Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s founder, at Stanford University in April 2026. Image: Anderseidesvik / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped
Jensen Huang, who co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and built it into the company whose chips run the AI boom, has resigned as its president, chief executive and a member of its board, effective immediately, Nvidia announced on Thursday. Chief financial officer Colette Kress becomes interim CEO while the board looks for a permanent successor.
What Nvidia said
Nvidia’s filing with the SEC says the board accepted Huang’s resignation on Wednesday, November 11, the day it was reported to be meeting late into the evening on his future. The same day it made Harvey C. Jones, 73, its first-ever chair. Jones has been a director since 1993, runs the family office Square Wave Ventures and was once chief executive and executive chairman of the chip-design software company Synopsys.
The board says it will consider internal and external candidates for the permanent job. Neither the announcement nor the filing gives a reason for Huang’s departure, and neither mentions a severance package, an advisory role or what happens to his shares. The release ends by thanking him for his “immeasurable contributions to the company and the industry.” Huang had not commented publicly by Thursday afternoon.
Jones said the board expects “the company’s operations, customer commitments and product roadmap to continue without interruption.” Kress, who signed the filing with her new title, said:
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.
Colette Kress, interim CEO and CFO, Nvidia
Who is Colette Kress?
Kress, 59, joined Nvidia as chief financial officer in September 2013 and will keep that job while she runs the company. Before Nvidia she spent nearly 25 years in finance roles at companies including Cisco and Microsoft. She has been the voice of Nvidia’s numbers on every earnings call through the data centre boom, which turned a gaming graphics firm into one of the most valuable companies in the world.
Her first big test comes fast. Nvidia says it will still report its third-quarter results on Tuesday, November 17, at about 1:20pm PT (21:20 UTC), with the earnings call at 2pm PT.
How it came to this
The end came in under three weeks. On October 29, reports said US intelligence believed a Chinese executive linked to the server firm Megaspeed, Alice Huang, had been recruited to spy on him. On November 8, Nvidia’s board opened an investigation and Huang admitted an affair. Then on Wednesday The New York Times reported a second relationship, with a senior Nvidia executive who reports to him, and The Wall Street Journal said the board was preparing to remove him.
Thursday’s announcement does not say whether the board’s inquiry, led for its independent directors by former acting US Attorney Joon H. Kim and Wachtell Lipton, will carry on. Three House committee chairs had asked Huang for a briefing, with talk of a subpoena if he refused, and the board had said on Sunday it had “no reason to believe” that national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised.
‘There is not a ready replacement for Huang’
Nvidia’s shares fell sharply in premarket trading after the news, CNN reported, then opened on Thursday at $149.29, down 14% from Wednesday’s close of $173.73, according to Yahoo Finance market data. Buyers came back within half an hour and the shares were trading at about $161, down 7%, shortly before 15:00 UTC. Nvidia makes up just over 6% of the S&P 500, so the slide reaches retirement accounts far beyond tech investors. Before the announcement, Saxo strategist Neil Wilson warned in a note:
There is not a ready replacement for Huang and it’s hard to overstate just how important he is for the company, so we assume a material derating (of the stock) based on his ousting.
Neil Wilson, strategist, Saxo, via CNN
Huang was more than a chief executive. He was Nvidia’s link to President Trump, who called him “an honorable guy” on Monday, and its loudest voice on how many AI chips China should be allowed to buy, a fight that now goes on without him. Kress inherits that, along with questions about where Nvidia’s chips end up and a market already asking whether the AI boom is a bubble.
Why it matters
Nvidia has had one leader for its whole life, and its rise is the AI boom in miniature. A finance chief caretaker, a new chair and an open search leave the world’s key AI supplier without a permanent chief at the moment investors, Congress and Beijing are all watching it.
Sources: Nvidia: NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition; Nvidia Form 8-K, November 12, 2026; Nvidia: Statement From the Independent Members of the NVIDIA Board; Nvidia: Statement From NVIDIA Board of Directors; CNN (share reaction, Neil Wilson, Trump); Yahoo Finance (NVDA market data).
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