Tim Cook, Former Apple CEO, Should Run Nvidia

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction), will be gone very 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. That could push him out immediately. The board is in the spotlight, which will likely trigger shareholder lawsuits that could drag on indefinitely.

More recently, it also came up that Huang had another affair with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care. Then it came up that Nvidia’s Singapore sales reporting disappeared. Alice Huang was associated with Megaspeed, which is based in Singapore. The Wall Street Journal reports, “As recently as the summer of last year, Singapore was officially one of Nvidia’s largest markets, generating 22% of the chip maker’s revenue. Then, practically overnight, it disappeared from the company’s financial disclosures.” Nvidia brought in the revenue. How was it reported?

Almost no one thinks any of Nvidia’s management could step in as permanent CEO. Almost no one can name any Nvidia executive. By some counts, Jensen Huang has 60 direct reports, none of whom is a first among equals. And which of these would be acceptable to Wall St., governments, or clients?

A look at the tech landscape shows very few people with deep technology and management skills that span 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 Steve Jobs picked to run Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) in 2011 and who held the job until earlier this year. He took Apple’s market value from $348 million in 2011 to $4 trillion recently. It is the world’s most valuable company.

Cook, like Huang, has built relations among senior executives and government leaders across the world. He is considered a consummate technologist. He has been on the board of Duke and Nike. And, he is only 66 years old.

Tim Cook may be the only CEO in the world who is in the same category as Huang.

Why would Cook do it? Perhaps because it is in the national interest. Perhaps because Huang’s departure would cause a collapse of the AI world order. He doesn’t need the money. But, would he be willing to help save an entire industry?

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.