Nvidia’s board is searching for a permanent chief executive after Jensen Huang, the only person to lead the chipmaker since its founding in 1993, stepped down amid a series of allegations of extramarital affairs. Colette Kress, until now executive vice president and chief financial officer, has been appointed interim CEO while the board seeks a permanent leader for the company, described as the world’s second-most valuable business and a $4 trillion giant. Huang’s departure opens a rare succession at the top of one of the world’s largest technology companies. The board has not named a permanent successor.
Among the names discussed for the role is Thomas Kurian, the India-born chief executive of Google Cloud. Kurian is one of several insiders and outsiders with leadership roles at major technology companies whose names have been raised in connection with the vacancy. The search has included candidates from inside Nvidia as well as from outside the company. No specific reason has been given for his reported consideration; his profile rests on his leadership of Google Cloud and his earlier role overseeing product development at Oracle.
Kurian was born in 1966 in Kottayam, Kerala, one of four children of P.C. Kurian, a chemical engineer and general manager of Graphite India, and his wife, Molly. He did his schooling in Bangalore and later joined IIT Madras. That educational path later took him to Princeton and Stanford.
At 17, Kurian moved to the United States with his identical twin brother, George Kurian. He graduated from Princeton University with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and later earned an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. His career began in management consulting at McKinsey & Company, where he worked from 1990 to 1996 as a business analyst and engagement manager. His path has since spanned consulting, enterprise software and cloud computing.
Kurian joined Oracle in 1996 and spent 22 years at the company, rising to president of product development and overseeing a multibillion-dollar research and development budget. He resigned in September 2018 after strategic disagreements with co-founder Larry Ellison over cloud computing. Two months later, in November 2018, he joined Google. He became CEO of Google Cloud in 2018, placing him at the head of Google’s cloud business, and has led the unit since.
He has been ranked among the top-earning technology executives in the United States and is estimated to be worth $1.8 billion, depending on Alphabet stock performance. His identical twin, George, who also moved to the US, is currently the CEO of NetApp.
The leadership transition at Nvidia has also prompted a public campaign. More than 1.32 lakh people have signed an online petition urging the company’s board to reinstate Huang as chief executive. The campaign has drawn support from prominent technology figures, including Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Replit CEO Amjad Masad and Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney.