Donald Trump has named his choice to run Nvidia, and the market has put a price on it. A Tim Cook Nvidia CEO contract that had never traded before the president’s post last changed hands at 6
Donald Trump has named his choice to run Nvidia, and the market has put a price on it. A Tim Cook Nvidia CEO contract that had never traded before the president’s post last changed hands at 6 cents on Polymarket at 11:01 a.m. Eastern on Thursday, about half an hour later, implying a 6% chance. That leaves the White House pick far behind two Nvidia insiders, Ian Buck at 32% and interim chief Colette Kress at 23%.
The endorsement did move one number. Outsiders now hold about 21% of the successor book, up from 12% when this desk first pulled it 50 minutes earlier. Wall Street also got there before the president. Dan Ives had called Cook a “dark horse” in a client note that Yahoo Finance reported at 9:41 a.m.
“NOW THAT Nvidia CEO JENSEN HUANG, who has done a fantastic job, has resigned, there is only one man to take his place - TIM COOK of Apple,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, according to CNBC. “A Legend replaces a Legend!” It was his first reaction to Jensen Huang’s resignation, Yahoo Finance noted.
Cook is not a free agent. Apple’s leadership page lists him as executive chair of its board after 15 years as chief executive, from 2011 to 2026, with John Ternus now running the company. The same biography credits him with moving Apple to its own silicon. CBC reported there is no indication that Cook wants the job or that Nvidia’s board aims to recruit him. The board has said only that it will consider internal and external candidates.
The president has leaned on semiconductor boardrooms before. In August 2025 he wrote that Intel chief executive Lip-Bu Tan “must resign, immediately”, a post that a wire report at the time described as “an extraordinary intervention in a private-sector company”. This time he is recommending a hire rather than demanding an exit, and the audience is a board that named its first chair, Harvey Jones, only this morning. Directors who took a nominee from a presidential post would swap one governance question for another.
Analysts doubt any single name fits. An outside search “could include a host of names, including Apple’s Tim Cook as a dark horse candidate in our view given the global importance of Nvidia to the overall US tech industry,” Ives wrote. Stacy Rasgon, senior analyst at Bernstein, told CNBC: “Who is the right person now to make the decisions for the next 10 years? I don’t intuitively know who that person would be.”
For brokers and trading desks, the tradeable signal is tiny. The Tim Cook Nvidia CEO contract has drawn under $2,000 of volume in a book of about $486,000. The cash market tells the larger story. Nvidia traded at $165.43 at 11:01 a.m., down 4.8% after touching $148.80 at the open, which values it near $3.99 trillion against Apple’s $5.21 trillion, CNBC data showed. Apple was up 0.8%, so equity investors are not pricing the loss of its chair. Earlier coverage: the resignation, the sector moves and our Apple bull and bear cases.
Three things settle this. A sentence from Cook or Apple would end the trade either way. Silence leaves the contract moving on presidential attention, which fades fast. The third is the board’s own timetable: by naming a candidate in public, Trump has raised the cost of choosing anyone quickly, because any pick now has to look like the directors’ own. Expect the outsider share to hold above its morning level and the odds of a permanent chief before year-end to drift lower.
