Nov 13 (Reuters) - Nvidia's board has approached British chipmaker Arm Holdings CEO Rene Haas in its search for a potential successor to Jensen Huang, the Financial Times said on Friday, even as another report said some employees were pushing to bring back the former CEO.
Huang stepped down on Thursday after revelations of extramarital affairs, including one involving a suspected Chinese spy, plunging the chipmaker into crisis and sending shockwaves across an AI industry he helped bankroll.
Haas' name
has been making the rounds among analysts since Huang's exit. He spent seven formative years at Nvidia, rising to vice president and general manager of its computing products business, before joining Arm in 2013.
He is among several candidates being considered and there is no guarantee he will be offered the job or accept it, the FT reported. Nvidia's finance chief Colette Kress is currently interim CEO.
Nvidia's board said it was in the process of selecting a search firm for the CEO role and had not formally engaged any potential candidates.
"Any speculation regarding individual candidates, whether internal or external, is premature," the board said in a statement.
Prior to Huang's resignation, a longtime Nvidia engineer had urged the board in an internal post to consider employee sentiment before taking any action, Wired reported late on Thursday.
The post has since drawn more than 1,600 comments, with several urging the board to find a way to bring Huang back, the technology news platform said, citing internal correspondence it reviewed. Nvidia has about 42,000 employees worldwide.
Billionaire Elon Musk separately said on X that a petition was underway to reinstate Huang and that he would sign it. It was not immediately clear whether Musk was referring to the internal effort reported by Wired.
Nvidia declined to comment on the Wired report as well as Musk's post, while Arm also declined to comment. Reuters could not independently verify the reports.
Haas became Arm CEO in 2022, overseeing the company's Nasdaq listing in 2023. Arm designs processor architectures and licenses them to other companies that develop chip designs. Historically its strength has been in mobile phones and it is expanding into computers.
Haas' combination of familiarity with Nvidia and experience running a publicly traded chip company could make him an unusual fit for the role, said Shay Boloor, chief market strategist at Futurum Equities.
"Rene is one of few external candidates who wouldn't need to be brought up to speed on Nvidia," Boloor said, adding that Haas' understanding of the company's culture alongside his experience running Arm was "a combination you don't find very often."
Arm's US-listed shares closed down about 5%. Nvidia's shares ended the session about 2% lower, bringing market value losses for the week to about $573 billion.
Some analysts expect the next CEO to break from Huang's three-decade reign as the hands-on "chief conductor" who personally steered engineering roadmaps, geopolitical negotiations over exports to China and massive investments across the AI ecosystem.
A potential shift toward a more institutional leadership structure would come as Nvidia faces heightened regulatory scrutiny and a growing consensus among US lawmakers to further restrict the company's chip exports to China.
INSIDERS AND TECH TITANS IN THE RUNNING
Analysts view Kress as a steady financial authority, while veteran engineer Ian Buck is seen as a top candidate after leading development of CUDA, the software platform that powers Nvidia's AI chips.
Apart from Haas, external names discussed by analysts include AMD chief Lisa Su, who has navigated the key China market, and Micron chief Sanjay Mehrotra, whose memory chips power Nvidia servers.
Other candidates cited by industry watchers include Marvell head Matt Murphy and Apple hardware chief Johny Srouji, who oversaw the iPhone maker's in-house silicon development.
Former Apple chief Tim Cook was floated by US President Donald Trump, as Nvidia's board evaluates whether to prioritize financial continuity, deep technical expertise, or experience running a global tech heavyweight.
(Reporting by Kanjyik Ghosh in Barcelona and Anhata Rooprai and Prathik Jayaprakash in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur, Sriraj Kalluvila and Leroy Leo)
