Alexander the Great was an extraordinary warlord and a mediocre king. He died unexpectedly, and his empire collapsed immediately.
Securing succession is a huge part of leadership in any organization that is supposed to outlast its leader. Because unexpected things can happen at any time, a leader must keep the organization in a shape, where a plausible successor can take over and continue leading it successfully. If no such successors exist, the leader has not done their job properly.
This presupposes that there are successors that can fill the roles. Even after curation, what's left will very rarely match what's required, doubly so with tech-centric companies. The CFO now in charge is the perfect example of this.
A regression to the mean more often than not happens as a result.
Because no one else can fill the shoes. The best that the next CEO can do is either:
a) make improvements on what exists, and thus effectively stagnate in a moving hardware industry, or
b) cut staff (which Nvidia has only done twice in its history: 1996 (near-bankruptcy), and around 2008 (360 / 6.5%), right in the middle of ironing out the Tesla architecture).
The moment their CFO took over, they already announced layoffs.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BayAreaTalk/comments/1xu5wzy/nvidia...
The CFO is almost never one that makes unique product decisions.