Jensen Huang resigns: Meet the Nvidia board members who decided his fate after affair reports
Nvidia Corp.’s board of directors met and removed Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang on Thursday after reports of multiple extramarital affairs. Huang, the only person to have ever led the chipmaker, had guided the company through a share-price surge of more than 700,000%, according to Bloomberg.
The board named Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress as interim CEO and appointed Harvey Jones as its first Chairman. Many directors have known Huang for decades. An annual governance ranking by executive recruiting firm James Drury Partners placed Nvidia 609th out of more than 650 companies in the S&P 500 and Fortune 500, below its largest technology peers. Nvidia did not immediately respond to Bloomberg's request for comment.
Jones joined the board in 1993 while serving as CEO of chip-design software company Synopsys Inc. Since 2004, he has been managing partner at private investment firm Square Wave Ventures. He holds degrees from Georgetown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Nvidia acquired a $2 billion stake in Synopsys last year.
Quick answers to key questions
•5 QUESTIONS
1
Who were the Nvidia board members who decided Jensen Huang's fate?⌵The board included Harvey C. Jones, Stephen C. Neal, Tench Coxe, John O. Dabiri, Dawn Hudson, Melissa B. Lora, A. Brooke Seawell, Aarti Shah, Mark A. Stevens and Suzanne Nora Johnson.
2
Why did Nvidia's board remove Jensen Huang as CEO?⌵The article says the board met and removed Huang after reports of multiple extramarital affairs. The related coverage describes the reports as allegations.
3
Who became Nvidia's first board chairman after Huang's departure?⌵Harvey C. Jones was appointed Nvidia's first chairman. He joined the board in 1993 and had a background in technology leadership and investing.
4
Who became Nvidia's interim CEO after Jensen Huang stepped down?⌵Nvidia's board appointed Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress as interim CEO. She was to continue serving as CFO while the company searched for a permanent successor.
5
Which Nvidia board members had served the longest?⌵Harvey C. Jones and Tench Coxe both joined the board in 1993. A. Brooke Seawell joined in 1997.
Neal joined in 2019. He is chairman emeritus and senior counsel at Cooley LLP, Nvidia’s long-time law firm. He earned degrees from Harvard University and Stanford Law School.
Coxe has served since 1993. A long-time Silicon Valley venture capitalist, he was managing director at Palo Alto-based Sutter Hill Ventures from 1989 to 2020 and was an early Nvidia investor. He and his wife live in Austin, Texas, where they are active political donors and local investors. In January, he donated $100 million to help launch a medical center at the University of Texas at Austin, according to Bloomberg.
A board member since 2020, Dabiri is a professor of aeronautics and mechanical engineering at the California Institute of Technology. He has received a National Medal of Science and funding from the MacArthur Foundation. As a Princeton undergraduate, he used videos of jellyfish taken at an aquarium to create mathematical models of their movement.
Hudson has been on the board since 2013. She previously served as chief marketing officer of the National Football League and as CEO of Pepsi-Cola North America.
Lora joined in 2023 after serving as president of Taco Bell International. In the announcement of her appointment, Huang hailed her “extensive finance expertise.” She holds degrees from California State University Long Beach and the University of Southern California.
Seawell joined in 1997, four years after Nvidia’s founding. He is a partner at venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates. Earlier, he was an executive at NetDynamics Inc., an application server software company acquired by Sun Microsystems, and he previously worked at Synopsys, Bloomberg reported. He holds degrees from Stanford University.
Shah spent 27 years at pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly & Co., rising to senior vice president and chief information and digital officer. When she joined the board in 2020, Huang deemed her “a world-class leader.” She holds a PhD in applied statistics from the University of California, Riverside.
Stevens served from 1993 to 2006 before rejoining in 2008. He is managing partner at private family office investment firm S-Cubed Capital and was an early Nvidia investor. Previously, he was managing partner at Sequoia Capital. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Nora Johnson joined in July after 21 years at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., where she was vice chairman. “Suzanne is an extraordinary leader whose career spans finance, technology, healthcare and public policy,” Huang said at the time, Bloomberg reported. She holds degrees from the University of Southern California and Harvard Law School.
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