#e4mXplains:  Key Person Risk: Why personalities can make for shaky foundations in business and media

In September 2018, Elon Musk took a puff from a marijuana joint on Joe Rogan's podcast, and, weirdly, it was the internet that briefly forgot about everything else.

There was much meme-ing of memes, clutching of pearls, a hurricane of headlines and the peculiar spectacle of a man attempting to colonise Mars being subjected to an earth-wide debate about whether he should be allowed to inhale recreationally.

Tesla's shares fell more than 6% the following day, although two senior executive departures and existing concerns about the company's “eccentric” management also contributed to Wall Street's distinctly unchilled reaction. Rogan had offered Musk a joint. Investors appeared to need something considerably stronger.

Eight years later, the incident seems almost quaint.

Musk now presides over a constellation of concerns with businesses spanning electric vehicles, rockets, satellites, artificial intelligence and social media. Meanwhile, the world's most valuable companies have become so thoroughly entangled with the personalities, peculiarities and private lives of their leaders that a corporate scandal can have implications extending considerably beyond the corporate world.

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We have, in other words, come a long way from worrying about whether billionaires might occasionally indulge in a little cannabis.

Welcome to Key Person Risk, the wonderfully antiseptic corporate term for the possibility that an organisation employing thousands, commanding billions and supporting entire industries might nevertheless come spectacularly unstuck because of one particular human being.

For all our advances in artificial intelligence, cloud computing and organisational management, capitalism still occasionally resembles a medieval kingdom with interns rather than peasants. Oh wait.

The king is dead. Long live the company

Of course, corporate empires have always had their emperors.

William Randolph Hearst built a media dynasty, Walt Disney created an entertainment kingdom, and Ted Turner launched a television network that would eventually make watching wars unfold in real time an international spectator sport.

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Their empires endured. Hearst died in 1951, yet the business bearing his name generated $13.5 billion in revenue in 2025. Disney died in 1966, five years before Walt Disney World opened, and his company continues to acquire intellectual property with the enthusiasm of a particularly wealthy collector.

Turner died earlier this year, long after surrendering control of CNN, which continues broadcasting through considerably different corporate arrangements.

Steve Jobs, perhaps technology's greatest patron saint of personal indispensability, died in 2011. Apple subsequently became a multi-trillion-dollar company.

The kings departed. The kingdoms remained. Sometimes under new management, occasionally following a palace coup, and almost invariably with an impressive number of consultants involved.

The advertising industry offers its own peculiar variation.

David Ogilvy died in 1999, but the agency bearing his name remains part of WPP. India's Piyush Pandey, whose creative legacy became almost synonymous with Ogilvy India, died in October 2025. The institution continues.

There are exceptions. When Martin Sorrell abruptly departed WPP in 2018, its shares fell 6%, illustrating that advertising's personality cults can be expensive too. Yet these businesses generally developed mechanisms, however imperfect, for surviving their legends.

The newer technology empires present a rather more complicated proposition.

The trillion-dollar personality cult

Consider Mark Zuckerberg, who controlled 60.6% of Meta's voting power as of October 2026, despite holding just 13.4% of its economic interests. His company's dual-class share structure gives him an extraordinary degree of authority over a business central to global advertising, communication and increasingly artificial intelligence.

Musk, meanwhile, held approximately 19.8% of Tesla on a beneficial-ownership basis, according to its 2026 proxy filing. His influence, however, extends far beyond his shareholding, across companies whose products touch transportation, space infrastructure, satellite communications and AI.

Then there's Sam Altman. When OpenAI's board fired him in November 2023, more than 700 employees threatened to resign unless he was reinstated. Within days, the board had effectively lost its confrontation with its own chief executive.

For an organisation developing artificial general intelligence, discovering that its immediate future depended on the continued employment of one particular human was an interesting philosophical development.

But there's a more consequential distinction between these modern technology barons and their predecessors. Their companies aren't simply publishing newspapers, producing entertainment or selling advertising. They are increasingly building the infrastructure upon which other industries, governments and economies depend.

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And American financial markets have become remarkably concentrated around them.

As of November 2, six technology giants, Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta, represented approximately 30.8% of the S&P 500's value. Just six companies accounted for nearly a third of the benchmark index of the world’s (and history’s) largest economy.

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These businesses are also central to America's technological and economic influence, from cloud computing and AI models to digital advertising and semiconductor infrastructure.

The US stock market, that great monument to diversified capitalism, has become rather dependent on a remarkably small guest list.

Which brings us to a gentleman in a leather jacket.

One Huang to rule them all?

Jensen Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and has led it ever since, transforming a graphics-chip manufacturer into one of the central suppliers of the artificial intelligence revolution.

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Unlike Zuckerberg, Huang does not wield majority voting control. Nvidia's 2026 proxy statement put his beneficial ownership at just 3.58%. Yet his perceived indispensability is arguably more consequential.

Nvidia reported quarterly revenue of $96.2 billion in August, up 106% year-on-year, with $89 billion coming from its data-centre business. Its chips are integral to AI systems being developed by OpenAI, Meta and other technology giants, while governments increasingly regard advanced computing capacity as a strategic national resource.

On October 22, Nvidia alone represented 7.78% of the S&P 500.

Then came revelations about Huang's relationship with Alice Huang, a Chinese businesswoman whom US intelligence officials reportedly suspected of working for Beijing. Reports also raised questions about the movement of restricted Nvidia chips to China through a business network linked to her.

Huang acknowledged being unfaithful to his wife. Nvidia's board launched an independent investigation, while stressing that it had no reason to believe company secrets or national security had been compromised. China has rejected the espionage allegations as groundless.

By November 10, Nvidia had lost approximately $430 billion in market value across two trading sessions, although broader concerns about soaring AI expenditure and valuations were already weighing on the sector.

The allegations remain under investigation, and the distinction between personal misconduct, possible corporate wrongdoing and unproven national-security concerns is essential.

But the governance predicament is unmistakable. Nvidia is no ordinary chipmaker. Its technology underpins vast investments in AI infrastructure, while Huang has become an influential advocate in Washington's debates over semiconductor exports and competition with China. He is the man the White House dispatches to global capitals to allay allies’ fears, massage the egos of their leaders, and help the US to some more access to populations and their data.

Replacing a chief executive in such circumstances is no longer merely a question of appointing someone with an impressive résumé and reassuring shareholders over a conference call. It potentially affects investor confidence, corporate strategy, international supply chains and the technological ambitions of governments.

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And there lies the central absurdity of modern Key Person Risk.

Corporations spend fortunes establishing boards, compliance systems, succession plans and mechanisms expressly designed to ensure that no individual becomes indispensable. Yet markets continue to reward founder-led companies partly because investors believe their leaders possess something irreplaceable.

To be fair, that belief isn't necessarily irrational. Jobs transformed Apple. Huang anticipated the AI boom. Musk helped make electric vehicles commercially credible. Their contributions cannot be wished away with a governance manual.

But exceptional leadership and institutional dependence are not the same thing. The former creates value. The latter can threaten it.

The question, then, isn't whether Huang or any other technology titan deserves to remain in charge. It is whether companies of such extraordinary economic importance can afford to make their continued success contingent upon one individual's continued presence.

Humanity is spending trillions developing machines that can reason, work and perhaps someday make decisions without human supervision. One might reasonably hope that, somewhere along the way, we could figure out how to make a company function without its founder.

Until then, the future of artificial intelligence remains remarkably dependent on plain old natural intelligence. and all the human complications that come with it.