Six months ago, American investor Christian Lamarco published a 40-page report in which he warned that Nvidia, the largest supplier of artificial intelligence processors in the world, was facing a fundamental problem in its business related to China. The report received little attention at the time, but the company's shares continued to rise until they reached record levels. But as the crisis surrounding its CEO, Jensen Huang, erupted, LaMarco's investigations returned to the forefront, and the investor who bet on the stock's decline became at the center of one of the most exciting stories in the technology sector.
The Wall Street Journal, in a report published on Wednesday, narrates the path of LaMarco, who is 31 years old and founder of the investment research company Culper Research, which specializes in studying companies that are betting on the decline of their shares, through what is known as a short-selling strategy. He chose the name of his company as inspiration from an American spy network that operated during the War of Independence, in reference to his approach based on collecting information and investigating the details of companies before taking his investment positions.
His thesis regarding NVIDIA was clear: the bet was not on the decline of the artificial intelligence boom, but rather on what he considered a defect in the company’s business linked to China. The report focused on questions about the company's business relationships in Southeast Asia, and also addressed what it described as a questionably close relationship between Huang and Alice Huang, an executive with one of the company's main trading partners in the region.
But the timing of publishing the report last May was not conducive to attracting attention. On the same day, Huang arrived in Beijing on board the US presidential plane, Air Force One, as part of a visit to President Donald Trump, before NVIDIA stock recorded a new record high the next day. The markets did not move at that time, reflecting the size of the warnings contained in the report.
Lamarco told the newspaper that interest in what the investor proposes may sometimes come too late, adding that what happened with the Nvidia report was an example of that. The questions he raised did not begin to gain widespread momentum until about half a year later.
The shift came with the emergence of new reports and allegations regarding a personal relationship between Huang and Alice Huang, who has become the subject of suspicion regarding her possible work for the Chinese intelligence services. These developments re-shed light on what was mentioned in the Culper report regarding the nature of the relationship between the two parties, and on the risks that may arise from the company’s commercial engagements in China and Southeast Asia.
This does not mean that the allegations circulating about espionage or a personal relationship have been proven true, but it has put what LaMarco had previously raised under a broader microscope, after those details were largely confined to an investment report that did not receive much attention when it was issued.
According to the Wall Street Journal, LaMarco and his team of two analysts began working on the investigation after following previous press reports about the company, before they stopped the research for a while, because they believed that finding new information about the largest company in the world by market value is a difficult task. However, accusations leveled last March by the US authorities against officials at Super Microcomputer regarding smuggling processors from NVIDIA to China in violation of US export controls prompted the team to resume the investigation.
According to the newspaper's account, the company relied on a network of experts who conducted interviews with former Nvidia employees, in addition to analyzing company records in Singapore and Malaysia and technical data, as well as reviewing photographic materials published on the Internet. After completing this work, LaMarco published his report in May, announcing that his company was taking an investment position betting on the decline of Nvidia’s stock.
This was not the first confrontation that Culber had with major companies. Since its founding, it has targeted dozens of listed companies, most of them small businesses, with reports examining their financial and business practices. LaMarco previously faced a defamation lawsuit from a company specializing in the manufacture of glass and windows, after he accused it of having links with a Mexican drug cartel. He also tried to bet a million dollars with American TV presenter Jimmy Fallon regarding the use of electric air taxis produced by the company “Archer Aviation”, on which he was betting that its stock would fall.
With the Nvidia report returning to the spotlight, communications with Marco doubled, who said that the amount of interaction with his investigation this time was unprecedented for him. He also stopped notifications from his account on the X platform after his posts garnered millions of views, and he rejected several requests to conduct television interviews.
The newspaper notes that Nvidia's market value has declined by more than a trillion dollars, and its stock has fallen by about 20 percent since the publication of the Culper report. But whether LaMarco made money on his bet remains unclear; He declined to reveal the return he achieved, or whether he still maintains a short selling position in the stock.
On the other hand, the story reveals the role that small investment research firms can play in raising questions about giant technology companies, even if those questions do not resonate immediately upon publication. For LaMarco, the challenge was not to prove that the artificial intelligence boom will end, but rather to convince investors that Nvidia's pivotal position in this boom does not exempt it from the risks of its business and commercial relationships.
The performance of global markets varied with the start of Asian trading on Thursday, amid pressure on US stock futures, after Nvidia shares fell by more than 8 percent in after-hours trading, following reports of a meeting of its board of directors to discuss the possibility of dismissing its CEO, Jensen Huang, in a development that raised questions about the leadership of the company, which is a major focus in the artificial intelligence boom.
An informed source said that Nvidia's board of directors held a meeting late Wednesday to discuss Huang's future, in light of the repercussions of allegations regarding his relationship with a woman suspected of being linked to Chinese spy services. The New York Times also reported that Huang had established a relationship with an executive at the company who was administratively reporting to him.
Jake Dollarhyde, CEO of Longbow Asset Management, said that the developments appear negative from various angles, but he ruled out dismissing Huang before the board of directors finds a prominent alternative with a well-known standing in the technology sector, noting that NVIDIA processors remain at the heart of the artificial intelligence story.
The stock's losses were reflected in Standard & Poor's 500 futures, which fell 0.4 percent, while Asian markets recorded mixed performance after a volatile start. The South Korean KOSPI index rose 0.2 percent, Taiwanese stocks rose 0.5 percent, and the Japanese Nikkei 225 index increased 0.5 percent, while the broader MSCI index of Asia-Pacific stocks excluding Japan fell 0.1 percent, affected by losses in Hong Kong stocks.
US stocks achieved strong gains in Wednesday's session, as the Standard & Poor's 500 index rose by 1.3 percent, close to compensating for all of its losses incurred since the US midterm elections last week. Analysts at Westpac attributed this recovery to renewed optimism about artificial intelligence, supported by positive developments at CoreWave and Anthropic.
In the currency market, the dollar index stabilized at 102.87 points during Asian trading, after rising 0.6 percent on Wednesday, recording its highest levels since April 9, 2025, with traders re-evaluating the possibilities of the Federal Reserve raising interest rates next month.
Interest futures contracts show an 87.3 percent probability of a 25 basis point rate hike during the council meeting scheduled for December 9-10, compared to a 12.7 percent probability of a larger increase of 50 basis points, according to the CME Group’s Fed Watch tool.
In cryptocurrency markets, Bitcoin fell 0.9 percent to $73,617.58, and Ether fell by the same percentage to $2,049.44.
