Nvidia has appointed Harvey Jones as its first-ever independent board chair, tasking a 33-year board veteran with finding a successor to co-founder Jensen Huang — and with steadying a company the board itself may have destabilised. CFO Colette Kress will serve as interim CEO, according to a leaked employee email first reported in screenshots on social media.

"I'm writing to share an important update," Jones' note began, before adding: "The Board takes seriously our duty as steward of this great company." The reassurance is standard crisis vocabulary. What it does not address is why the board, on which Jones has sat since 1993 — the year Huang founded Nvidia — failed to act earlier on conduct it was obliged to investigate.

Who is Harvey Jones?

Jones, 73, is not a household name, but he has spent more than three decades in technology and semiconductors, according to his Nvidia biography. He founded two companies, led Synopsys (an electronics design software firm) as CEO from 1987 to 1998, and has managed the investment firm Square Wave Ventures since 2004.

His fortune is substantial. Forbes lists Jones as a billionaire, a status the magazine attributes "almost entirely" to his Nvidia director's compensation and his 0.03% stake in the company. That stake, worth roughly a third of a percentage point of one of the world's most valuable chipmakers, ties his personal wealth directly to the company he now chairs.

Friends describe a polished, strategic operator. "Harvey has a deep sense of history," said Chris Rowen, who co-founded the semiconductor processor company Tensilica with Jones in 1997. Rowen cautioned against mistaking the polish for softness: "Beneath that smooth exterior is a really bright, insightful, aggressive guy."

Penny Herscher, who has known Jones since 1984 and once worked for him, called him a "charming elder statesman" who is likely "very hard to ruffle" — a "steady pair of hands" to sort out Nvidia's next chapter. "He's very strategic," she said. "He's always looking around corners."

Did the board enable the crisis?

Here the record is less flattering. Three of Huang's affairs are known as of this writing, and the former CEO reportedly accumulated up to 60 direct reports at one point, with no clear successor and no succession planning. The New York Times reported that Huang's affair with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of health care, was known inside the company and appears to violate Nvidia's code of conduct, which instructs employees to "avoid situations where our actions create conflict," including personal relationships. The board promises prompt investigation of all misconduct reports. What happened is a question Jones has not answered.

"Jones may be the right person to steady the ship, but his longevity is both his greatest qualification and the strongest reason to scrutinize his leadership," Jonathan Tower, managing partner at VC firm Catapult, told Fortune. "The board cannot simply present itself as the solution without examining its role in creating the problem."

Nvidia did not respond to a request for comment.

What does the search look like?

Jones will likely lead the selection process for the next CEO, Herscher said, though she had not spoken to him about it directly. She bases that assessment on her own service on three public boards and her role co-founding The Chairs Circle, which runs education programs for board chairs. Jones also sits on Nvidia's Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee, the body typically involved in such searches.

The process will likely take at least a few months. Bloomberg reported this week that Nvidia has already hired an outside recruiting firm to identify candidates; the firm will conduct first outreach, with Jones and the internal search committee then speaking to the most promising names.

His recruiting record suggests he can be persuasive. Longtime technology executive Chi-Foo Chan described Jones as "a very persuasive guy" in a 2019 Computer History Museum oral history, recalling how Jones convinced him to join Synopsys.

Who might replace Huang?

The field of candidates remains undefined. Potential successors named so far include Rene Hass, currently CEO of the chipmaker Arm. President Trump — who allegedly did not act on reports of Huang's affair with a suspected Chinese spy — has suggested former Apple CEO Tim Cook as a good pick.

Whoever takes the role will need genuine operational and product development credentials to keep the GPUs (Nvidia's core graphics and AI processors) flowing. Nvidia shareholders will be hoping the man selecting that person has better judgement in the chair's seat than the record suggests he showed from the boardroom's back benches.