WASHINGTON (The Thursday Times) — President Donald Trump said on Thursday that Tim Cook, Apple’s executive chairman, should take over as chief executive of Nvidia, hours after Jensen Huang resigned from the chipmaker he co-founded.
“NOW THAT Nvidia CEO JENSEN HUANG, who has done a fantastic job, has resigned, there is only one man to take his place – TIM COOK of Apple,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform. “A Legend replaces a Legend!”
The choice belongs to Nvidia’s board, which named Colette Kress, the chief financial officer, as interim chief executive and has begun a search for a permanent successor that will look at internal and external candidates. It also named Harvey Jones, a former chief executive of Synopsys, as the company’s first board chair.
Apple and Cook did not immediately respond to requests for comment from reporters, and Nvidia has not said whether Cook is under consideration.
A chairman, not a chief executive
Cook stepped down in September after 15 years as Apple’s chief executive, handing the job to John Ternus, the company’s former head of hardware engineering. He has stayed on as executive chairman of Apple’s board.
He has kept close ties with Trump. Last year Cook presented the president with a US-made plaque on a 24-carat gold base to mark Apple’s American Manufacturing Program, after the company pledged an extra $100 billion of investment in the United States. Both Cook and Huang attended the White House state dinner for China’s President Xi Jinping in September.
Silent on the scandal
Trump’s post praised Huang and did not mention the allegations that ended his 33-year run at Nvidia. Huang resigned after reports that US intelligence agencies believed he had been targeted in a Chinese espionage effort through a relationship with Alice Huang, a businesswoman who is not related to him. A further report on Wednesday said he had also had a relationship with a senior Nvidia executive, and the board had been preparing to remove him.
On Monday, Trump said he had spoken to Huang, who told him he did not know the woman was suspected of being a spy. He called Huang “an honorable guy” who had “done an amazing job for our country”. China’s foreign ministry has called the spy allegations baseless.
Republican leaders of three House committees have asked Huang to give closed-door testimony, and two Democratic senators, Elizabeth Warren and Chris Coons, have written to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick asking that records of Nvidia’s dealings with China be preserved.
Nvidia is due to report its third-quarter results on November 17, its first under interim leadership. Beijing said on Thursday that it was in talks on a meeting between Trump, Xi, and Putin at next week’s summit in Shenzhen, and told Washington to stop what it called fabricated spy stories.
