10 Big Nvidia Executive Hires And Departures In 2024

Nvidia beefed up its talent in sales, startup relations, system product engineering and the convergence of AI and networking with executives who came from companies such as Ayar Labs, Amazon Web Services, Salesforce, Intel and Cisco.

On its way to becoming the world’s most valuable company last week by market capitalization, Nvidia—like many of its partners and competitors—experienced its own share of executives coming and going throughout the year.

When it came to executive hires, the AI computing giant beefed up its talent in sales, startup relations, system product engineering and the convergence of AI and networking. These executives came from companies such as Ayar Labs, Amazon Web Services, Salesforce, Intel and Cisco Systems.

Among the executives who departed Nvidia this year, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company lost top talent in enterprise sales, data center system architecture, GPU systems engineering, enterprise computing and global AI initiatives. While some of these executive retired, one of them left for rival AMD.

After briefly becoming the world’s most valuable company earlier this year, Nvidia hit the milestone once again on Nov. 5. Its market capitalization now stands at around $3.6 trillion, as of Monday mid-afternoon.

What follows are 10 big Nvidia executive hires and departures that happened so far in 2024.

Charles Wuischpard

Nvidia hired former Intel executive and entrepreneur Charles Wuischpard as vice president of North America and Latin America in January, according to his LinkedIn profile.

He was previously CEO and a board member of Ayar Labs, one of CRN’s hottest semiconductor startups of 2023. The startup, which counts Nvidia as an investor, is seeking to enable a new era of high-performance chips with silicon photonics technology that uses light to move data faster through chips than what’s possible with electricity.

Prior to leading Ayar Labs, Wuischpard was an executive for more than four years at Intel, where he served as general manager of the Scalable Datacenter Solutions Group, which was sold to MiTAC, the Taiwan-based parent company of server vendor Tyan.

Previously, he was president and CEO of Fremont, Calif.-based high-performance computing systems integrator Penguin Computing for seven years.

Karen Chen

Karen Chen, an 11-year Salesforce sales veteran, joined Nvidia in February as vice president of global cloud sales, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Chen was previously senior vice president of sales at Salesforce, which made her “responsible for enterprise and commercial cloud sales across communications and media, consumer business services, travel, transportation and hospitality,” per her LinkedIn profile.

Before then, she was area vice president of enterprise sales and regional vice president of enterprise sales after starting at the company.

Earlier in her career, Chen spent more than 11 years at IBM, where she served in client executive and client manager roles.

Steve Fields

Steve Fields, a 30-year IBM veteran, left Nvidia in April as vice president of data center system architecture after working there for more than three years, per his LinkedIn profile.

When Fields announced his job at Nvidia in 2020, he said that the new opportunity brought him out of retirement after finishing his tenure at IBM earlier in the year.

Fields was critical to the development of IBM’s Power Systems servers over the past several years, CRN previously reported. In 2015, he was named an IBM fellow, the company’s highest technical honor, for his leadership on the architecture and design of Power Systems. At the time, he was focused on evolving the Power Systems platform for cloud computing, analytics and other emerging workloads.

Paul Bommarito

Paul Bommarito left Nvidia in April after serving as the company’s vice president of Americas enterprise sales, according to his LinkedIn profile.

A 21-year Cisco sales veteran, Bommarito led “all aspects of the Americas enterprise business for Nvidia,” which included both the end-user sales organization and the partner sales organization, his LinkedIn profile said.

Prior to joining Nvidia in 2015, Bommarito served as vice president of Americas security sales and area vice president of U.S. enterprise West at Cisco.

Rajeev Jayavant

Rajeev Jayavant, a 23-year Nvidia veteran, retired from the company in April after most recently serving as vice president of GPU systems engineering.

This is according to his LinkedIn profile, which said he last focused on enabling large clusters of GPU systems for data center-scale deployments through systems and modules such as Nvidia’s DGX systems, the HGX motherboards and the SXM socket solution for enabling high-bandwidth connectivity for Nvidia GPUs.

Jayavant said on his LinkedIn profile that he started Nvidia’s DGX program and later created the HGX programs. His past titles included vice president of notebook GPU engineering, director of GPU engineering and GPU ASIC manager.

Howard Wright

Nvidia hired former Amazon Web Services executive Howard Wright as vice president of startup ecosystem in June, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Wright was previously vice president and global head of startups at AWS for more than two years. In that role, he oversaw an organization that was “dedicated to helping startups to create, build and grow on” the company’s cloud platform, according to a biography on the cloud service giant’s website.

Wright was formerly CEO and president of C360 Technologies, a Wexford, Pa.-based startup developing computer vision-based solutions for enabling sports broadcasters to create immersive experiences. It was acquired by live entertainment tech vendor Cosm in 2023.

He was formerly vice president of business development at Intel Capital, Intel’s venture capital arm, and spent 14 years before that at Qualcomm.

Wright entered the tech world after playing basketball professionally, which included stints playing for the Atlanta Hawks, Orlando Magic and Dallas Mavericks.

Ron Amit

Ron Amit, a 28-year Intel engineering veteran, joined Nvidia in October as vice president of system product engineering, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Amit, who is based in Haifa, Israel, was most recently a corporate vice president at Intel, for which he led a global team in charge of “post-silicon product engineering” as well as “quality and reliability work for all client products.”

Amit’s prior roles at Intel included general manager of manufacturing product engineering and general manager of client product development.

JP Vasseur

Nvidia hired former Cisco fellow JP Vasseur, once credited as the switching giant’s most prolific inventor, as a senior distinguished engineer and chief architect of AI and networking in September, according to his LinkedIn profile.

With a doctorate and master’s in computer systems networking and telecommunications from Télécom Paris in France and the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, respectively, Vasseur spent the past 25 years at Cisco where he was a celebrated engineer and top inventor who worked on high-priority initiatives.

A blog post by Cisco in 2019 called Vasseur the company’s “top inventor,” with 483 issued patents carrying his name and “spanning key tech areas from machine learning and AI in security in enterprises to the Internet of Things.”

In his most recent role as vice president of engineering of machine learning and AI for networking, Vasseur said he led the development of “large language model and generative AI use case specifications, system architecture design, prompt engineering, model tuning and sophisticated techniques such as Knowledge DB and [retrieval-augmented generation],” according to his LinkedIn profile.

He previously served as the head of engineering for various high-profile areas including predictive networks, IoT and advanced threat detection.

Keith Strier

Keith Strier departed Nvidia in September as vice president of worldwide AI initiatives to join AMD as its new senior vice president of global AI markets, per his LinkedIn profile.

Strier spent five years at Nvidia, where he oversaw the AI computing giant’s global AI initiatives, which included work in the global public sector as well as “sovereign AI cloud deals across allied nations.” He also led “development and structuring” for AI research and development centers of excellence across the Asia-Pacific region.

In his new role at AMD, Strier will be “responsible for expanding the company’s AI vision, driving new ecosystem capabilities and accelerating strategic AI engagements globally across public and private sectors,” according to an AMD announcement in September.

Prior to joining Nvidia in 2019, Strier served as the global AI leader at accounting giant EY, where he developed the company’s go-to-market narrative, offerings and alliances. He previously worked for 11 years at IT consulting giant Deloitte, where he most recently served as global managing director of digital innovation.

Manuvir Das

Manuvir Das, a Microsoft and Dell veteran, retired from Nvidia in October after serving as vice president of enterprise computing for five years.

In his role at Nvidia, Das had served as a spokesperson for the AI computing giant’s enterprise strategy as well as several products, services and programs, such as the Nvidia AI Enterprise software suit, the DGX Cloud supercomputing service, the Nvidia-Certified Systems program, and Nvidia Inference Microservices (NIM).

“I hoped going in that Nvidia would be my last employer, Jensen my last boss. I'm lucky that it has in fact turned out that way,” Das wrote on LinkedIn last month.

Prior to joining Nvidia in 2019, Das served in senior executive roles at Dell Technologies and EMC before it was acquired by Dell in 2016. His roles at both companies included senior vice president of product engineering for unstructured data storage.

He previously spent more than 14 years at Microsoft, where he served as general manager of the Azure cloud service and Windows Server.