Nvidia said on Thursday that Jensen Huang had resigned as president, chief executive and board member with immediate effect, ending a 33-year run at the chipmaker he co-founded in 1993. The board named chief financial officer Colette Kress, a 13-year company veteran, as interim CEO, and appointed longtime director Harvey Jones as its first-ever board chair. Nvidia said it will weigh internal and external candidates for a permanent successor. Kress stays on as CFO while running the company.
The exit caps a week of disclosures about Huang's personal life, including reports of two extramarital relationships, one involving a businesswoman US intelligence officials suspect of spying for China. Nvidia's board opened an independent investigation into whether Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort before it accepted his departure. Shares fell as much as 14 percent at the opening bell on Thursday before closing about 4 percent lower.
The handover lands at an awkward moment for the AI buildout. Nvidia's GPUs sit behind most frontier model training and a large share of inference, and the company reports earnings next week. Lawmakers have also asked the Commerce Department for documents on H200 supply channels to China, and Huang has agreed to testify before Congress. For founders renting Nvidia capacity, the immediate question is whether contracts, pricing and allocation hold through a leadership transition with no clear end date.