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By Hugh Cameron
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On Thursday, Nvidia's board of directors announced that CEO Jensen Huang had resigned after 33 years leading the company.
It thanked Huang for the “profound” contributions he made since cofounding Nvidia in 1993 and said he would be replaced on an interim basis by Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress.
Huang’s departure followed reports of two affairs: one with a Chinese national who U.S. intelligence sources reportedly suspected was a spy, and another with an employee. Markets and analysts were already reacting to this possibility before the official resignation, with shares sinking and the stock downgraded on fears that one of the world’s most consequential tech companies may be unable to function without the man who spent three decades building it into a multitrillion-dollar chipmaking giant.
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“Jensen is Nvidia. He is the visionary," Bernstein Senior Analyst Stacy Rasgon said in an interview with CNBC, after the firm slashed Nvidia’s price target 50 percent to $200.
And some say these concerns have been worsened by the absence of a clear replacement for Huang.
“There is no apparent successor as [Huang] has seemingly deliberately refused to create any number two at Nvidia,” John C. Coffee Jr., a Columbia Law School professor and corporate governance expert, told Newsweek. “This is an extraordinary flat organization with no intermediate senior executives.”
But the Nvidia board is now on the hunt for a permanent CEO—considering both “internal and external candidates” per Thursday’s announcement—and the combined wisdom of analysts, prediction markets and even some lawmakers has seen an informal shortlist begin to take shape.
1. Ian Buck, Nvidia
Buck joined Nvidia in 2004, and as its vice president of hyperscale and high-performance computing, he possesses a unique understanding of both the company’s infrastructure and the technology that has propelled it to the forefront of the semiconductor sector and of the global AI arms race. Buck is also the engineer behind CUDA, the software that allows customers to use Nvidia’s GPUs as more general-purpose engines.
As a result, he has emerged as a frontrunner—or at least a preferred candidate—in the eyes of some analysts and prediction markets.
"Ian Buck is the strongest long-term internal candidate given his role in creating CUDA and leading Nvidia's hyperscale business,” Shay Boloor, chief market strategist at Futurum Equities, told Reuters.
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Tae Kim, author of The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant, called Buck “one of the most important figures in Nvidia’s history” in a blog post on Thursday. “He oversees the company’s AI hardware and software products deployed with hyperscalers and other customers. He has the engineering knowledge, experience, close data center customer relationships, and employee respect needed to lead Nvidia into its next chapter.”
Analysis from The Action Network also showed Buck leading the pack, with odds around 36 percent following Huang’s resignation.
"We analyzed prediction-market probabilities from Kalshi and Polymarket, weighting each platform based on its historical forecasting accuracy in science and technology markets,” Gautham Marthandan, a senior data & research specialist at The Action Network, explained to Newsweek. “We also examined the more specific Next CEO market segment, trading activity and the strength of supporting historical evidence to provide additional context."
2. Tim Cook
Much of the discussion around Huang’s role at Nvidia and what the company will lose in his absence has focused on his status as a “visionary” in the AI and tech spaces.
Tim Cook’s 15-year tenure at Apple has drawn significant praise for the steady stewardship and balance sheet discipline demonstrated during this time. Apple was valued at around $350 billion when Cook took over in 2011, growing close to $4.7 trillion by the time he departed earlier this year, giving him a certain symmetry with Huang’s story.
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Cook’s name was thrown into the mix largely thanks to President Donald Trump, who on Thursday said there was “only one man” who could take Huang’s place.
"TIM COOK of Apple. A Legend replaces a Legend!” Trump posted to Truth Social on Thursday.
Dan Ives, a technology analyst and partner at investment firm Yorkville Ives & Co., told Newsweek on Thursday that he considers Cook the top candidate for the job. Ives wrote in a note that there was “a good chance Nvidia's Board looks to the outside for a CEO,” and called Cook “a dark horse candidate…given the global importance of Nvidia to the overall U.S. tech industry.”
Like Huang, Cook has experience guiding a multitrillion-dollar company through periods of significant expansion, occasional difficulty and technological upheaval, while developing a similarly amicable relationship with the White House.
“It would help to recruit an individual with a strong record of accomplishment on the tech field,” William Kovacic, former chairman and commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission, told *Newsweek. “*Tim Cook would be such a person. If not Tim Cook then someone of comparable stature.”
3. Colette Kress
“Colette Kress has built enormous credibility internally and externally and we are big fans of her strategically,” Ives wrote on Thursday.
Before stepping into the interim CEO role, Kress has served as Nvidia’s CFO since 2013 and, to many, appears a logical choice to ensure a smooth transition. Ahead of Huang’s official exit, many analysts had tapped Kress as a potential replacement. Nvidia generated only around $4 billion in annual revenue when Kress joined, which has grown to $216 billion, according to the company’s latest financial report.
The Action Network lists her as Buck’s closest contender, and the company extolled her qualifications in Thursday’s announcement.
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"Colette has helped lead NVIDIA through a period of extraordinary growth and has a deep understanding of our business, customers, operations and financial position," Harvey Jones, Nvidia’s newly appointed chair, said in a statement on Thursday.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Kress has at times fallen out of favor with Nvidia’s former CEO. Citing people familiar with the matter, it said that the pair had disagreed over Nvidia's financial exposure and aggressive dealmaking, and that Huang had at times acted dismissively toward Kress, calling her a “deer in the headlights” at a meeting this summer.
On X, the author of The Nvidia Way reacted to the story and called such remarks “standard operating procedure for Jensen's management style."
When contacted for comment, Nvidia shared the quote from Jones with Newsweek, in which the chair said that Kress "is supported by an experienced leadership team that has been instrumental in executing NVIDIA’s strategy and advancing its technology roadmap.
"The Board has full confidence in Colette and the leadership team, and we expect the company’s operations, customer commitments and product roadmap to continue without interruption."
4. Renee Haas
Renee Haas currently serves as CEO of ARM Holdings, a British semiconductor and software design company. Among external candidates, Haas has the benefit of being a former Nvidia executive—having spent seven years at the company as vice president of its computing products arm.
Morningstar senior equity analyst Brian Colello called Haas “a compelling external candidate that could guide the Nvidia ship.”
“Haas is familiar with leading a publicly-listed company and would bring semiconductor experience, though Nvidia's business model is considerably different from Arm's, Charu Chanana, an investment strategist at Saxo, told the BBC.
Haas is arguably one of only two choices, according to Kim, the other being Buck.
“He has proven very successful outside Nvidia with a strong grasp of technology, a public-facing CEO skill set, and well-regarded business management experience. As a former Nvidia executive, he is also well known to Nvidia’s senior leadership, and I have heard that former Nvidia employees loved working for him.”
5. Lisa Su
Like Haas, Lisa Su’s appointment would appeal to analysts who believe an outside hire with semiconductor expertise is the best compromise for ensuring experienced leadership and a smooth transition.
“It is likely that the Nvidia Board will seek to replace Huang with an outside experienced semiconductor industry figure, to ensure that the company is being run by someone with the industry relationships and stature of Huang,” Paul Triolo, technology policy lead for Asia and the Americas at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group, told Newsweek. “The fundamentals of the company remain strong, its engineering staff unmatched in the industry, and the firm will retain deep ties with both suppliers and customers.”
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Su is currently the chair and CEO of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and has been credited with leading one of the most notable turnarounds in recent tech history—AMD transforming from a debt-riddled chipmaker into an AI giant worth around $1 trillion.
And Su was named Yahoo Finance’s most recent “CEO of the Year,” with Executive Editor Brian Sozzi writing: “Since assuming the CEO position in 2014, Su has completely transformed the company into Nvidia's strongest rival.”
Su is also Huang's first cousin. Both were born in Taiwan, then moved separately to the U.S. and became executives at trillion-dollar companies.
What’s Next for Nvidia?
While the above names are currently considered “in the running,” the past week has shown how swiftly executives’ positions and futures can be upended.
"Our earlier analysis saw Jensen Huang's exit probability rise from 13.2% to 76.6% in just three days, coinciding with his resignation. This shows how rapidly market expectations can shift,” Marthandan told Newsweek. “With NVIDIA's permanent CEO still undecided, new developments or credible reports about potential successors could trigger similarly significant movements in the coming days."
Some say that the choice will have a limited impact, and that the more consequential risks have already begun to manifest with Huang’s exit. But many remain bullish about the company and its prospects.
“Jensen's departure doesn't mean the company instantly goes to zero. The next two years are already baked in,” Kim wrote on X.
In the immediate future, however, Nvidia faces a number of headwinds due to the scandals, including Congressional scrutiny and lost progress in relaxing export restrictions for which Huang had been lobbying.
Chris Miller, an associate professor at Tufts University and author of Chip War, told Newsweek on Wednesday that the scandal “will substantially reduce the Nvidia's role in shaping technology policy toward China.”
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Daniel Orton, Gray R. Thomas
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