An unlikely suggestion
Hours after Jensen Huang's surprise resignation as CEO of Nvidia — ending one of the most iconic figures of the artificial intelligence revolution — United States President Donald Trump used his own social networks to suggest that the right name to fill the vacancy would be Tim Cook, former CEO of Apple who now serves as executive chairman of the company's board.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote in capital letters: "NOW THAT NVIDIA CEO JENSEN HUANG, who did a fantastic job, has resigned, there is only one man to take his place — TIM COOK of Apple. A Legend replaces a Legend!"
The declaration, though delivered with the president's characteristic tone, brought to light a discussion that had already been mapped by corporate governance analysts for weeks. Nvidia, which had never outlined a formal succession plan for its founder and 33-year leader, now faces the challenge of appointing a permanent successor amid unprecedented instability.
The succession landscape was already mapped
Even before Cook's name gained headlines, the table of candidates was already being discussed in Wall Street and Silicon Valley boardrooms. According to SEC filings, Nvidia named Colette Kress, its current chief financial officer, as interim CEO while the board searches for a permanent successor. Kress, 59, has been at Nvidia for 13 years and previously held finance roles at giants including Microsoft, Cisco, and Texas Instruments.
The board also elected Harvey C. Jones, 73, as the company's first-ever board chair — a structural change unprecedented for a company that had always operated under Huang's concentrated authority. Jones, an entrepreneur and technology investor with more than 30 years of experience, has been managing partner at Square Wave Ventures, a private family office, since 2004.
Among the top internal candidates for the permanent position are Ian Buck, vice president of high-performance computing and creator of the CUDA platform that underpins Nvidia's developer ecosystem, and Chris Malachowsky, a company co-founder. External names that have surfaced include AMD CEO Lisa Su, Arm CEO Ravi Sridhar (who spent seven years at Nvidia before moving to Arm), and Jay Puri, Nvidia's head of worldwide field operations.
Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld of Yale School of Management, a specialist in executive leadership studies, argued in an article published in Time magazine on Wednesday that Cook has an "unparalleled track record of succeeding a founder bigger than the company itself," referencing the successful transition Cook executed when he took command of Apple after Steve Jobs' death in 2011.
Why Cook, and why now?
Trump's recommendation, though non-binding, carries considerable political and media weight. Cook, who stepped down as Apple's CEO on September 1, 2026, after 15 years at the helm, remains as executive chairman and continues to engage in international government relations — including trade negotiations with China, a point of synergy with Nvidia's position amid U.S.-China trade tensions. Cook and Huang were both part of the group of CEOs who accompanied Trump on his trip to China in May 2026 to meet with President Xi Jinping.
In a Newsweek interview, analyst David Ives noted that Cook has "the stature needed to succeed Huang," particularly considering the executive's expertise in managing global supply chains and navigating complex regulatory relations. Trump himself had publicly praised Cook when he stepped down from Apple's CEO role, saying he had "always been a big fan of him" and even claiming that Cook would call Trump for help.
The market already reacted to the succession uncertainty: Nvidia shares fell 8% in after-hours trading on Wednesday, November 11, reflecting the panic triggered by the resignation news. Prediction markets on platforms like Kalshi placed Ian Buck as the favorite with 42% probability, followed by Kress at 27% and Cook at just 10% — though an absurd spike to 91% was briefly recorded on the platforms before being corrected, without clear explanation. Data compiled by BigGo Finance showed that 83-88% of bettors on prediction markets had odds of Huang leaving by the end of the year.
Thirty-three years of legacy and the company's future
Huang, who co-founded Nvidia in 1993 alongside Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem, transformed the company from a graphics chip supplier into the absolute dominator of the artificial intelligence processor market. Under his leadership, Nvidia grew from a quiet Santa Clara startup into the world's most valuable company, with a market capitalization exceeding $3 trillion. Huang never formally named a successor — something critics like Jeffrey Sonnenfeld had already considered a grave corporate governance failure, especially at a company whose leadership was so inseparably linked to a single person.
Huang's resignation, driven by scandals involving extramarital affairs with two women — one of them allegedly a Chinese intelligence agent, the other Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's own vice president of healthcare — represents an abrupt collapse of the almost mythological leadership narrative that Huang had built over decades. Trump himself had publicly defended Huang just days before, calling him an "honorable man" and stating that Huang "had absolutely no idea that the person in question was a spy."
Now, with Kress as interim leader and the board under new chairmanship, Nvidia faces the challenge of maintaining the confidence of customers, partners, and developers while searching for a permanent CEO. Analysts like Armina Rosenberg of Minotaur Capital suggest that the most realistic path would be a co-CEO structure: Kress as interim leader to stabilize the business and finances, alongside a product and technology leader like Ian Buck, responsible for the CUDA ecosystem that keeps developers locked into Nvidia's platform.
The question is not who will fill the role, but whether Nvidia will need to reinvent its leadership model to survive without the charisma and vision of its founder.
Sources: TechCrunch, Politico, Axios
✓ Independent sources cross-checked and verified before publishing
