NVIDIA CEO's son-in-law promoted to vice president after two years... Leading AI infrastructure financial support

(San Francisco = Yonhap News) Correspondent Kwon Young-jeon = The son-in-law of Nvidia CEO Jensen Hwang appears to be rapidly emerging as a powerful figure in the company.

The Information, an American information technology (IT) media outlet, reported on the 5th (local time) that Nico Caprez (35), Vice President of Global AI Infrastructure Growth, has established himself as a key executive trusted by CEO Hwang by leading large-scale financial and infrastructure transactions in just two years since joining Nvidia.

Vice President Caprez, who is from Switzerland and has a unique career as a former member of the national alpine skiing team, worked as a management consultant for Boston Consulting Group (BCG)'s Zurich branch, and while pursuing a master's degree at London Business School (LBS), he met Madison Hwang (35), CEO Hwang's daughter, as an alumnus.

He later worked as a financial analyst at an asset management company and joined Nvidia through Madison's arrangement.

At NVIDIA, he continued to receive unprecedented rapid promotions, and in January of this year, less than two years after joining the company, he was selected as Vice President, skipping the position of Senior Director. Madison Hwang was also promoted to senior director of physical AI product marketing in March of this year.

The two got married in Hawaii at the end of last month.

CEO Hwang's son, Spencer Hwang (36), is also serving as director of robotics product management, so some say that Nvidia has a family management system that is rare in the Silicon Valley technology industry.

NVIDIA employees see these people as NVIDIA's future executives. “CEO Hwang seems to be preparing Madison and Nico for the next step,” one employee commented.

Vice President Caprez is in charge of overseeing data center-related partnerships, including the so-called NeoCloud Group.

In particular, he played a decisive role in making NVIDIA a financial support institution like a bank by leading the promotion of a credit guarantee and loan program that allowed it to raise funds using expensive NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs) as collateral.

We also established a plan to raise AI infrastructure worth $500 billion in cooperation with large Wall Street private equity funds such as Blackstone and Brookfield.

Industry figures also give high evaluations of his capabilities and status within the company. Sikandar Rashid, head of AI infrastructure at Brookfield Asset Management, said that CEO Hwang introduced him at their first meeting last year by saying, “If you need to handle anything, tell Nico.”

General Manager Rashid said, “Vice President Kaprez has a vision to help Nvidia conquer the AI ​​infrastructure ecosystem,” and mentioned his resourcefulness by saying, “He sometimes cracks a joke during a tense conversation.”

Kerry Littlepage, CEO of OneCronos, an AI server exchange company, also said, “It was clear that he was a star analyst for NVIDIA,” and “his ability to point out the key points in complex problems was outstanding.”

Nvidia Vice President Vladimir Troy emphasized that "Nico is a very important person," and one cloud company executive called him "Jensen's closest consigliere."

He seems to have also adapted to CEO Hwang's work style, which involves working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Partners who have worked with Vice President Caprez agree that he is always available and responds quickly, no matter what time zone he is in.

In fact, he continued working on the 24th and 25th of last month, which was Nvidia's quarterly vacation period and the date of his wedding. He returned to work on the 28th without any vacation, and also attended the Nvidia investor dinner held in New York the next evening.

Vice President Caprez has refrained from external activities such as media interviews, but has recently been attending conferences and increasing his LinkedIn activities.

He recently posted a post on LinkedIn emphasizing that “AI has become essential infrastructure” and that “NVIDIA chips are assets that can be financed.”