Nvidia’s longtime finance chief Colette Kress has been named interim CEO as a widening scandal brings Jensen Huang’s 33-year tenure to an end.
Kress’s appointment on Thursday follows Huang’s resignation, which the board said was effective immediately.
The board said it is initiating a search for a permanent CEO and will “consider internal and external candidates.”
Nvidia’s share price dropped more than 10% in premarket trading after announcing Huang’s resignation.
Huang stepped down after Nvidia’s board opened an investigation into whether he was the target of a “foreign intelligence effort.” He also admitted to being unfaithful to his wife in a memo.
The New York Times reported that Huang had romantic relationships with Alice Huang, an executive at Nvidia customer Megaspeed — whom US intelligence officials identified as a suspected Chinese spy — as well as Kimberly Powell, an Nvidia employee who served as vice president of healthcare.
Insiders and analysts had previously pointed to Kress as a likely successor to Huang, citing her visibility among shareholders. She has worked at Nvidia for 13 years, joining in September 2013 and helping to lead the company’s finances through the AI boom.
“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 in a statement on Thursday.
Kress is one of Nvidia’s most influential executives
As Nvidia’s chief financial officer, Kress is one of its most public-facing and influential executives, and she’ll lead the coming earnings call on November 17. She took home about $14.3 million in total compensation last fiscal year, according to the company’s annual filing.
She also speaks at conferences and investor meetings, laying out the company’s key strategies. Kress has previously spoken about how AI agents will be the next big driver of Nvidia’s business.
“Agentic AI is really where it is getting work done, work that can augment the work of many employees, many of our folks at home,” Kress said at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. “All of these things are really important as we think going forward. Those transitions are going to take some time, and they’re all occurring and creating an exponential growth in terms of our compute.”
As finance chief, Kress has also played a key role in Nvidia’s partnerships with cloud giants, startups, and other compute partners. She previously said at CES that the AI boom has “created an exponential growth in the need for the amount of compute that’s necessary.”
Kress “has built enormous credibility inside and outside the company; she now runs the most important one in the AI Revolution,” Yorkville Ives analyst Dan Ives wrote in a note to investors.
Nvidia has a flat leadership structure
The board also announced that Harvey C. Jones will serve as its first chair. Jones, a semiconductor industry veteran, has served on Nvidia’s board since the company’s founding and is also a managing partner at Square Wave Ventures.
Huang maintained a flat leadership structure with as many as 60 direct reports, and said he wanted to keep working for as long as possible, which complicated succession planning.
Kress reported directly to Huang, Business Insider previously reported.
Prior to joining Nvidia, Kress held finance positions at Cisco and Microsoft. She has also served at Texas Instruments in various finance roles.
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