全球市值最高的两家公司近几个月都更换了掌门人，但换帅的方式却截然不同。在苹果公司，蒂姆·库克于9月将职位交给了约翰·特努斯，这家iPhone制造商称之为“长期继任计划”。英伟达的继任计划只持续了四天。黄仁勋是这家芯片巨头33年历史上唯一的掌门人，他从未打算离开。11月8日，他承认了一段婚外情；11月12日，在有关其私生活的更多爆料曝光后，他辞职了。
TWO OF THE world’s most valuable companies have changed bosses in recent months. They could hardly have done so more differently. At Apple, Tim Cook made way for John Ternus in September under what the iPhone-maker called a “long-term succession plan”. Nvidia’s succession plan lasted four days. Jensen Huang, the chip giant’s only boss in its 33-year history, never intended to leave. On November 8th he confessed to an affair; on November 12th, after further revelations about his private life, he resigned.
目前，这一职位落到了科莱特·克雷斯肩上。她自2013年起担任英伟达首席财务官，现被任命为临时首席执行官。她从未接受过出任最高职位的培养，因此需要快速学习。自11月6日以来，英伟达股价已下跌约20%。除了安抚投资者，她还需要稳住供应商、修复与华盛顿的关系，并维系支撑英伟达飞速增长的庞大融资计划和合作网络。
The job has fallen, for now, to Colette Kress, Nvidia’s finance chief since 2013, who has been named interim chief executive. She was never coached for the top job, and will need to learn fast. Since November 6th Nvidia’s share price has dropped by about 20%. Besides calming investors, she will need to shore up suppliers, mend fences with Washington and hold together the vast web of financing schemes and partnerships that has fuelled Nvidia’s breakneck growth.
克雷斯女士接手的，是企业史上最强大的赚钱机器之一。全球超过三分之二的人工智能算力运行在英伟达的芯片上。其毛利率徘徊在75%左右，而竞争对手芯片设计公司AMD的毛利率为55%。本财年，公司预计营收将超过4000亿美元，几乎是去年的两倍。此外，公司还坐拥约620亿美元现金。
Ms Kress inherits one of the most formidable money-making machines in corporate history. More than two-thirds of the world’s artificial-intelligence computing power runs on Nvidia’s chips. Its gross margins hover around 75%, against 55% at AMD, a rival chip designer. This financial year the company expects to bring in more than $400bn in revenue, nearly double last year’s. And it is sitting on around $62bn in cash.
克雷斯女士的第一个考验将在11月17日到来，届时英伟达将公布最新财报。一份亮眼的季度业绩将安抚市场情绪。但投资者还会希望得到保证：英伟达仍能实现其承诺的明年70%的营收增长。她需要说服投资者，高层动荡不会让公司分心，因为公司正面临强大的竞争对手，包括AMD以及谷歌、亚马逊等云巨头，这些云巨头如今都在设计自己的人工智能芯片。
Ms Kress’s first test will come on November 17th, when Nvidia reports its latest earnings. A blowout quarter would soothe nerves. But investors will also want assurances that Nvidia can still achieve the 70% revenue growth it has promised for next year. She will need to convince them that the upheaval at the top will not distract the company at a time when it faces formidable rivals, including AMD and cloud giants such as Google and Amazon, which now design their own AI chips.
接下来是这家芯片巨头错综复杂的供应链。英伟达表示，由于供应链瓶颈，它无法满足所有需求。这使得其下一代AI系统Vera Rubin的发布显得尤为棘手。有报道称，制造问题正在阻碍高端型号的生产。
Next is the chip giant’s intricate supply chain. Nvidia says that it cannot fill all the demand, because of supply-chain bottlenecks. That makes the launch of Vera Rubin, its next generation of AI systems, especially delicate. Reports have suggested that manufacturing problems are holding up production of the higher-end variants.
确保产品按时交付需要与台积电等供应商合作，这家台湾公司负责制造其芯片；还需要与SK海力士等存储芯片制造商合作，后者位于韩国。黄仁勋擅长处理这些关系，既靠魅力也靠合同来维系。英伟达已与许多供应商签署长期协议，承诺到2029年向他们投入数千亿美元。但这些供应商也希望得到保证，即支撑这些订单的高增长目标依然成立。
Ensuring that its products are delivered on time requires working with suppliers such as TSMC, the Taiwanese firm that manufactures its chips, and memory-makers such as SK Hynix of South Korea. Mr Huang excelled at this, running the relationships as much by charm as by contract. Nvidia has signed long-term deals with many of its suppliers, committing hundreds of billions of dollars to them through 2029. But they, too, will want reassurance that the lofty growth targets behind the orders still hold.
然后是华盛顿方面。黄仁勋曾是唐纳德·特朗普最喜欢的商人之一，并利用这种渠道大力游说放宽对华芯片销售限制，经常与国会中的鹰派发生冲突。这起丑闻让英伟达在首都的声誉严重受损。11月18日，即财报电话会议的第二天，黄仁勋将出席一个闭门国会简报会，回答关于他与Megaspeed高管Alice Huang关系的问题。
Then there is Washington. Mr Huang was one of Donald Trump’s favourite businessmen, and used his access to lobby hard for looser curbs on selling chips to China, often clashing with hawks in Congress. The scandal has left Nvidia’s standing in the capital badly bruised. On November 18th, a day after the earnings call, Mr Huang will appear at a closed-door congressional briefing to answer questions about his relationship with Alice Huang, an executive at Megaspeed, a Singaporean customer of Nvidia, whom American officials reportedly suspect of being a Chinese agent.
Megaspeed是英伟达的一家新加坡客户，美国官员据称怀疑她是中国特工。将于1月接管国会控制权的民主党人可能会施加更大压力。一名员工承认，黄仁勋在华盛顿的强硬风格为英伟达树敌不少，公司将需要与决策者合作，而不是对抗。克雷斯将需要改变策略。
Democrats, who take control of Congress in January, may add more pressure. One employee concedes that Mr Huang’s combative style in Washington made Nvidia enemies, and that it will need to work with policymakers rather than against them. Ms Kress will need to change course.
最难的任务或许是把英伟达保持在人工智能经济的中心。黄仁勋的积极交易撮合使该公司成为人工智能基础设施热潮中最重要的参与者，并提振了对其芯片的需求。过去三年，英伟达已承诺向初创企业投入超过700亿美元，仅去年就进行了约90笔投资，今年迄今至少已有60笔。它还以最高360亿美元的规模为人工智能云提供兜底，承诺购买它们无法卖给其他方的算力，并为俄亥俄州一个面向OpenAI的大型数据中心项目的债务提供担保。
The hardest task of all may be keeping Nvidia at the centre of the AI economy. Mr Huang’s aggressive dealmaking has made the company the AI-infrastructure boom’s most important player, and boosted demand for its chips. Over the past three years Nvidia has pledged more than $70bn to startups, making about 90 investments last year alone and at least 60 so far this year. It has also backstopped AI clouds to the tune of up to $36bn, promising to buy computing capacity they cannot sell to others, and guaranteed the debts for a giant data-centre project in Ohio intended for OpenAI.
除此之外，它还签署了200亿美元的数据中心租约，计划转租给第三方，并与华尔街贷款机构策划了一项融资计划，可能引导最多5000亿美元的额外投资进入数据中心。这些交易中有许多都建立在黄仁勋的口头承诺之上。克雷斯现在必须说服英伟达的合作伙伴，这些承诺依然有效。
On top of that, it has signed $20bn of data-centre leases that it plans to pass on to third parties, and orchestrated a financing programme with Wall Street lenders that could direct up to $500bn of further investment into data centres. Many of these deals rested on Mr Huang’s word. Ms Kress must now convince Nvidia’s partners that they still stand.
无论她处理这一切多么娴熟，克雷斯都不太可能在这个职位上待太久。她缺乏技术背景；彭博报道称，董事会一直在与一家外部猎头公司合作，寻找永久继任者。在内部人士中，负责英伟达数据中心计算业务的伊恩·巴克深受工程师欢迎，但尚无执掌一家巨型公司的经验。AMD的苏姿丰和Arm的勒内·哈斯（前英伟达高管）可能是人选。另一个可能是苹果硬件芯片负责人约翰尼·斯鲁吉。英伟达或许终会发现，其继任问题的答案就在那家向它示范了该如何完成继任的公司身上。■
However deftly she handles all this, Ms Kress is unlikely to keep the job for long. She lacks a technical background; Bloomberg reports that the board has been working with an outside recruiting firm to find a permanent replacement. Among insiders, Ian Buck, who runs Nvidia’s data-centre computing business, is popular with engineers but untested at running a giant company. Lisa Su of AMD and Rene Haas of Arm, a former Nvidia executive, may be options. Another could be Johny Srouji, Apple’s hardware-chip chief. Nvidia may yet find that the answer to its succession problem lies at the company that showed it how succession should be done.■