Nick Parker, a 26-year Microsoft veteran who led the company’s worldwide commercial sales business, is leaving to become Nvidia’s new sales chief — a high-profile talent shift between two of the biggest players in the AI boom.
Parker will join Nvidia as executive vice president of worldwide field operations, effective Aug. 24, according to a regulatory filing. He succeeds Jay Puri, who is retiring after 21 years running Nvidia’s global sales operation and will stay on as a senior adviser.
“Microsoft and NVIDIA are great partners and I look forward to continuing to nurture that fantastic relationship,” Parker wrote in a LinkedIn post announcing the move.
The regulatory filing by Nvidia sets Parker’s base salary in the new role at $1 million, with a $5 million signing bonus and equity grants targeted at $40 million. The bulk of that, $35 million in restricted stock units, vests over roughly four years, while the additional $5 million in shares is tied to Nvidia outperforming the S&P 500 over three years.
The new role puts him in charge of global sales and customer relationships at the center of the AI boom, reporting directly to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang — one of the most consequential commercial roles in the industry, overseeing the operation that sells Nvidia’s chips to the world’s largest companies.
Parker, 55, rose through OEM, device and partner sales roles at Microsoft before being named president of industry and partner sales in 2022. After a promotion this year, he served most recently as executive vice president and chief business officer of Microsoft Worldwide Sales & Solutions, reporting to Judson Althoff, CEO of Microsoft’s commercial business.
Puri, 71, is credited with helping transform Nvidia from a consumer gaming brand into an AI infrastructure giant, building the enterprise sales operation Parker will now inherit.
On Thursday, Microsoft unveiled a $2.5 billion initiative called the Microsoft Frontier Company, which will embed AI engineers inside customers. It will be led by Rodrigo Kede Lima, a longtime Microsoft sales and enterprise leader, most recently president of Microsoft Asia.
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