Mehrotra, Arora and Kurian Named in Nvidia CEO Succession Talk
Nvidia is searching for a new chief executive after Jensen Huang resigned on November 12. Three Indian-origin executives, Sanjay Mehrotra, Nikesh Arora and Thomas Kurian, are among the names in discussion, alongside insiders and other outside figures. CFO Colette Kress is interim CEO.
Three Indian-origin executives, Sanjay Mehrotra of Micron Technology, Nikesh Arora of Palo Alto Networks and Thomas Kurian of Google Cloud, have emerged in discussions over who could succeed Jensen Huang as Nvidia's chief executive. Huang resigned with immediate effect on Thursday, November 12, 2026. The 3 Indian-origin CEOs race alongside several insiders and outside names.
Nvidia named chief financial officer Colette Kress interim CEO. The board said it will consider both internal and external candidates. Longtime director Harvey Jones becomes the company's first-ever board chairman.
Why the search matters
Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and led it for more than three decades. Under him it grew from a graphics chipmaker into one of the world's most valuable technology firms. It now dominates the market for chips that power artificial intelligence.
Nvidia is the world's second most valuable company. Its customers include Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Tesla, OpenAI and Anthropic. His departure creates uncertainty in a stock market that was already unsettled in recent weeks.
Nvidia has reportedly hired an outside firm to identify candidates. The search is expected to be hard, given how central Huang was to the company's rise.
The names in discussion
Mehrotra has led Micron through the chip industry's boom-and-bust cycles. Micron shares have risen more than 2,700% during his tenure, driven partly by demand for memory chips tied to AI infrastructure.
Arora has run Palo Alto Networks since 2018 and expanded its AI-powered cybersecurity business. He was previously president and chief operating officer of SoftBank and spent a decade at Google.
Kurian heads Google Cloud, a major player in cloud computing and AI. His remit covers cloud infrastructure, enterprise software and AI services.
Other names include Kress and vice-president Ian Buck, who helped develop CUDA, the software platform that made Nvidia's processors central to modern AI. Outside possibilities are Arm CEO Rene Haas and Apple's chief hardware officer Johny Srouji.
What led to the resignation
Huang stepped down after reports of two affairs. The first involved a businesswoman alleged to be a Chinese spy. A second, reported on Wednesday, involved an Nvidia colleague.
The allegations raised national security concerns and prompted calls for investigations in the US. Nvidia has said there is no reason to believe its secrets or national security were compromised. Huang apologized to his wife, children and employees, admitting he had been "unfaithful to my wife."
Stephen Witt, author of a biography of Huang, called him "a tech visionary of the likes of Steve Jobs." Nvidia has not named a timetable for choosing a permanent chief executive.
