US President Donald Trump said Thursday that former Apple CEO Tim Cook should replace Jensen Huang at Nvidia, after Huang quit over revelations of two affairs, including one with an alleged Chinese spy.
“Now that Nvidia CEO JENSEN HUANG, who has done a fantastic job, has resigned, there is only one man to take his place — TIM COOK of Apple. A Legend replaces a Legend!” Trump, who was close to Huang, said on his Truth Social network.
Jensen Huang resigned as chief executive of AI giant Nvidia on Thursday after revelations he had two extramarital affairs, including one with a woman accused of spying for China.
Chief financial officer Colette Kress will serve as interim CEO while the board searches for a permanent successor, the company said, ending Huang’s 33-year run at the helm of the global juggernaut he co-founded.
Huang, 63, also gave up his seat on the board. The company did not give a reason for his departure.
The scandal has sent shares of the multi-trillion-dollar company plunging, and the exit of Huang, a close informal adviser to President Donald Trump on AI, leaves Nvidia without its leather-jacket-clad leader at a crucial time for the sector.
Huang was a central figure in the revolution set off by the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, with Nvidia’s powerful processors, once intended for video game graphics, becoming the crucial ingredient for building the AI models now spreading across the world.
Huang remains Nvidia’s largest individual shareholder, with a stake of about 3.6 percent, according to the company’s most recent filing.
However, the stake gives him no special voting power, unlike founders at Meta or Google, who control their companies through super-voting shares
For many in Silicon Valley, the dramatic departure will compare to that of Steve Jobs, who was pushed out of Apple by its board in 1985 and returned 12 years later to take the company to new heights.
At the heart of the spy allegations is the race between the United States and China, with both superpowers trying to get ahead in an industry widely seen as the next industrial revolution.
Nvidia shares were down as much as 13 percent in early trading on Wall Street following the announcement, with $800 billion wiped off the company’s valuation since the weekend.
Analyst Dan Ives of Yorkville Ives called it “a dark day for Nvidia and the US tech industry,” but said the board had done what it needed to: “rip off the band-aid and take Nvidia into its next chapter without him.”
