If Jensen Huang goes, who could replace him? Here’s who the board might pick if the Nvidia CEO is ousted in the wake of affair scandals

It was bad enough for Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang that he admitted to having an affair with someone, who people believe to be someone suspected of being a Chinese spy. But it's now come to light he has reportedly had a second affair with a member of Nvidia staff—Kimberly Powell, VP of healthcare. After this latest story it's looking more likely that Huang could be forced to resign.

The question is what's next for Nvidia if the board today decides his tenure as the longest-serving Silicon Valley CEO should come to an end. Huang has been the image of the company in the eyes of the public for a long time, so whoever steps in to replace him will have a big leather jacket to fill. And whoever it is, it will be a major change for the company regardless.

The doors are wide open for Nvidia in the long-term, so it's difficult to pin down with any certainty who any eventual replacement CEO would be, but in the interim the options are more limited. Here's who we could consider seeing as the new CEO of Nvidia.

The potential candidates

• Colette Kress - Chief Financial Officer, Nvidia
• Jeff Fisher - SVP of GeForce business unit, Nvidia
• Michael Kagan - Chief Technology Officer, Nvidia
• Ian Buck - VP of hyperscale and HPC, Nvidia
• Chris Malachowsky - Founder and fellow, Nvidia
• Joseph D. Greco - SVP of advanced technology group, Nvidia
• Jonah Alben - SVP of GPU engineering, Nvidia
• Andrew Bell - SVP of hardware engineering, Nvidia
• Lip-Bu Tan - CEO, Intel
• Lisa Su - CEO, AMD
• Rene Haas - CEO, Arm
• Elon Musk - CEO, Tesla, SpaceX
• Tim Cook - Executive chairman and ex-CEO, Apple

Who could it be?

The first thing to note is that if Huang does get the boot, Nvidia will need to appoint someone to the position quickly as an interim CEO. As one of the biggest companies in the world and a major player in the AI industry which is keeping large parts of the US economy afloat, trying to quickly mitigate economic concerns will be key. This would likely mean picking someone internal to Nvidia.

Top of the list here is Nvidia CFO Colette Kress. If you've listened to Nvidia earnings calls, you'll have heard Kress talking to investors about how the company's doing. Kress could be a likely pick for interim CEO because she's known to investors and heads up company finances. In the short term, to investors she'd seem a safe bet to keep the company in good financial standing amidst any damage Huang's controversies may have done to Nvidia's long-term future.

Other options internal to Nvidia aren't out of the question, either. Jeff Fisher is especially noteworthy because he's very public-facing, but he is very much couched in the world of gaming as SVP of the GeForce department. Kress would still likely be a safer bet for investors.

Chief technology officer, Michael Kagan, is another option, and would potentially be a good fit as co-interim CEO alongside Kress. Kagan joined Nvidia as part of the Mellanox acquisition, a company which he co-founded. He is also a former Intel engineer having managed the design of the Pentium MMX chips.

The other Nvidia staff I listed are an option, too. Malachowsky perhaps not so much—he's a co-founder but is very hands-off and maybe doesn't have much real involvement with the company from a leadership position.

Any interim CEO that's picked could be there for a while. When Intel CEO Brian Krzanich resigned in 2018—under vaguely similar circumstances to those Huang finds himself under now—both he and Pat Gelsinger were followed by interim CEOs for months before final decisions were made on their successors. Though in Krzanich's case, the interim successor, Robert Swan, went on to become full CEO for another two years.

In the long-term, the net for Huang's replacement could be cast far and wide. People like Tim Cook and Elon Musk would be pretty outside bets, but with the monopolistic and 'in-bed-together' state of Big Tech in the US, it wouldn't be out of the question. Remember that Nvidia is the biggest profiteer of the AI boom by far, so an offer would be enticing.

AMD's Lisa Su would be an interesting choice, too, and has been touted by a number of people. She certainly has a combination of GPU and AI engineering prowess alongside general public trust and goodwill. In fact, I can't think of many tech CEOs that the public hate less (an increasingly relevant metric, these days).

Then there is also the consideration of who would want to take the job. Sure, it would guarantee a big pay check, but it's a big role to fill with Nvidia's current very flat hierarchy, and any CEO is going to have to be across everything the company does. It's also a role under intense political and economic scrutiny and with the potential for an AI pop still on the horizon, the company might be sitting on a precipice.

Of course, the board of directors could throw us a wild card, and on that front your guess is as good as mine. Though one thing is very likely, whoever comes in is probably not going to have PC gaming much in their thoughts.