Colette Kress takes over as interim chief executive
Nvidia said in a brief online statement that Huang had resigned not only as chief executive but as president and as a board member, and it said his contributions to the company were “profound” and “immeasurable.” The announcement named Colette Kress as interim CEO. Kress is an executive vice president and chief financial officer of Nvidia.
Nvidia did not state a reason for Huang’s resignation. The departure follows reporting from The New York Times and others that Huang had a relationship with a Chinese woman who U.S. intelligence agencies think was recruited by Beijing as a spy. The Times reported a day before the resignation that Huang had a second affair, this time with a senior Nvidia executive.
NPR has not independently confirmed the spy allegations, and China denies them. John Ruwitch, NPR’s tech correspondent, reported that it remains unknown whether any Nvidia information or national security material might have been compromised. The United States bans the export of Nvidia’s best chips to China, which is why allegations that Huang was involved with someone who might have been a spy for China are alarming, Ruwitch said.
Huang was present at Nvidia’s founding 33 years ago and shepherded the company from a maker of niche video game graphics cards for computers into a company that enabled the AI boom. Nvidia makes the powerful chips that are the gold standard for AI, and they are in data centers everywhere.
Huang was, by all accounts, a micromanager who had his hand in decisions at the company, big and small, and dozens of senior employees looked to him for direct guidance, according to Ruwitch. Huang had no apparent succession plan. Stephen Witt, author of a book about Nvidia called “The Thinking Machine,” said the departure creates a huge hole in the company.
“There’s no obvious replacement. It’s not even clear NVIDIA can be the same kind of company without Jensen. I have a hard time imagining what NVIDIA looks like without Jensen,” Witt said.
Kress knows her way around Nvidia but is temporary, and she has to reassure staff and investors that Nvidia can still be Nvidia without Jensen Huang, Ruwitch said. The company reports its quarterly earnings Tuesday, which may offer the first public test of that reassurance.
Investors have been unsettled. As of Thursday afternoon, Nvidia’s share price was down about 11% since the close of trading Friday, before the reports escalated, Ruwitch reported. Nvidia’s main chipmaking rival, AMD, was up nearly 30% over the same period. Nvidia has been one of the drivers of the stock market’s bull run, and there are concerns that because so many companies rely on Nvidia technology, trouble at the company could put the AI boom at risk. Nvidia shares rebounded slightly from their lows after the resignation announcement, Ruwitch said.