The AI boom without Jensen Huang will test a hard truth: Even if the tech world has grown somewhat less reliant on Nvidia's chips, it remains highly dependent on its checkbook.

Why it matters: With rival chips maturing and recent software breakthroughs, the tech ecosystem has achieved what would have seemed impossible a year ago: a viable path around Nvidia.

• But replacing a CEO willing to bankroll startups, backstop billions in cloud debt and aggressively fund rivals to the AI giants will be much harder.

The big picture: The next chapter without Huang will be more cautious, but the industry is capable of absorbing the change, for two key reasons:

1. New chips: Semiconductor competition has become harder to contain.

• At OpenAI and other startups, a longstanding joke was that the best way to get a discount on Nvidia chips was to openly talk to Google or others about alternatives. Huang would often swoop in enthusiastically, eager to lock in a customer.
• The progress of custom chips from Google, Amazon, Microsoft and OpenAI, as well as new deals with Broadcom and Nvidia rival AMD, gives those conversations more substance. Customers have options and far more leverage than ever.
• AI itself has also made those offerings easier to use. Anthropic says its Mythos model helped run certain workloads on AMD chips in about three days, compared with six to 12 months in the past.

2. Washington: In D.C., China hawks are ascendant. Huang's departure strengthens calls from administration forces, some lawmakers and companies such as Anthropic that have pushed for tighter controls on chip sales.

• Legislation is rapidly advancing to cut off loopholes and strengthen export restrictions for advanced chip sales to China, and the Commerce Department is reportedly preparing additional ways to limit such access.
• Cutting off those routes could help protect America's lead and offer a major pre-IPO boost to Anthropic and OpenAI.

Reality check: Alternative chips and leaps forward in software won't solve the near-term computing crunch that all the big players in AI are facing.

• Nvidia's chips remain the most sought after because they are the most widely supported, making them critical for the industry's smaller players and important for the big companies that need maximum efficiency out of each data center they build.

There are two reasons a strong Nvidia still remains essential:

1. Finance: The company's checkbook will be far more difficult to replicate than its computing power.

• Nvidia has made $530 billion of off-balance-sheet commitments and guarantees, including deals to buy memory and backstops for data centers and certain companies building them, according to data firm SemiAnalysis.
• Smaller cloud providers, often called neoclouds, as well as a vast array of startups all over the world, have lost perhaps their most enthusiastic champion.
• Nvidia will remain a formidable competitor, but it will almost certainly become less aggressive about startup funding, acquisitions and backstops, tempering its efforts to spread exposure among institutional investors in ways that some critics said resembled the mortgage bubble.

2. Open models: Nvidia has been the most enthusiastic funder and champion of the Western open-model ecosystem — giving developers cheaper alternatives to the expensive offerings from frontier AI companies.

• Its pending acquisition of Hugging Face, licensing agreement with model developer Poolside, backing of Reflection and development of the Nemotron family of open models extend well beyond chip sales.
• Without Nvidia, it's not clear whether the U.S. will be able to develop open-weight alternatives to China, since many don't have a clear or easy path to financial returns given that such systems are often free to download.

The bottom line: Huang's departure won't derail America's AI ambitions. But it leaves a hole in the ecosystem that will be harder to fill than any shortage of Nvidia chips.

Nvidia has begun searching for a permanent replacement for longtime CEO Huang, who resigned yesterday amid scrutiny over reports of multiple extramarital affairs.

Why it matters: Nvidia's next leader will inherit one of the world's most valuable companies — and the daunting task of succeeding the pioneer who transformed it into an AI powerhouse.

• The job will require as much political savvy as technological expertise, Axios' Nathan Bomey says. The next CEO must navigate regulatory scrutiny, geopolitical tensions and the economic upheaval unleashed by the AI boom.

Catch up quick: Nvidia announced Thursday that CFO Colette Kress would serve as interim CEO following Huang's departure.

• The board said it would consider both internal and external candidates. Longtime director Harvey Jones was appointed Nvidia's first-ever board chair.

Keep reading.

The White House is standing by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick despite a view within the administration that Lutnick delayed action to address concerns over chip smuggling to China.

Why it matters: Congress smells blood in the water following bombshell reports that U.S. national security may have been jeopardized by Huang's relationship with a suspected Chinese spy.

• Lawmakers want to know what the Trump administration did or did not do in response to that intelligence — and Lutnick, the official in charge of the department at the center of export control policy, is squarely in their field of view.

Trump, however, is not distancing himself from the secretary.

• "Secretary Lutnick is a champion of President Trump's America First trade and tariff policies, which have secured almost 20 fair trade deals and trillions in manufacturing investments," a White House official tells Axios.

Catch up quick: Lutnick was sent intelligence about Huang's relationship with an alleged Chinese spy and repeatedly did not take export control action — despite pressure from the broader administration and the president himself, Axios first reported.

What they're saying: Lutnick's role is prompting scrutiny on the Hill from members on both sides of the aisle.

• "Secretary Howard Lutnick and Under Secretary Jeffrey Kessler must explain why they have not closed export control loopholes and act today to ensure our advanced technology is not fueling China's military," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), poised to be the next Senate Banking Committee chair, said in a statement.
• "The obvious question is why did he choose to sell advanced chips?" Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told Politico.
• "Secretary Lutnick needs to answer that in front of God and country," Kennedy added. "I mean, there will be a congressional investigation. But I don't think he ought to wait on Congress."

The Commerce Department has not confirmed for the record whether or not Lutnick has seen the memo.

Yes, but: "It's impossible that Howard Lutnick didn't know about this memo," one senior administration official told Axios.

• "Of course Commerce got the memo. It had to get the memo. That's the point of the memo. It's about chips. Commerce deals with chips," a second official said.

Go deeper.

• AI chipmaker Cerebras beat third-quarter revenue expectations, raised its annual forecast and announced a new deal with Microsoft. (CNBC)
• The Commerce Department is finalizing a rule that could close a loophole allowing Chinese AI firms to remotely access advanced chips through overseas data centers, despite opposition from Nvidia. (The Information)
• The New York Times has a worthwhile read on the history of affairs that have brought down chief executives, including several in tech.

We enjoyed nerding out on this rogue agent dashboard, which takes an important step in trying to rank events by severity on a 1-to-10 scale. Hugging Face got a 5.