Jensen Huang resigned as NVIDIA CEO on November 12, 2026. He also left the president role and the board, effective immediately. Colette Kress is interim CEO and stays CFO. Harvey C. Jones is the first board chair. The board will look inside and outside the company. Leave NVIDIA's next CEO to that search. On November 13 we used Lessie to find people a recruiter can actually contact, and we kept every email locked: 7 former NVIDIA leaders, 10 semiconductor operators, and 15 current NVIDIA directors and VPs.
A hiring manager does not need a prediction. They need names they can review before NVIDIA reports earnings on November 17, 2026. The public facts are enough to brief that work. NVIDIA's investor release and the company's November 11 Form 8-K say the board accepted the resignation, appointed Kress interim CEO, and started a search that includes external candidates. The same release kept the third-quarter fiscal 2027 report on its existing date.
That search changes the market around the company. People who already left NVIDIA are easier to approach. Operators who have already run a semiconductor or data-center business become the comparison set for your own general-manager seat. Directors and VPs still inside NVIDIA are passive candidates, and the first note has to be about their work.
We used Lessie, our people-search agent, the way a recruiter would on the morning after the announcement. Each prompt asked for current title, company, location, and a verified work email. We did not click Check Email. The screenshots below are the light-mode result tables from those runs.
Find Executive Candidates in Three Shortlists
One search tries to do too much. A former NVIDIA vice president, a sitting semiconductor CEO, and a current NVIDIA director are three different conversations. Split them. Each shortlist below has one job, one prompt, and a number you can put in front of a hiring manager.
| Shortlist | Who it is for | Full matches |
|---|---|---|
| Former NVIDIA VPs and GMs | Your VP, product lead, or advisor seat | 7 |
| Semiconductor and data-center operators | Your CEO or general manager seat | 10 |
| Current NVIDIA directors and VPs | A first conversation, not an offer | 15 |
The first two lists are people who already work somewhere else. The third list is people who still work at NVIDIA. Treat that third list as a relationship list. A retained search for a CEO is a different product and a different fee. If you need the fee model and the 90-to-120-day timeline, read how retained executive search works. This page is the list you can build before you call a firm.
Former NVIDIA Leaders Who Already Left
Start here when the open role is a vice president, a general manager, or an advisor who has already shipped hardware and software together. These people are on the open market. You are not asking a sitting NVIDIA officer to leave during the first week of a transition.
Prompt. Find former NVIDIA vice presidents and general managers who left within the past five years and now work at AI infrastructure, semiconductor, or cloud companies in the United States. Show current title, current company, location, and verified work email.
The former-NVIDIA search returned 7 full matches. Email and phone stayed behind Check Email.
The seven full matches were Bratin Saha, Dr. Taner Ozcelik, Jeff Herbst, David Greenlaw, Freddy Engineer, Karthick Iyer, and Partho Mishra. The rows we could verify from the result detail looked like this. Bratin Saha is CEO of NTT DATA AIVista and previously a NVIDIA vice president. Taner Ozcelik is CEO of Mythic and previously a NVIDIA VP and GM. Jeff Herbst is founding managing partner at GFT Ventures and left NVIDIA in August 2021. David Greenlaw is a VP of engineering at Google, and the row dated the end of his NVIDIA tenure to January 2022. Freddy Engineer's row placed him at Alchip and dated the end of his NVIDIA tenure to April 2026.
Keep a row when three things are true. The person does not work at NVIDIA now. The NVIDIA title was VP or GM. The end date sits inside the last five years. Drop a row when the current title still says NVIDIA, or when the only evidence is an old headline.
Lessie's own note on this run is worth keeping. Departure date plus exact former title is hard to read from a structured database, so most rows landed as partial matches. We saw 65 partials beside the 7 full matches. Partials are a review queue, not a send list. That is the same discipline as a talent map: chart the market first, then decide who is actually reachable.
Semiconductor Executive Candidates With Operator Experience
The board said it will consider external candidates. Use that public fact as a portrait, then hire against the portrait for your own company. The portrait is a person who has already been CEO or general manager of a semiconductor or data-center hardware company, and who previously sat in a CFO, COO, or president chair.
Prompt. Find CEOs and general managers of semiconductor or data-center hardware companies who previously served as CFO, COO, or president. Prioritize people in the United States who have sold to large cloud providers.
Lessie asked what the list was for before it searched. We chose Recruiting, asked for 10 people, and submitted. The first pass mixed in recycling, real estate, and gas companies. The agent tightened the industry to semiconductors and data-center hardware and ran again. The finished turn reported 10 full matches and 71 partials, and it recorded 49 credits for that turn.
Ten operator profiles marked fully matched. The cloud-customer test was the weakest column, because most profiles never name AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.
Names on the full-match list: Sanjay Pooneen, Renee James, Jensen Huang, Sassine Ghazi, Jeffrey Springborn, Aki Fujimura, Victor Peng, Hock Tan, Ananth Avva, and Ozan Kaya. The rows with a clear operator story included Renee James, CEO of Ampere and a former Intel president; Sassine Ghazi, president and CEO of Synopsys, previously president and COO; Jeffrey Springborn, CEO of Colovore, previously president and COO; Aki Fujimura, chairman and CEO of D2S; Victor Peng, CEO of PsiQuantum and a former AMD president; Hock Tan, president and CEO of Broadcom; Ananth Avva, a general manager at Renesas; and Ozan Kaya, CEO of Voltage Park, with president, CFO, and COO experience on the row.
Take Jensen Huang off this shortlist. He is on the full-match list only because public profiles still describe him as NVIDIA's president and CEO. He resigned those roles on November 12, 2026. Delete the row before a hiring manager sees the list.
Read the other nine as market context. They show what "has already operated a hardware company" looks like in the US. They are not a slate for NVIDIA's board. Colette Kress moving from CFO to interim CEO is why the prompt includes a finance seat in the prior title. She is not on this list, and she is not a candidate you should add by hand.
Run the same brief on your own role. Lessie keeps the email locked until you decide the person is worth a note.
Current NVIDIA Directors and Vice Presidents
Use this list when you want a conversation with someone who still owns a NVIDIA product line. Data center, networking, CUDA software, and enterprise sales are the four lanes that sit closest to customers. A director or VP in one of those lanes can tell you how the work is actually organized. They can also become a later candidate. The first message should not assume either outcome.
Prompt. Find current NVIDIA directors and vice presidents in data center, networking, CUDA software, or enterprise sales. Show team, location, and verified work email.
Fifteen current NVIDIA leaders, all marked fully matched. The search completed with emails still locked.
The 15 full matches were Zang Du, Ivan Goldwasser, Larry, Yuliana Widjaja, Julie Bernauer, James Huang, Jeremy Rodriguez, Vic Tsai, Howard Duggan, Ian Finder, Ye Chen, Kevin Flower, Rob Jeffrey, Seow Lim, and Christina Olmsted. Two titles were specific enough to quote from the row detail. Zang Du is Director, Data Center Systems and Thermal Architecture. Ivan Goldwasser is Director of Product Marketing for data-center CPUs. Open the other rows and keep the team name in your note. A title that only says "Director" is too thin to send.
Write four lines. Name the team. Name the role you are hiring. Ask for 15 minutes. Stop if they do not reply. Do not mention the resignation, the board, or the earnings call. The news is why you are searching this week. It is not the reason they should take the meeting.
Score Executive Candidates Before You Write
A full-match badge is a starting filter. It is not permission to export the table and blast it. Score each kept name on three checks, in this order.
- Still in the job the row claims. If the profile and the last public mention disagree, the row waits.
- Owns a team or a P&L. CEO, GM, VP, or a director with a named product line. Individual contributors stay in the partial pile.
- Moved recently enough to matter. For the former-NVIDIA list, the leave date should fall inside five years. For the operator list, a prior CFO, COO, or president title should be visible, not inferred.
Then cut each list to 15 names or fewer. Fifteen is enough for one recruiter to write by hand before November 17. Unlock work email only for those 15. On these runs, Check Email was never clicked. Across the session the credit balance moved from 982 to 894, which is the cost of searching and scoring, not the cost of contact data.
First note, former leader or operator. Subject: Hiring a VP to build an AI systems team. Body: I am hiring a VP Engineering for an AI infrastructure team. Your work leading [team] is the closest match I have found. Would you be open to a 20-minute call this month?
First note, current NVIDIA leader. Keep it shorter. Name the product line. Offer 15 minutes. Do not attach a job description on the first touch.
Lessie's published product figures, separate from this test, are a 95% contact accuracy claim and a 3x reply-rate claim against manual outreach. We did not send the notes above, so this article does not report a reply rate. The AI recruiting workflow is where you run the prompt, score the rows, and unlock the emails you will actually use.
Put one of the three prompts into Lessie. You will get a table you can edit before anyone is contacted.
Close the Shortlist Before November 17
NVIDIA said it will still report third-quarter fiscal 2027 results on Tuesday, November 17, 2026. Use that call as a deadline for version one of the list. After the call, management will describe the transition in their own words. Update current title and current team. Keep the same three prompts.
- 1Export the three full-match tables
Keep full matches only. Park partial matches in a second tab. Do not merge them into the note list.
- 2Remove stale rows
Drop anyone whose profile still depends on a title that changed this week. The Jensen Huang row is the obvious one. Check the others the same way.
- 3Write 15 notes, not 70
Five from the former-NVIDIA list, five from the operator list, five from the current-leader list. Unlock email only for those 15.
- 4Rerun the morning after earnings
Ask Lessie for the same people and compare current company and current title. Add one short update to your tracker. Do not start a fourth search from scratch.