San Francisco = Yonhap News Correspondent Kwon Young-jeon = With former CEO Jensen Hwang resigning in disgrace, finding the next head of Nvidia, an 'artificial intelligence (AI) empire' with a market capitalization of $4 trillion, has emerged as an immediate task.
As Nvidia's board of directors hired an external headhunting company on the 12th (local time), the AI industry and the market are predicting the next CEO by mentioning key executives within the company and major technology industry giants.
Among Nvidia's internal personnel, the most heavily mentioned person is Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Colette Kress, who was appointed interim CEO.
Since joining Nvidia in 2013, he has overseen finance and led the company's growth for 13 years. He is well-versed in communicating with Wall Street investors and understands the internal situation better than anyone else, so he is evaluated as a suitable card for stabilizing the organization.
He is also the most well-known Nvidia executive outside of former CEO Hwang through quarterly performance presentation meetings.
When former CEO Hwang asked how long he would have to serve as CFO, he was someone whom former CEO Hwang trusted to the extent that he answered, "Until death do us part."
However, the lack of an engineering background to become the head of a leading AI semiconductor company is considered a weakness.
In technology companies, finance managers are often viewed as temporary measures rather than long-term appointments, so they are expected to play a role only until the next CEO is appointed.
Vice President Ian Buck, also a strong candidate within the company, is the driving force behind the technology that allowed NVIDIA to advance beyond the game graphics field and into the AI field.
There is even analysis that NVIDIA's current market monopoly is not simply based on the performance of the graphics processing unit (GPU), but is also due to the lock-in effect of many developers and companies around the world using the software platform 'CUDA' developed by Vice President Buck.
In addition, because he is currently in charge of leading the data center division, which is a core department of NVIDIA, he has strong trust in the customer and developer ecosystem and has strengths in terms of business continuity.
However, the New York Times (NYT) and Bloomberg News pointed out that there is a lack of management-related experience.
Many people mention Renee Haas, a former Nvidia executive who is currently the CEO of Arm.
This is because not only does he understand Nvidia's corporate culture and the semiconductor ecosystem, but his management capabilities as a semiconductor company have also been verified.
Ben Packrin, an analyst at investment advisory firm Packrin, told the New York Post, "Renai Haas is by far the most notable external candidate. He has a proven ability to manage a large portfolio and has both an engineering background and management experience."
Lisa Su, CEO of AMD, which is considered Nvidia's strongest competitor, was also among the candidates.
He is a veteran CEO who received a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and led AMD for 10 years, raising its stock price 170 times. He has both technical expertise and management ability. The fact that she is the 5th cousin of former CEO Hwang (the daughter-in-law) is also attracting attention.
However, it is unclear whether he will move to Nvidia for the top management position of a competitor.
People from Apple, who have had a somewhat strained relationship with Nvidia, were also included in the list.
President Donald Trump singled out Hwang, saying that the only person who could replace former CEO Hwang was Tim Cook, Apple's executive chairman of the board of directors.
President Trump made his claim by saying, "One legend replaces another legend," but it is observed that it is unlikely that Chairman Cook, who stepped down as Apple CEO at the age of 66, will move to the position of Nvidia CEO.
On the other hand, Apple's Chief Hardware Officer (CHO), Johnny Srouji, is attracting attention as a person who was previously mentioned as a candidate for Intel CEO.
He is a leading figure in the development of Apple's own chip, 'Apple Silicon', and has a high level of understanding of the semiconductor sector.
Likewise, Amin Badat, who oversees the tensor processing unit (TPU) program at Google, Charlie Kawas, president of Broadcom's semiconductor division, and Forrest Norrod, senior vice president of AMD, were also mentioned.
Nvidia supply chain companies and customer executives, including Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, Amazon Web Services (AWS) CEO Matt Garman, and Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, also spoke out.
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at Yale University's Graduate School of Business, mentioned former CEO Eric Schmidt, who led Google for 10 years, but considering his past history of extramarital affair scandals, it seems likely that former CEO Hwang will be judged as an unsuitable candidate.
Former CEO Hwang's family members, including senior director Madison Hwang, his son Spencer Hwang, and son-in-law Vice President Nico Caprez, have also been mentioned as successors, but with internal dissatisfaction expected due to the nepotism controversy and the interim CEO system of Kress being confirmed, there is a high possibility that they will be virtually excluded from the pool of candidates.
In particular, considering that the U.S. information technology (IT) media outlet The Information reported that Senior Director Madison and Vice President Caprez had a conflict with interim CEO Kress, their influence within the company is expected to decrease further.
Jeff Christian, CEO of Christian & Timbers, a headhunting company, said that the conditions that Nvidia's next CEO must have include being a leader who is loved and inspired by people, a great technical engineer, and a magnet that attracts talent.
However, experts pointed out that the extremely horizontal structure of the 60-member direct reporting system should be immediately reorganized as well as finding the next CEO of Nvidia.
“It becomes a problem when the number of direct reports exceeds 12,” said Craig Stevens, a partner at headhunting firm Boyden. “There needs to be an immediate change in the organizational structure.”
