Colette Kress takes over Nvidia as Jensen Huang resigns

Colette Kress is now running Nvidia as interim chief executive after Jensen Huang resigned as president and CEO of the AI chip giant he co-founded in 1993. Nvidia said in a regulatory filing that its board accepted Huang's resignation on Wednesday, and that Kress will keep her role as chief financial officer while the company searches for a permanent leader, TechCrunch reported on Thursday, November 12.

Huang's exit follows days of pressure after he admitted to a romantic affair with a woman alleged to be a Chinese spy, which sparked a US national security crisis, according to TechCrunch. The BBC reported that he resigned over reports of extramarital affairs, one of them with the suspected spy.

Who is Colette Kress?

Kress has worked in the technology industry for more than 30 years and previously held senior posts at Cisco and Microsoft, the BBC said. At Nvidia she is CFO and executive vice-president, and she has watched the company grow from a maker of gaming chips into the leading supplier of AI processors.

Josh Gilbert, an analyst at eToro, told the BBC that she has "fronted every earnings call" alongside Huang and is a "familiar and trusted voice for the market at a time when it badly needs one". He added that a permanent appointment could be different, because a company known for its technical edge may want an engineer in the top job.

A new chair and a first test next week

The board also named Harvey C. Jones, managing partner of Square Wave Ventures and a former CEO of Synopsys, as Nvidia's first-ever chair. Jones has sat on the board since 1993 and is expected to play a central role in the search for a new CEO.

The first public test for Colette Kress comes quickly. Nvidia reports quarterly earnings on Tuesday, and investors will be listening for any sign of how customers and partners are reacting.

Market shock and possible successors

Investors reacted sharply. TechCrunch said Nvidia shares were down nearly 12% in early trading on Thursday and had fallen as much as 19% since Friday, a market value loss of more than US$855 billion. The BBC reported that the stock opened more than 13% lower after the announcement.

Names floated by analysts quoted by the BBC as possible long-term leaders include:

• Colette Kress herself, if the board decides to keep her in the role.
• Chris Malachowsky, one of Nvidia's three co-founders.
• Ian Buck, who runs the high-performance computing business.
• Rene Haas, chief executive of Arm Holdings.
• Tim Cook, Apple's former chief executive and current chair, though analysts doubt he would leave.

Why the Kress appointment matters beyond Nvidia

Under Huang, Nvidia became a financial engine of the AI boom. TechCrunch reported that it had US$99 billion in investments and another US$25 billion in commitments at the end of its second quarter, plus US$36 billion in cloud service commitments that help AI cloud operators pay for its chips.

Its bets include large stakes in OpenAI and Anthropic, and investments in cloud providers such as CoreWeave and Nebius, whose shares also fell on Thursday. Huang owns only about 3.5% of the company and held no special voting rights, which meant the board could replace him at any time.

Huang ran a famously flat organisation with around 60 direct reports and no named successor. Ray Wang of Constellation Research told the BBC that many partnerships were built on personal trust in Huang, which is the real challenge for whoever follows him.

The story has a strong Asian angle too. Nvidia relies on Taiwan's TSMC and South Korea's SK Hynix and Samsung for production, and Southeast Asian governments, including Thailand, are courting AI data centre investment. Background on the crisis is in our reports on the Nvidia board meeting on Huang's future, the Nvidia spy memo and Nvidia H200 chips and China.

In a statement, Nvidia said: "The Board and the company thank Jensen for his immeasurable contributions to the company and the industry."

Image: Nvidia headquarters in Santa Clara, California, where Colette Kress now leads as interim CEO. Photo by Coolcaesar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.