The founder who turned a graphics company into the centre of the artificial-intelligence boom has left.
NVIDIA announced on November 12 that Jensen Huang has resigned as president, chief executive officer and a board member, effective immediately. Colette Kress, executive vice-president and chief financial officer since 2013, becomes interim chief executive while also keeping her finance role. The board is starting a search for a permanent successor and has appointed Harvey C. Jones as its first-ever chair.
The release gives no reason. It arrives days after Huang wrote to employees that he had been unfaithful to his wife, and after the board met to weigh his future. Shares had already fallen on the earlier reports. NVIDIA said operations, customer commitments and the product roadmap should continue without interruption.
The resignation follows two lines of reporting the board had placed under review. One involved Alice Huang, a former senior executive at Singapore-based customer Megaspeed, whom US intelligence officials have described as a Chinese intelligence asset. We profiled her earlier. The second, reported by the New York Times, concerned a relationship with Kimberly Powell, NVIDIA’s vice-president of healthcare, who reported directly to Huang. The board opened an independent investigation on November 8 “in light of recent reporting that founder and CEO Jensen Huang has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort.” As we examined, the bylaws allowed directors to remove the chief executive by majority vote, with or without cause.
Kress has been finance chief through NVIDIA’s rise as the dominant AI-chip supplier. The board said it has “full confidence” in her and the leadership team. Jones, a long-time technology executive and former chief executive of Synopsys, becomes the first separate chair. Results for the third quarter of fiscal 2027 remain set for November 17.
The permanent search is now the big question. The board will consider internal and external candidates. Investors will watch the November 17 call for continuity signals and any update on the earlier investigation. Huang’s exit ends a 33-year tenure as the company’s only chief executive.
Author: Grace Sharp
See Also:
Can NVIDIA’s Board Fire Jensen Huang?
Who Is Alice Huang? The Executive in the NVIDIA Affair Probe
