The market has already priced in a version of a Jensen Huang-less Nvidia. It does not like what it sees.
Nvidia has lost roughly $1.6 trillion in market value since its October 6 record close of about $5.78 trillion, a drop of about 27%. That destruction happened before a single leadership change was confirmed. On Wednesday evening, Bloomberg reported that Nvidia’s board has been working with an outside firm to identify potential replacements for Huang. Odds on prediction market Polymarket showed an 83% chance that Huang would resign or be removed by the end of the year.
The governance problem underneath all of this is structural, not personal. Huang has approximately 60 executives reporting directly to him and has publicly argued for that unusually large number of direct reports. The word “succession” does not appear in Nvidia’s most recent annual report to shareholders. That is not an oversight. It is a philosophy that worked brilliantly for 33 years and is now a liability.
What the Analysts Are Pricing In
Dan Ives estimated Nvidia shares could be worth $225 without Huang, compared with $300 if he remains CEO. The range of outcomes in analyst models has widened dramatically in one week. That spread is itself a signal: nobody has high conviction on what Nvidia is worth under different management.
One analyst note put it plainly: “There is not a ready replacement for Huang and it’s hard to overstate just how important he is for the company, so we assume a material derating of the stock based on his ousting.”
Who Actually Steps In
Two names dominate every serious succession conversation. Many analysts and investors see engineer Ian Buck and CFO Colette Kress as particularly likely candidates, at least for the short term.
Buck joined in 2004, helped launch AI on Nvidia chips, and is closely associated with the early development of CUDA. He currently manages Nvidia’s AI hardware and software products as head of product for hyperscale AI. CUDA is the reason developers have never seriously defected to competing chip architectures, and Buck built it. “My bigger concern is next decade, because Jensen isn’t simply Nvidia’s CEO but he’s the person who has consistently identified where computing is going,” said Shay Boloor, chief market strategist of Futurum Equities. “Ian Buck is the strongest long-term internal candidate given his role in creating CUDA and leading Nvidia’s hyperscale business,” he added.
Kress offers a different value. Nvidia’s finance chief since 2013, she has played a strategic role in positioning the company as an innovator in chip design and data center computing. Analysts consider her instrumental in Nvidia’s success on Wall Street and a key strategic partner to Huang. The more pragmatic scenario described by several portfolio managers is a co-CEO structure, with Kress steadying the business and finances alongside Buck handling product and technology strategy.
The Talent Risk Nobody Is Discussing
Valuation compression is the obvious risk. The quieter one sits inside Nvidia’s org chart. If Huang is replaced with an insider, “you’re going to have 59 people who will all think ‘it should have been me,'” said Jason Schloetzer, a professor at Georgetown University who co-authors an annual report on CEO succession planning. An exodus of senior engineers at the moment AMD and custom silicon from Google and Amazon are maturing would compound the leadership discount in ways a new CEO cannot quickly reverse.
Even with Huang’s seemingly likely ouster, the board’s work is only beginning. A deep failure was exposed this week: one of the world’s most valuable companies was allowed to run with some 60 direct reports and no clear succession plan, as though its founder were both immortal and infallible. The fundamentals have not changed. The premium investors attached to the man who saw the AI wave before everyone else has.
