Executive vice-president and chief financial officer will serve as interim CEO
Jensen Huang has resigned as president, chief executive officer and a member of the board of Nvidia, effective immediately, the chipmaker's board of directors announced Thursday, ending a 33-year run at the helm of the company he co-founded, according a company release.
Colette Kress, Nvidia's executive vice-president and chief financial officer, will serve as interim CEO while keeping her CFO duties until a permanent successor is named. The board said it is launching a search and will consider both internal and external candidates.
The board also appointed Harvey C. Jones as its first-ever chair. Jones has been an entrepreneur, technology executive and venture investor for more than 30 years, and previously served as CEO and executive chairman of chip-design software company Synopsys, according to the company.
Pressure mounted for resignation
Pressure on Huang, 63, had been building in recent days after reports that he had an affair with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based cloud company Megaspeed whom U.S. authorities have concluded was a Chinese intelligence asset, Reuters reported. Beijing has denied she is a spy. The two are not related.
Megaspeed was an official Nvidia cloud partner with priority access to its chips. Washington has also investigated the company over suspicions it helped China obtain advanced AI chips restricted under U.S. export controls, according to media reports cited by Reuters.
Earlier this month, Nvidia's board launched an investigation, led by independent directors with outside legal counsel, into whether Huang had been targeted by a foreign intelligence operation. At the time, the board expressed confidence in him, said media reports.
Men's Journal reported that the probe was opened on Nov. 8. According to CNBC, Huang admitted to having an affair on Sunday, and some lawmakers had called for his resignation.
The situation escalated Wednesday when the New York Times reported that Huang had also had an affair with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice-president of health care, who reported to him. The board met that day to consider his ouster, according to a person familiar with the matter cited by Reuters.
Huang, who is married, is Nvidia's fourth-largest investor with a stake of about 3.61 per cent, according to Reuters. He will not remain on the board.
'Full confidence' in interim leader
In the company's release, Jones said the board has full confidence in Kress and the leadership team, and expects operations, customer commitments and the product roadmap to continue without interruption.
"Colette has helped lead NVIDIA through a period of extraordinary growth and has a deep understanding of our business, customers, operations and financial position," Jones said. "She is supported by an experienced leadership team that has been instrumental in executing NVIDIA's strategy and advancing its technology roadmap."
Kress has been Nvidia's CFO since September 2013, leading its finance organization through its rise to become the world's most valuable company. Before joining Nvidia, she spent nearly 25 years in finance roles at technology companies including Cisco and Microsoft, according to the release.
"NVIDIA's strength has always come from its people, and together with our leadership team, I am committed to building on the extraordinary foundation Jensen created over the last 33 years," Kress said. "We will continue advancing the work that has made NVIDIA a leader in accelerated computing and AI, and execute on the opportunities ahead."
The board's statement described Huang's contributions to the company as profound and thanked him for what it called his immeasurable contributions to Nvidia and the industry.
Shares slide ahead of earnings
Nvidia's stock fell about 10 per cent in premarket trading Thursday following the announcement. Nasdaq futures dropped 1.4 per cent and S&P 500 futures lost 0.7 per cent, CNN reported. CNBC reported that the shares were already down more than 20 per cent over the previous month.
Bernstein downgraded Nvidia to market-perform and halved its price target to US$200 from US$400 following the reports of Huang's affairs, according to Yahoo Finance. Richard Reyle, chief investment officer at Questar Capital Partners, told CNBC that Nvidia's lack of a succession plan made the stock "uninvestable."
The leadership change comes days before Nvidia reports its third-quarter fiscal 2027 results, which the company said will be released as scheduled on Tuesday, Nov. 17.
Fallout for AI industry and U.S. chip policy
Huang's exit leaves the AI industry without its most prominent champion and plunges the US$4-trillion company into uncertainty, Reuters reported. It also threatens to disrupt an AI ecosystem Huang helped bankroll by reinvesting Nvidia's growing cash reserves into cloud providers, suppliers and major AI labs. Investor sentiment toward AI stocks was already shaky amid doubts about whether heavy spending and rising debt at large tech companies will pay off, according to Reuters.
The departure could also have consequences for U.S. chip export policy, given Huang's push to preserve access to the Chinese market and his close ties to U.S. President Donald Trump, said Reuters. On Sunday, Trump said Huang had "done an amazing job for our country," and that the Nvidia chief had told him he had no idea the woman he had an affair with was a spy, Reuters reported.
Once known mainly for gaming graphics cards, Nvidia saw its chips — prized for their ability to perform many calculations at once — become central to the AI boom and a strategic asset in the U.S.-China technology race. That turned Huang into what Reuters described as a rock-star CEO, mobbed by fans in Taiwan and South Korea, whose mere mention of other companies at events could move their stock prices.
