Few people would have thought of Nvidia’s future without Jensen Huang until lately.
Due to allegations of extramarital affairs, including one with a woman suspected of being a Chinese spy, the powerful co-founder of the massive AI chip manufacturer resigned on Thursday.
For the time being, Colette Kress, the chief financial officer, is in charge as the software behemoth struggles to find a permanent leader for the company Huang helped establish over thirty years ago.
We examine the contenders who have surfaced as possible successors.
The finance chief
Colette Kress has almost thirty years of experience in the sector, having held senior roles at such companies such as Microsoft and Cisco.
As executive vice-president of Nvidia, Kress has witnessed the company’s evolution from producing video game chips in the early 1990s to being a dominant force in AI semiconductors.
Alongside Huang, she has “fronted every earnings call” and is a “familiar and trusted voice for market time when it badly needs one,” according to Josh Gilbert, an analyst at the financial firm eToro.
However, Gilbert noted that it might be different if the company were to conduct the work permanently.
The co-founder and the engineer
Another choice is Chris Malachowsky, who established Nvidia with Huang and Curtis Priem and is the only executive with the same seniority.
Malachowsky has contributed significantly to the advancement of the company’s computer technology.
If Nvidia is eager to appoint an engineer to the top position, Ian Buck, who is in charge of the company’s high-performance computing division, has also surfaced as a possible contender.
Buck was one of the first to popularize the usage of graphic processors for purposes other than gaming.
Apple and Arm's top brass
According to Ten Cap’s founder and principal portfolio manager, Jun Bei Liu, Nvidia is expected to favor an internal choice at first but may search outside for a more permanent replacement.
Experts have mentioned a number of tech entrepreneurs who are not affiliated with Nvidia.
Liu stated that Tim Cook, the former CEO of Apple, may be a good fit because he has experience overseeing international supply chains, but she wasn’t sure if he would be open to leaving the iPhone manufacturer, where he currently serves as chair.
Liu of Ten Cap had thought Huang’s resignation as Nvidia’s CEO was inevitable.”Personal behavior is no longer the only issue,” she stated. “It is about corporate governance, national security concerns and maintaining confidence in the leadership of one of the world’s most strategically important companies.”
Given investors’ long-standing optimism about the company, a number of significant investment firms have lowered their projections for the chip titan.
The market value of Nvidia’s shares was wiped out by more than half a trillion dollars when the company’s shares opened down more than 13%.
Nvidia Faces Investor Confidence Crisis
“Our gut tells us we probably haven’t fully probed the depths of what might be found here,” stated Stacy Rasgon, senior analyst in US semiconductors at Bernstein Research, in a letter to investors.
Bernstein’s target share price for Nvidia was cut in half by Rasgon, who declared, “We’ve had enough and prefer to watch from the sidelines.”
The dilemma, according to Ray Wang, CEO of Constellation Research, is more of a problem for Nvidia than it is for the larger AI sector. Nvidia must decide whether the candidate it chooses to be its CEO is as appealing as Huang.
