[Edaily Reporter Jang Yeong-Rak ] As NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has been dismissed amid scandals involving an extramarital affair and allegations of illegal equipment exports to China, Executive Vice President Ian Buck is emerging as a leading candidate to succeed him. Buck has worked at the company for 22 years and has been involved in the development of NVIDIA’s core technologies.

On the 12th (local time), prediction markets Kalchi and Polymarket placed the probability of Buck becoming the next NVIDIA CEO at 40%, the highest among the candidates. While Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Colette Kress is currently serving as interim CEO, the market views it as highly likely that the next CEO—to be ultimately appointed by the board—will be an executive with a background as an NVIDIA engineer.
Vice President Buck joined the company as a systems engineer and has worked at NVIDIA for 22 years. He currently oversees the hyperscale and high-performance computing (HPC) businesses.
Above all, he is drawing attention as one of the developers of “CUDA,” the core technology that has enabled NVIDIA to lead the AI chip sector. CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) is a parallel computing and programming model created by NVIDIA; this technology paved the way for GPUs—which had previously been limited to graphics acceleration tasks—to be utilized as general-purpose computing devices, or GPGPUs.
Like Jensen Huang, Vice President Buck holds a Ph.D. in computer science and possesses a deep understanding of NVIDIA’s core technologies—which have become synonymous with the company—and is therefore seen as the ideal candidate to carry forward the company’s unique strategy of technological superiority.
However, some observers point out that it would be difficult to find someone who could easily replace him in terms of marketing strategies that leverage the high public profile enjoyed by Jensen Huang.
In particular, from a financial perspective—such as corporate investment value—there is speculation that CFO Kress would be a more suitable candidate.
NVIDIA’s board of directors decided to dismiss Jensen Huang following discussions the previous day regarding various issues, including the scandal involving him. The results of NVIDIA’s internal investigation into his alleged involvement in national security matters have not yet been disclosed.