Jensen Huang Resigns as Nvidia CEO, Kress Named Interim

Jensen Huang is no longer running Nvidia. In a release dated November 12, the company said its co-founder has resigned as president, chief executive and member of the board, effective immediately. Colette Kress, Nvidia’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, has agreed to serve as interim CEO and will keep her CFO role until a permanent successor is named. The same text was filed with the SEC as an exhibit to a Form 8-K. According to TechCrunch, which cites the filing, the board accepted the resignation on November 11.

The board also split the chair from the chief executive for the first time. Harvey C. Jones, a former CEO and executive chairman of Synopsys who has sat on Nvidia’s board since 1993, is the company’s first-ever board chair and is expected to lead the search, which will look at internal and external candidates. “The Board has full confidence in Colette and the leadership team,” Jones said. Kress joined Nvidia in September 2013 after nearly 25 years in finance at Microsoft and Cisco, and the board said it expects operations, customer commitments and the product roadmap to carry on without interruption. The release thanks Huang “for his immeasurable contributions to the company and the industry”; it does not quote him and gives no reason for his departure.

The context is the week that preceded it. On November 8 the board opened an independent inquiry after The New York Times reported that U.S. intelligence believed a woman Huang had an affair with was gathering information for Beijing, and Huang apologised to staff for being unfaithful to his wife. According to CNBC’s running coverage, the board then hired the law firm Wachtell Lipton to investigate the intelligence allegations; late on November 11 the Times reported a second relationship, this time with an Nvidia executive; and that night, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC, the board decided to oust him. CNBC also reports that House Foreign Affairs chair Brian Mast said Huang had agreed to testify before Thanksgiving, with the date still being negotiated. None of the investigations has published findings.

Investors had been pricing the risk in for days. Nvidia closed at $173.73 on November 11, down from a closing high of $239.24 on October 6, and the shares fell more than 13% at the open on November 12, taking the company below a $4 trillion market value, CNBC reported. Neocloud stocks that depend on Nvidia supply and capital fell with it: CoreWeave about 12% and Nebius about 17% in early trade.

What makes the change so disruptive is how little of Nvidia was built to run without Huang. TechCrunch notes that he founded the company in 1993 and was its only CEO, owns about 3.5% of it without super-voting shares, and ran a flat organisation with around 60 direct reports and no named heir. The company he leaves is also one of the largest backers of the AI labs it supplies, with stakes reported at $30 billion in OpenAI and $10 billion in Anthropic, alongside billions more in CoreWeave and Nebius.

Kress’s first public test is already on the calendar. Nvidia said it will report results for the third quarter of fiscal 2027 on Tuesday, November 17, at about 1:20 p.m. Pacific, with the earnings call at 2 p.m., as previously scheduled. It will be the first time in the company’s history that someone other than its founder answers the questions about demand, China and the next generation of chips.