Longtime chief financial officer Colette Kress will take over as interim chief executive while the board searches for a permanent successor.
Nvidia co-founder Jensen Huang resigned as president, chief executive, and board member, the company announced Thursday, following revelations that he engaged in extramarital affairs with an alleged Chinese intelligence asset and a subordinate executive.
The chipmaker’s board accepted Huang’s resignation on Wednesday night, TechCrunch reported. Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress has stepped in as interim CEO while the board searches for a permanent replacement, and she will retain her finance role. The board also appointed longtime director Harvey C. Jones, a former chief executive of Synopsys and managing partner of Square Wave Ventures, as its first board chair.
Huang had run Nvidia since co-founding the firm in 1993, turning a maker of video game graphics cards into the central hardware supplier behind global artificial intelligence development. His departure followed mounting pressure after Nvidia shares dropped as federal inquiries into his conduct became public earlier in the week.
How the scandal unfolded
The leadership crisis escalated rapidly over several days. The company’s board said Sunday it was starting an independent inquiry into Huang’s personal ties after reports emerged that he had an affair with Alice Huang, an executive at Singapore-based cloud provider Megaspeed. Megaspeed is a major Nvidia customer. According to The New York Times, Alice Huang was recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security to gather intelligence about advanced American artificial intelligence chips and influence technology sales to China.
Over the weekend, Jensen Huang sent a memo to Nvidia staff acknowledging he was unfaithful to his wife and apologizing to shareholders and his family. The board initially hired law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, led by former acting U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim, to run an investigation while keeping Huang in his post, Variety reported. Federal authorities also opened inquiries, and Donald Trump confirmed on Monday that the FBI was examining the matter, even while defending Huang.
Huang’s standing collapsed on Wednesday when reports revealed a second relationship, this time with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care, who joined the company in 2008 and reported directly to him, The Verge reported. Nvidia’s corporate code of conduct prohibits employees from entering situations where actions could create a conflict between personal gain and company responsibilities, specifically noting that personal relationships can trigger such conflicts. The board met Wednesday evening to weigh removing him before accepting his resignation.
Market fallout and industry impact
Nvidia stock fell nearly 12 percent in early trading on Thursday, pushing the shares to eight-month lows. The stock has dropped 19 percent since Friday, erasing more than $855 billion in market capitalization.
The turmoil spread across the broader artificial intelligence sector, where Nvidia holds a dominant role through chip sales and expansive financial backstops. Nvidia had reported $99 billion in investments and another $25 billion in commitments through the end of its second quarter. It also carried $36 billion in cloud service commitments, arrangements where Nvidia buys compute capacity from data center operators that purchase its processors.
Several companies tied to Nvidia’s computing network saw their stock prices slide on Thursday. CoreWeave fell about 12 percent in premarket trading, Nebius dropped 20 percent, and IREN declined 8 percent. Nvidia had invested $2 billion into CoreWeave in January and $2 billion into Nebius in March. The company had also signed on to provide up to $105 billion in credit guarantees for an OpenAI facility in Ohio and was considering acting as a guarantor for an Nscale data center project in West Virginia.
What happens next at Nvidia
Kress takes operational control after serving as chief financial officer since 2013, when Huang recruited her from previous finance posts at Microsoft, Cisco, and Texas Instruments. Industry analyst Patrick Moorhead told WIRED that “Colette is the logical choice” because of her standing with Wall Street and her grasp of Nvidia’s hardware and software plans.
Nvidia must now manage a leadership structure that was long built entirely around Huang. Dozens of executives reported directly to him, and the firm does not employ a traditional chief operating officer. While other longtime leaders such as CUDA creator Ian Buck and GeForce executive Jeff Fisher remain at the company, the board is conducting an external and internal search for a permanent chief executive.
The Justice Department has also been handling an investigation into whether Nvidia assisted in smuggling chips to China, a probe that originated at the Commerce Department. The board stated that Nvidia’s operations, product roadmap, and customer commitments are expected to proceed without interruption while Kress leads the interim team.
