CFO Colette Kress to serve as interim leader after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang resignation

New York (CNN) — Jensen Huang, the founder who propelled Nvidia to become one of the world’s most valuable companies, has resigned from his role as chief executive after 33 years.

Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress has been appointed interim chief executive, Nvidia’s board said Thursday, as it considers internal and external candidates as a permanent replacement.

The announcement ends several days of whirlwind speculation about Huang’s future in the wake of a stunning corporate scandal.

“Colette has helped lead NVIDIA through a period of extraordinary growth and has a deep understanding of our business, customers, operations and financial position,” said Harvey Jones, who was also named Nvidia’s first-ever board chair in the Thursday announcement. Jones added that the board expects “the company’s operations, customer commitments and product roadmap to continue without interruption.”

Kress will also continue to serve in her current role executive vice president and CFO until Nvidia finds a permanent CEO. As Nvidia’s chief financial officer of more than a decade, Kress has deep knowledge of the business and has been the most visible executive among investors and the public next to Huang.

The leadership shakeup came days after the board said it would investigate whether Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort amid reports of his relationship with a woman US officials believe is a Chinese spy, and shortly after the New York Times reported that the CEO also had an affair with an executive who reports to him. Huang on Sunday admitted to having an extramarital affair, without naming the other party, and apologized to his family and colleagues.

The exit marks a sharp fall from grace for Huang, who is largely responsible for kicking off the AI boom. The chips made by the company he founded in 1993 have become critical to the AI infrastructure, putting Nvidia at the center of the AI buildout and thrusting Huang into President Donald Trump’s inner circle.

Nvidia shares dropped more than 10% in pre-market trading on Thursday.

Nvidia called Huang’s contributions to the company “profound” and thanked him for his “immeasurable contributions to the company and the industry.”

Nvidia’s whirlwind week

Huang on Sunday admitted to having an extramarital affair, without naming the other party, and apologized to his family and colleagues.

His statement came in tandem with an announcement by the company’s board that it was investigating reports that he was the “target of a foreign intelligence effort.” The inquiry followed reports that Huang was in a close relationship with Alice Huang, a Chinese citizen who has worked for Singapore-based tech company and Nvidia customer Megaspeed, whom US officials suspected to be working with Chinese intelligence. The Financial Times reported US officials believed the relationship was romantic in nature.

Huang’s ouster represents a quick reversal by the Nvidia board, which initially said it had “confidence” in Huang in its Sunday statement and “no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised.” Trump also defended Huang earlier this week, calling him an “honorable guy.”

But the board convened Wednesday night to weigh whether to oust Huang following the New York Times report about his additional affair with a company executive.

Huang’s influence at Nvidia

Huang has transformed Nvidia into much more than a chipmaker, but the centerpiece of the AI revolution. He was early to bet that graphics processing units – chips commonly used in video game consoles – would be critical for training AI models. Now, Nvidia offers all the pieces needed for AI computing, from models catered to specific industries like robotics and data centers to networking technology, boosting it to become the world’s first $ trillion company last year.

Clad in his signature leather jacket, Huang himself became an icon of the AI boom – drawing major crowds at the company’s conferences and other tech events. Some have viewed him with rockstar-like reverence; a woman once asked him to sign her chest during an autograph session at a tech conference in Taiwan.

Tech companies like Google have developed their own chips, in part to reduce their reliance on Nvidia. But Huang’s company is largely unmatched in the AI chips race.

“If you look at the magnitude of Nvidia’s offerings, nobody really can touch them,” Ted Mortonson, technology desk sector strategist at Baird, told CNN last year.

As Nvidia’s profile has grown, so has Huang’s: His close relationship with Trump has given him influence in AI policy decisions. Trump even recently called Huang when he was in the middle of giving a talk at a conference in September, which the Nvidia CEO put on speaker for the crowd to hear.

Huang had become synonymous with Nvidia, and his ouster casts one of the world’s largest and most influential companies into a period of uncertainty. There’s never been an Nvidia without Huang; he told Bloomberg in 2023 that the company “was built so that I know how to run it.”