Jensen Huang Resigns as Nvidia CEO Effective Immediately, CFO Colette Kress Named Interim Chief

Nvidia announced on November 12 that Jensen Huang has resigned as president, chief executive officer, and board member, effective immediately, ending his 33-year run atop the company he co-founded in 1993. Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress will serve as interim CEO while continuing her CFO duties, and Harvey C. Jones — previously CEO and Executive Chairman of Synopsys — has been named Nvidia's first-ever independent board chair, according to the company's official announcement. The board said it has "full confidence in Colette and the leadership team" and expects operations, customer commitments, and the product roadmap to continue without interruption. Nvidia's release did not state a reason for the resignation.

The move caps a six-day crisis that began on November 6, when The New York Times reported that U.S. intelligence agencies believed Huang had been targeted by a Chinese intelligence operation centered on Alice Huang, an unrelated businesswoman who previously led Megaspeed International, a major buyer of Nvidia chips. Two days later, Huang told employees in an internal email that he had been unfaithful to his wife and apologized; Nvidia's board launched an independent investigation on November 9 into whether he had been the target of a foreign intelligence effort, saying at the time it had no reason to believe company secrets or national security had been compromised. The following day, the board's independent directors retained Joon H. Kim, a former acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, as outside counsel. On November 11, the Wall Street Journal reported the board was preparing to remove Huang, sending shares down more than 8% in after-hours trading. China has called the spying allegations "baseless" and denied them; a separate Justice Department inquiry is reportedly examining Megaspeed for possible export-control violations, and Nvidia has denied any involvement in illegal chip transfers to China.

Nvidia also faces a securities lawsuit alleging the company failed to adequately disclose aspects of Huang's personal conduct to shareholders — a claim the company has not publicly addressed in detail. None of the intelligence or personal-conduct allegations against Huang have been independently confirmed or proven in a legal proceeding.

Nvidia shares fell roughly 9-10% in the hours following the resignation announcement, continuing the slide that began with Wednesday's ouster report. The reaction reflects just how closely Nvidia's roughly $4.5 trillion valuation has been tied to Huang personally — he built the company from a graphics-chip maker into the dominant supplier of the processors powering the AI boom, and investors have treated his leadership as close to inseparable from the stock's performance. Kress, who has been with Nvidia since 2013 after nearly 25 years in finance roles at Cisco and Microsoft, said in a statement that the company's strength "has always come from its people" and that she is committed to building on the foundation Huang created.

The leadership change lands five days before Nvidia is scheduled to report third-quarter fiscal 2027 results on November 17, a report investors will now parse for signs of how the transition is affecting customer relationships, data-center GPU demand, and the China export situation — on top of the usual scrutiny of AI capital spending. The board gave no timeline for naming a permanent CEO and said it will consider both internal and external candidates.