Nvidia faces life after Jensen Huang

Huang steps down over affairs

Nvidia co-founder Jensen Huang resigned Thursday over reports of extramarital affairs, one involving a woman suspected of being a Chinese spy.

Kress takes interim control

Chief financial officer Colette Kress is now in charge as Nvidia faces one of its biggest challenges: finding a permanent leader for the AI chip-making giant.

The finance chief option

Kress has been an industry veteran for over thirty years at firms like Cisco and Microsoft. She has fronted every earnings call alongside Huang and is a familiar trusted voice for the market.

“familiar and trusted voice for the market at a time when it badly needs one”

The co-founder and engineer

Chris Malachowsky, who founded Nvidia alongside Huang, is another option. Ian Buck, who oversees high-performance computing, has also emerged as a candidate if the company wants an engineer in the top job.

External candidates emerge

Nvidia could look outside for a permanent replacement. Tim Cook, Apple's former chief executive, and Rene Haas, chief executive of Arm Holdings, have been suggested as possible choices.

Stock plummets on resignation

Nvidia shares opened down more than thirteen percent, wiping more than half a trillion dollars off the firm's share market value when markets opened in New York.

Analysts downgrade forecasts

Several major investment firms have downgraded their forecasts for Nvidia. Bernstein Research halved its share price target and said it prefers to watch from the sidelines.

“We've had enough and prefer to watch from the sidelines.”

Trust in Huang was the draw

Ray Wang, chief executive of Constellation Research, said the crisis is whether the new chief executive will have the same appeal as Huang. Many partnerships and investments were made because of trust with Jensen.

“a lot of these partnerships and investments have been made because of the trust with with Jensen”