Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) shares plunged to $166.95 in Tuesday afternoon trading, leaving the AI chipmaker down 18.42% for November and wiping out every gain it had accumulated in 2026. The selloff accelerated as congressional Republicans threatened to subpoena CEO Jensen Huang over his reported relationship with a suspected Chinese intelligence operative.

The company now faces pressure on multiple fronts: its board has opened an independent probe, shareholders have filed a lawsuit, and competition in the AI chip market is intensifying. The stakes extend beyond Nvidia itself: its chips are widely used to train and run AI systems, and the company is closely watched as a barometer of AI spending.

At the Tuesday afternoon price, Nvidia was roughly 10.5% below its $186.50 closing level at the end of 2025 and 31.4% below its recent peak of $243.37. November is shaping up as the stock's worst month since September 2022, when shares lost roughly 19.6%; the company suffered an even deeper 32% crash in April of that year.

Tuesday's drop exceeded 6% in afternoon trading, after a 4.3% fall on Monday. The two-day decline was on track to erase more than $470 billion in market value.

The Technical Backdrop

Even after the steep decline, some analysts would still view the stock as extremely overbought in the long term, with prices far above what would be considered safe based on technical indicators. For context, even an additional 20% crash (-43% from October) would be considered healthy in an isolated technical analysis, leaving the price still above the average price of the last 50 months. Prices tend to either bounce or trade near that line. When prices drift too far from the average, it usually signals unusual appetite for the asset, typically driven more by fear of missing out than fundamentals.

Congress Threatens to Compel Huang

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast told ABC News on Tuesday that he was prepared to subpoena Huang unless the CEO responded by Wednesday, November 11, to a request for a closed-door briefing. No subpoena had been issued at the time of reporting. Unlike a voluntary request, a subpoena carries legal force to compel testimony.

Mast and two other Republican committee chairs asked Huang to appear on November 18 and explain his interactions with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based chip buyer Megaspeed. The lawmakers also want details about Nvidia's safeguards against foreign espionage, according to a letter reviewed by Reuters. The focus on an overseas chip buyer touches a longstanding U.S. concern: advanced chips being rerouted through third countries to China despite export controls.

U.S. authorities have reportedly investigated whether Alice Huang, who has no family relationship to the Nvidia CEO, passed information to Beijing. The allegations have not established that Jensen Huang knowingly disclosed confidential information or violated export rules.

On Sunday, Nvidia's board announced an independent investigation into whether its chief executive had been targeted by a foreign intelligence operation. In a statement, the board said it had no reason to believe that national security or company secrets were compromised, but would examine the available information.

The Financial Times reported on Tuesday that Nvidia has hired former U.S. prosecutor Joon H. Kim to conduct the internal investigation.

The company is also facing legal pressure. Shareholders filed a proposed class-action lawsuit on Monday alleging that Nvidia and Huang failed to disclose risks associated with the reported relationship.

Nvidia's Other Problem: Competition From Google

The scandal has landed during a broader reassessment of the AI boom. Investors have questioned how long massive spending on data centers can continue, and Nvidia's competitors are offering customers more alternatives to its expensive chips.

Google introduced new AI chip configurations on Monday. The Information reported that OpenAI was considering buying Google's tensor processing units, or TPUs—processors built specifically to run AI workloads. Neither company has confirmed a purchase, but Google announced a new line of TPUs available for select customers on Monday, directly competing against Nvidia's chips. A credible second source of AI compute matters because it loosens the reliance on a single vendor — the position Nvidia has long held in the market.

Nvidia is scheduled to report quarterly earnings on November 17, one day before the congressional briefing requested by House Republicans. Mast's deadline for Huang to respond comes first, on November 11 — a compressed stretch in which the company's quarterly numbers and new developments in the congressional inquiry are set to arrive within days of each other.