Nvidia's New Board Chair Harvey Jones to Lead CEO Search Amid Scrutiny

Nvidia's board has appointed Harvey Jones, a director since 1993, as the company's first-ever Chair of the Board, placing the 73-year-old at the head of the search for a permanent successor to ousted co-founder Jensen Huang. CFO Colette Kress steps in as interim CEO while that search, expected to run at least a few months, gets under way with an outside recruiting firm already retained, according to Bloomberg.

Jones announced his appointment in an email to employees, screenshots of which leaked publicly. "I'm writing to share an important update," the note began, before addressing a workforce shaken by the events surrounding Huang's sudden departure. "The Board takes seriously our duty as steward of this great company," Jones wrote.

For finance chiefs and governance officers, the appointment matters on two levels. It signals who will control the succession process at the world's most-watched chipmaker — and it puts a three-decade incumbent of the same board under the microscope for the oversight failures that created the crisis in the first place.

Who is Harvey Jones?

Jones is not a household name, but he has spent more than 30 years in technology and semiconductors, according to his biography on Nvidia's website. He founded two companies, served as CEO of Synopsys from 1987 to 1998, and has managed the investment firm Square Wave Ventures since 2004. He joined Nvidia's board in 1993, the same year Huang founded the company.

His net worth tells its own story about director compensation at Nvidia. Forbes classifies Jones as a billionaire, a fortune the magazine attributes "almost entirely" to his Nvidia director's pay and his 0.03% stake in the company.

Two longtime friends and former colleagues, speaking to Fortune, described a leader built for turbulent moments. "Harvey has a deep sense of history," said Chris Rowen, who co-founded the semiconductor processor company Tensilica with Jones in 1997. Rowen called him "a smooth polish" — but warned against reading that polish as softness. "He is such a gentleman, so articulate, and so well-sanded on the outside that you might worry there isn't a deep fierceness and technical insight inside, but beneath that smooth exterior is a really bright, insightful, aggressive guy."

Penny Herscher, who has known Jones since 1984 and once worked for him, called him a "charming elder statesman" who at this stage of his career is likely "very hard to ruffle" — a "steady pair of hands" to sort out Nvidia's next chapter. "He's very strategic," she said. "He's always looking around corners."

What does the appointment change for governance?

The uncomfortable counterweight is Jones's own tenure. Huang's affairs — three of which are known as of this writing — went undetected or unaddressed by a board Jones has sat on for over three decades. Huang also accumulated as many as 60 direct reports at one point, with no clear successor and no succession planning.

The New York Times reported that Huang's affair with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of health care, was known inside the company and appears to violate its code of conduct. That code instructs all employees to "avoid situations where our actions create conflict," including "personal relationships" — and the board promises to promptly investigate all reports of misconduct.

"Jones may be the right person to steady the ship, but his longevity is both his greatest qualification and the strongest reason to scrutinize his leadership," Jonathan Tower, managing partner at VC firm Catapult, told Fortune. "The board cannot simply present itself as the solution without examining its role in creating the problem."

For practitioners, that tension is the story: the same governance committee structure now leading the rescue is the one that presided over the risk buildup.

How will the CEO search run?

Jones will likely lead the selection process, Herscher said, though she had not spoken to him about it directly and Nvidia did not respond to a request for comment. She draws that read from her own experience on three public boards and as co-founder of The Chairs Circle, which runs educational programs for board chairs. Jones's seat on Nvidia's Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee — the body typically involved in such processes — makes his leadership of the search more likely, she said.

The mechanics, per Herscher: the recruiter does the first outreach, then Jones and the internal search committee speak with the most promising candidates. The search will likely take at least a few months. Bloomberg reported this week that Nvidia has already hired an outside firm to identify candidates.

Jones's record as a recruiter is a point in his favor. Longtime technology executive Chi-Foo Chan, in a 2019 oral history interview with the Computer History Museum, called him "a very persuasive guy," recalling how Jones convinced him to join Synopsys.

Potential successors floating in public discussion include Rene Hass, currently CEO of the chipmaker Arm. President Trump, who allegedly did not act on reports of Huang's affair with a suspected Chinese spy, has suggested former Apple CEO Tim Cook as a good pick.

Whoever lands the role will need the operational and product development credentials to keep the GPUs flowing — the one line in this succession drama that shareholders will ultimately grade the board on.