The Jensen Huang sized hole at Nvidia

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Caleb McHugh (0:30)

Hello, and welcome to Decoded by POLITICO. I'm Calden McHugh.

Christine Moy (0:33)

And I'm Christine Moy. Today on the show, we discuss what happens next for Nvidia, now that its CEO, Jensen Huang, has been ousted from the company.

Caleb McHugh (0:42)

Plus, we'll speak to POLITICO reporter Owen Dahlkamp about his reporting on safety advocates who are hoping for greater protection for children on social media.

So Christine, a few hours ago, I touched down in Denver for a conference called What's Next, which is a conference run by Majority Democrats, which is a super PAC organization. They are very excited, of course, as is everybody who's down here about the results in the midterms. And that's sort of all that everybody's talking about here. But there are some whispers of what's going on with Jensen Huang, even in this group of people who really just wants to talk about 2028 You know, you can't totally escape that story. And of course, the tech world is completely abuzz with this news. Huang has officially resigned from Nvidia, and the CFO Colette Cress has been named as interim CEO while they search for another more permanent CEO. Christine, what comes next for this company? This is just wild.

Christine Moy (1:39)

Yeah, well, Nvidia, right as it's searching for a new permanent CEO, the board confirmed today when they announced his resignation that it's going to be looking both internally and externally. But Nvidia has a Jensen Huang-sized hole to fill, and that's going to be pretty difficult. As we've talked about here a lot, Huang wasn't just the CEO, he's really the face of Nvidia. He's its chief deal maker, he's its biggest advocate in Washington, and he's a global celebrity as one of the most influential people in just the entire global AI industry. There's this immediate question of who replaces him. You've got Cress, who is the longtime CFO of Nvidia. She's stepping in on an interim basis. There are names being floated around, including I've heard Ian Buck from some people in Silicon Valley in the tech industry, who currently runs Nvidia's massive data center unit. And of course, there's the possibility to poach executives at other chip and tech firms. So President Trump was dangling the idea of former Apple CEO Tim Cook being a candidate. I was talking around with people today, and an industry executive had told me that some at Nvidia view Cress as just a good option because he could be a brand ambassador and a strategic figure like Jensen while also calming the stock market right now and the big customers.

But I think the bigger question is, what kind of CEO does Nvidia want as it's digging itself out of this mess? Do they want another technical visionary? In that case, maybe Cress isn't the best option.

Or do they want someone who can calm like Wall Street, reassure customers, kind of clean up the company's image in Lockington? And I think that last part is going to be particularly tricky.

Caleb McHugh (3:15)

Yeah. I mean, it's just so hard because I think, Huang, as you mentioned, Christine is just such a singular figure and was at Nvidia.

You know, if you ask people who are not totally within the tech space and really thinking about this all the time to name even one more Nvidia employee before this week, I would bet that many of them couldn't have. So it makes sense that they're looking both internally and externally. But as we were talking about this this week and as this seemed to become more and more of a possibility, this was just a huge question. There was not an obvious successor. Nvidia also has a lot of problems in Washington. Their problems are not only who can replace Huang but what's going to happen to the company. Whoever steps in, crest for now, but whoever steps in is going to have to deal with a lot of this. What's your reporting out of DC today, Christine?

Christine Moy (4:06)

Yeah, I mean, I think you're right. Huang has these deep connections to Trump and he has this record of personal lobbying. That's going to make this scandal linger longer than Nvidia would like. He's very much still personally in lawmakers crosshairs. He's agreed to testify at this closed door hearing. That's going to happen before Thanksgiving. That's what key Republican committee chairs are convening. He agreed after they had threatened to force his attendance via subpoena.