Patrick McGee on Johny Srouji and Nvidia

Patrick McGee (author of Apple in China; my guest on The Talk Show last May), writing on X in response to Semafor’s reporting that Nvidia is “considering” Johny Srouji:

Apple hardware chief Johny Srouji would be an incredible choice to lead @nvidia — and I believe he’d accept it.

He’s hit the ceiling at Apple and won’t ever be CEO; obviously competent; ambitious as hell; has long wanted chip designs to dictate Apple product launches/timelines.

I wrote about this a few days ago, that my money is on Srouji having no interest in the Nvidia job. It’s true that Srouji will almost certainly never be CEO at Apple. But it’s wrong to assume that Srouji would consider CEO of Nvidia to be an upgrade from CHO at Apple. There’s no way Eddy Cue, Craig Federighi, or Greg Joswiak would leave Apple to be CEO at another company. Most of Apple’s leadership genuinely bleeds six colors. There’s a certain approach to product that drives them, motivates them, and literally only Apple does that type of work. Tim Cook surely turned down numerous CEO offers to leave Apple while he served as COO under Steve Jobs, and he’s always been clear that he hoped Jobs would stay a few steps ahead of his cancer and could remain at Apple until, well, probably around now. (Jobs would be 71.)

I’ve never met Srouji and don’t have a read on him like I do other leaders at Apple. But I do have a read on Ternus and Cook. I’ll stick with my bet from earlier in the week:

Another scenario is that Srouji meant what he said, loves his job at Apple, and truly is John Ternus’s trusted and trustworthy hardware lieutenant. In this case, Nvidia’s board leaking that they’re considering Srouji to replace Huang is like someone in hell saying they’re considering ordering some ice water.

Aside from Srouji’s loyalty to Apple (and to the Apple Silicon chip architecture that’s been his life’s work), there’s also the question of whether he’d take the gig at Nvidia in particular, even if he is open to leaving Apple. Jensen Huang has left the company with a $4 trillion market cap, yes, but it was $5 trillion just a week ago. It now seems 20 percent of Nvidia’s sales in the AI era have been in violation of U.S. national security export controls to China. The company has no internal leadership hierarchy. And Huang placed bets that have leveraged the company’s future on OpenAI and the overall data center mania not being a bubble. Srouji has been a senior leader at the one tech company that conspicuously avoided those bets entirely.

★ Saturday, 14 November 2026