NVIDIA board of directors has announced Colette Kress, the company's current executive vice president and chief financial officer, as the temporary replacement for longtime chief executive officer Jensen Huang. Huang has resigned from the AI and gaming giant he founded after leading the company for 33 years. The leadership change comes during a tumultuous period for the enterprise, following revelations that prompted the board to investigate Huang after he admitted to having an affair with a former tech executive accused of being a Chinese intelligence asset. The New York Times subsequently reported that Huang also had an affair with an NVIDIA executive who reported directly to him.
Newly-minted NVIDIA board chair Harvey Jones addressed the transition in a public release, expressing full confidence in the incoming interim leader. The board stated that it expects operations, customer commitments, and the ongoing product roadmap to continue without interruption. Before this sudden transition, NVIDIA did not have a formalized succession plan in place. The board of directors has announced that it will consider both internal and external candidates to permanently fill the chief executive officer position.
Key takeaways
- Colette Kress has been named NVIDIA's interim CEO after 33-year veteran Jensen Huang resigned.
- Huang's resignation followed board investigations into personal affairs.
- Kress joined NVIDIA in 2013 after spending 25 years in various finance roles at Texas Instruments, Microsoft, and Cisco.
- NVIDIA recorded $215.9 billion in revenue for fiscal 2026, a massive growth from $4.28 billion at the start of Kress's tenure.
Before taking the helm at NVIDIA, Kress built an extensive 25-year career spanning multiple prominent technology and semiconductor companies. She spent eight years in various finance roles at Texas Instruments before moving to Microsoft in 1997. By 2006, six years after Steve Ballmer took over as Microsoft chief executive officer, she became the chief financial officer of the company's Server and Tools division. She maintained that position until 2010, when she transitioned to Cisco to serve as senior vice president and chief financial officer of the company's Business Technology and Operations Finance unit.
Kress joined NVIDIA in 2013 after being directly recruited by Huang. According to a 2023 interview, Huang sketched his vision for transforming NVIDIA into a dominant player in the nascent artificial intelligence industry on a whiteboard during the recruitment process. When Kress joined, NVIDIA was the smallest company she had worked for, posting annual revenue of $4.28 billion at the start of her tenure. By contrast, the company recorded a record $215.9 billion in revenue for fiscal 2026.
The newly appointed interim executive faces intense regulatory and political scrutiny ahead. Huang has agreed to testify before Congress in a hearing that the House aims to hold before the Thanksgiving holiday. Furthermore, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs committee, Brian Mast of Florida, noted he was not ruling out public hearings for other individuals down the road. NVIDIA is expected to face heavy scrutiny in the coming weeks, particularly as control of the House and Senate shifts at the start of the next year. In her first email to NVIDIA employees following the transition, Kress acknowledged the extraordinarily difficult period and expressed gratitude for staff resilience and professionalism.
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