NVIDIA Corp.’s board has approached Arm Holdings CEO Rene Haas as a potential successor to ousted co-founder Jensen Huang, according to the Financial Times, even as employee petitions and Washington fallout mount following revelations of Huang’s affair with an alleged Chinese spy.
Huang stepped down Thursday after reports surfaced regarding his extramarital affairs, including a relationship with a businesswoman employed by Megaspeed, a firm probed by U.S. agencies over suspected chip smuggling into China.
The sudden exit plunged the chipmaker into crisis, wiping roughly $573 billion off NVIDIA’s market value over the week as shares fell about 2% on Friday. Arm’s U.S.-listed shares dropped roughly 5% following the report.
Haas, who spent seven years at NVIDIA as vice president and general manager of its computing products business before joining Arm in 2013, is among several candidates under consideration. Appointed Arm CEO in 2022, he oversaw the British chip designer’s Nasdaq listing in 2023.
Futurum Equities chief market strategist Shay Boloor noted that Haas’ familiarity with NVIDIA’s culture alongside his experience leading a publicly traded semiconductor firm makes him a rare external fit.
NVIDIA’s board said it is currently selecting an executive search firm and has not formally engaged any candidates, calling individual speculation premature. Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress is serving as interim CEO.
Other potential internal and external contenders cited by analysts include NVIDIA CUDA architect Ian Buck, AMD Inc. CEO Lisa Su, Micron Technology Inc. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, Marvell Technology Inc. CEO Matt Murphy, Apple Inc. hardware chief Johny Srouji, and former Apple CEO Tim Cook, whose name was floated by President Donald Trump.
Despite the leadership search, internal pushback is growing among NVIDIA’s 42,000 employees. Wired reported that an internal message board post urging leadership to consider staff sentiment has drawn more than 1,600 comments, many calling for Huang’s reinstatement. On X, billionaire Elon Musk said a petition was underway to bring Huang back and said he would sign it.
NVIDIA and Arm declined to comment on the reports.
Meanwhile, the scandal has ignited political infighting within the Trump administration over export oversight. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent publicly faulted Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s department for delaying the addition of Megaspeed to the U.S. trade restriction list, despite investigations into whether the cloud firm smuggled restricted processors into China.
“President Trump made it very clear that China should not receive any NVIDIA chips above H100s, so any leakage is very frustrating,” Bessent told CNBC, adding that while several agencies favored blacklisting Megaspeed for months, “Commerce has the pen.”
Bessent also directed blame toward NVIDAI. Lutnick has been called to testify before the Senate Banking Committee next month regarding the department’s export approvals, while congressional committees have ordered Commerce to preserve all records tied to Huang and the chipmaker.
Underscoring those enforcement concerns, a Reuters review identified more than $3 billion in Chinese computing projects built around restricted NVIDIA processors, despite the company’s assertions that U.S. controls have effectively locked it out of China’s AI data center market.
The projects span from coastal hubs to western provinces, including a proposed 6.2 billion yuan ($873 million) facility in Fujian province specifying NVIDIA H100 chips, and a 3 billion yuan project in Shaanxi province involving state-owned engineering group Sinomach that specifies H100 and H200 processors.
With Huang, a vocal opponent of strict export curbs, out of the picture, analysts expect NVIDIA’s next leader to adopt a more institutional structure as Washington moves toward tighter semiconductor restrictions.
