Jensen Huang resigns as Nvidia CEO after 33 years as Colette Kress steps in

Jensen Huang resigned as president and chief executive of Nvidia on Thursday and left its board, effective immediately, ending 33 years at the helm of the chipmaker he co-founded and built into a $4 trillion company that powered the artificial intelligence boom.

Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress will serve as interim CEO while keeping her finance role, and the board named Harvey C. Jones its first-ever chair, Nvidia said in its announcement. The board is starting a search for a permanent CEO and will consider internal and external candidates. The exit came four days after Nvidia said it was investigating Huang's affair with a woman described as an alleged asset of China's Ministry of State Security.

Kress has been Nvidia's chief financial officer since joining the company in September 2013 and has led its finance organization. Before Nvidia, she spent nearly 25 years in finance roles at technology companies including Cisco and Microsoft, the company said. CNBC reported that she also did a stint at Texas Instruments and holds a finance degree from the University of Arizona and an MBA from Southern Methodist University.

Jones joined Nvidia's board in 1993 and is a former CEO and chairman of chip-design software maker Synopsys, according to CNBC. In the release, he said the board expects "the company's operations, customer commitments and product roadmap to continue without interruption." Kress said she is "committed to building on the extraordinary foundation Jensen created over the last 33 years". Huang was not quoted in the release. The board thanked him for his contributions to the company and the industry.

Analysts have pointed to several internal leaders as potential permanent replacements, CNBC reported. They include Kress; Ian Buck, Nvidia's vice president and general manager of hyperscale; Bryan Catanzaro, vice president of applied deep learning; Chief Technology Officer Michael Kagan; and Chief Scientist Bill Dally.

The resignation follows a series of reports about Huang's private life. On Nov. 6, The New York Times and the Financial Times reported that Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, was a spy for China's Ministry of State Security who had been recruited to collect information on the Nvidia chief, WIRED reported. The Chinese government has rejected all claims that she was a spy. She has no known relation to Jensen Huang and previously held a senior position at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based AI company, according to WIRED. CNBC described her as a woman believed by the U.S. intelligence community to be a Chinese spy.

Huang, 63, sent a companywide email on Sunday acknowledging the affair, apologizing to his family and Nvidia employees and pledging cooperation with the internal investigation, WIRED reported. He provided no details about the relationship. CNBC reported that Huang denied allegations that he had compromised national security or Nvidia secrets. The board announced its investigation on Nov. 8 and said Tuesday that it had hired Wachtell Lipton to investigate the intelligence allegations. Late Wednesday, the Times reported that Huang also had a separate affair with a direct report at the chipmaker.

A source familiar with the matter told WIRED that the alleged relationship with a subordinate, along with Huang's business dealings with Megaspeed, likely played a greater role in the board's decision than the espionage allegations. The Associated Press reported that Huang resigned after his extramarital affair raised national security concerns.

The fallout reaches Washington. Huang formed a particularly close relationship with President Donald Trump and lobbied to allow chip exports to China, CNBC reported, and in May he joined Trump on a trip to China. U.S. intelligence officials reportedly briefed Trump on Huang's relationship with Alice Huang last year, but the president did not act on it, according to WIRED.

Investors have already been retreating. Nvidia stock fell 10% after the resignation was announced, CNBC reported. As of Wednesday's close, the shares were down about 7% this year and headed for a sixth straight weekly drop, the longest slump since 2012, and Nvidia has fallen behind Apple in the ranks of the world's largest companies. Nvidia's obligations to other firms are estimated at $400 billion, a web of financial relationships Huang built across the AI industry, CNBC reported.

Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 with Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem to bring realistic 3D graphics to personal computers. For decades the company was known mainly for gaming chips before it pivoted to building chips for artificial intelligence. In the summer of 2025, Nvidia became the first company in history to cross $4 trillion in value, and as of September 2026 it controlled about 90 percent of the GPU market, WIRED reported.

The leadership change does not move Nvidia's calendar. The company said it will report fiscal third-quarter results on Nov. 17 at about 1:20 p.m. PT, as previously scheduled, followed by its earnings call at 2 p.m. PT. Follow the story in our Tech Sector.