Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang resigns effective immediately, ending a 33-year run leading the chipmaker he co-founded. Nvidia named chief financial officer Colette Kress interim CEO and opened a search that will consider internal and external candidates.

The November 12 transition removes Huang from both the chief executive role and Nvidia's board as the company navigates an independent investigation and a volatile market reaction. Nvidia says its operations, customer commitments and product roadmap will continue without interruption.

Nvidia's announcement establishes four immediate changes:

• Huang leaves the president, CEO and director roles.
• Kress becomes interim CEO while remaining CFO.
• Harvey Jones becomes Nvidia's first board chair.
• The board begins a permanent CEO search.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Resigns Effective Immediately

Nvidia's official transition announcement says Huang resigned as president, chief executive and a member of the board. The release does not describe a severance arrangement or name a timetable for selecting his permanent replacement.

Huang founded Nvidia in 1993 and led its expansion from computer graphics into accelerated computing and AI infrastructure. That long tenure concentrated product strategy, partner relationships and public advocacy around one leader, making succession unusually consequential for the company.

Reuters reported that Nvidia shares fell more than 10% in premarket trading. The report valued the company at roughly $4 trillion and said Huang remained its fourth-largest investor with a stake of about 3.61%.

The price move reflects uncertainty rather than a demonstrated change in Nvidia's products. Its GPU roadmap, software ecosystem and supply agreements continue, but investors must now evaluate whether the leadership team can coordinate the same complex network of chipmakers, cloud providers, customers and AI laboratories.

Colette Kress Takes the Interim CEO and CFO Roles

Kress will keep her executive vice president and chief financial officer positions while serving as interim CEO. Holding both jobs preserves financial continuity, although it also places operating and finance responsibilities with one executive during the search.

Nvidia's executive biography says Kress joined the company in September 2013. She previously spent nearly 25 years in technology finance, including leadership roles at Cisco and Microsoft and earlier work at Texas Instruments.

The board also appointed Harvey C. Jones as Nvidia's first chair. Jones previously served as chief executive and executive chair of chip-design software company Synopsys, giving the new board structure an experienced semiconductor-industry operator separate from the interim chief executive.

Nvidia says Kress has a deep understanding of its customers, operations and financial position. The harder test will be strategic: a permanent chief must balance data-center growth, manufacturing constraints, product timing, developer support and increasingly political rules governing access to advanced chips.

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The Board Investigation Continues After the CEO Change

Nvidia announced an independent investigation on November 8 after reports that Huang had been targeted by a foreign intelligence effort. The board said then that it had no reason to believe national security or company secrets were compromised, while promising to examine the available information.

Two days later, the independent directors retained former acting U.S. attorney Joon H. Kim and the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to conduct the review. Nvidia has not said that the leadership transition ends or changes that process.

Reuters linked the resignation to reports about Huang's personal relationships and an alleged Chinese intelligence connection. Those allegations remain under review. Beijing has denied that the woman identified in reporting was a spy, and Nvidia has not announced that protected information was lost.

The distinction matters because the confirmed corporate actions are narrower than the unresolved claims. Huang has resigned, Kress is interim CEO, Jones is chair and the search is underway; the investigation must still establish whether any security, governance or conflict-of-interest rules were breached.

November 17 Earnings Become the First Continuity Test

Nvidia plans to report fiscal third-quarter 2027 results on November 17 at about 1:20 p.m. Pacific time, followed by an earnings call at 2 p.m. The event will give investors an early opportunity to hear how Kress and the leadership team describe demand, supply and succession.

The company's immediate commercial position remains strong: its accelerators, networking products and CUDA software underpin much of the AI industry's infrastructure. Leadership disruption can nevertheless affect long-term investment decisions, government negotiations and partnerships that depended heavily on Huang's direct involvement.

Attention will focus on three practical signals: whether product schedules remain intact, whether major customers alter commitments and how quickly the board defines the qualifications for a permanent CEO. A stable quarter would reduce operational concern without resolving the investigation or the strategic question of who follows Nvidia's founder.

The transition is therefore more than a personnel change. Nvidia must prove that the systems built during Huang's tenure can operate independently of him while preserving technical execution, customer confidence and compliance across an industry facing intense geopolitical scrutiny.

Illustrative feature image: Jensen Huang speaking at Stanford University on April 30, 2026. Photo by Anders Eidesvik, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Cropped and resized; this derivative remains CC BY-SA 4.0 and does not depict the November 12 resignation.