Eric Schmidt, Former Google CEO, Should Run Nvidia
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Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction), could be gone soon. One more accusation of any ties, even if Huang acted by mistake, to the Chinese acquisition of Nvidia chips with the help of his former lover, Alice Huang, could undermine his chances of keeping his CEO job. A negative report from Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, a well-regarded law firm hired by the Nvidia board to investigate Jensen Huang’s relationship with Alice Huang, could show how poor his judgment was and how badly it damaged Nvidia, and could push him out immediately. The board is in the spotlight, which will likely trigger shareholder lawsuits that could drag on indefinitely.
Almost no one thinks any of Nvidia’s management could step in as CEO. Almost no one can even name them. Some reports state that Jensen Huang has 60 direct reports, none of whom is a first among equals. And which of these would Wall St., governments, or clients accept?
A look at the tech landscape shows very few people with deep technology and management skills spanning decades. Very few also have experience running huge publicly held tech companies.
Who comes to mind? Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have been out of company management for decades and were never considered world-class tech executives. Other well-known tech leaders, like Michael Dell, run the companies they founded. Bill Gates might have been a placeholder for a year or two, but scandal has tainted him.
This leaves, among all the great tech executives who ran megatech companies, the man picked as CEO of Google in 2001 and who held the job until 2011. He served as executive chairman until 2017. Google was renamed Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) in 2015 as its businesses expanded to include YouTube, Mail, Maps, hardware, and the self-driving company Waymo.
Today, Schmidt serves on the boards of Apple, Princeton, and the Mayo Clinic. He lectures widely on advanced technology and particularly artificial intelligence. In other words, he is among the most influential members of the broader tech universe.
At 71, by all public appearances, he is at the top of his game. There is no reason he could not run Nvidia as long as CEOs of a number of companies have—well into their 70s.
If Nvidia has to fire Jensen Huang, Schmidt is on the short list, and may be the only one who belongs there.
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Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
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A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
