Colette Kress steps in as Nvidia's interim CEO after Huang's exit

Nvidia’s board announced Thursday morning that Jensen Huang — Nvidia’s co-founder and CEO for the past 33 years — had resigned as president, CEO and board member, effective immediately: a stunning turn for one of the world’s most valuable companies, which Huang had led without ever naming a successor. The ouster follows reports that Huang had affairs with both a woman the U.S. alleges is a Chinese spy and one of his own direct reports at Nvidia.

Chief financial officer and executive vice president Colette Kress is taking over as interim chief while the board searches more broadly for a permanent replacement at the roughly $3.8 trillion company. Kress has worked at Nvidia since September 2013; before that she spent three years as finance chief of Cisco’s Business Technology Operations Finance arm, then 13 years at Microsoft, four of them as CFO of its Server and Tools division. She studied finance at the University of Arizona and later completed an MBA at Southern Methodist University.

The 59-year-old Californian keeps a limited social-media presence but has been a familiar face to analysts as a regular presence on Nvidia’s earnings calls. Forbes puts her net worth at about $1.2 billion on its list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women, and says she joined Nvidia partly because her two sons pushed her toward the company for its role in video games. “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, adding that the company’s focus remains on its customers, partners, developers and shareholders.

Nvidia reports quarterly earnings on Tuesday, when analysts expect to hear more from Kress about her plans for the company.

Why it matters

Kress inherits a company with no clear succession plan and a leadership scandal unfolding in public, making her handling of Tuesday’s earnings call an early test of whether Nvidia’s AI-chip dominance can hold steady through a messy transition.