Nvidia said Thursday that Jensen Huang has resigned as president, chief executive and a member of the board, effective immediately, and that longtime chief financial officer Colette Kress will serve as interim CEO while the board searches for a permanent successor, according to an official company statement.
The Santa Clara chipmaker’s board appointed Harvey C. Jones as its first-ever chair. Jones, whom the company described as an entrepreneur, technology executive and venture investor for more than 30 years, previously served as chief executive and executive chairman of Synopsys. Kress has been Nvidia’s executive vice president and CFO since she joined in September 2013, after finance roles at Cisco and Microsoft, and will keep the CFO title while she serves as interim chief, the company said. The board will consider internal and external candidates. “The Board has full confidence in Colette and the leadership team, and we expect the company’s operations, customer commitments and product roadmap to continue without interruption,” Jones said. Kress said she was “committed to building on the extraordinary foundation Jensen created over the last 33 years.” The statement called Huang’s contributions “profound” and did not mention the investigations or reported affairs that have surrounded him this week.
CNBC reported that Nvidia shares plunged more than 13% at the open, that the company’s market value dropped below $4 trillion, and that the session was on pace for Nvidia’s worst day since January 2025. CNBC also said shares closed Wednesday at $173.73, down from a closing high of $239.24 on Oct. 6, a decline of $2 trillion in market value from that early-October peak, and that the company had lost more than $740 billion in market value since Friday’s close. The Guardian, in a later accounting of the morning tape, said the stock was down 7% in morning trading after a partial rebound, wiping more than $320 billion off the company’s value on the day and more than $600 billion for the week, valuing it at about $3.9 trillion. Those figures are the outlets’ own and were reported at different points in the session.
The resignation follows an independent board investigation, previously assigned to Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, into Huang’s relationship with Alice Huang, a Chinese citizen and Nvidia customer who U.S. intelligence agencies suspect is a Chinese asset, the Guardian reported, and a New York Times report late Wednesday that Huang also had an affair with Kimberly Powell, a senior Nvidia health-care executive. CNBC described Powell as vice president of health care; the Guardian called her president of healthcare. Huang, 63, apologized Sunday for being “unfaithful to my wife,” CNBC reported, without detailing the relationship with Alice Huang, who is not related to him. The official statement announced no finding and gave no reason for the resignation. Nvidia will report third-quarter fiscal 2027 results on Tuesday, Nov. 17, at about 1:20 p.m. PT, followed by an earnings call at 2 p.m. PT, the company said.