Trump Urges Tim Cook to Replace Jensen Huang as Nvidia CEO

President Donald Trump weighed in on NVDA's leadership vacuum on Thursday, November 12, posting on Truth Social that with "Nvidia CEO JENSEN HUANG, who has done a fantastic job," having resigned, "there is only one man to take his place," naming "TIM COOK of Apple" and adding, "A Legend replaces a Legend!". He repeated the idea later in an interview, saying, "I think Tim Cook would be a great candidate to run Nvidia" (Anadolu).

The post came shortly after Nvidia's board announced at 8:48 a.m. ET that Huang had resigned as president, CEO and director, effective immediately, with CFO Colette Kress named interim CEO while keeping her finance role and former Synopsys chief Harvey Jones becoming the company's first board chair (Nvidia). The board said its search will consider internal and external candidates. Huang's exit followed reports of two affairs, one with Alice Huang of Megaspeed, whom U.S. officials suspect of gathering information for Beijing; Beijing denies it, and Nvidia's board has said it has no reason to believe company secrets were compromised.

Cook stepped down as AAPL CEO on September 1 after 15 years and is now executive chairman, with John Ternus as chief executive. Neither Apple nor Nvidia responded publicly to Trump's suggestion, Cook has shown no public interest, and there is no indication the board is considering him, according to TechCrunch and Fox Business.

Nvidia shares opened about 13% lower on Thursday and fell as much as 14.35% to $148.80 in the first minutes of trading, much of that before the resignation was announced, then recovered to close at $166.19, down 4.34% (Motley Fool). Nvidia reports fiscal third-quarter results on Tuesday, November 17, where any update on the CEO search will be closely watched.