What to make of Jensen Huang’s resignation: AI Investing Panel

00:00 Host

Shares of NVIDIA plunging as the company announces CEO Jensen Huang is resigning. Joining us now to talk about NVIDIA and the AI trade more broadly, Liz Thomas, Chief Market Strategist at SoFi, Patrick Moorhead, founder of Moor Insights & Strategy, and Eric Jackson, EMJ Capital founder and president. Guys, thank you so much for joining us.

00:26 Host

Um Pat, you know the company best, so I’m going to turn to you first here. because when this news first crossed that of the first instance of the affair, you and I emailed a little bit about the possibility that Jensen would be leaving. It seemed less much less likely. Now it has happened. Um just give me your first blush reaction here.

00:51 Patrick Moorhead

Yeah, first blush reaction is I’m not surprised. I know Julia did tell you on Sunday, the odds of the board pushing Jensen out were low, but the relationship with the direct report changed, it changed all of that. And at that point when I saw that, uh I I pretty much had broadcast that that there was no way he can recover from this and and here we are.

01:21 Host

Uh here we are. Colette Kress is going to be the interim CEO of the company. She’s the current CFO and she’s going to be doing her CFO job too. Um, this is obviously a huge, huge job. Who who who would be your first pick to step in?

01:39 Patrick Moorhead

Yeah, right now, so I I’ve done a bunch of interviews out there and I said Colette Kress is likely would be put in as as interim uh CEO and they potentially could give her a shot uh at the big job as well. Um that is standard, you know, board standard operating procedure, but I think uh, internally it would likely be Ian Buck. Uh he is the father of CUDA and he runs the hyperscalar business at NVIDIA, which is the lion share of their revenue and and profit dollars. Uh and externally, right, I I see, you know, there there’s a myriad of of people. Uh you have Rene Haas who worked at NVIDIA for for seven years. He he ran a business unit there and reported right into uh Jensen, knows him well. Uh sure, he’s the ARM CEO right now. and I think Charlie Kawwas at uh at Broadcom, uh unless he’s been uh promised the next seat uh uh when Hock Tan uh leaves. So those are my my odds on favorite external and internal.

02:37 Host

Um Liz, I want to turn to you because uh NVIDIA shares as we mentioned are down this morning. Nasdaq futures are also down. And this is unlike what we saw earlier in the week where uh NVIDIA sold off and the rest of tech did okay. So how I mean are there other factors at work here? How are you thinking about the relationship between this company and the broader AI trade?

03:00 Liz Thomas

Well, earlier in the week, the news came out and I think it was more of an idiosyncratic Nvidia issue and there were still question marks about whether or not Jensen would be removed and I think most people, including betting markets, right, agreed…