Nvidia’s board announced his exit on Thursday, November 12, and named Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress as interim CEO. Jensen Huang has resigned as Nvidia’s President and CEO and has also left the company’s board, with immediate effect. Kress will keep her CFO role until the board finds a permanent replacement.
The resignation follows weeks of mounting pressure on the 63-year-old, who co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and led it through the AI boom. On Sunday, November 8, Huang admitted to an extramarital affair with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based data centre firm Megaspeed. Kress has been Nvidia’s CFO since September 2013. Before that, she spent nearly 25 years in finance roles at Cisco and Microsoft.
The board said it will consider both internal and external candidates for the permanent job. US officials reportedly suspect her of spying for China. Nvidia’s announcement does not give a reason for his exit.
On Wednesday, fresh reports said he had also had a relationship with a married healthcare executive at Nvidia who reported to him.
He said the board has “full confidence in Colette and the leadership team” and expects the company’s operations, customer commitments and product roadmap “to continue without interruption.” Nvidia has also appointed Harvey C. Jones as the first-ever Chair of its board. Jones is a former CEO and Executive Chairman of chip design software maker Synopsys.
Kress said she is committed to “building on the extraordinary foundation Jensen created over the last 33 years. Nvidia shares fell nearly 7% in under a week, sliding to eight-month lows over national security concerns, and a proposed class action lawsuit accused the company of misleading shareholders about Huang’s ties to Alice Huang. A relationship with someone who reported to him appears to go against Nvidia’s code of conduct.
The board called Huang’s contributions “profound” and thanked him for his “immeasurable contributions to the company and the industry. On October 29, he described his interactions with her as “completely normal and not unusual,” the kind he has with many Chinese customers and executives. It said Huang would stay on as CEO and that it had no reason to believe company secrets had been compromised.
The trouble started with reports that US intelligence agencies believed Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, was passing information to Beijing. She is not related to Jensen Huang. Megaspeed is an Nvidia customer and has separately faced scrutiny over whether it helped restricted AI chips reach China. Beijing has denied using her to spy on Huang. At first, Huang played it down. Ten days later, he wrote to employees: “I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. Nvidia’s board then opened an independent investigation, overseen by a committee of independent directors with outside counsel. Huang was also reportedly facing an FBI investigation over the relationship. Join conversation Share your thoughts in the comments Be respectful · TOI community guidelines The fallout spread quickly. Wednesday’s report then added a separate problem. The board met that night to decide his future, and the White House was reportedly aware of the meeting. Less than a day later, Huang was out. Your child uses AI every day. But do they understand it? Find out in the TOI AI Masterclass.
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