Nvidia said it was investigating a possible foreign intelligence effort targeting Huang
Nvidia said Thursday that co-founder Jensen Huang has resigned and that longtime finance chief Colette Kress will lead the California-based chipmaker as interim CEO.
Kress takes over a company whose high-end chips have emerged as the leading building blocks for artificial intelligence. As CFO, she was a key architect of the financing deals Nvidia reached with many of its biggest customers, which today include AI companies such as Anthropic and CoreWeave.
Huang resigned after reports of his extramarital affairs came into the spotlight this week. He faced growing calls to step down after The New York Times reported on his relationship with a woman alleged to be a Chinese spy.
Late Wednesday, the Times and later other outlets reported that Huang was said to have had another affair with an Nvidia employee.
In a statement Thursday about her new post, Kress said Nvidia’s “strength has always come from its people” and that she was “committed to building on the extraordinary foundation Jensen created over the last 33 years.” She added that the company will “continue advancing the work that has made NVIDIA a leader in accelerated computing and AI.”
Kress first joined Nvidia in 2013 and has served as the company’s executive vice president and chief financial officer since. Before Nvidia, she worked at Cisco, Microsoft and Texas Instruments in a variety of roles, according to her executive bio on the company’s website.
Nvidia did not directly address the affairs in Thursday’s announcement. But over the weekend, the company said it was investigating whether Huang was “the target of a foreign intelligence effort,” and the then-CEO separately apologized for being unfaithful to his wife.
China’s Foreign Ministry has dismissed the spying allegations.
Huang co-founded Nvidia more than three decades ago and had been chief executive until Thursday’s announcement.