NVIDIA CEO Search Stuck at Search-Firm Stage as Shares Drop

NVIDIA's board said on November 13, 2026, that it had not yet chosen a search firm to lead the hunt for a permanent CEO, and that no candidate had been formally engaged. The statement, reported by CNBC, sets the official start of the succession process at zero: no firm retained, no candidate approached on the record.

The board's exact words carried a careful hedge. "Any speculation regarding individual candidates, whether internal or external, is premature," it said. That phrasing addresses formal engagement specifically, and leaves open whether informal conversations have taken place.

Has the board already approached someone?

The Financial Times reported on November 13 that the board had approached Arm CEO Rene Haas, citing people familiar with the matter. Haas spent seven years at NVIDIA, including a stint as vice president of the computing-products business, before joining SoftBank-backed Arm in 2013. Neither NVIDIA nor Arm has confirmed the report.

The gap between the board's denial and the FT's account is narrow but real. The board denied formal engagement; it did not deny contact. That distinction will define the credibility of the search process in the weeks ahead.

Who is running NVIDIA now?

Jensen Huang resigned as president, CEO and board member on November 12, 2026, effective immediately. Colette Kress, executive vice president and CFO since September 2013, agreed to serve as interim CEO while keeping her finance duties until a permanent successor is named.

Kress brought almost 25 years of technology-finance experience to NVIDIA, including roles at Cisco and Microsoft. She held her first meeting as interim CEO on the afternoon of November 12 with senior executives at NVIDIA's Santa Clara, California, headquarters, according to a person familiar with the internal details.

The board also appointed Harvey C. Jones as its first-ever chair. The permanent search will consider both internal and external candidates, though no timeline has been disclosed.

What did the market do?

NVIDIA shares fell more than 2% on November 13, pushing the company's market capitalization below $4 trillion. Investors weighed Huang's sudden exit against the board's assurances of continuity.

Jones said the board expected operations, customer commitments and the product roadmap to continue without interruption under Kress and the existing leadership team. Kress, separately, said NVIDIA would keep advancing its accelerated-computing and AI work, with focus remaining on customers, partners, developers and shareholders.

Those are promises, not yet evidence. Both statements rest on a leadership structure where one person holds the two most scrutinized jobs in the company at once.

Why the November 17 earnings call matters

Third-quarter fiscal 2027 results remain scheduled for November 17, 2026, at approximately 1:20 p.m. Pacific Time, with the earnings call at 2 p.m. That release is the next scheduled public checkpoint for the continuity plan.

The call will arrive while Kress holds both the interim CEO and CFO roles and the board is still selecting the firm that will support the permanent search. The immediate business issue is whether the existing leadership team can deliver the operational and product-roadmap continuity the board has promised while the succession remains unresolved.

What HR and governance watchers should note

For people-process leaders, the case is a study in interim-structure risk. The board has stacked two C-suite roles on one executive, appointed a first-ever chair, and started a search that, by its own account, has not formally begun.

No timeline for the permanent appointment exists in the public record. Until a search firm is retained and candidates are confirmed as engaged, every name in circulation — Haas included — remains unverified, and the board's November 13 statement is the only authoritative document on the process.