Fear not, Nvidians, the man who wrote the book on Nvidia says the company’s success doesn’t rely on Jensen Huang

We thought it might be coming, and it’s here: Jensen Huang is no longer CEO of Nvidia, as he has resigned following an admitted affair, and an additional alleged one.

It wasn’t unexpected, and both before and after the announcement there has been a lot of talk about how it would be a bad decision and could spell very bad news for Nvidia. And, well, there’s certainly some truth in that given we saw company share prices drop after reports of Huang’s alleged second affair came to light.

After perusing X for a while today, the general sentiment seems to be that Huang was so incredibly central to Nvidia that the company couldn’t possibly do well without him. Or at the very least, nowhere near as well as it would with Jensen sticking at the helm. Ditto the AI market in general.

But not everyone agrees. In fact, one of the most credible voices on Nvidia reckons there are “strong” and “excellent” candidates for a replacement. Tae Kim wrote the most well-known, authoritative book on the company—The Nvidia Way—and yesterday they explained:

“Many people have cited my book as saying Nvidia would be completely lost without Jensen Huang. My views have evolved in the several years since I wrote those passages. I now believe there is a strong internal candidate with the technical expertise, experience, customer relationships and respect of employees needed to lead Nvidia effectively into its next chapter.”

“There is also one excellent external candidate who has been very successful outside of Nvidia and offers both technical expertise and solid business management experience. Employees loved working for him. Either one would be great.”

They’re certainly optimistic comments, but your guess is as good as mine as to who they might be referring to—presumably someone on the list of potential replacement CEO candidates I put together earlier.

We now know that the actual interim CEO is Colette Kress—exactly who we predicted it would be. I’m not sure whether that’s who Kim had in mind, given they decided, for some strange reason, to not mention who they were thinking of by name. But if not, there’s still room for the next proper CEO to be one of those he has in mind.

This being said, Jensen Huang’s status, drive, and deep familiarity with the company and the market are undoubtedly unparalleled. I think you’d find it difficult to pin down anyone who could reasonably disagree with that. In which case, while Nvidia might not be “completely lost”, it’s hard to say it will be as oriented as it would be with Huang still at the helm.