Jensen Huang has resigned as chief executive officer and co-founder of Nvidia, the company announced. The resignation followed multiple allegations of extramarital affairs, including one involving an alleged Chinese spy and two with company employees.
Nvidia immediately appointed Colette Kress, chief financial officer, as interim chief executive. Kress will serve in the role until the board appoints a permanent successor. The board stated that it is beginning a search for Huang’s permanent replacement and is considering both internal and external candidates. Kress could remain as chief executive permanently, but the company may also appoint another candidate.
Harvey C Jones, the newly appointed chair of Nvidia’s board of directors, said on Thursday: “Colette has helped lead Nvidia through a period of extraordinary growth and has a deep understanding of our business, customers, operations and financial position.” He added: “The board has full confidence in Colette and the leadership team.”
Kress is 59 years old and joined Nvidia in 2013 as chief financial officer. Before that, she held financial positions at Texas Instruments, Microsoft and Cisco. She regularly participates in the company’s quarterly conference calls and oversaw Nvidia’s transition from a niche video game chip company to a trillion-dollar AI giant. People who know her describe her as a calming contrast to Huang’s often confrontational style, Reuters reported. On Thursday, in a letter to employees, she praised Huang, saying she would continue to build on the foundations he created over the past 33 years.
Huang co-founded the company in 1993 and has about 60 direct reports. His son and daughter also work at Nvidia, and his daughter is considered a possible proxy, but neither has enough experience to take over leadership. During a meeting last summer, Huang interrupted Kress’s presentation and described her as “a deer in the headlights”, a source familiar with the comments told the Wall Street Journal. Huang suggested during that August meeting that Kress was not someone who could help him make decisions.
Among the names mentioned for the permanent successor are Ian Buck, who manages Nvidia’s AI hardware and software products, and Rene Haas, a former Nvidia employee and current chief executive of Arm Holdings, the British chipmaker. Buck has worked at Nvidia since 2004 and is responsible for introducing generative AI in partnership with leading global AI companies, including Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, OpenAI and others. Haas is well known at Nvidia, where he worked for seven years as vice president and general manager before joining Arm in 2013. Lisa Su, chief executive of chipmaker AMD, is also mentioned as a possible replacement for Huang. AMD is Nvidia’s most direct competitor, and Lisa Su is a distant relative of Huang.
Anshel Sag, chief analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy, said: “Putting Kress in an interim role makes sense to calm the markets, but I do not think she is the long-term visionary Nvidia needs to continue its current trajectory.” Sunny Cheung, an analyst at the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation, said that Kress could face questions from Congress regarding the company’s oversight of chip sales involving Chinese institutions linked to the military and Southeast Asian brokers.
In a 2023 interview with an Israeli publication, Kress credited her two minor sons with encouraging her to join Nvidia in 2013, as they knew her chips from their video games. Kress became a billionaire in 2025 based on the value of her Nvidia stake, according to media reports. Forbes noted that her wealth of $1.2 billion in mid-2026 placed her 32nd on the list of America’s wealthiest self-made women. She holds an undergraduate degree in finance and an MBA, and has been named among the 50 most powerful women in business.
Nvidia’s market capitalisation stands at approximately $4 trillion. The company is a key driver of the US economy and one of the world’s most valuable firms. The entire AI ecosystem relies on Nvidia, which develops advanced chips for training AI models and powers companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google.
