For 33 years, it was almost impossible to separate Nvidia from Jensen Huang. The co-founder, always in his leather jacket, turned a company he started with two friends in a Silicon Valley diner into one of the world’s most valuable firms. He drew stadium crowds to watch him unveil the chips that power tools like ChatGPT.
His resignation on Thursday leaves the company facing a question it has never had to answer: what does Nvidia look like without him? He stepped down after admitting an affair with a woman US officials believe was working for Chinese intelligence, and after reports of a second relationship with a subordinate.
Who takes charge?
For now, chief financial officer Colette Kress will serve as interim CEO and keep her finance role. Harvey C. Jones, a former chief executive of chip design software firm Synopsys, becomes the board’s first-ever chair.
Kress joined Nvidia in 2013 after nearly 25 years at companies including Cisco and Microsoft, and is often cited as a leading internal candidate. But the company has no known succession plan, and Huang repeatedly avoided naming an heir.
“There’s not someone who is sort of prepped and ready to go next in line,” said Carmem Domingues, who was a senior AI adviser in the Biden White House.
Martin Peers of tech outlet The Information has said there are “no obvious internal candidates”. He named two possible outside picks: AMD chief executive Lisa Su, who is a relative of Huang, and Rene Haas, CEO of British chip designer Arm. Another analyst has suggested Intel boss Lip-Bu Tan.
Huang’s children, Madison and Spencer, both hold management roles at the company. Domingues said it was unclear how ready they would be to take over.
The ‘Huang premium’
Investors have long paid extra for Nvidia’s leadership.
“Investors have effectively been buying into Nvidia’s technology and Huang’s vision in equal measure,” said Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management. “It may now have to calculate how much of that premium was attached to one individual.”
Mandeep Singh, global head of technology research at Bloomberg Intelligence, said Nvidia was unlikely to be “as aggressive” under new leadership. That matters for a company racing to deliver each new generation of AI chips.
Rivals could gain as customers look to spread their orders. Charu Chanana of Saxo Markets said “AI leadership could broaden, rather than the boom ending”, and named AMD, Broadcom, Alphabet and Samsung as possible winners.
The first test comes on 17 November, when Nvidia reports its quarterly results under interim leadership.
Ripples across the AI industry
The bigger fear is contagion. Nvidia sits at the base of an AI economy in which companies fund one another in a loop.
“All the AI companies either owe money to Nvidia and/or depend on them,” said Domingues. “One falling can bring down a lot.”
Chanana said the “bigger risk is a disruption to AI spending itself”. Financing, cloud giants’ spending and the returns on AI investment were already under scrutiny. The turmoil also comes days before AI firm Anthropic’s stock market debut, which is widely seen as a test of investor appetite for the sector.
Not everyone is alarmed. Investor Sheikha Maytha Bint Maktoum said any disruption would be “temporary”, given the ecosystem Nvidia has built over decades.
What it means for Europe
Europe has a lot riding on what Nvidia does next. A few weeks ago, at an investment summit in Berlin, Germany, Huang agreed an AI partnership with Chancellor Friedrich Merz. The federal government is reportedly contributing a nine-figure sum in euros.
Around a dozen German companies are expected to take part, including Siemens, Audi and start-up Black Forest Labs, which is based in Freiburg im Breisgau.
Nvidia says it invested almost $1 billion (€900 million) in Germany in 2025. In October, it announced an AI hub for start-ups in Stockholm, Sweden.
Huang championed those projects personally. It remains to be seen whether his successor shares his enthusiasm for each country building a “national intelligence” from its own data.
Losing its voice in Washington
Huang was a close informal adviser on AI to US President Donald Trump, and spent years lobbying against curbs on sales of advanced chips to China. Last year, Trump cleared Nvidia’s H200 chips for export there, overruling China hawks in both parties.
With Huang gone and the spy allegations hanging over the company, that influence may fade. Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren and Chris Coons have already asked the administration to preserve all documents on Nvidia’s chip exports to China.
Beijing denies the spying claims and has accused Washington of using them as a pretext for a technological “blockade”. Meanwhile, Chinese firms are trying to break their dependence on US suppliers, and Huawei is presenting itself as China’s answer to Nvidia.