Nvidia's $673 Billion Week Points to Ian Buck as Huang's Likely Successor

Nvidia has lost roughly $673 billion of market value in a week, and its board could vote to remove CEO Jensen Huang as soon as Wednesday night. The Wall Street Journal broke the timing at 5:27 PM ET, following a New York Times report that Huang had a relationship with Nvidia executive Kimberly Powell. Nvidia hasn't commented.

The stock sat at $158.76 in after-hours trading at 7:55 PM ET — down 8.6% from Wednesday's close and 14.9% since the November 6 close, the last before Huang admitted an affair. Behind the price action sits a governance problem the company has never solved: who runs a $3.83 trillion business that has never had any CEO but its founder? Nvidia has never named a successor.

"Mr. Huang being removed immediately could be challenging for Nvidia since it does not have a succession plan in place," Gil Luria of D.A. Davidson told Reuters on Wednesday. Among people who know the company's inner workings, one name keeps surfacing: Ian Buck.

Who is Ian Buck?

Buck runs Nvidia's hyperscale and high-performance computing business — the unit selling to the giant cloud and AI customers whose data center spending made Nvidia the world's most valuable chipmaker. He has been at Nvidia for about two decades.

His technical pedigree goes back further. As a Stanford Ph.D. student, he built Brook, one of the first programming languages for running general computing work on graphics chips. At Nvidia, he became a key architect of CUDA, the software platform developers use to write programs for Nvidia's silicon.

CUDA is why Nvidia's customers find it hard to leave. Millions of developers write for it, and CUDA code doesn't run on rival chips without rework. Analysts call it Nvidia's moat. Buck helped dig it.

Why does his name keep coming up?

"It's probably going to be Ian Buck," robotics engineer Dennis Hong wrote on X on Wednesday afternoon. "Been there for two decades and a key architect of CUDA. Arguably the most interesting and probable candidate because he understands the technology moat, and not just the financial model."

The authors behind Yale's CEO leadership forums went further in a Time essay published Wednesday evening, calling Buck "an admired tech superstar" with "strong relationships with NVIDIA's largest customers." They wrote he "would be a hugely strong replacement" and noted he "has garnered influential endorsements as the next CEO from several key commentators, including Jim Cramer."

International Business Times reported Monday that Buck has surfaced in outside successor discussions because of his technical background and his experience running Nvidia's accelerated computing business. The case for him mirrors Huang's own value: he understands the chips and software, and the biggest AI buyers trust him. Few Nvidia executives check both boxes.

Who else is on the list?

• Colette Kress, CFO since 2013, is the executive investors know best. The Time essay suggested she and Buck could serve as interim co-CEOs, though analysts quoted by Axios said her finance career makes her a less natural fit for Huang's technical role.
• Lisa Su of AMD and Rene Haas of Arm are outside names floated by The Information, per Benzinga — either would mean poaching a rival's or a key supplier's chief.
• Tim Cook and Eric Schmidt were cited in the Time essay as outside leaders who succeeded or steadied famous founders.

Baird analysts wrote Wednesday that a CEO change looked increasingly likely and that they'd favor an outside hire. The board hasn't said what it will do, and Nvidia hasn't designated anyone as Huang's replacement.

What does this mean for shareholders?

Dan Ives of Yorkville Ives pegs Nvidia's Huang discount at 25% to 30% — roughly $958 billion to $1.15 trillion at the after-hours price. A successor the market already trusts on technology and customers is the most direct way to shrink that number.

History cuts both ways. McDonald's fired CEO Steve Easterbrook in 2019 and named his successor in the same announcement; the stock was up 14.7% a year later. Intel's Brian Krzanich resigned in 2018 with no successor ready, and Intel ran on an interim CEO for seven months while trailing the S&P 500 by 17 points over the next year. For Nvidia holders, speed may matter as much as the name.