Morning Bid: Scandal topples the AI star

A look at the day ahead in European and global markets from Rae Wee

A new era dawns for Nvidia with its longtime figurehead Jensen Huang abruptly out, plunging the chipmaker into crisis and sending shockwaves across the multi-trillion-dollar artificial intelligence industry he helped bankroll.

The fallout from Huang's admission of an affair reverberated across markets this week, sending shares of Nvidia and its customers tumbling, and even triggering a slump in copper prices as traders question the durability of physical AI infrastructure demand.

And as if that wasn't enough of a mess, Washington is swooping in to turn up the heat and stoking worries about China's future access to Nvidia's chips. US House Speaker Mike Johnson signalled a hardening consensus in Congress on limiting chip exports to the world's second-largest economy.

US Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott meanwhile sent letters on Thursday to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Huang, asking them to testify over recent developments at the company. Senior White House officials are separately discussing whether Lutnick should be pushed out.

The crisis underscores Nvidia's rapid rise as the lynchpin of the global AI ecosystem, with its influence extending across business and politics, and threatening to shatter an AI rally that was already on shaky ground.

Asian shares managed to find their footing on Friday after last week's bloodbath sparked by the Republicans' electoral drubbing in the US, which stoked fears that tighter regulation could slow the AI infrastructure buildout that has helped send stocks to record highs this year.

However, sentiment remained fragile.

Elsewhere in markets, the dollar held near a 19-month high and was on track for its largest weekly gain in over a month, as investors weighed the prospect of an outsized 50-basis-point rate hike by the Federal Reserve next month.

There's an active debate about more aggressive action on the part of the Fed after this week's stronger-than-expected inflation data, which left policymakers opening the door to a quicker pace of tightening.

The repricing of rate expectations sent the 2-year US Treasury yield to a one-month high in Asia on Friday, while the benchmark 10-year yield scaled a three-week peak.

The renewed climb in the dollar meanwhile weighed on the yen, leaving traders on alert for any intervention from Japanese authorities to shore up the currency.

Japan's government will respond appropriately to currency volatility, the country's Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama said on Friday, renewing her warning as the yen briefly crossed the key 160 per dollar threshold.

The US Treasury bought Japanese yen in the July-to-September quarter, but the Fed did not intervene on its own in foreign exchange markets in the same period, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said on Thursday.

The New York Fed said it bought 79.4 billion yen ($497.37 million) in the spot market on July 31, selling euros from the Exchange Stabilization Fund.

Key developments that could influence markets on Friday:

- Nvidia developments

- Fed officials speak

- French inflation (October)

- Euro zone GDP flash estimate (Q3)

- Euro zone flash employment figures (Q3)

(Editing by Shri Navaratnam)