Nvidia Loses $673 Billion in a Week and Eyes Ian Buck

Nvidia shares fell 8.6 percent to $158.76 in after-hours trading on Wednesday, extending a one-week decline that has erased roughly $673 billion in market value, as The Wall Street Journal reported the board could meet as soon as Wednesday night to remove CEO Jensen Huang. The report followed a New York Times story that Huang had a relationship with Nvidia executive Kimberly Powell. Nvidia has not commented. The stock is down 14.9 percent since the November 6 close, the last before Huang admitted an affair.

The immediate question is awkward. Who runs a $3.83 trillion company that has employed only one chief executive since its founding? 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 that sells to the cloud and AI customers whose data center spending made Nvidia the most valuable chipmaker in the world. He has spent about two decades at the company. Before that, 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, Buck became a key architect of CUDA, the software platform that lets developers write programs for Nvidia's chips. Millions of developers write for it, and CUDA code does not run on rival silicon 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. They called Buck "an admired tech superstar" with "strong relationships with NVIDIA's largest customers," adding that he "would be a hugely strong replacement who brings the right technical expertise, customer relationships, experience, and employee relationships for the role." They noted he "has garnered influential endorsements as the next CEO from several key commentators, including Jim Cramer." International Business Times reported Monday that Buck appears in outside successor discussions because of his technical background and his tenure running the accelerated computing business.

The case for Buck mirrors the case for Huang. Huang's value rests on two things: he understands the chips and software better than almost anyone, and the biggest buyers of AI computing trust him. Buck is one of the few executives who checks both boxes.

Who else is in the frame?

Buck is not the only candidate in the conversation:

• Colette Kress, chief financial officer since 2013, is the executive investors know best. The Time essay suggested she and Buck could serve as interim co-CEOs. Analysts quoted by Axios said her finance career makes her a less natural fit for the technical side of the role.
• Lisa Su of AMD and Rene Haas of Arm are outside names The Information floated, according to Benzinga. Either would mean hiring the chief of a rival or a key supplier.
• 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 was growing more likely and that they would favor an outside hire. The board has said nothing, and Nvidia has not designated any executive as the replacement.

What is at stake for shareholders?

Dan Ives of Yorkville Ives has estimated Nvidia would be worth 25 to 30 percent less without Huang. At the after-hours price, that is roughly $958 billion to $1,150 billion of market value. A successor the market already trusts on technology and customers is the most direct way to shrink that gap.

Precedent cuts both ways. When McDonald's fired CEO Steve Easterbrook in 2019, it named a successor in the same announcement, and the stock rose 14.7 percent a year later. When Intel's Brian Krzanich resigned in 2018 with no successor ready, Intel ran on an interim chief for seven months and trailed the S&P 500 by 17 points over the following year. For Nvidia holders, the speed with which the board names a credible leader may matter as much as the identity of that leader.