Nvidia's board reportedly approached Arm CEO Rene Haas, a longtime Nvidia veteran, during its CEO replacement search.
Nvidia's board of directors has approached Arm chief executive Rene Haas as a potential successor to Jensen Huang, according to a Financial Times report citing people familiar with the matter. Haas is among several candidates under consideration, though it remains unclear whether he will receive a formal offer or agree to take the position.
The search comes as Nvidia undergoes a leadership transition following Huang's swift departure from the CEO role earlier this week. For now, chief financial officer Colette Kress serves as interim CEO. The board is searching for a permanent replacement and is reportedly weighing both internal and external candidates. Neither Arm nor Nvidia commented on the matter to the FT.
Haas is no stranger to Nvidia. He spent approximately seven years at the company before leaving in 2013, serving as a vice president responsible for several projects, including notebook GPUs, Windows-on-Arm, and Tegra system-on-chips. His senior management roles gave him firsthand experience with Nvidia's operations, corporate culture, and relationships with customers and partners.
Haas also has experience developing consumer and data center CPUs as well as GPUs and GPU IP, a combination that is rare in the industry. He reportedly maintains close ties with Huang and several members of Nvidia's board, which could make him an attractive candidate for a company whose strategy and management structure have revolved around its founder for more than three decades.
At Arm, Haas has shown a willingness to make substantial strategic changes. Since taking the helm in 2022, he has introduced the Compute Subsystems (CSS) initiative, which gives customers complete, validated processor platform designs and makes it easier for newcomers to enter the market. Arm also introduced its first own-brand AGI CPU, putting the company in direct competition with some of its traditional customers. Both initiatives mark significant departures from Arm's traditional licensing model, and they suggest Haas is willing to pursue new revenue opportunities despite the risk of damaging relationships with long-term partners.
Haas also has extensive experience across the semiconductor industry. Arm's CPU and GPU technologies are used in system-on-chips developed by hundreds of companies with very different requirements, including Nvidia, Apple, Qualcomm, and MediaTek, to name a few. In addition, Haas led Arm through its initial public offering in 2023, giving him experience with investors and regulators. The report also states that Haas is the CEO of SoftBank, Arm's parent company.
Haas' potential appointment would not be without challenges, chiefly because he has never run a company of Nvidia's scale. Arm has about 10,000 employees worldwide and develops and licenses semiconductor IP, primarily CPU and GPU technologies, to a wide range of customers with distinct needs. Nvidia, by contrast, designs CPUs, GPUs, networking equipment, complete AI systems, and software platforms, and it has a headcount of about 42,000. If Haas were to lead Nvidia, he would have to manage a considerably larger organization with a far more complex product portfolio and supply chain. Replacing Huang, who has led Nvidia since its founding in 1993 and personally shaped its technology strategy and business tactics, would be a formidable task for virtually any executive.
Ironically, if Haas is appointed, Nvidia would be led by the chief executive of a company it tried to acquire in 2020 and abandoned in 2022 amid regulatory opposition.
[Editor's note: The source describes Haas as the CEO of SoftBank. Based on public reporting, Haas is CEO of Arm, and SoftBank's CEO is Masayoshi Son. The sentence should be verified before publication.]