Nvidia's succession dilemma just got real. Here's who could take over if Jensen Huang steps down.
· Business Insider
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- Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's affair and a board investigation are sparking questions about succession.
- Analysts and former employees point to Colette Kress and Ian Buck as possible successors.
- Nvidia said Huang is "committed to continuing to lead Nvidia as CEO without interruption."
It's hard to imagine Nvidia without Jensen Huang — and the CEO has repeatedly discussed his intention to work for as long as possible.
Now, the question of succession has come into sharp focus this week as Huang admitted to having an affair, and Nvidia's board announced it's investigating whether Huang was the target of a "foreign intelligence effort."
If Huang steps down from his role, analysts and former employees floated several potential successors, including vice president Ian Buck and chief financial officer Colette Kress. Huang's two children, Madison and Spencer, also work at Nvidia, raising questions about whether leadership could remain in the family.
Nvidia told Business Insider in a statement on Sunday that "Jensen is committed to continuing to lead Nvidia as CEO without interruption."
Huang would be hard to replace, said Brad Gastwirth, the global head of research at Circular Technology. While Huang doesn't have controlling voting power, he owns about 3.6% of Nvidia and would likely "have considerable input into succession unless the investigation uncovers serious wrongdoing," Gastwirth said.
"Jensen's combination of technical expertise, strategic vision, and industry relationships is nearly impossible to replicate," he said.
Inside Nvidia's succession dilemma
Nvidia has not publicly designated a number two, and Huang is known for keeping an unusually flat leadership structure with roughly 60 direct reports.
"That works beautifully while he's in the seat, but it means nobody has been groomed, tested, or publicly positioned as the heir," said Daniel Newman, CEO of The Futurum Group.
One former employee said Madison Huang, who works as senior director of product marketing for physical AI, has been asserting greater authority across Nvidia's businesses, which they believe could be an effort to position herself for a larger leadership role.
Madison Huang, Jensen Huang's daughter and Nvidia's senior director of product marketing for physical AI.Bloomberg/Getty Images
Gil Luria, an analyst at DA Davidson, said Kress is the company's only other highly visible executive and could take over as interim CEO if Huang stepped aside.
Kress has worked at Nvidia for 13 years, and prior to that, she held finance roles at Cisco and Microsoft.
Colette Kress, chief financial officer of Nvidia.Nvidia
Since Kress lacks the engineering background that has been central to Huang's leadership, another possible long-term replacement is Ian Buck, a longtime executive who helped develop CUDA, the chip software that has become central to Nvidia's dominance in AI.
Buck heads Nvidia's data center and computing businesses, and he has worked at Nvidia for 22 years.
"He's already running the group that is generating virtually all the revenues," the former employee said, referring to Nvidia's data center business.
Ian Buck, vice president of accelerated computing at Nvidia.David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
A second former employee cited the importance of Nvidia's distinctive culture in promoting a current executive as a successor.
"Ideally it has to be someone from the company who's lived the values and the culture," they said.
Could Nvidia look to an outsider?
Some observers have floated executives from other major technology companies as potential successors, including Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian and Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman.
Both oversee enormous cloud computing businesses that invest heavily in AI infrastructure and work closely with Nvidia, giving them firsthand knowledge of the customers and technologies driving its growth.
While Huang's departure appears unlikely for now, Gastwirth said losing him under the current circumstances could seriously hurt Nvidia.
"I think it would be one of the worst things that could happen to Nvidia," he said. "The company would continue operating, but I would question whether it could maintain the same pace of innovation and execution."
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