The top candidate for the Nvidia board of directors has stated that they would rather die than take over as CEO

The semiconductor research organization SemiAnalysis published a report regarding Jensen Huang's resignation, indicating that although the board has appointed Colette Kress as interim CEO, they prefer that the formal CEO does not have a financial background, and therefore are still in the process of selecting a permanent CEO.

Internal technical candidates include Ian Buck and Jonah Alben. Ian Buck founded CUDA during his PhD at Stanford and joined NVIDIA in 2004, responsible for the data center business; Jonah Alben joined in 1997 and is currently the Senior Vice President of GPU Engineering. Executives have stated, "Ian would rather die than take over Jensen's position," and "no one would really want that job." The report notes that both are outstanding, but may not be able to exert the same supply chain management control as Jensen Huang.