The earnings release is just around the corner, and this time, Nvidia’s board has made a particularly decisive break.
CFO Colette Kress has been appointed interim CEO, while Harvey Jones, a founding member since 1993, has taken on the role of the company’s first-ever chairman. Power has been formally bifurcated—ending once and for all the era in which a single founder wielded near-absolute authority.
Upon the announcement, Nvidia’s shares plunged more than 14% at the market open before recovering much of the loss amid buying triggered by the “event risk” resolution. Wall Street consistently favors certainty, even if it means parting with a foundational figure. Yet short-term market stabilization cannot obscure the deeper structural shifts looming ahead for this semiconductor giant.
Many attribute Nvidia’s success to technological superiority, but overlook its fundamental identity as a pure-play design company—without fabrication facilities and without server assembly operations. The ability to achieve a 75% gross margin on a $100 product is not solely due to engineering blueprints, but also to Huang Renxun’s exceptional commercial acumen.
Why did TSMC prioritize advanced packaging for Nvidia during periods of acute compute scarcity? Why did SK Hynix and Samsung extend preferential access to high-bandwidth memory?
Because the founder personally leveraged relationships and influence—what industry insiders refer to as “face time.” With professional managers operating within established procedures, will supply chain priorities remain as rigidly aligned? Broadcom and AMD have already signaled their reaction through gains exceeding 5% in pre-market trading.
A more subtle shift is unfolding internally. Managers with financial backgrounds excel at crafting flawless quarterly reports—cutting marginal lines of business, stabilizing margins, and optimizing short-term performance.
But history shows that the most valuable decisions in tech often appear financially disastrous at the time.
In 2006, Nvidia invested heavily in building the CUDA ecosystem despite widespread criticism from Wall Street—no one could foresee the returns. In 2019, the $6.9 billion acquisition of Mellanox was similarly dismissed as overpriced. When “founder-driven bets” give way to “financial modeling,” who will dare to make bold, long-term investments amid projected earnings declines?
This wave of disruption has even reached the broader AI industry. Huang Renxun has, in effect, been the largest unseen funder of Western open-source AI. Nvidia’s substantial investment in maintaining open models like Nemotron follows a clear logic: only by enabling global enterprises to freely use open-source models—while purchasing GPUs for deployment—can the market be protected from being locked down by closed, proprietary ecosystems.
With major model providers now restricting data distillation, a new management team focused on short-term profitability may curtail open-source spending. If so, the open-source community could face a chilling effect.
History often rhymes. After Steve Jobs was ousted from Apple in 1985, his successors relied on existing product momentum to triple sales and deliver years of strong financials—until the early 1990s, when the tide receded and Apple suddenly found itself on the brink of collapse.
Huang Renxun has left behind sufficient order backlog to allow Nvidia to navigate the next few quarters with dignity.
The true test for this company will never be the numbers reported next week, but rather whether, three years from now, at the next pivotal inflection point, no one remains in the boardroom wearing a leather jacket, willing to bet everything on an uncertain future.
Huang Renxun’s Alleged Infidelity Scandal
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1881696189792403/
Disclaimer: This article reflects the personal views of the author