Nvidia succession remarks surface as board weighs Huang removal

By Tom Whitfield

Nvidia shares fell as much as 8% in after-hours trading on Wednesday after The Wall Street Journal reported that the board was preparing to remove Jensen Huang. Nvidia did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment, so neither the removal nor any successor was confirmed.

A Bloomberg “The Circuit” interview recorded on October 14 and released Thursday now frames the people-process issue: the next chief must be selected, not handed to Huang’s children. Huang, who has led Nvidia for 33 years, said: “Just as I can be fired, the next CEO has to be hired.”

The recording predates the scandal by weeks, although Bloomberg released it after a turbulent week at Nvidia. The reporting identifies no regulatory deadline; the immediate people-process decision is whether Nvidia can run a credible, board-led succession process if Huang leaves.

What changed at Nvidia?

On Sunday, Huang admitted to being unfaithful to his wife. Nvidia’s board said it was investigating whether a foreign-intelligence effort had targeted him.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that Huang had a second affair with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care, who reports directly to him. The report cited five unnamed former employees.

Those disclosures followed a week of turmoil at Nvidia, described at the time as the world’s most valuable chip company. The reported board action turned succession from a long-term planning matter into an immediate governance and leadership test; the board may now need a successor, not merely a plan.

Why did Huang reject an inherited succession?

Bloomberg asked whether his daughter Madison, Nvidia’s senior director of product marketing for physical AI, was in line to take over. Huang said he did not hope the job would go to her and that, if either Madison or Spencer aspired to it, they had to earn it.

His son Spencer serves as director of robotics product. Huang treated either family ambition as a reason to compete for the role, not a reason to receive it.

Nvidia has not publicly named a successor. Its flat structure gives Huang as many as 60 direct reports, which has made a clear No. 2 difficult to identify.

Analysts and former employees have pointed to CFO Colette Kress as a possible interim leader and Ian Buck as a potential contender. Buck is a longtime executive who leads Nvidia’s data-center and accelerated-computing business.

Those names indicate internal possibilities, not an appointment or a confirmed contingency. Nvidia still has contenders, but the evidence shows an open selection rather than a designated heir.

What succession model did Huang prefer?

At the time of the October remarks, Huang said he had no intention of leaving soon. He nevertheless hoped the next chief already worked at Nvidia and said he wanted to stay healthy and continue earning his keep for another 20 years.

Huang also said it was his job to ensure Nvidia developed its own next chief. The company should create conditions for continued success with its next leader already inside, he said.

He described the burden of the role in equally demanding terms, saying he was responsible for an entire industry and that the pressure of being chief executive was supposed to be high. His preference was therefore for an internal bench, although his words did not settle who should win.

What remains unanswered?

The report does not identify a permanent successor, an interim appointment or selection criteria. It also does not say whether the board has authorized a contingency, or how the foreign-intelligence question affects the leadership review.

For HR leaders, the next questions are concrete: has the board named an acting executive, what criteria will decide a permanent appointment, and how will Nvidia conduct an internal search while the board’s inquiry remains open? These questions concern decision rights, candidate evaluation and continuity rather than assumptions about family succession.

The next test is whether Nvidia can name a credible leader without making a hasty appointment while the board considers Huang’s conduct and the reported possibility of removal. Until then, Nvidia has a succession principle but no public succession plan.