NVIDIA's board of directors is filled with veterans, and it is difficult to find a successor for Jensen Huang

According to a survey by the technology media outlet The Information on NVIDIA's board of directors, the fate of founder and CEO Jensen Huang currently depends on the board. This company, which has the highest market value globally, does not have a clear successor for the CEO position, and there are several long-time partners who have worked with Huang for decades on the board. The board needs to investigate whether Huang's personal relationships have led to the leakage of company secrets and whether he has violated internal regulations; if issues are found, they must also decide how to handle this founder and CEO.

NVIDIA has a total of 11 directors, including Jensen Huang himself, with 5 of the remaining 10 having served for over ten years. Venture capitalists Tench Coxe and Mark Stevens joined the board when the company was founded in 1993, coming from early investors Sutter Hill Ventures and Sequoia Capital, respectively. The person most likely to lead the investigation is Chief Independent Director Stephen Neal, a nearly 80-year-old lawyer who joined the board in 2019 and serves as the chair of the corporate governance committee; his firm, Cooley LLP, has provided legal services to NVIDIA since 1993. NVIDIA has not yet announced the members of the investigation committee, and it is still uncertain whether Neal will personally lead it.

Neal previously defended Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and represented key figures in the U.S. savings and loan crisis, such as Charles Keating; FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried also proposed him as chairman when the company was on the brink of bankruptcy. He is also responsible for overseeing Meta's independent content review board, and a person familiar with him described his approach as pragmatic, preferring to resolve issues with minimal disruption. Jensen Huang has long directly managed dozens of executives, with core business leaders reporting directly to him, and there is no recognized second-in-command; none of the board members have held CEO positions at large companies. Harvard University corporate governance expert Jesse Fried expects the investigation could last for months, and the board is likely to ultimately choose to retain Jensen Huang.