I would like to remind folks that the Intel NUC is not an officially supported platform from VMware and although have have enable this new system for the community, it does not mean this system or previous generations are supported. You will need to replace the existing ne1000 driver with the new offline bundle, which can be downloaded from here.
UPDATE (01/20/20) - As shared on Twitter last Friday, we now have an updated ne1000 driver that will detect the Intel NIC found in the new 10th Gen NUC. UPDATE (08/21/20) - To disable the TPM 2.0 connection cannot be established message in ESXi, please see this blog post for more details. UPDATE (09/21/20) - The required ne1000 driver has been incorporated into ESXi 7.0 Update 1 It looks like the these NUCs have a newer version of I219-V NIC which is currently not recognized by either the vmklinux e1000 or ne1000 driver.
This issue was reported by a fellow reader named Ben who reached out to me over the holiday and with his help, I was able to get access to the system.
The onboard Intel NIC is not detected by ESXi which prevents the installer from proceeding. Just a heads up, if you are considering the latest 10th Generation of the Intel NUC (formally known as Frost Canyon) which are now available on Amazon, Newegg & SimplyNUC, there is an issue to be aware of.