Nvidia Board Approaches Arm CEO Rene Haas as Potential Successor to Jensen Huang

Nvidia's board has approached Arm Holdings CEO Rene Haas about taking the top job at the chipmaker, the Financial Times reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. The approach comes a day after Jensen Huang resigned as CEO following revelations of extramarital affairs, including one involving a woman U.S. intelligence officials suspect was a Chinese spy. [5]

Huang stepped down Thursday after a scandal that unfolded over more than a year. An October 2025 New York Times report first linked him to Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed, an Nvidia cloud partner. Subsequent reports said U.S. intelligence believed she was acting on behalf of Chinese intelligence; Beijing has denied this. Earlier this month, Nvidia's board launched an independent probe into whether Huang had been targeted by a foreign intelligence operation. Two affairs — with Alice Huang and Kimberly Powell — were initially revealed; Reuters later learned of a relationship with another unnamed Nvidia employee. [1]

Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress was named interim CEO. The board also appointed former Synopsys CEO Harvey Jones as its first board chair. [1]

Haas's Nvidia pedigree

Haas spent seven years at Nvidia, rising to vice president and general manager of its computing products business before joining Arm in 2013. He became Arm CEO in 2022 and oversaw its Nasdaq listing in 2023. Arm designs processor architectures and licenses them to other chipmakers; historically strong in mobile, it is expanding into computers. [5][2]

The FT report cautioned that Haas is among several candidates under consideration and there is no guarantee he will be offered the job or accept it. Arm declined to comment; Nvidia did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment. Reuters said it could not independently verify the report. [5]

A crowded field

Analysts and investors have floated a mix of internal and external names. Internally, Ian Buck — a 20-year Nvidia veteran who co-created CUDA, the software platform that ties developers to Nvidia's chips — leads prediction markets. Kress is seen as a steady hand for finance and Wall Street relations. [2][4] Analysts question who would fill the tech visionary role if she runs the company. [2]

Externally, the list includes AMD CEO Lisa Su (a distant relative of Huang), former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, Apple hardware chief Johny Srouji, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, and Marvell CEO Matt Murphy. President Trump suggested Tim Cook on social media: "There is only one man to take his place — TIM COOK of Apple. A Legend replaces a Legend!" [2][4]

Governance vacuum

The succession crisis has exposed what critics call a governance vacuum. Nvidia's 11 directors have an average tenure of nearly 15 years; two have served since the company's founding in 1993. None is a current or former big-company CEO, and none has national security experience. The company has never published a formal succession plan; "succession" appears nowhere in its annual report. Huang resisted internal succession planning for years, worried it would create competition among executives, according to former employees cited by the New York Times. [3]

The board has hired Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to lead the investigation, with former acting U.S. attorney Joon H. Kim directing it. [3]

Market fallout and investigations

Nvidia shares fell as much as 14.3% Thursday before closing down 4.3%, wiping out nearly $493 billion in market value for the week. The stock accounted for nearly a third of all S&P 500 trading volume Thursday. Retail investors bought heavily on the dip; Fidelity reported buy orders outnumbering sells nearly 5 to 1. [1]

The scandal has spilled into Washington. The FBI is investigating Huang's relationship with Alice Huang. The Justice Department is running a criminal inquiry into Megaspeed, which imported more than $4.6 billion of Nvidia chips and rented them to Chinese customers including Alibaba. The Commerce Department's probe of Megaspeed was transferred to Justice after Nvidia's general counsel contacted officials. Singapore says it has received limited cooperation from the U.S. in its own Megaspeed investigation. [1][3]

Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called for a review of whether Nvidia is "too big to fail" and its impact on U.S. banking and credit markets. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Democratic-led committees will investigate whether national security was compromised. [1]

What happens next

Kress will run the company while the board searches. Susannah Streeter of Wealth Club said Kress would be a "safe pair of hands" but "lacks global status" and is "unlikely to be able to forge such deep commercial ties." [1] Anshel Sag of Moor Insights & Strategy said: "Kress is a very strong CFO, but she is primarily a financial operator... I don't think she is the long-term visionary that Nvidia needs." [1]

Whether Haas or another candidate gets the job, the new CEO will inherit a company at the center of U.S.-China tech competition, a federal investigation, shareholder litigation, and a board that has never managed a transition. The board's next moves — and whether it can operate independently of Huang's decades-long influence — will be the first test of Nvidia's post-founder governance.