Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang has resigned, ending a 33-year period in which the company was almost impossible to separate from its co-founder. Huang, who started the firm with two friends in a Silicon Valley diner and drew stadium crowds to unveil the chips that power tools like ChatGPT, stepped down on Thursday after admitting an affair with a woman US officials believe was working for Chinese intelligence, and after reports of a second relationship with a subordinate.
For now, chief financial officer Colette Kress will serve as interim CEO while keeping her finance role. Kress joined Nvidia in 2013 after nearly 25 years at companies including Cisco and Microsoft and is often cited as a leading internal candidate. Harvey C. Jones, a former chief executive of chip design software firm Synopsys, becomes the board's first-ever chair. The company has no known succession plan, and Huang repeatedly avoided naming an heir. Huang's children, Madison and Spencer, both hold management roles, though it is unclear how ready they would be to take over.S3
Investors have long paid a premium for Nvidia's leadership. Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said investors had been buying into Nvidia's technology and Huang's vision in equal measure, and that the market may now have to calculate how much of that premium was attached to one individual. Mandeep Singh, global head of technology research at Bloomberg Intelligence, said Nvidia was unlikely to be as aggressive under new leadership, at a time when the company is racing to deliver each new generation of AI chips. Charu Chanana of Saxo Markets argued that AI leadership could broaden rather than the boom ending, naming AMD, Broadcom, Alphabet and Samsung as possible winners.S3S4
The broader concern is contagion. Nvidia sits at the base of an AI economy in which companies fund one another in a loop. Carmem Domingues, a former senior AI adviser in the Biden White House, said that all the AI companies either owe money to Nvidia or depend on it, and that one falling could bring down a lot. The first test of the new arrangement comes on 17 November, when Nvidia reports its quarterly results under interim leadership.S3
