A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Huang, is out, and the company's chief financial officer is taking over as interim CEO.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This comes after allegations that Huang had multiple affairs, including with a woman who may have been recruited by China to spy on him.
MARTÍNEZ: NPR tech correspondent John Ruwitch has been following the saga. He joins us now to discuss Nvidia's future. So - all right, John. Jensen Huang is out. Who is his in-house replacement?
JOHN RUWITCH, BYLINE: The board said the company's CFO, Colette Kress, is stepping into the role while they search for a permanent replacement for Huang. Kress is a longtime Nvidia executive. She joined Nvidia 13 years ago after working in finance at tech companies for many years before that. You know, Jensen Huang was very much the public face of the company, but Kress has been prominent. She has, for instance, been on dozens of earnings calls alongside Huang when the company reports its quarterly results. So she's a known quantity inside Nvidia, with its investors and with companies it does business with.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. So right now it feels like Nvidia's in a big mess. I mean, how substantial are the challenges she faces right now?
RUWITCH: Yeah. They are immense. Nvidia's a linchpin of the AI economy and, by extension, the U.S. economy because it makes the most widely used chips powering the AI revolution. But it just lost a visionary leader who deserves a lot of credit for building the company and making it into the juggernaut that it is. I mean, it has an 80% to 90% market share in chips called graphics processing units, or GPUs, that AI runs on. Tammy Madsen is a professor at Santa Clara University's Leavey School of Business. And she says a major order of business for Kress is going to be reassuring the world that Nvidia still has its mojo, especially at a time when the share price has been falling because of the crisis.
TAMMY MADSEN: I mean, I think for her, it's important to sort of provide confidence back to the market that - we are going to turn this around, and here's the steps we're taking to move forward.
RUWITCH: Nvidia shares have been trending downward and are off more than 10% since last Friday, before the whole saga blew up over the weekend. Going forward, Kress has a balancing act - managing some serious short-term challenges and Nvidia's long-term strategy.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. So what might that look like?
RUWITCH: Well, short-term, there will be fallout from Jensen Huang's downfall. There's an internal investigation into Huang's affair with the Chinese woman that'll play out at Nvidia. Congress is also preparing to probe the spy allegations, which could put the company under a hot spotlight.
Then there are all the relationships with Nvidia's partners and the deals that Huang handled that are going to have to be tended to. That includes some of the so-called circular-financing agreements where Nvidia invests money in companies that then turn around and buy chips for data centers. Now, luckily, Kress, as CFO, will be intimately familiar with those arrangements, so that's a plus. On the tech front, Nvidia is king of the hill on AI chips because it makes really popular gold-standard products. And Kress is going to have to make sure that Nvidia stays on point to protect market share.
MADSEN: It is a very healthy organization. They've been moving forward on a strong strategy. But I think what needs to remain strong is that long-term vision.
MARTÍNEZ: It sounds like Kress has an overfull plate. I mean, is...
RUWITCH: Yeah.
MARTÍNEZ: ...She set up for success or not?
RUWITCH: Well, the company's in a strong market position. Demand for its products is not expected to drop off anytime soon, just because more and more people are using AI. One question to watch is how much trust and leeway the board gives Kress as she runs the company. They're making the right noises, though. In a statement online, the board chairman said they have, quote, "full confidence" in her and the leadership team and that they expect the company's operations, customer commitments and product roadmap to continue without interruption.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. That's NPR's John Ruwitch. John, thanks a lot.
RUWITCH: You're welcome, A. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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