The biggest guessing game in the business world has begun: Who will succeed Jensen Huang?
Clette Kress, who has served as NVIDIA's Chief Financial Officer since 2013, was appointed as the company's interim CEO on Thursday. During the board of directors' search for a permanent successor to Jensen Huang, Kress will also continue to hold the position of Chief Financial Officer.
Scott W. Simmons, co-managing partner of the executive headhunting firm Crist Kolder Associates, told Fortune, "Collette is very suited for the temporary CEO role." However, Simmons, who has been in the executive recruitment business for nearly 30 years, believes that when NVIDIA's board of directors looks for a permanent successor to Jensen Huang, they will tend to choose a technical leader, and this person may come from outside the company.
If NVIDIA ultimately chooses an external candidate, what The Futurum Group Chief Market Strategist Shay Boloor is most optimistic about is Arm CEO René Haas.
Boloor posted on X, saying: 'He worked at NVIDIA for seven years and understands Jensen Huang's culture; what's interesting about him is that NVIDIA's Grace and Vera CPU both run on the Arm architecture. Although he missed the rise of NVLink, Mellanox, and rack-level AI, his understanding of the CPU side of the NVIDIA platform surpasses that of any other external observer.'
Venture capital and private equity investors, as well as the co-founders and heads of Concordia Capital VC / PE Secondaries, Sam Sugarman, have also included Has in the list of external candidates.
Haas possesses both work experience at NVIDIA and leadership experience in a listed company: He led Arm to achieve IPO in 2023 and promoted the company's business to further expand beyond processor licensing. His background spans engineering, product strategy, and sales. However, his familiarity with NVIDIA dates back to an earlier period: he left NVIDIA in 2013. The board of directors will have to assess whether his experience managing Arm is sufficient to prepare him for managing NVIDIA's larger and more complex business.
Sugarman also mentioned AMD CEO Su Zifeng, believing that she could also become Jensen Huang's successor. Ironically, Su Zifeng is also a distant cousin of Jensen Huang. She brings with her experience in semiconductor engineering, as well as a proven track record in successfully managing a large chip manufacturer. Since 2014, she has been leading AMD, overseeing a transformation that has turned AMD into a strong competitor in the processor field and challenged NVIDIA in the AI chip industry. Such experience might appeal to the board of directors. However, recruiting her would mean having to persuade a current CEO to leave the company she helped build from scratch.
At the same time, Yorkville Ives and Co, partners and senior managing directors, Dan Ives, told Fortune that he believes Tim Cook, former CEO of Apple, Google Cloud, CEO Thomas Kurian, and Palo Alto Networks, Chairman and CEO Nishish Arola, "are the top three external candidates for the NVIDIA CEO position."
Cook will bring a kind of experience that few executives have had: taking over from the iconic leader of a technology company. Cook took over from Steve Jobs and has been in charge of Apple for 15 years before becoming Executive Chairman in September of this year. Cook's ability to control the supply chain and logistics will be very suitable for NVIDIA, and Apple's continuous advancement in developing its own processors over the past decade also means that Cook has some direct experience in the chip business. He continues to handle Apple's international relations affairs, which is also relevant for a company that is facing geopolitical pressures.
However, his continued role as chairman at Apple may complicate the process of recruiting him. Nevertheless, Cook has received support from a well-known observer: President Trump posted on Truth Social on Thursday, stating that Cook should replace Jensen Huang.
Currihan will bring in connections with the infrastructure business of NVIDIA AI. Before taking over Google Cloud in 2019, Currihan worked at Oracle for 22 years and eventually rose to become President of Product Development. During his tenure at Google Cloud, he also maintained close collaboration with NVIDIA through the infrastructure cooperation between the two companies in AI. The question is to what extent these experiences can be successfully transformed into the ability to lead this chip manufacturer itself.
Arola will bring the experience from the current listed company CEO, with a career spanning corporate technology, global sales, and investment fields. Before joining this cybersecurity company in 2018, Arola served as President and Chief Operating Officer at SoftBank and also held senior business positions at Google, including Chief Commercial Officer. The attractiveness of Arola as a candidate may depend on whether NVIDIA wishes to find a strategic figure who can build around its technical leadership team.
Each potential candidate may have their own advantages and disadvantages, but the final decision of the board of directors will determine the fate of NVIDIA. Simmons said, "When you think about the people who are truly capable of taking on this position, the pool of candidates is actually very small."
