An IITian, a BITS alum and an IIT droput in race to be Jensen Huang's successor at Nvidia. Check their careers and net worth

Three technology executives of Indian origin, with expertise in semiconductor manufacturing, cybersecurity and cloud computing, are in the running to succeed Jensen Huang as the CEO of Nvidia. Sanjay Mehrotra, Nikesh Arora and Thomas Kurian are among those being considered, according to a report by Reuters, as the AI chipmaker hunts for a permanent replacement for its long-serving chief.

Huang's resignation, which takes effect immediately, comes amid controversy over reports of alleged extra-marital relationships. The Nvidia board is exploring internal and external candidates, and has named the company’s chief financial officer, Colette Kress, as interim CEO.

Here’s a look at the three Indian-origin executives, their careers, educational qualifications and estimated wealth.

1. Sanjay Mehrotra

Micron Technology Chairman and CEO Sanjay Mehrotra has decades of experience in the semiconductor space. He co-founded flash-memory company SanDisk in 1988 and spent nearly three decades there before joining Micron in 2017.

Mehrotra was president and CEO of SanDisk prior to its $16 billion acquisition by Western Digital in 2016. He’s guided the company’s growth through semiconductor market cycles, and growing demand for memory chips used in AI infrastructure has helped fuel Micron’s expansion.

Mehrotra was born in Kanpur and studied at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani, before moving to the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned bachelor and master degrees in electrical engineering and computer science.

Net worth: Mehrotra's net worth has been estimated to be around $1.1 billion, according to Forbes.

2. Nikesh Arora

Nikesh Arora has served as chairman and CEO of cybersecurity company Palo Alto Networks since 2018. He has held senior leadership positions at some of the world's largest technology companies.

Arora is an alumnus of IIT (BHU), Varanasi and also an MBA from Northeastern University and holds a Master's degree in Finance from Boston College. He worked for almost a decade at Google, becoming its top business executive, before moving to Japan's SoftBank in 2014. He later served as president and chief operating officer of SoftBank.

He has led the company’s growth in security and AI services at Palo Alto Networks.

Net Worth: Forbes estimated Arora's real-time net worth to be $1.7 billion.

3. Thomas Kurian

Another potential outside candidate is Thomas Kurian, who has been running Google Cloud since 2019. His career, unlike Mehrotra and Arora, has been primarily in enterprise software, cloud infrastructure and technology services.

As per reports, he got into IIT-Madras after school but left after six months. Kurian holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from Princeton University and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business. He spent more than 20 years at Oracle, eventually becoming president, before joining Google in November 2018.

He ran infrastructure, enterprise software, and AI services at Google Cloud, experience that could be relevant to Nvidia's expanding role in AI computing.

Net worth: As per a report by India Times, Kurian’s net worth has been estimated at over Rs 15,000 crore. This figure is a reported estimate, not a current Forbes valuation.