Joining us for more analysis this morning after Huang's departure are two of some of the biggest names when it comes to the tech space on Wall Street. Dan Ives with us this morning in our Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio. Dan is the founder and managing partner at Yorkville Ives, and Gene Munster is with us as well, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management. It's great to have both of you with us this morning on Daybreak. And to think about Nvidia as this sort of F1 supercar, gets to your note, Gene, out this morning after that. The challenge for Nvidia, the central challenge, is to maintain urgency. How difficult is it going to be for Nvidia to stay in the lead, to keep the AI race going without Jensen Huang in the cockpit? Good morning.
Good morning. I'll start with, I'm a shareholder of Nvidia, so I think the near-term, I would describe that as the next couple years are going to be in a great place. To answer your question about how difficult is it long-term, it's extremely difficult. And to put it into perspective, if you look at the playbook for companies that have been generational tech companies that have had these spectacular outcomes, and that's if you're investing today, what you're looking for, one of the key common characteristics is that it's founder-led, number one, and number two, those founders tend to have a wartime or really intense sense of urgency. And I mean, we can go through everything from Jobs to Zuckerberg to Musk from Palantir, Elon, and then of course Jensen. And so there, I can't think of a great example of a company that has had these exponential returns once the founder has left. I do want to mention though that urgency is not binary. There's a scale on it, and so it will not have, I mean, I think it's by def, it's definitionally impossible for Nvidia to have founder urgency because the founder is no longer there, but that doesn't mean that they cannot have urgency. And I kind of pull it all together is that if you think about the job of the board right now, it's to do, I think their number one goal should be to try to find someone who has that sense of urgency because I think that ultimately is going to what's going to keep them competitive in years three through 10.
Dan Ives, let's bring you into the conversation as well. You have called Jensen Huang the godfather of AI. Now that Jensen Huang is out, who potentially steps in? Is there someone who can lead Nvidia at the kind of level that Jensen Huang has, not just for Nvidia, but for the AI industry as a whole?
Yeah, and I thought Gene put it perfect in terms of some of the challenges as well as some of the opportunities for Nvidia. Look, in my opinion, I just think you, when you look at Jensen and you look at going forward, it's a dark day for Nvidia. It's a black eye moment for Jensen, but the reality is I think they're going to need someone from the outside. I mean, we've talked about Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai from Google that probably leads them forward. Colette, I think that is the best candidate internally. She has so much respect internally and externally. But there's a gut check moment for Nvidia, and you know, and it goes back to as I used to refer to Jensen as the godfather and all the stuff that he created. It's a blessing as it goes up. It's a curse as it goes down, especially with no succession plan that Nvidia had.
Gene, what do you think about potential successors here? We have heard Tim Cook, the former Apple CEO, floated by none other than President Trump as a legend replacing a legend, as the president put it. But are there certain candidates that you look at who could step into Jensen Huang's shoes?
Yeah, I think, I mean, that's a, Dan did an awesome list there. There's not much more that I can add beyond, I don't think it's Cook. I mean, Cook's passion is Apple. I mean, this is his true love is Apple. I'd be surprised if he moved in a different direction. The chairmanship role is something that he spends time, I think he was like in Turkey last week or just, I mean, he's still on the move with Apple. But I think as you think about Dan's list there, you know, those names are not household names. And like Dan said, I mean, he is the godfather. And so I think regardless of who it is, it's just not going to have the same kind of drive. Just kind of some perspective about how hard Jensen drives to be the godfather. Dan talks about last year he had six meetings with Trump. That's a form of branding. They had four major conferences, GTCs in one year. He did 16 individual interviews with Bloomberg, CNBC and Fox Business. I mean, this guy is everywhere, and there's just nobody who kind of even comes close to that. And so that's that dark day that Dan's talking about. I mean, there's no way to sugarcoat it. Probably the only positive here for those who like his evangelism around the AI is that he's not going away. He's going to, he will show up in some capacity with some company down the road. He's just, despite all the disgrace that has been around him more recently, he still, I think, is going to have a measure to make some money, and I think that that will probably draw investment dollars.
