Could a Former Nvidia Executive Replace Jensen Huang? Arm’s Rene Haas Emerges as Candidate

Nvidia’s board has approached Arm CEO Rene Haas as a potential successor to Jensen Huang, according to the Financial Times, putting a former Nvidia executive in contention for one of technology’s biggest jobs.

Haas is one of several people under consideration, people familiar with the matter told the FT. There is no guarantee he will receive an offer or accept one. The FT said he maintains strong ties to Huang and some Nvidia directors.

Nvidia’s board told Reuters it was still selecting an executive search firm and had not formally engaged any candidate. “Any speculation regarding individual candidates, whether internal or external, is premature,” it said.

Huang resigned Thursday after 33 years leading the company he co-founded, following reports of extramarital relationships, including one with a business executive suspected by U.S. officials of having Chinese intelligence ties. The company said it had no reason to believe its secrets were compromised.

Chief financial officer Colette Kress is now interim CEO, and longtime director Harvey Jones has become board chair. Analysts have also floated Nvidia data-center executive Ian Buck and AMD chief Lisa Su as possible successors, though those names are not confirmed appointments or offers.

An internal Nvidia suggestion-box post has attracted more than 1,600 comments, many supportive of Huang’s reinstatement, according to Wired. “If you believe in the mission, bring back THE boss,” one anonymous employee wrote.

Other staff members have demanded transparency around his departure. The campaign shows Huang still has supporters inside Nvidia; it does not mean the board has opened talks to reinstate him.

Who is Rene Haas?

Haas, 64, is a Silicon Valley-based semiconductor executive whose career spans engineering, product development and sales. He earned an electrical engineering degree from Clarkson University and worked at chip companies Tensilica and Scintera Networks before joining Nvidia in 2006.

He spent seven years at Nvidia as vice president and general manager of its computing products business, then moved to Arm in 2013. At Arm, he rose from strategic alliances to chief commercial officer in 2015 and head of its intellectual-property products group in 2017, before becoming CEO in February 2022.

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That appointment came as Nvidia’s proposed $40 billion takeover of Arm collapsed under pressure from regulators. Haas was suddenly running a business his former employer had tried, unsuccessfully, to buy.

He steered Arm back onto the Nasdaq in September 2023 at an initial valuation of about $54.5 billion, one of the year’s largest stock-market debuts. The IPO also gave Japanese owner SoftBank a way to sell shares while retaining control.

Unlike Nvidia, which primarily sells graphics processors and related computing systems, Arm licenses chip designs and computing architecture to companies including Apple, Amazon and Qualcomm, earning fees and royalties when customers use its technology. Arm-based designs are now increasingly found in cloud servers as well as phones.

Arm reported $1.44 billion in revenue for the quarter ended September 30, up 27% from a year earlier. Royalties from data-center chips doubled, while Arm said initial commercial deliveries of its new CPU remain on track for early 2027.

Haas also sits on SoftBank’s board and, since April, has served as CEO of SoftBank Group International, helping oversee its semiconductor and AI interests. A move to Nvidia would require untangling those ties, particularly because the companies are partners whose interests increasingly overlap in data-center hardware.

For Nvidia, the next leader would inherit not just its lead in AI chips, but delicate relationships with governments and customers as Washington debates tighter export restrictions on China. Nvidia is scheduled to report earnings on November 17, with Kress at the helm and its permanent CEO search still underway.