Jensen Huang has resigned as president, chief executive officer, and a member of the board of Nvidia, effective immediately, the company announced on Thursday, November 12. The departure ends a 33-year run for the co-founder who built Nvidia from a maker of graphics chips into the dominant supplier of the processors that train and run advanced artificial intelligence systems, the first CEO change in company history.
Colette Kress, Nvidia's executive vice president and chief financial officer, has agreed to serve as interim chief executive officer while the board searches for a permanent successor. Kress will keep her finance roles during the transition, and the board said it will consider both internal and external candidates. Kress joined Nvidia in September 2013 and has led its finance organization through its extraordinary growth, after nearly 25 years in finance roles at companies including Cisco and Microsoft. The board also appointed Harvey C. Jones, a director since 1993 and a former chief executive and executive chairman of Synopsys, as its first-ever chair of the board. Jones said the board has full confidence in Kress and expects operations, customer commitments, and the product roadmap to continue without interruption.
Investors reacted sharply. Nvidia's shares fell nearly 12 percent in early trading on Thursday, according to TechCrunch, and the stock was down as much as 19 percent from Friday, erasing more than 855 billion dollars in market value. Shares of companies closely tied to Nvidia's spending, including CoreWeave and Nebius, also fell, a sign of how much of the artificial intelligence buildout runs through Nvidia.
Nvidia's announcement gave no reason for the resignation, and a regulatory filing said the board accepted it on Wednesday, November 11. The exit follows a fast-moving controversy reported by The New York Times and other outlets involving Huang's extramarital relationship with a Singapore-based technology executive whom United States officials suspect of spying for China. Those reports remain allegations, not established findings. On November 8, Nvidia said independent directors, assisted by outside counsel, would oversee an investigation into whether Huang had been targeted, and the board said it had no reason to believe national security interests or company secrets had been compromised. In a memo to employees reported by USA Today, Huang acknowledged being unfaithful to his wife, said he took full responsibility, and pledged to cooperate with the board's review.
The leadership vacuum is unusual in its scale. Huang, 63, co-founded Nvidia in 1993 with Curtis Priem and Chris Malachowsky, held about 3.5 percent of its shares, and famously ran a flat organization with around 60 direct reports and no public succession plan. Under his leadership, Nvidia's graphics chips became the standard for artificial intelligence training, and the company became a central financier of the boom, investing in model labs, cloud operators, and data centers that buy its hardware.
The first public test of the transition comes quickly. Nvidia said it will report its third-quarter fiscal 2027 results on Tuesday, November 17, at approximately 1:20 p.m. Pacific time, as previously scheduled, followed by its earnings call at 2:00 p.m. Pacific time. Kress said she is committed to building on the foundation created over the last 33 years. Who the board chooses as permanent chief executive, and what the investigation ultimately finds, will shape the company at the center of the artificial intelligence industry for years to come.
Photo: Jensen Huang poses for selfies with students at Stanford University in April 2026. Photograph by Anders Eidesvik, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.