Nvidia (NVDA.US) new CEO candidate list and market forecast inventory Trump names Cook to replace him

The Zhitong Finance App learned that on November 12, local time, Nvidia (NVDA.US) announced that the company's board of directors has approved the resignation of Huang Renxun as the company's president, chief executive officer (CEO) and director, with immediate effect. Colette Kress, the company's current executive vice president and chief financial officer, will serve as interim CEO and will continue to serve as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) until an official successor is determined. The Board will begin the process of selecting a new CEO, considering both internal and external candidates. Additionally, the board of directors announced the appointment of former Synopsys CEO Harvey Jones, who has over 30 years of experience in corporate operations and venture capital, as the company's first chairman of the board of directors.

After Hwang In-hoon left Nvidia, the market is closely watching who will officially take charge of this artificial intelligence (AI) chip giant in the future. Analysts and investors want the new CEO to have both technical knowledge, vision, and excellent financial management skills. After all, Nvidia is not only a manufacturer, but also a significant investor in the AI craze. Additionally, managing a large business is probably an essential requirement for this position.

Outside voices have begun to “make choices” for Nvidia when the successor is still unclear. US President Trump publicly named former Apple CEO Tim Cook as the “only candidate” to replace Hwang In-hoon, saying “one legend succeeds another.” Kress, who was appointed as interim CEO, and Ian Barker, a senior Nvidia engineer with deep expertise in the field of technology, are also seen as potential successors. The two each have the two competencies most valued by investors — financial management and technical strength.

According to the prediction market website Polymarket, Buck is most likely to become the next CEO, followed by Cress, Arm Holdings (ARM.US) CEO Rene Haas, and Cook.

Here are some of the Nvidia CEO candidates discussed by chip industry observers.

1. Colette Kress - Nvidia CFO

Analysts and investors say Kress's rich experience, authority, and deep relationship with Wall Street made her the right person to lead Nvidia through the crisis. Kress has been Nvidia's CFO since 2013. Prior to that, she had a long career in large technology companies such as Microsoft, Cisco, and the chip company Texas Instruments. If she were to head the company, an important question would be who would assume the role of a technology visionary.

2. Ian Barker - Vice President of Nvidia's Hyperscale Computing and High Performance Computing Business

Buck joined Nvidia in 2004 and is one of the key technology development leaders driving the company's transformation from a company focused on video game chips to the world's largest AI hardware giant. He played an important role in this, participating in leading the development of CUDA. CUDA is a software platform that enables Nvidia graphics processors to support general purpose computing. As the head of Nvidia's AI hardware and software products, Buck also works closely with large customers.

Investors want the new CEO to be a visionary with insight into the future direction of development, and this is an important part of Buck's role. Last year, Buck said at a Bank of America conference: “One of the most challenging parts of my job is often trying to predict the future, but AI always continues to surprise us.”

3. Rene Haas -- Arm CEO

Prior to joining Arm, René Haas spent seven significant years at Nvidia, rising all the way to vice president and general manager of the company's computing products business. He joined Arm in 2013 and became CEO in 2022, overseeing the listing of the British chipmaker on Nasdaq in 2023. In April of this year, he also took over the international business of Arm's parent company SoftBank Group and served as a member of the SoftBank Group board of directors.

Arm is responsible for designing the processor architecture and licensing it to other companies to develop specific chip designs based on this. For a long time, Arm's strengths have mainly been in the mobile phone field, and it is currently continuously expanding into the computer market. This makes it heavily overlapping with Nvidia's business. Nvidia is also a chip design company, but Arm is far smaller than Nvidia regardless of revenue scale or number of employees.

4. Tim Cook -- former CEO of Apple

After Apple co-founder Steve Jobs passed away in 2011, Tim Cook took over and successfully completed the difficult task of leading Apple. Therefore, the experience of succeeding a legendary figure is indeed an important qualification in his resume.

In his 15 years as CEO, he raised Apple's market value from $350 billion to a whopping $4.5 trillion. Today, Apple is still the only company whose market capitalization surpasses Nvidia. He has earned praise for driving the design of best-selling products such as Apple Watch and AirPods, while also establishing and growing the company's service business, making it a large-scale revenue source for Apple.

Cook has further strengthened its strategy of using China as Apple's main manufacturing base. This approach brought huge efficiency improvements to the company, but it also exposed Apple to risks, especially after Trump raised tariffs. Meanwhile, Cook is also actively building relationships with Trump, often keeping in touch with him by phone, and attending private dinners with the president and others.

Cook is currently still the executive chairman of Apple's board of directors. He continues to travel around the world to promote Apple's interests, including a visit to China in October this year — his third visit to China this year.

5. Pat Kissinger - Former CEO of Intel

Pat Kissinger, who led an ambitious plan to reverse Intel's business situation, left the chipmaker in 2024 due to difficulties in achieving substantial progress in reform initiatives, when he had been CEO for less than four years.

Despite this, Kissinger is one of the few executives in the world who actually knows how to run a chip company. He is familiar with both chip design and manufacturing because Intel is involved in both fields. Although Nvidia does not manufacture its own chips, its success is inseparable from maintaining close partnerships with manufacturers.

Kissinger began his career at Intel when he was 18, working for the company for 30 years, and progressed all the way to Intel's first Chief Technology Officer. Since then, he has worked for nearly ten years at VMware, a subsidiary of Broadcom. In 2021, he returned to Intel as CEO.

6. Su Zifeng - AMD CEO

Su Zifeng leads AMD (AMD.US), one of Nvidia's main competitors. If she succeeds Hwang In-hoon, this will have a major impact on AMD and trigger a chain reaction throughout the semiconductor industry.

Su Zifeng and Huang Renxun were both born in Taiwan, China. The two have also stated that they are distant relatives. However, compared to Wong Yen-hoon, Su Tsz-fung is known for her very different and much more understated style. Whereas Huang Renxun often attracts large crowds every time he visits Asia, Su Zifeng takes a more restrained approach.

As US export controls led to a sharp decline in Nvidia's share in the Chinese market, AMD under Su Zifeng's leadership still found ways to enter the Chinese market, including selling central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processors (GPUs) for consumers. These businesses helped AMD gain 4% of the AI chip market in China.

7. Sanjay Mehrotra - CEO of Micron Technology

Sanjay Mehrotra, CEO of memory chip manufacturer Micron Technology (MU.US), has over 40 years of experience and maintains a close partnership with Nvidia, which uses Micron products.

Since 2017, Mehrotra has been leading the largest memory chip manufacturer in the US and is driving the company's transformation to become an important supplier in the field of AI systems. Prior to joining Micron, Mehrotra co-founded the pioneering flash memory company SanDisk in 1988 and remained with the company until it was sold in 2016. He has been the CEO of SanDisk since 2011, helping the company grow into a Fortune 500 semiconductor company.

Under Mehrotra's leadership, Micron further deepened its partnership with Nvidia and shifted its business focus to high-bandwidth memory chips for AI servers. This strategic transformation boosted the company's valuation to around $1 trillion, benefiting from a surge in demand for AI infrastructure.

8. Matt Murphy - CEO of Maywell Technology

Matt Murphy, CEO of custom chip maker Maywell Technology (MRVL.US), has become an important figure in the AI infrastructure boom. While maintaining close cooperation with Nvidia, he helps cloud computing giants develop custom chips to reduce their reliance on Nvidia processors.

Since 2016, Murphy has led Mewell Technology, transforming the company from a chip manufacturer focused on the storage business to a major supplier of data center, networking, and AI infrastructure technology. Prior to joining Maywell, he had a career spanning over 20 years in various roles at Maxim Integrated.

Under Murphy's leadership, Maywell Technology has become one of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI boom. The company expanded its custom chip business, won large cloud computing customers, and strengthened its partnership with Nvidia. In June of this year, Hwang In-hoon called Maywell Technology the next “trillion dollar company,” driving its stock price to a record high.

9. Johnny Slugi - Apple's Chief Hardware Officer

Johnny Srooge is responsible for managing the engineering development of all of Apple's hardware products. His terms of reference cover hardware such as microchips, cellular modems, displays, cameras, and batteries within Apple devices, and reports directly to CEO John Tenus.

Prior to joining Apple, Scrooge held senior positions in processor design at Intel and IBM. Sluggie helped Apple grow into a company with strong chip design capabilities, enabling it to design its own processors. He joined Apple in 2008 and is responsible for leading the development of the iPhone's main processor. This work later developed into Apple Silicon, a line of chips designed independently by Apple for its devices.

Both Apple and Nvidia have partnered with TSMC.US to provide manufacturing services for chips designed by these two Californian companies. This gave Slugi an insight into the operation of one of Nvidia's key partnerships.