Nvidia Names Harvey Jones Its First Chair as Jensen Huang Steps Down

Nvidia named Harvey C. Jones its first-ever board chair on Thursday, the same announcement in which Jensen Huang resigned as president, chief executive and a member of the board, effective immediately. Chief financial officer Colette Kress became interim CEO, and the board, now led by Jones, is searching inside and outside the company for a permanent chief executive.

The shares opened at $151.01 and fell as low as $148.80, about $2.18 trillion below the company's October 6 record market value, before trading at $164.56 at 10:46 a.m. ET — 10.6% above the session low and down 5.3% from Wednesday's close. Nvidia was worth about $3.97 trillion.

Jones joined the board in 1993, the year Nvidia was founded by three engineers building a graphics chip company in California. Thirty-three years later, he chairs it. The company describes the chairmanship as a role it has never held.

Who is Harvey Jones?

Jones has spent more than 30 years as an entrepreneur, technology executive and venture investor, according to his Nvidia biography. The record:

• 1981: Co-founded Daisy Systems, a computer-aided engineering company, and served as president and CEO until 1987.
• 1987 to 1998: Led Synopsys, one of the companies whose software is used to design chips, first as CEO for seven years and then as executive chairman.
• 1997: Co-founded Tensilica, which licensed processor designs, and chaired it until Cadence Design Systems bought it in 2013.
• Since 2004: Runs Square Wave Ventures, a private investment firm.
• Education: A math and computer science degree from Georgetown and a management degree from MIT.

On Nvidia's board, Jones sits on the audit committee and on the nominating and corporate governance committee, the group that oversees board membership and, typically, leadership succession.

The practical point: the new chair has run two semiconductor-related companies and one chip-design software vendor, and he now sits on the committee that governs CEO succession.

Why the Synopsys handoff matters

The most relevant precedent comes from Synopsys. Jones ran it as CEO for seven years starting in 1987. In 1994, the job went to Aart de Geus, one of the company's founders, while Jones stayed on as executive chairman. De Geus led Synopsys for roughly 30 years.

Jones has lived through a CEO transition from the chairman's seat at a chip-design company with a founder at the center of it. This time the direction reverses: the founder is the one leaving, and the founder's former peer is in the chair.

What Jones said

"Colette has helped lead NVIDIA through a period of extraordinary growth and has a deep understanding of our business, customers, operations and financial position," Jones said in Thursday's announcement, adding that she is supported by an experienced leadership team.

That sentence is his entire public statement so far. The company called him the board's first-ever chair, so the position itself is new.

What the investigation still covers

The board's own investigation, led by the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz with former acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim, into Huang's relationship with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore's Megaspeed whom U.S. officials suspect of spying for China, remains open. China calls that claim groundless, and Huang has not been accused of a crime.

An unfinished investigation and a vacant permanent CEO slot are running at the same time, with no disclosed timetable for either.

What shareholders do not yet have

Nvidia is worth about $3.97 trillion and has never chosen a CEO. What shareholders lack today is a timeline, a shortlist and a permanent leader. Analysts have named Kress and Ian Buck, who runs Nvidia's hyperscale business, as internal candidates, and Bloomberg reported that the board has been working with an outside firm to identify candidates.

For most investors the decision that matters today is position size rather than the succession. Nvidia accounts for about 6% of the S&P 500 and a larger share of the Nasdaq-100, so retirement accounts hold it whether or not the owner bought the stock directly. If the total exceeds roughly 10% of a portfolio, trimming inside an IRA carries no tax cost.

The open question for the coming months is whether Jones and the board can name a permanent chief executive, and whether the Wachtell inquiry broadens beyond Huang's personal ties, before the governance vacuum starts to carry a price of its own.