FT: Nvidia Approached Arm CEO Rene Haas to Replace Huang. David Sacks Says the Spy Case Is Collapsing

Since Jensen Huang tendered his resignation to the Nvidia board on Nov. 12, the fight has moved from his exit to two questions: who runs the company next, and whether the espionage allegations behind the scandal will hold up.

Nvidia's board reaches outside the building

Nvidia's board has approached Arm Holdings CEO Rene Haas about succeeding Huang, the Financial Times reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. Haas is one of several candidates under consideration, and there is no guarantee he will be offered the job or accept it, the FT reported. Arm declined to comment.

Haas spent seven years at Nvidia, rising to vice president and general manager of its computing products business, before joining Arm in 2013. He became Arm's CEO in 2022 and oversaw its 2023 Nasdaq listing.

Arm's U.S.-listed shares pared losses after the report but were still down more than 5% Friday. Nvidia's shares were down more than 3%.

CFO Colette Kress is interim CEO. Analysts have floated other names, including Nvidia engineer Ian Buck, AMD's Lisa Su, Micron's Sanjay Mehrotra, Marvell's Matt Murphy and Apple's Johny Srouji. Those are analyst speculation, not board disclosures.

Sacks says the spy narrative is falling apart

David Sacks, the former Trump AI czar who now co-chairs the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, posted on X that the spy narrative is "collapsing already." He asked whether there is "clear & convincing evidence" against Alice Huang, the Singapore-based executive at the center of the allegations.

Sacks listed officials he says have stopped short of backing the claims. In his telling, the Attorney General reached no conclusions, the CIA is not yet convinced, and the Director of National Intelligence called the claims "not entirely accurate and over-torqued." He also said the incoming House Intelligence Committee chairman, asked right after a briefing, said, "today, at least, I don't know." Those are Sacks' characterizations of what the officials said.

He leaned on CNN reporting by Natasha Bertrand. CNN reported that the intelligence community is still working to understand Alice Huang's relationship to the Chinese government, and that multiple sources told the network the intelligence collected on her so far does not prove the allegations.

Sacks also argued that anonymous officials justified suspicion on thin grounds. "The only crime that we know for sure happened is the leaking of the classified memo," he wrote, and he called for an investigation into who leaked it and why.

Alice Huang previously worked for Megaspeed, a cloud company under U.S. scrutiny over allegations that it helped China obtain restricted AI chips. China's Foreign Ministry has denied the espionage allegations, accusing the U.S. of "fabricating so-called spy narratives" as a pretext for a technology blockade. Nvidia has said it has no reason to believe company secrets were leaked. Jensen Huang has acknowledged an affair, and there are reports of a second with a company executive who reports to him.

Trump's ties to Huang become an oversight target

Trump defended Huang as late as Monday. He has called him "amazing," "brilliant," "one of the great geniuses of our time," and "very handsome." Huang was part of Trump's delegations to Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom, and Nvidia's Arizona manufacturing announcement was later cited by the White House as a success story.

Democrats plan to dig in. "The two illicit affairs we're interested in are the ones between Nvidia and Donald Trump and Donald Trump and China," Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), expected to chair the House Judiciary Committee next year, said.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) was more careful. He said he didn't know how close the relationship was, that "making assumptions" about whether Trump had been compromised "wouldn't be right," and that an oversight process "will probably give us better insight."

Raskin's line is a political promise, not evidence. Sacks' line is an advocate's reading of anonymous and partial intelligence assessments, not a finding. Neither side has produced a public document that settles whether Alice Huang worked for Chinese intelligence.

The market bill

Nvidia has lost about $1.8 trillion in market value since its record close of $239.24 on Oct. 6, according to Euronews. Roughly $900 billion of that vanished between the previous Friday's close and Thursday's intraday low, after weekend reports of Huang's infidelity. CNBC reported that Nvidia shares declined 4% on Thursday following news of Huang's resignation and continued to slide after the open Friday.

Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Kunjan Sobhani said Huang's departure is unlikely to change Nvidia's earnings estimates for fiscal 2027 and 2028. He pointed to longer-term risks around succession, dealmaking and China scrutiny as investors reassess what he called the "Jensen premium."

Credit markets have not panicked. The yield on Nvidia's 4.5% bond due 2031 stood at 5.77% Friday, nearly 6% higher week to date, according to CNBC. Goldman Sachs analyst James Schneider wrote Thursday that he expects Nvidia to fulfill its announced commitments, but that new multi-party investments at the same scale may be harder to negotiate. CreditSights analyst Andy Li said, "We don't know what the ultimate strategy for Nvidia is going to be coming out the other side."

What comes next

No permanent CEO has been named, and Nvidia has not confirmed the Haas approach. The intelligence community is still working to understand Alice Huang's ties, per CNN's sources. Congressional scrutiny of Nvidia's China business and Trump's relationship with Huang is expected to continue into next year.