Nvidia's Board Approached Arm CEO Rene Haas to Succeed Huang

Nvidia's board has approached Arm Holdings CEO Rene Haas as a possible permanent successor to Jensen Huang, the Financial Times reported on Nov. 13, citing people familiar with the matter. Haas is one of several candidates. He has not been offered the job, and there is no guarantee he would take it if he were, according to the FT. Reuters said it could not independently verify the report.

The news lands mid-crisis. Huang resigned as chief executive on Nov. 12, and CFO Colette Kress — Nvidia's finance chief since 2013 — is running the company as interim CEO while remaining CFO. Nvidia has not said when it expects to name a permanent leader. The company reports third-quarter results on Nov. 17.

Arm declined to comment. Nvidia did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

What did the market do with the news?

It sold chip stocks. Arm's US-listed shares fell about 6.5% on Friday, with the decline accelerating after the FT report, Investing.com reported. Reuters put the drop at more than 5% after the stock pared some losses; TipRanks measured it at roughly 6%. Nvidia slid more than 3%. The selling came on a broad down day for semiconductors: the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell about 5%, with AMD and Broadcom among the decliners.

For Arm investors, the worry is continuity. Arm licenses the processor architecture that runs across much of the chip industry — including Nvidia's own Grace and Vera data center CPUs — and Haas has led its push into data centers and custom CPU designs. Losing him would leave a second CEO vacancy at a company he took public on Nasdaq in September 2023.

Why does Haas make sense as a candidate?

He knows the building. Haas spent seven years at Nvidia, rising to vice president and general manager of its computing products business, before joining Arm in 2013. He became president of Arm's IP Products Group in 2017 and succeeded Simon Segars as CEO in February 2022. The FT and other reports describe him as close to Huang and to several Nvidia board members.

His tenure at Arm began the same month Nvidia's attempt to buy the company collapsed. Nvidia and Arm's majority owner, SoftBank Group, terminated the $40-billion-plus deal in February 2022, citing "significant regulatory challenges." SoftBank kept Nvidia's $1.25 billion prepayment; Nvidia kept a 20-year Arm license. "I expect Arm to be the most important CPU architecture of the next decade," Huang said at the time.

Haas was already the outside name most often floated. The Information reported on Nov. 10 that recruiters may have begun scouting candidates including Haas and AMD's Lisa Su, according to a summary by The Standard. On Nov. 12, a banker working on chip deals told Reuters that Haas made the most "logical sense." The FT report is the first to say the board has actually made an approach.

Who else is in the frame?

Reuters' list of names under discussion includes:

• Internal: interim CEO Colette Kress and Ian Buck, the veteran engineer who led development of Nvidia's CUDA software
• External: AMD's Lisa Su, Micron's Sanjay Mehrotra, Marvell's Matt Murphy and Apple hardware chief Johny Srouji
• President Donald Trump has also floated Apple's Tim Cook

None of them has commented on the FT report.

The decision rests with Nvidia's 10 independent directors, led by new chair Harvey Jones. With no offer made, no acceptance assured and a results date on the calendar, the market will be watching Nov. 17 for any signal on timing — and on whether Kress's interim tag becomes permanent or the board moves on a candidate who currently runs one of Nvidia's most important architectural partners.