefing, so staff hear the company's position before they read it in the news.
An Nvidia staffer told the BBC that rank-and-file workers mostly brushed off the first reports until the second affair surfaced.
Each lesson moves part of the founder's public role to the company ahead of a crisis, a step that any founder-led brand should plan for.
Our Take: Who Should Sign the Crisis Agency’s Contract?
The BBC reported that Nvidia officials and a personal representative for Huang both declined to comment this week.
These are two separate parties with interests that no longer match.
We'd have the board sign a founder-led company's crisis agency contract, with the chair or an independent director as the client contact.
Nvidia only named Harvey C. Jones its first-ever board chair on Nov. 12, the day Huang resigned.
This setup lets the agency start work the day a scandal breaks without waiting for the founder to approve a plan about himself.
The board should sign while the founder is still popular, during a calm news week that leaves time to map succession messaging.
Nvidia named an interim CEO and opened a search in the same release as the resignation, a structure that an agency can draft months in advance.
The board should also call the agency in when the first report points to more.
The New York Times reported Huang's second relationship on Wednesday, the board met the same day, and Huang resigned on Thursday.
And the agency should be in place before lawmakers set the calendar, since Congress picks the hearing dates.
Any founder-led company paying its crisis agency through the CEO's office should ask who the agency answers to when the board and the founder disagree.
We'd put this question in every pitch, because firms that have handled it before can answer it in one sentence.
Brands comparing crisis communications partners can explore top public relations firms on DesignRush.
