THE AFTERMATH: Jensen Huang's resignation this morning ends Nvidia's 33-year founder era, but it doesn't end the story. There's a search for a successor with no obvious candidate, an espionage case now touching four governments, a congressional hearing, and a growing roster of people offering their own picks for who should run the world's most important AI chipmaker.

Nvidia moved quickly to project continuity. In an internal memo, longtime director Harvey Jones told employees he would serve as the company's first-ever board chair. Jones, a former Synopsys CEO, has sat on Nvidia's board since its founding in 1993. The fact that Nvidia never had a separate chair until today says a lot about how much authority sat with one person.

CFO Colette Kress, at Nvidia since 2013, will run the company on an interim basis while keeping her finance role. CNBC reports she is gathering the executive team at the Santa Clara HQ to talk leadership and continuity. Her first real test: Nvidia is set to report quarterly results in just a few days, on November 17.

Meanwhile, investors are not waiting and the immediate reaction has been that Nvidia shares opened down more than 13%, briefly dropping the company below a $4 trillion market cap, before partially recovering by midday. Nvidia is still on track for six straight weekly losses, its longest losing streak since 2012. Apple has reclaimed the title of world's most valuable company. Wall Street and everyone else is split on what comes next.

Bloomberg reports that Nvidia has hired an outside firm to find candidates , but replacing Huang won't be easy.

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