Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Resigns, Colette Kress Named Interim Chief

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NVIDIA announced on Thursday that Jensen Huang has resigned as President, Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Board, effective immediately, ending the co-founder’s 33 years at the head of the chipmaker. The Board appointed Colette Kress, the company’s Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, as Interim Chief Executive Officer, NVIDIA said in a release distributed by GlobeNewswire. Kress will continue as Chief Financial Officer until a permanent successor is named, and the Board said it is initiating a search for a permanent Chief Executive Officer that will consider internal and external candidates.

The Board also appointed Harvey C. Jones as its first-ever Chair. Jones, formerly Chief Executive Officer and Executive Chairman of Synopsys, said the Board has full confidence in Kress and expects operations, customer commitments and the product roadmap to continue without interruption. Kress has been NVIDIA’s finance chief since joining in September 2013, after nearly 25 years in finance roles at Cisco and Microsoft, the company said. The release thanked Huang for his “immeasurable contributions” and gave no reason for his resignation.

The market reaction was immediate. NVIDIA shares fell more than 10% in premarket trading and weighed on the broader market, Reuters reported, as the exit plunged what Reuters described as the $4 trillion company into uncertainty. Huang is NVIDIA’s fourth-largest investor, with a stake of about 3.61%, and he will leave the Board as well as the executive roles, according to Reuters. The company he leaves is the world’s most valuable, a scale our explainer on market capitalization puts in context, and its chips are central to the artificial intelligence buildout.

The resignation follows a board inquiry under way this month. Reuters reported that the Board launched a probe earlier this month, led by independent directors with outside legal counsel, into whether Huang had been targeted by a foreign intelligence operation, while expressing confidence in him at the time, and that the Board met on Wednesday to consider his ouster, citing a person familiar with the matter, after further reports about his personal relationships. Those reports remain allegations NVIDIA has not addressed in its announcement, and the company has announced no findings from the inquiry. Beijing has denied that the businesswoman at the center of the earlier reports is a spy, Reuters reported.

Kress now faces an immediate test. NVIDIA will report its third-quarter fiscal 2027 results on Tuesday, November 17, as previously scheduled, the company said, and readers can follow the succession on our Corporate America desk. Sources: NVIDIA press release via GlobeNewswire, November 12, 2026; Reuters, November 12, 2026.

Educational coverage — not tax or investment advice.