Jensen Huang resigns as president, chief executive and a member of the board of Nvidia, effective immediately, the company said on Thursday. Chief financial officer Colette Kress will serve as interim CEO while remaining CFO. The board appointed Harvey C. Jones, a long-serving director and former Synopsys CEO, as its first chair.
Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and has led it for 33 years. The company is the dominant supplier of the GPUs that power the global artificial-intelligence build-out. Nvidia’s shares fell more than 10 percent in early trading after the announcement, extending losses that had already wiped hundreds of billions of dollars from its market value in recent days.
What the board said when Jensen Huang resigns
The board said it accepted Huang’s resignation on Wednesday. It is starting a search for a permanent chief executive and will consider both internal and external candidates. Kress has been Nvidia’s CFO since 2013. Before that she held finance roles at Cisco and Microsoft.
“NVIDIA’s strength has always come from its people, and together with our leadership team, I am committed to building on the extraordinary foundation Jensen created over the last 33 years,” Kress said in the company statement. The board said it expects operations, customer commitments and the product roadmap to continue without interruption. Nvidia is still scheduled to report quarterly earnings next Tuesday.
Why the resignation landed on Thursday
The move followed days of reporting about Huang’s personal conduct. Nvidia’s board opened an independent investigation after reports that Huang had a relationship with a Chinese businesswoman whom U.S. authorities suspect of ties to Chinese intelligence. On Wednesday the New York Times reported that Huang also had a relationship with a senior Nvidia executive who reported to him. Huang had previously acknowledged in a staff memo that he had been unfaithful to his wife.
Australian data-centre operators that rely on Nvidia GPUs for AI workloads — including NextDC, AirTrunk and the projects still moving through the planning system — now face a leadership transition at their main supplier. The company did not give a reason for the resignation beyond the board’s acceptance of it.
