Who Should Run Nvidia? Not Another Jensen Huang

On November 11, 2026, Nvidia's board accepted Jensen Huang's resignation as president, chief executive and director, effective immediately. It named its finance chief, Colette Kress, interim chief executive, and said it "will consider internal and external candidates" for the permanent job. Every instinct now says: find another Jensen Huang. Nvidia's own filings say that would be hiring for a job that no longer exists.

Nvidia has given no reason for the resignation. On November 10, the day before, its independent directors said they had retained Joon H. Kim, a former acting US attorney, and the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz "to conduct a thorough and independent investigation." What that investigation concerns and what it finds are for Nvidia to say. The question here is the one the board now has to answer: who should run the company next?

The pull toward another founder is easy to understand. Nvidia's own announcement spoke of "the extraordinary foundation Jensen created over the last 33 years." After a run like that, a board looks for a technical visionary who can stand on a stage and tell customers what the next five years of computing look like. The lists drawn up this week, including The New York Times's, lean that way, toward chip and AI expertise. That describes the job Huang built. It does not describe the job he leaves behind.

Look at what Nvidia signed this summer. In August, it agreed to guarantees, capped at $105 billion, on data center leases in Ohio taken by an affiliate of OpenAI. Its quarterly report showed equity investments of $99 billion in other companies. Its supply commitments had reached $279 billion, and the report said what they were for: "primarily memory and manufacturing facilities." The same report warned that "The United States has imposed unilateral worldwide controls restricting GPUs and associated products."

That is three jobs in one. Nvidia is still a chip designer. It is also a buyer of memory and factory capacity, with commitments counted in the hundreds of billions. And it is, in its own words, a provider of "financial guarantees and other forms of credit support" to the customers who buy its chips. All three now run under export rules set in Washington.

Huang built the first job and grew into the other two. His successor inherits all three on day one, without 33 years of trust to spend. So the profile is not "another Jensen." It is someone who has run a supply chain at enormous scale, kept a balance sheet whole through a downturn, and earned the respect of engineers who will judge a new boss by whether the roadmap still ships.

There is a fourth problem that no filing shows. Huang ran Nvidia with an unusually flat structure: The New York Times reported this week that "an estimated 60 people were reporting directly to him." Craig Stevens, a managing partner at the search firm Boyden, told the paper: "Things have to change structurally immediately." Whoever comes next will have to build the management layers that a founder of 33 years never needed.

Colette Kress is the obvious first name, and not only because she holds the job today. She joined Nvidia in September 2013 after nearly 25 years in finance at technology companies, including 13 at Microsoft and three at Cisco, and she signed the filings that disclosed every one of the commitments above. Few people know those promises as well. The case against is the one any board weighs with a finance chief: Nvidia's customers buy a roadmap, and her career has been in finance. There is a second risk in the interim itself. Kress remains finance chief while she serves, so for now the person who sets the strategy and the person who reports on the balance sheet are the same person.

Debora Shoquist joined Nvidia from JDS Uniphase in 2007 to run operations and has been responsible for operations and the supply chain since 2009. If the job is now largely about memory and manufacturing, that is the work she has been doing. The company lists her age as 71, which makes her a natural bridge rather than a ten-year answer.

Then there is the newest senior hire. In July, Nvidia said its head of worldwide field operations, Ajay Puri, would retire, and it named Nick Parker, 55, to the role after 26 years at Microsoft. Parker arrived in August 2026. That is a strong hire for the customer side of the business, and far too recent to be a successor.

The inside name the instinct favors is Ian Buck, the vice president the Times credits with inventing CUDA, the software that let Nvidia's chips move from video games to AI. He now handles Nvidia's biggest data center customers and has testified in Congress. His strength is the part of the job that changed least, and, as the Times put it, he "lacks broad management experience."

Start outside with Lisa Su, and her record explains why. She became chief executive of AMD in October 2014, after serving as its operating chief, and holds three degrees in electrical engineering from MIT. AMD's revenue went from $3.991 billion in her first full year to $34.639 billion in 2025, and someone who bought AMD the day she took over now has about 38 times as much as someone who bought the US market. Of everyone here, she is the nearest thing to another Huang. That is the case for her, and also the case against: her great strength is the one Nvidia already has in depth.

Hock Tan has run Broadcom since March 2006. Under him it bought VMware in November 2023, and its revenue grew from $20.848 billion in fiscal 2018 to $63.887 billion in fiscal 2025. If the next decade at Nvidia is about deals and capital, his is the record built for it. He is 74.

Sanjay Mehrotra co-founded SanDisk in 1988 and has run Micron, the memory maker, since May 2017. His record there has two very different chapters. Revenue was $30.391 billion in fiscal 2018 and only $37.378 billion in fiscal 2025. Then, in fiscal 2026, it was $133.188 billion. Someone who bought Micron the day he took over has about 8 times as much as someone who bought the US market. He is 67.

Tim Cook handed Apple's chief executive job to John Ternus on September 1, 2026, and became executive chair. He is also the one name with a public sponsor: President Trump suggested him for Nvidia, the Times reported. On paper he is not a chip executive at all. In practice, the job Nvidia now needs filled is the one Cook did for Apple as its operating chief, when, Apple said in 2011, he had been responsible for "end-to-end management of Apple's supply chain." Then he succeeded a founder, Steve Jobs, and the company kept growing. Apple's net sales were $108.249 billion in fiscal 2011 and $416.161 billion in fiscal 2025, and someone who bought Apple the day he took over had about 3.4 times as much, by the day he stepped down, as someone who bought the US market.

He is still a dark horse: he has just stepped back from one top job, he is 66, and, as the Times noted, he "hasn't been deeply engaged in the A.I. revolution." But if the board writes the job down honestly, his is the career that matches it best.

Hire the operator, not the visionary. Nvidia's engineers can keep the roadmap. What Nvidia has not yet done is carry a $279 billion book of supply commitments and up to $105 billion of guarantees through a downturn, and that is the part of the job that can sink the company.

The strongest fit is Sanjay Mehrotra: a founder by background, which matters to engineers; an operator by trade; and the only candidate who has run a memory maker, through years when revenue barely moved and a year when it exploded. Memory is what Nvidia's supply commitments are "primarily" for. Su is the finer chip executive and the weaker fit for this job. Cook is the dark horse who matches the job description better than anyone else on this list. Kress should stay where she is most valuable, as the finance chief who knows every promise, beside whoever gets the job.

Whoever it is, the board should move fast. A 2010 study of US public companies found that interim successions "are associated with lower performance during the period in which the interim serves." Intel's chief executive resigned effective immediately on December 1, 2024; its board named Lip-Bu Tan, a former Intel director, on March 10, 2025. Nvidia should aim to take less time than that.

Every board's choice is its own, and Nvidia's will be made with information no one outside has. But the lesson travels. When a founder leaves, the temptation is to search for the founder's strengths. The better search is for the job's needs, which may have changed while the founder held it. Write the job down before you write down the names. Apple had a succession plan ready in 2011, and in 2026 it announced in April a handover that took effect in September. Nvidia now has to write its job down in a hurry.