The key facts

  • Huang's odds of surviving the week on Kalshi are estimated at 30%
  • The NYT reported, citing five sources, an affair with Kimberly Powell; it remained unclear whom Huang was referring to
  • TechCrunch listed candidates: Lisa Su, Eric Schmidt, Lip-Bu Tan, Bret Taylor, Ian Buck and others

The situation around Nvidia's founder

Nvidia, in TechCrunch's phrasing, is almost impossible to imagine without its 'rock-star' CEO, but that is exactly the scenario being discussed in Silicon Valley. On the Kalshi trading platform, Jensen Huang's odds of surviving the week were estimated at just 30%. Huang admitted to an extramarital affair, yet, as noted by midday Wednesday, it remained unclear who exactly was meant: Alice Huang — a Chinese top executive whom American intelligence suspects of spying for the PRC — or Kimberly Powell, an Nvidia executive who reports to him and who, according to five sources of The New York Times in an 'explosive new investigation', was also his lover.

What could happen and why there is no ready plan

Even if Huang were removed from the CEO post, board members who grew wealthy thanks to him are unlikely to break off relations with him entirely: absent new complications, they could keep him as chairman of the board — a position Nvidia currently does not have. The problem is that the company has no obvious succession plan, so publications and analysts are forced to speculate. TechCrunch notes that Huang's 60 direct reports are surely being scrutinized more closely than the rest.

Candidates from TechCrunch's list

Among the figures named is Lisa Su, head of AMD and a distant relative of Huang, whose name The Information mentioned this week; TechCrunch, however, doubts she would trade her post at a competitor company that only benefits from Nvidia's distraction with the investigation and briefings in Congress. Eric Schmidt is the favorite of Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean for leadership studies at the Yale School of Management, who earlier this week spoke with TechCrunch: Schmidt, in his words, could 'parachute in tomorrow and do very well.' The objection — Schmidt's own extramarital affairs, which The New York Times wrote about in 2024. Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Intel, knows chips and, against the backdrop of Intel's weak outlook (shares fell 20% after a warning about a memory shortage caused by the AI boom), might view such a move as an 'emergency exit'. Bret Taylor, former co-CEO of Salesforce and chairman of OpenAI's board, now runs the startup Sierra. Inside Nvidia, vice president Ian Buck, one of the creators of CUDA, and senior vice president for hardware engineering Andrew Bell are being discussed; most often named is CFO Colette Kress, though analysts do not consider her a born visionary. TechCrunch called Laurie Huang — the founder's wife, a former chip engineer and now co-head of the family trusts — a 'wild card.'

Context

Notably, even the publication that compiled the list of candidates caveats its 'unscientific' nature: these are speculations amid an absence of official information. No decisions by Nvidia's board of directors have been announced so far; TechCrunch concludes that the resolution will come quickly — 'whatever happens next, we will find out soon.'