Who Could Replace Jensen Huang? The Names, and Who Is Floating Them

Nvidia has not named a single candidate to replace Jensen Huang. Its board “will consider internal and external candidates,” the company’s Nov. 12 release says. That is all it has said on the record about the search.

The lists came anyway. Since Wednesday, analysts, investors, prediction-market traders and President Donald Trump have put forward at least nine people. Some coverage, mostly in Indian outlets, has described three Indian-born executives as in the race. We traced each name to whoever floated it first, and none came from Nvidia.

The board has a search firm, not a shortlist

Colette Kress, the chief financial officer, is interim CEO and keeps her finance job. Our profile of Kress covers her career and pay. The release gives no timeline for a permanent pick.

On the evening of Nov. 11, Bloomberg reported that the board was working with an outside firm to find replacements. We read that report through 24/7 Wall St.’s account, and no firm has been named. Our resignation story covers Huang’s exit and the reports that preceded it.

Inside Nvidia, an internal post drew more than 1,600 comments, many asking for Huang back, WIRED reported, as our report on the employee campaign explains.

Analysts keep coming back to Ian Buck

Inside Nvidia, the name analysts cite most is Ian Buck. He is vice president of hyperscale and high-performance computing, according to his Nvidia bio. He joined in 2004 after a Stanford PhD and developed CUDA, the software that runs general computing on Nvidia chips.

Reuters made the case first, on Nov. 11. Shay Boloor of Futurum Equities called Buck “the strongest long-term internal candidate,” Reuters reported. A day later, StoneX analyst Cody Acree told CBS News that “Ian makes the most sense internally.”

Bettors agree, on thin volume. Kalshi gave Buck 42% and Kress 12% on Thursday afternoon, CBS reported. By that evening, a Motley Fool tally had Buck near 36% and Kress at 19%.

Analysts quoted by CBS doubt Kress stays. “Ms. Kress will only serve on an interim basis,” said Gil Luria of D.A. Davidson. Our look at Nvidia’s bench explains why the executives named in its filings are a thin pool.

The outside names are analysts’ picks

The most-cited outsider is Rene Haas, Arm’s CEO. “He spent seven years at Nvidia and understands Jensen’s culture,” Boloor wrote on X, Fortune reported. A banker working on chip deals told Reuters that Haas made the most “logical sense.”

Investor Sam Sugarman of Concordia Capital named Haas and AMD CEO Lisa Su, Fortune reported. Apple’s hardware chief, Johny Srouji, came from Patrick McGee, a Free Press contributor. “I could see him wanting that role,” McGee told CBS.

Dan Ives of Yorkville Ives & Co. supplied three more. He told Fortune he sees Tim Cook, Thomas Kurian of Google Cloud and Nikesh Arora of Palo Alto Networks “as the top three external candidates.”

Trump’s pick is Cook. He posted that Cook should take the job, writing “A Legend replaces a Legend!” TechCrunch reported. Cook stopped being Apple’s CEO on Sept. 1 and is now its executive chairman, Apple announced in April. Kalshi gave him about 4%, the Fool tally showed.

How three Indian-born CEOs got on the list

Arora and Kurian trace to Ives. Arora, born in Ghaziabad, has led Palo Alto Networks since 2018 and is its chairman and CEO. He was earlier president of SoftBank and spent about a decade at Google.

Kurian, born in Kerala, became Google Cloud’s CEO after 22 years at Oracle. His last Oracle job was president of product development, Google said in 2018 when it hired him.

Sanjay Mehrotra’s trail is thinner. Born in Kanpur, he is chairman and CEO of Micron, which he joined in 2017. Before that, he led SanDisk from its 1988 start to its 2016 sale.

None of the analysts quoted by Reuters, CBS or Fortune named Mehrotra. The earliest mention we found is in Calcalist’s CTech on Nov. 12. It listed him among names that “could enter the discussion,” without naming a source. Crypto-news sites summarizing a Bloomberg list also include him, but we couldn’t open the Bloomberg original.

By Nov. 13, Indian outlets were reporting the three together as contenders. We found no report that Nvidia’s board has considered any of them. None of the coverage we read carried a comment from Micron, Palo Alto Networks or Google.

Nine names, and no one has said yes

Seven of the nine work for other companies, so the table maps outside opinion, not the board’s thinking.

Kress faces her first public test on Tuesday, Nov. 17. That day, Nvidia reports third-quarter results, with a call at 2 p.m. PT, the release says.