Jensen Huang Resigns as Nvidia CEO, Colette Kress Takes Interim Role
3 min readJensen Huang resigns as chief executive of Nvidia, ending a 33-year run at the company he co-founded and leaving the most valuable name in the AI boom without a permanent leader. The board accepted his resignation this week and announced it Thursday, days after opening an inquiry into his ties to a woman U.S. officials reportedly concluded was a Chinese spy. Chief financial officer Colette Kress is now interim CEO.
How the Jensen Huang Resignation Unfolded
AI Incider covered the start of this story on November 9, when Nvidia’s board opened an investigation while saying it remained confident in Huang’s leadership. According to the Associated Press, the pressure built quickly from there. The New York Times had reported that Huang had a relationship with a woman U.S. officials believed was recruited to influence Nvidia to make its most advanced chips more available in China. President Trump said Monday that the FBI was investigating. Then late Wednesday, reports surfaced of a second alleged affair, this time with an Nvidia employee who reported to him. Huang acknowledged an affair but did not identify the woman.
The woman at the center of the case, Alice Huang, is a former executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed International, a company that faced allegations last year of illicitly shipping advanced Nvidia chips into China. The two are not related. Singapore authorities said Thursday they questioned her and confiscated her passport last year, found insufficient evidence of a crime, but suspected she downplayed her role at the company and barred her from returning.
What Nvidia Announced
Kress, CFO since 2013 and a veteran of Microsoft and Cisco, takes over on an interim basis while the board considers internal and external candidates. Nvidia had no succession plan in place. The board also named venture investor Harvey C. Jones as its first-ever chairman. Nvidia has said it has no reason to believe national security or its secrets were compromised, but that its inquiry will examine all available information. Quarterly earnings are due Tuesday.
Shares plunged 14 percent at the opening bell before recovering to close down about 4 percent as investors weighed lawsuits, investigations and the health of an AI-driven market. eMarketer analyst Asa Hiken said Huang’s departure introduces uncertainty well beyond Nvidia itself.
Why It Matters
The fallout is far from over. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Congress must demand answers from Huang and Nvidia, and House Foreign Affairs chairman Brian Mast said Huang will be subpoenaed if necessary. Megaspeed said it has cooperated with the Commerce Department’s export-control bureau and has hired a U.S. law firm to run a full census of its chips.
China denies trying to ensnare Huang, who had lobbied Washington to loosen chip export limits and in January won approval to sell H200 chips to China. Watch Tuesday’s earnings call, the pace of the CEO search, and whether Congress gets its testimony.