Nvidia Approaches Arm Holdings' Rene Haas After Huang Resigns

Reuters reported that Nvidia shares fell as much as 14.3% Thursday and closed down 4.3%, wiping out nearly $493 billion in market value for the week after founder and CEO Jensen Huang resigned. The stock represented nearly one-third of all S&P 500 trading volume Thursday, while Fidelity said retail buy orders outnumbered sell orders by nearly 5 to 1.

The Financial Times reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter, that Nvidia's board approached Arm Holdings CEO Rene Haas about taking the top job. The approach came a day after Huang's resignation, the Financial Times reported.

The Financial Times said Haas was one of several candidates under consideration, with no guarantee Nvidia would make him an offer or that he would accept it. Arm declined to comment, Nvidia did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment, and Reuters said it could not independently verify the report.

Why did Huang resign?

The New York Times reported in October 2025 that an affair involved Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed, an Nvidia cloud partner. Reuters reported that subsequent reports said U.S. intelligence believed she acted on behalf of Chinese intelligence; Beijing denied that claim.

Reuters also reported that Huang stepped down Thursday after a scandal that had unfolded for more than a year. Two affairs, with Alice Huang and Kimberly Powell, emerged initially; Reuters later learned of a third relationship with another unnamed Nvidia employee.

Earlier this month, Nvidia's board launched an independent probe into whether Huang had been targeted by a foreign intelligence operation, Reuters reported. ARD reported that the board hired Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to lead the investigation, with former acting U.S. attorney Joon H. Kim directing it.

Reuters reported that Nvidia named CFO Colette Kress interim CEO. The board also appointed former Synopsys CEO Harvey Jones as its first board chair.

What does Haas bring?

The Straits Times reported that Haas spent seven years at Nvidia, reaching vice president and general manager of its computing products business before joining Arm in 2013. He became Arm CEO in 2022 and oversaw its Nasdaq listing in 2023.

Arm designs processor architectures and licenses them to other chipmakers. The company has historically been strong in mobile and is expanding into computers, The Straits Times reported.

Who else is under consideration?

Analysts and investors cited by The Straits Times and Trending Topics floated a broad field of internal and external candidates.

• Ian Buck: The sources describe him as a 20-year Nvidia veteran and co-creator of CUDA, the software platform that ties developers to Nvidia's chips. He leads prediction markets.
• Colette Kress: Analysts see her as a steady hand for finance and Wall Street relations, though some question whether she can fill the technology visionary role.
• External names: AMD CEO Lisa Su, a distant relative of Huang; former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger; Apple hardware chief Johny Srouji; Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra; and Marvell CEO Matt Murphy.

According to The Straits Times, President Trump suggested Tim Cook of Apple on social media. He wrote: “There is only one man to take his place — TIM COOK of Apple. A Legend replaces a Legend!”

Can Nvidia's board govern without Huang?

The Straits Times reported that Nvidia's 11 directors have an average tenure of nearly 15 years, and two have served since the company's 1993 founding. None is a current or former big-company CEO, and none has national security experience.

The New York Times, citing former employees, reported that Huang resisted internal succession planning for years because he feared competition among executives. Nvidia has never published a formal succession plan, and the word “succession” appears nowhere in its annual report, according to The Straits Times.

What did Huang's departure trigger?

The FBI is investigating Huang's relationship with Alice Huang, Reuters reported. The Justice Department is running a criminal inquiry into Megaspeed, which imported more than $4.6 billion of Nvidia chips and rented them to Chinese customers, including Alibaba.

Reuters reported that the Commerce Department's Megaspeed probe moved to the Justice Department after Nvidia's general counsel contacted officials. Singapore said it has received limited cooperation from the U.S. in its own Megaspeed investigation.

Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called for a review of whether Nvidia is too big to fail and its effects on U.S. banking and credit markets. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Democratic-led committees will investigate whether national security was compromised.

Can Kress lead Nvidia?

Reuters reported that Kress will run Nvidia while the board conducts its search. Susannah Streeter of Wealth Club called her a safe pair of hands who lacks global status and is unlikely to be able to forge such deep commercial ties.

Anshel Sag of Moor Insights & Strategy said: “Kress is a very strong CFO, but she is primarily a financial operator... I don't think she is the long-term visionary that Nvidia needs.” Reuters also identified shareholder litigation as an unresolved risk facing any successor.

Whether Haas or another candidate gets the job, the permanent chief will inherit a company at the center of U.S.-China technology competition, federal investigations and a board that has never managed a CEO transition, Reuters reported.

The next test is whether Nvidia's directors can narrow the field and appoint a leader able to operate independently of Huang's decades-long influence. Reuters' reporting leaves the $4.6 billion Megaspeed transfer case and the absence of a succession precedent as defining constraints on that choice.