Inside Jensen Huang’s Last Hours as Nvidia CEO

Whatever, I don't care. And worse, these are unusual words for an individual that we usually see being very direct, full of energy, charismatic, and take charge kind of guy. Um, what led to the giving up of Jensen one? Because you guys, um, you do some incredible reporting here. Yeah. I mean, the situation that he put himself in and the situation that the board, um, were forced to deal with was such that there was no choice. There were, of course, rumors and speculation and an admission of an affair with somebody who was at a customer. But then when you factor in an affair with somebody who actually works for the company, something that is explicitly, uh, not permissible under the company's stated rules, then the board were in a position where they had no choice but to bring this to him, and that he had no choice. There was no way around this. Can you describe when you do it so well in the peace that you rode with Drake Bennett, the Jensen Wong that emerged in the last few days behind closed doors, the discussions that he had with confidants, with members of the board, his demeanor, the way he was talking versus the Jensen Wang that for so many years you covered as as this person who became known as the central banker of the AI industry. I mean, we've all seen him literally. We've all seen him on stage, uh, events on TV, appearing with the president. And there was nothing apart from absolute control of himself, absolute control of the message, ebullience, that humor, charisma, confidence and absolute drive towards a certain goal. And what, according to our reporting, happened in the last few days as he tried to, you know, cauterize the wounds. He tried to accept responsibility. He obviously, in his letter, internally took responsibility for his actions and apologized. But in the end, that wasn't enough. In the end, he wasn't able to remain in control. And according to our reporting, he was reduced to becoming self-critical and, um, to resignation. Yeah, it certainly speaks to his state of mind, and one can understand why. I am also curious, as you reported this out in, um, how conflicted the board was. Um, you know, this was Jensen's board. Um, and anybody who'd been at the company for a long time only knew Jensen Wong as the CEO of this company. Yeah, I mean, several members of that board have literally been on that board for three decades. Mhm. Right. Um, this is not, uh, a board of, uh, of people who have been brought in to, you know, hold his feet to the fire and to control a company that, you know, that was in trouble. Everybody's been along for the ride, right? Whether it's employees, whether it's board members, they've all done very well to have had no reason to to be exposing him to severe scrutiny, because this company has done extremely well. I think what matters now that he's no longer a part of that company is how the board proceed, and also how the people who used to work for him very closely respond to this, whether they grow, whether they, you know, show up in a way that they weren't previously allowed to publicly, but more importantly, whether they continue to be the world champion engineers, because they are, that's going to determine what Nvidia's future looks like. I want to talk more about Nvidia's future in a minute, but first, I want to talk about Jensen Wong's future. Um, we learned yesterday that he's hired a high powered law firm at this point. What what happens next for him? Well, Because of the nature of some of the reports, because of the nature of the interest that's been taken in that politically and also from a legal perspective, he is going to probably find himself in front of committees in Congress or find himself facing potential subpoenas and legal action. So he's going to have to navigate that process. And that, again, it's personally important for him as to whether he even has a future in public life or in professional life. Obviously, he's going to have to reach an arrangement of some kind with his family as to whether they feel about what's happened and how they're going to react to it. So all of these things are important. Um, but also in that process, will people who currently work for Nvidia be exposed as having taken actions that were either not against the interests of America or indeed the company? Ian. That's where I wanted to go. Any any feel from your reporting that in terms of the scope of the people who might have been aware of Jensen's indiscretions, or who might have been aware of any concerns around Nvidia's relationship with mega speed. I mean, the only reporting that we've done that has gone, you know, that we've published has concerned the general counsel and his potential role in sort of overseeing or trying to broker, um, relief for mega speed and to try to sort of lessen the the scrutiny that that company was being placed under. That's obviously our reporting and that's what we've done so far. Mhm. Right. You know I it's I think one thing that came across in your piece was the distinction between this, this man who's been traveling around the world On behalf of this company, on behalf of the United States, and on behalf of an entire layer of technology that is sort of undergirding for many people, not just the US economy, but the future of the global economy. And I think a lot of people right now have a difficult time understanding the development of that without him. Can you help us make sense of that in. Yeah. I mean, you know, when a bank leads, it loses its lead singer. People say the band can't go on, right? That's that's the only analogy I can think of. Very few bands are able to do that. Right. Very few bands are able to replace that. Whoever's the person out there on that mic night after night. And that's been him. Right. It's whether it's lobbying politicians, whether it's cajoling of the companies, whether it's publicly showing up other companies events and saying, here's some money. Um, whether it's his own events, you know, whether you know, his responsiveness to whatever, the zeitgeist, whatever to which direction the wind was blowing in terms of public opinion, in terms of the industry's opinion about where I was going, he's been that he's been the person that everybody stand to. Clearly, he's not in a position to do that anymore and is unnecessary. Is it a good thing that he's gone? We will see. But, you know, I'm going forward. I'm more focused on how this company responds, how these people react. Yeah I agree. It's like, okay, so now what? Um, speaking of now what the Financial Times is out talking about the possibility of, um ALM CEO Renee Haas who spent time at Nvidia, uh, which shouldn't surprise a lot of people. Yeah. Aline, given the reporting that that Ian has done and what our team has done about sort of the short list of internal and external candidates, you're absolutely right. Like, you know, so these names are, you know, kicked around until they're not basically. But I do think about we just had on Kat Barton, who is the bureau chief, um, for Bloomberg News in Seoul, South Korea. And she talked about how Jensen has looked as a star and that, you know, Samsung and SK Hynix so crucial to the chip story, global chip story and how, you know, Jensen met with them like had relationships with them. And that's so important, especially to any kind of Asian, you know, company. Um, and so you have to wonder kind of what happens next. Um, can can there be somebody is it a renaissance or how do you think about who needs to be the next leader of Nvidia? I mean, that's a very good practical point. If his relationships with TSMC, for example, and we've certainly know that he was a friend or a confidant of Morris Chang over there. If the relationship with TSMC went through him, if the relationship with Samsung with SK went through him, and I've been in a room with the leaders of those on Jensen and seen him interact with them. So it's absolutely clear that there was a relationship and he was certainly the front man. And how quickly new relationships can be forged or need to be forged is going to be probably one of the top priorities of whoever they bring in to replace him. Or for Colette Kress, the CFO, and her team of people who are basically picking up the pieces right now. Um, it's in everybody's interest because Nvidia is still looking. They still have the best products to stay working with them, uh, for the time being. But they have to keep proving it. They have to keep earning it. Um, and there's no salesman there for them right now. So we. And before we let you go, there's still only one celebrating. Uh, on Nvidia by analysts who are tracked by Bloomberg. What is the what is the bull case that analysts have come out with in recent days that is still exist for Nvidia? Yeah. And that that's what we just mentioned. Right. Jensen did not design their chips. Right. Jensen did not invent Cuda the operating system that based at all. Jensen is not the person who, uh, built the data centers. Jensen is not the person who designed the racks of servers. He was a front man for all of the rollouts and everything like that. But there absolutely must be a group of engineers who are more than competent inside this company, because, you know, the engineers at Google, at Microsoft, they're not idiots, right? They wouldn't be buying Nvidia products unless Nvidia products were the best, right? This isn't a default status right now, and probably for some time to come, Nvidia will have the best products out there. How these engineers react to the challenge that they're facing and how they go forward will determine.