Who will replace Jensen Huang as permanent Nvidia CEO? Top contenders.

After reports of multiple affairs, including one with an alleged Chinese spy, Jensen Huang is out at Nvidia.

With Huang’s resignation from the chipmaking giant that he helped found, who will take the helm at Nvidia?

While Nvidia quickly announced an interim CEO in Colette Kress, there’s a lot of speculation about who will take a more permanent role as head of one of the world’s most valuable companies.

Let’s take a look at some of the names.

Colette Kress

First up is Nvidia’s longtime Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress, already a billionaire in her own right.

Kress technically has the CEO job right now, as Nvidia paired Huang’s resignation announcement with the news that Kress would fill in as interim CEO. And, if she’s able to right the ship and help Nvidia come out of Huang’s scandals relatively unscathed, she’s a favorite to take the position long-term, too.

Before being promoted to the interim CEO position, Kress has worked as the CFO at the company since 2013. She previously worked as CFO for divisions at Microsoft and Cisco. Nvidia’s investors are familiar with her too from the company’s quarterly earnings calls, so she may have the upper hand there too.

Ian Buck

Kress may have the advantage of being the interim CEO, but Ian Buck seems to be the favorite amongst the speculators.

Like Kress, Buck would also be an internal choice for CEO. Buck has worked at Nvidia since 2004 and is currently the company’s Vice President and General Manager of Hyperscale and High-Performance Computing (HPC). 

In his role at Nvidia, Buck is responsible for the company’s data center, cloud, and HPC product lines — all central to Nvidia’s success amid the AI boom.

In addition, Buck is credited as the creator of CUDA, or Compute Unified Device Architecture. CUDA is Nvidia’s proprietary platform that developers use to run their software on Nvidia’s GPUs.

Rene Haas

Rene Haas’s name has immediately been floated as a potential fit as Nvidia CEO. Why?

If investors are looking for an outsider to come in and take over Nvidia, Rene Haas is likely the guy to do it.

Haas is currently the CEO of British chipmaker Arm, so he already works as a high-level executive within the industry. And Arm and Nvidia have collaborated for over a decade on designing and manufacturing CPUs.

However, Haas has another big thing going for him. He’s an outsider who used to be an insider. Haas worked at Nvidia for seven years before leaving the company in 2013. He worked closely with Huang as the company’s Vice President and general manager of its computing products business.

Lisa Su

Lisa Su is the head of Nvidia’s biggest competitor, AMD. Would she make the jump? That’s what some speculators are betting on as her name floats to the top as one of Huang’s potential successors.

Su has led AMD as CEO since 2014 and, interestingly, is also Jensen Huang’s cousin, so it would certainly make for a good story.

Johny Srouji

According to a report from Semafor, the outside firm that Nvidia has hired to find Huang’s replacement is seriously looking at Apple’s current chief hardware officer Johny Srouji.

Srouji was recently promoted by Apple from the company’s Senior Vice President of Hardware Technologies to Apple’s Chief Hardware Officer following John Ternus’ transition to CEO of the company. In his role as chip lead at Apple, Srouji helped lead the company’s transition from Intel chips to its own Apple silicon chipset.

Notably, Bloomberg‘s Apple insider Mark Gurman reported last December that Srouji was thinking of exiting the company, although former Apple CEO Tim Cook was able to convince him to stay. Is Nvidia the opening that Srouji was looking for? We’ll see.

Tim Cook

Speaking of Apple and Tim Cook, the former Apple CEO’s name is also being spread as a potential replacement for Huang.

And who’s throwing Tim Cook’s name in the ring? Why, the President of the United States, of course!

“NOW THAT Nvidia CEO JENSEN HUANG, who has done a fantastic job, has resigned, there is only one man to take his place —TIM COOK of Apple,” President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social after Huang resigned. “A Legend replaces a Legend!”

Tech industry experts are already throwing cold water on this idea, however.

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Cook just left his CEO position at Apple and would have to step down as Apple’s executive chairman if he took the job with Nvidia, so he seems the least likely of the potential candidates. However, his name is being seriously passed around amongst investors and speculators alike.

Nikesh Arora

Nikesh Arora is currently the CEO of cybersecurity firm Palto Alto Networks. However, Arora worked at a number of tech companies over the years, including Google, where he was Chief Business Officer, and T-Mobile. 

Arora also previously worked as President and COO of SoftBank, a major global tech investment firm.

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