With Jensen Huang under pressure, Nvidia finds itself with no succession plan

With Jensen Huang under pressure, Nvidia finds itself with no succession plan When reports of an espionage plot against Nvidia's Jensen Huang first emerged, the company stood by their chief executive. Nvidia spokesperson John Rizzo released a statement saying Mr Huang was committed to keep leading the firm "without interruption". Before its probe into Mr Huang's romantic relationship with a suspected Chinese spy was even underway, Nvidia said it had "no reason to believe" either US national security or company secrets had been compromised. Two days later, Nvidia's board is reportedly meeting to decide whether to oust Mr Huang. Overnight, the New York Times reported he had a second extra-marital affair with Nvidia executive Kimberly Powell, the company's vice-president of health care, who also reported to him. This week, shares in the multi-trillion-dollar tech giant tumbled, while Nvidia and Mr Huang have faced a proposed class action accusing them of defrauding shareholders. But what is perhaps most extraordinary is that Nvidia has no obvious successor to Mr Huang, who has run the company since it was created 33 years ago. Holding the position of co-founder, president and chief executive, Mr Huang has created an unusually flat corporate structure with about 60 executives reporting directly to him. He told the Wall Street Journal he did not believe in succession planning — despite his family being woven into the company's fabric. Mr Huang is the only Nvidia insider on the company's board, which operates without a permanent chair. Instead, a lead director is chosen annually by a majority of board members. "Jensen is not replaceable … there is no other person on the management team bench that can step in seamlessly as CEO," tech analyst Dan Ives told Reuters. Following the first reports this morning the board was preparing to oust him, Nvidia's share price dropped about 8 per cent in after-hours trade. That brought it 33 per cent lower than its peak in early October. Mr Huang's departure could leave the world-leading chip maker and global AI trade in an even more precarious position, according to investment analyst Jun Bei Liu. "He's the face of Nvidia and Nvidia has been front and centre of the AI build-out," she said. "If we look at how many new cloud data centre businesses have been sponsored in this circular financing world, it's pretty much all by Nvidia. "There's just a lot of uncertainty to come … not just for Nvidia, it's for the whole AI, the circular financing, the AI build-out, all the businesses that they co-invest and sponsor." Huang's star power Mr Huang has spent decades building Nvidia into a leading developer of graphics processing units, the hardware that AI companies such as ChatGPT and Anthropic rely on to operate. One of the world's most valuable companies, Nvidia hit a market capitalisation of $US5.7 trillion ($8.3 trillion) at its peak in early October. In America's pursuit to win the AI race against China, Mr Huang has emerged as a close ally of Donald Trump and one of the few people known to have a direct line to him. He has been to the White House at least five times since Mr Trump returned to office and just months ago accompanied him on a trip to Beijing. Mr Huang's star power also extends to other tech billionaires such as Larry Ellison and Elon Musk, who famously begged him for more Nvidia chips. (Already, the SpaceX founder has suggested he would hire him). NYT tech reporter Ryan Mac told the ABC's Afternoon Briefing that Mr Huang was a person "that sets the tone when it comes to AI regulation or lack thereof". "He is an agenda-setter, someone that has a close relationship with Donald Trump and influences policy not just in the US but globally. "This is arguably the most important person in the tech industry, certainly in AI,"he said. Mac, one of the reporters who broke the story of Mr Huang's second alleged affair, said it was "incredibly unclear" who would be tapped to succeed the Nvidia boss should he depart the company. "He has this kind of gravitas, this 'key man' placement in the company that would be very hard to replace," he said.