Nvidia’s board says it is still choosing a search firm to find Jensen Huang’s permanent successor, and hasn’t formally approached any candidates. Interim chief executive Colette Kress faces her first big test on Tuesday, when the company reports results.
Two days after Jensen Huang’s resignation, Nvidia has a leader, a chair and a lot of speculation. What it does not yet have is a search.
Nvidia’s board told CNBC on Thursday that it is still selecting an executive search firm for the chief executive role, and has not formally engaged with any potential candidates. The company has said it will consider both internal and external candidates. It hasn’t given a timeline.
Colette Kress, 59, is interim chief executive, and will keep her role as chief financial officer until a permanent successor is named. She joined Nvidia as CFO in September 2013, after finance roles at Texas Instruments, 13 years at Microsoft and a stint as a CFO at Cisco.
Kress held her first meeting with senior executives at Nvidia’s Santa Clara headquarters on Thursday afternoon. The company plans an all-hands meeting for employees on 18 November.
The board is now led by Harvey Jones, a former chief executive of chip-design software company Synopsys and a long-serving Nvidia director, who became its first-ever chair this week.
The names in circulation
Speculation has filled the vacuum.
The Financial Times reported that Nvidia’s board approached Rene Haas, chief executive of Arm, the British chip-design company, as a potential successor. Haas spent several years at Nvidia before joining Arm, so he knows the company well. Nvidia’s statement that it hasn’t formally engaged candidates doesn’t necessarily rule out informal conversations.
Other names floated in media reports include Ian Buck, the Nvidia executive behind CUDA, the software platform that underpins its AI dominance, and AMD chief executive Lisa Su. President Donald Trump has said former Apple chief executive Tim Cook should take the job.
Search specialists widely expect the board to look for a technologist, someone who can command the respect of engineers and customers the way Huang did, rather than a pure manager.
Few companies depend on a single leader the way Nvidia did. Huang set the company’s technical direction for three decades, personally managed relationships with its largest customers, and was its most effective salesman. He also had no designated successor, because he didn’t believe in succession planning.
The next chief executive will inherit a business that brought in $215.9 billion of revenue last financial year, faces congressional scrutiny over chip sales to China, and is fighting rivals that sense an opening. AMD and Broadcom both gained this week as investors spread their AI bets.
The first test: Tuesday
Nvidia reports quarterly results on 17 November, Kress’s first earnings call as interim chief executive. Investors will listen for three things: confirmation that demand for its AI chips remains strong, any update on the CEO search and the board’s investigation, and reassurance that relationships with major customers are intact.
Nvidia’s shares closed at $162.85 on Friday, about 13% below where they stood before the scandal broke, with the company’s market value below $4 trillion.
What’s up
Nvidia’s leadership vacuum is one reason global investors have been spreading money beyond AI stocks this month, and India has been a beneficiary. A strong results report and a credible succession plan could bring that money back to US technology. A drawn-out search could keep investors cautious about AI for longer.
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