Jensen Huang biographer reacts to the Nvidia CEO's resignation

Jensen Huang biographer reacts to the Nvidia CEO's resignation

NPR's A Martinez speaks with Stephen Witt, author of a Jensen Huang biography, about his resignation from his role as CEO of Nvidia.

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

For more on this, we're joined by Stephen Witt. He's the author of the book "The Thinking Machine," a biography of Jensen Huang. Stephen, so what crossed your mind? I mean, the news is pretty fresh, but what crossed your mind when you heard that he resigned?

STEPHEN WITT: It's a shocking downfall for the man who, until quite recently, had a claim to be the most powerful guy in tech, one of the most powerful people alive, actually, because of his influence with Trump and his connections inside China and all over the world. It's really shocking. It's a tale of hubris. He was carrying on quite openly, it seems, with one of his employees at his company. He had this woman across the seas in China. And perhaps there are more. And I think, ultimately, he just decided that there was no way that he could continue at the company with so much pressure and attention on him.

MARTÍNEZ: I mean, you wrote the book on him. Is he the type that just kind of doesn't listen to anyone else and just kind of, you know, marches to the beat of his own drum?

WITT: That's exactly the type that he is (laughter).

MARTÍNEZ: OK.

WITT: He is not a person who really brooks much disagreement. He's not a person who really listens to anyone else. And I think perhaps as he grew more powerful and as he grew more influential, I think the kind of, you know, the hubris set in, the overconfidence, the classic, maybe masculine overconfidence that I'm untouchable, that no one can touch me and no one can get me. But that's never true - not for anyone.

MARTÍNEZ: Do you think this decision was one that he made on his own, or was he pressured to do this by the Nvidia board?

WITT: It's hard to say. It's hard for me to imagine Jensen not fighting his way to the end.

MARTÍNEZ: Yeah.

WITT: So perhaps it just got to a point where it's absolutely untenable. This is his life. I mean, he has been the CEO of this company for 33 years, and he was prepared to do it for another 33. He never wanted to let go. There's no successor. He never cultivated a second-in-command or someone to replace him. I don't think he had any plan to ever exit this company - or at least not for a long time. And so I think if he's leaving now, it reached a point with the board where it was just absolutely untenable and he couldn't move forward.

MARTÍNEZ: So on that succession plan, we're hearing the name Colette Kress, the CFO and...

WITT: Yes.

MARTÍNEZ: ...Interim CEO. What do you know about her?

WITT: She's a great CFO. She's a good person to lead the company in the interim. But ultimately - and this is the challenge - you can't just get a classic MBA or a person who's good with business to run this company. You need a world-class computer scientist. Jensen's at the National Academy of Engineering. You need somebody who really understands computers from the scale of the microchip, from the scale of the transistor, all the way up to the data center. And then that person also has to be great at business. And so that combination is really rare. Those people are hard to find.

MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. That person probably has their own company that they are running.

WITT: Yeah, they probably do. Nvidia may have to look outside the company at other CEOs or maybe find someone within who can step up to the challenge.

MARTÍNEZ: All right. Stephen Witt is a journalist and author of the book "The Thinking Machine," a biography of Jensen Huang. Stephen, thanks a lot.

WITT: Thank you.

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