Nvidia board approached Arm's Rene Haas in hunt for Jensen Huang's successor

Nvidia's board has approached Rene Haas, chief executive of British chip designer Arm, as it searches for a permanent successor to Jensen Huang, the Financial Times reported on Friday, 13 March. Haas is one of several names under consideration, and there is no guarantee he will be offered the job or accept it, the report said.

Haas knows Nvidia from the inside, having worked there for seven years before joining Arm in 2013. At Nvidia he was vice-president and general manager of its computing products division. At Arm he began as vice-president of strategic alliances, became chief commercial officer and later headed its intellectual property products division, taking the top job in February 2022 and leading the company through its Nasdaq listing in 2023.

Colette Kress, Nvidia's chief financial officer, remains interim chief executive while the board weighs candidates from inside and outside the company. The board has said it is looking both internally and externally; no permanent successor had been announced.

Huang resigned on Thursday, 12 March after disclosures about extramarital relationships. One involves an executive suspected of working for Chinese intelligence, an allegation the Chinese government has denied. The transition ends more than three decades under the co-founder who became the leading face of the chip industry's expansion into artificial intelligence.

Arm licenses processor architectures and designs to other companies, which build chips used in phones, computers and other equipment. Haas's path places him among executives who combine knowledge of Nvidia with experience running another company central to the semiconductor industry; the board has not indicated it has made a choice. Arm declined to comment and Nvidia did not respond immediately, according to the report.