Nvidia Names CFO Colette Kress Interim CEO as Huang Exits After 33 Years

Nvidia named CFO Colette Kress interim CEO on Thursday after Jensen Huang resigned as president, chief executive and board member, ending a 33-year tenure at the company he built into a $4 trillion chipmaker.

The board accepted Huang's resignation on Wednesday, effective immediately, according to Nvidia's official release. The announcement gave no reason for the departure. Kress will keep the CFO title while serving as interim chief executive.

Investors reacted immediately and sharply. The stock fell more than 13% at the open, CNBC reported, after closing Wednesday at $173.73. Nvidia's announcement on X, posted by the NVIDIA Newsroom account on November 12, 2026, linked directly to the transition release.

What does the board promise customers?

The board's message to customers and partners is continuity. New board chair Harvey Jones said in the release that the board expects "the company's operations, customer commitments and product roadmap to continue without interruption."

Nvidia will report third-quarter results on November 17 as scheduled. That date now doubles as Kress's first public test as interim CEO, when she presents quarterly results and takes analyst questions on the earnings call.

The release thanked Huang for his "immeasurable contributions" and called Nvidia "one of the most consequential technology companies in the world." Kress said she is committed to building on "the extraordinary foundation Jensen created over the last 33 years."

Who is Colette Kress?

Kress has been Nvidia's executive vice president and CFO since September 2013, a 13-year run atop the finance function of the world's most valuable chipmaker. Before Nvidia, she spent nearly 25 years in finance roles at Cisco, Microsoft and other technology companies.

That track record is why the board turned to her. Dan Ives of Yorkville Ives & Co. told CNBC that for now, "to steady the ship, she's the one." Ives added that longer term the company will "probably" look outside for a permanent chief executive.

The board is searching for a permanent CEO and will consider both internal and external candidates. It has not said when it expects to name a successor.

Who is Harvey Jones?

Harvey Jones, a board member since 1993 and a former CEO and executive chairman of Synopsys, becomes the first person to hold the newly separated chair role. His 33 years on Nvidia's board span nearly the entire Huang era, which gives the continuity message an institutional anchor: the two people now steering the company represent more than six decades of combined Nvidia tenure.

Why did Huang resign?

The release gave no reason. One data point stands out: on November 8, the board opened an independent review of recent reporting about Huang. At that time, the board said it had no reason to believe national security or Nvidia's secrets were compromised.

The timeline is compressed. The review opened November 8. The board accepted the resignation Wednesday. The announcement came Thursday. The stock dropped more than 13%. Four dates, one week, and the abrupt end of the longest-running founder-CEO tenure in the semiconductor industry's current generation.

The stakes for the market are difficult to overstate. Huang leaves a company with a $4 trillion valuation, the central supplier of the GPUs (graphics processing units, the chips that train and run AI models) on which most of the AI industry depends. An unexplained CEO exit at that scale moves the entire sector, and it did on Thursday.

How do customers and rivals react?

The change reaches Nvidia's biggest customers. Elon Musk said on SpaceXSI's August earnings call that the company would build exclusively on Nvidia. On October 26, SpaceXSI committed to a roughly $40 billion lease of Nvidia's Vera Rubin chips, with deliveries starting in the first half of 2027.

That commitment now sits under a management transition with no named permanent CEO. The board's "without interruption" pledge on the product roadmap speaks directly to contracts like it: Vera Rubin deliveries are a 2027 event, and customers will judge the transition by whether that schedule holds.

Rivals moved the other way on Thursday. AMD rose about 3% and Broadcom gained more than 5%, CNBC reported. The pattern is straightforward: uncertainty at the dominant AI-chip supplier is read as opportunity for the challengers.

What happens on November 17?

Kress's first test comes November 17, when she presents third-quarter results and fields questions on the earnings call as interim CEO. Analysts will press on three fronts: the status of the independent review opened November 8, the timeline for naming a permanent successor, and the state of the Vera Rubin roadmap that underpins commitments like SpaceXSI's $40 billion lease.

The board has not said when it expects to name a permanent successor. Until it does, Nvidia is run by a CFO-interim-CEO who joined in September 2013 and a chair who joined the board in 1993, holding a $4 trillion company steady while the market decides what Huang's exit means.