Nvidia’s board is searching for a permanent CEO after Jensen Huang resigned on Thursday. Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress will lead the company on an interim basis while directors consider internal and external candidates. Possible successors mentioned by analysts include Tim Cook, Ian Buck, Johny Srouji and Rene Haas, but the board has not named finalists or set a deadline. Experts say finding a leader with both engineering and executive skills may take time, and prediction-market odds remain divided. The board’s review is the next step in choosing who will lead a company valued at $4 trillion and central to supplying chips for advanced AI models.
TLDR: Colette Kress is serving as Nvidia’s interim CEO while the board considers candidates from inside and outside the company. Analysts have floated several names, but no permanent successor or decision date has been announced.
Nvidia’s board has put a formal succession process in motion after Jensen Huang resigned as chief executive on Thursday. Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress will serve as interim CEO while the board considers internal and external candidates for a permanent replacement. The decision gives the company a clear next step during a major leadership change.
The board’s stated plan is to consider candidates from inside and outside Nvidia. That is the common-sense course for a company whose next leader will need to match technical knowledge with executive skill. Experts say finding someone with both could take an extensive search, and one analyst warned that naming a successor too quickly could be a mistake.
Huang, 63, led Nvidia from its founding more than three decades ago. The company became a $4 trillion business under his leadership, and its chips supply nearly the entire market for processors used in frontier artificial intelligence models, according to the report. His departure leaves a leadership gap at a company with an unusually concentrated management structure: Huang had more than 60 direct reports and held broad influence over company decisions.
The circumstances around his resignation add uncertainty. The report says he stepped down following reports of a relationship with a woman suspected to be a Chinese spy. It does not provide further details about those reports. The board has not announced a permanent successor or a date for completing its search.
Kress is the immediate continuity choice. Wall Street analysts described her as a solid interim CEO, but said they do not expect her to receive the permanent role. Prediction markets have given her varying odds: one market put her chances at roughly one in five, while another listed a 24% probability. Those figures reflect trader expectations, not a decision by Nvidia’s board.
Tim Cook, Apple’s executive chairman and former CEO, has emerged as a leading outside possibility. Cook ran Apple for 15 years before stepping down in September, and President Donald Trump endorsed him in a Thursday social media post. If Cook took the Nvidia job, the report says he would have to leave Apple because of possible conflicts of interest. That would mean giving up his current position to take on leadership of a major competitor in the technology sector.
Ian Buck is a prominent internal candidate. He is Nvidia’s vice president of its data center unit and oversees its AI hardware and software products. Buck joined Nvidia in 2004 and invented CUDA, the software platform that allows developers to use Nvidia graphics chips for work such as training AI models. Analysts have said the board may favor a technology leader and that Buck makes sense as an internal option.
Other names have surfaced, though none has been identified by the board as a finalist. Johny Srouji, Apple’s chief hardware officer, has been mentioned by analysts and was reported as a person under consideration. Rene Haas, CEO of Arm and a former Nvidia executive, is another possibility. The CEO of a multinational cybersecurity company, identified in the report as Arora, has also been floated. These names remain possibilities raised by analysts, not confirmed selections.
The process carries practical costs in time and attention, but the report provides no estimate of financial costs, no application forms, and no compliance requirements. No deadline for the board’s decision has been announced. The directly affected parties are Nvidia’s leadership, employees and shareholders, while the company’s role as a leading chip supplier gives the succession wider significance for customers that depend on its products. A search that weighs internal and external candidates also means the company has not narrowed its options to a quick handoff.
Prediction markets show how uncertain the outcome remains. On Kalshi, traders put Buck first at 35%. Polymarket traders leaned toward Cook, with nearly 50% assigning him a chance of becoming CEO, compared with 32% for Buck, 24% for Kress and 9.2% for Haas. These percentages are separate market estimates and do not establish what the board will do.
The board’s next step is to continue evaluating candidates and select a permanent CEO; oversight of that process remains with the board. The search has no reported deadline, and the company has given no further timetable. That review is the necessary next step, and the experts have this handled.
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