Nvidia Corp.'s board has approached Arm CEO Rene Haas as a potential successor to Jensen Huang, according to sources cited by the Financial Times on November 133. Haas worked at Nvidia more than a decade ago.
The outreach follows Huang's ouster as CEO, president, and board member, effective immediately, after reports of two extramarital affairs, including one with a woman suspected of spying for China5,8. Nvidia's board accepted Huang's resignation on November 12 and said he will no longer have ties with the chipmaker[1].
Interim leadership and new chair
Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress has been appointed interim CEO and will continue to hold the CFO role until a permanent successor is named6. Kress joined Nvidia in September 2013 and previously spent nearly 25 years in finance roles at Cisco and Microsoft. The board has also appointed Harvey C. Jones, a former Synopsys Inc. CEO and longtime Nvidia director, as the company's first-ever board chairman7. Nvidia took a $2 billion stake in Synopsys last year.
The board said it will consider both internal and external candidates for the permanent CEO role. Nvidia's press release on Huang's exit did not include a quote from Huang.
Succession candidates surface
Beyond the Haas approach, Tae Kim, author of *The Nvidia Way*, published an assessment on November 12 identifying two candidates he considers strongest: Haas and Nvidia Vice President Ian Buck2. Kim described Haas as an executive with a strong understanding of technology and business management experience. Kim wrote that Nvidia has a deep bench of talent and that he believes the company can continue to thrive under a new CEO.
Huang owns approximately 3.61% of Nvidia and is its fourth-largest shareholder. His 33-year tenure transformed a graphics-chip maker into a company valued at roughly $4 trillion at the center of the artificial intelligence boom, according to Ctech.
Board composition under scrutiny
Bloomberg reported on November 12 that many members of Nvidia's 10-person board have known Huang for decades, including attorney Stephen C Neal, venture capitalist Tench Coxe, and academic John Dabiri1. ANALYSIS The board's decision to approach an external candidate with prior Nvidia experience, while simultaneously keeping the permanent search open to insiders, underscores the difficulty of replacing a co-founder who led the company for more than three decades.
The prior Vector Wire brief noted that the espionage dimension of Huang's departure had already begun reshaping the political environment around AI chip exports, even before any new export rule was written[3].