Who could replace Jensen Huang? A highly unscientific list of possible successors

Nvidia suddenly finds itself without an obvious plan for a scenario few imagined: a CEO on the way out. Jensen Huang has acknowledged an extramarital affair, yet as of Wednesday afternoon the identity involved remained murky — either Alice Huang, a Chinese executive U.S. intelligence suspects of spying, or Kimberly Powell, an Nvidia executive who reports to him. Five sources told The New York Times that Powell was also a paramour. On prediction market Kalshi, Huang's odds of surviving the week sat at just 30%.

Even in a forced exit, the board members Huang has enriched are unlikely to cut him loose entirely; barring another revelation, they could retain him as chairman, a title Nvidia does not currently have. But someone still has to run the company, and no apparent successor stands ready — leaving Huang's 60 direct reports as the first pool to examine.

Among outsiders, the names floated include AMD chief Lisa Su, a distant cousin of Huang's whom The Information raised this week; The Information's logic notwithstanding, AMD gains each day Nvidia stays consumed by investigations and congressional briefings. Yale's Jeffrey Sonnenfeld argued Eric Schmidt could "parachute in tomorrow and do a very good job," citing his run of Google from 2001 to 2011 and the NSCAI chairmanship, though his own personal history could stall a board vote. Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan faces a company whose stock fell 20% in after-hours trading after a fourth-quarter guidance miss, despite Q3 revenue of $16.5 billion, up 21%. Bret Taylor, who leads Sierra and chaired OpenAI's board through the "Blip," brings relationships with nearly every Nvidia customer.

Insiders carry their own case. Ian Buck, the Stanford PhD and VP who helped develop CUDA, is viewed as a viable "builder" candidate, particularly if Huang keeps the chairman's seat and pushes for a partner he can work with. Senior vice president of hardware engineering Andrew Bell, a Cornell graduate who joined 25 years ago, has chip pedigree and a direct line to Huang; CFO Colette Kress is the most frequently named executive, though analysts say she is not a natural fit as innovator and visionary. The wildcard nobody has raised: Lori Huang, a former Silicon Graphics chip engineer who co-leads the family trusts.

What remains unclear is whether the board prefers continuity or a clean break, whether Huang can hold a chairman title while ceding daily control, and whether any marquee candidate — Su, Schmidt, Taylor — would actually trade their current seat for the hottest job in silicon.