Jensen Huang resigns as Nvidia CEO; Kress named interim chief
Jensen Huang resigned as Nvidia chief executive, effective immediately, after the board met to weigh his future following reports of two extramarital affairs. Shares fell more than 10% in premarket trading.
The resignation
Nvidia said on Thursday that Jensen Huang has resigned as president, chief executive officer and a member of the board, effective immediately. Chief financial officer Colette Kress will serve as interim chief executive while keeping her finance role, and the board has begun a search for a permanent successor, considering internal and external candidates.
The board also appointed Harvey C. Jones, a longtime technology executive and board member, as its first-ever chair. The search will be overseen by Jones, according to Barron's. Nvidia's announcement did not directly address the allegations surrounding Huang.
A week of mounting pressure
Pressure had been mounting on Huang for days. On Sunday, November 8, he admitted to an extramarital affair with Alice Huang, a former executive at the Singapore-based cloud company Megaspeed, whom U.S. authorities have concluded was a Chinese intelligence asset. The two are not related, and Beijing has denied she is a spy.
The controversy escalated on Wednesday, when the New York Times reported that Huang also had an affair with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of health care, who reports to him. Earlier in November, the board had launched a probe, led by independent directors with outside legal counsel, into whether Huang had been targeted by a foreign intelligence operation, and expressed confidence in him at the time. The Wall Street Journal reported the board was preparing to oust him, and the board met on Wednesday evening to consider his future. President Donald Trump said on Sunday that Huang had "done an amazing job for our country."
- Premarket fallMore than 10%
- After-hours fall WednesdayMore than 8%
- Wednesday close$173.73
- Bernstein valuation$200, cut from $400
- Third-quarter resultsNovember 17
Shares slide
Nvidia shares fell more than 10% in premarket trading on Thursday, weighing on the broader market and wiping hundreds of billions of dollars off the company's market value, according to the Wall Street Journal. The stock had already slid more than 8% in after-hours trading on Wednesday, from a close of $173.73.
Bernstein halved its valuation of Nvidia, cutting it to $200 from $400. Huang, who co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and is its fourth-largest investor with a stake of about 3.61%, has said he does not believe in succession planning, leaving no clear candidate waiting in the wings.
What happens next
The board must now find a permanent chief executive for a company worth about $4 trillion that sits at the center of the artificial intelligence boom. Huang's exit also raises questions for U.S. chip export policy, given his push to preserve access to the Chinese market and his close ties with President Trump, and for the AI ecosystem he helped bankroll by pouring Nvidia's cash into cloud providers, suppliers and leading AI labs.
Investor sentiment toward AI stocks was already shaky, as soaring cash burn and rising debt at traditionally cash-rich tech giants fuel doubts over whether the AI boom will pay off. Nvidia confirmed it will still publish its third-quarter results on Tuesday, November 17, as scheduled — the next hard test of the business without its founder at the helm.
