Colette Kress Takes Over Nvidia as Interim CEO After Jensen Huang Resigns

Nvidia named CFO Colette Kress interim CEO on Thursday, hours after Jensen Huang resigned following revelations of an affair with an alleged Chinese spy and subsequent reporting that he had also been in an extramarital relationship with another company executive.

Kress, Nvidia's executive vice president and chief financial officer, will hold both the CEO and CFO titles until a permanent successor is named, according to a company announcement. The board is "initiating a search" for a permanent CEO "and will consider internal and external candidates." Nvidia gave no timeline for how long that search will take.

The abrupt transition puts one of the world's most valuable companies in the hands of a finance veteran who has spent 13 years at Huang's side.

Who is Colette Kress?

Kress joined Nvidia in 2013 as executive vice president and CFO, a title she has held ever since. Before Nvidia, she spent roughly 25 years in finance roles at technology companies including Cisco, Microsoft, and Texas Instruments. She earned her bachelor's degree at the University of Arizona and an MBA from SMU.

Her path to the CFO seat was long. Huang selected her for the job after a two-year search. According to reporting from The New York Times, her children — video game fans — initially encouraged her to take the Nvidia position.

In 2025, Kress crossed the billion-dollar net-worth mark, becoming one of a handful of CFOs to do so, according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index.

How does her background differ from Huang's?

The contrast is sharp. Huang is an electrical engineer by trade. Kress built her career in finance and broader business operations.

Over the past 13 years, Kress worked closely with Huang as Nvidia grew from a relatively small tech company into a behemoth whose market cap has at times exceeded Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and others.

Her defining skill in recent years, according to those who have followed the company, has been explaining to Wall Street and investors what exactly was happening at Nvidia as it transformed from a smaller chipmaker into the dominant force of the artificial intelligence boom. Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs) have served as the backbone of the technology behind the AI revolution.

That investor-facing credibility matters now more than usual. Nvidia stock has already been under pressure — it plunged 17.5% over five days before the resignation, and analysts have openly worried that CEO succession could pose a long-term threat to the share price. A new lawsuit added to the chaos.

What happens next?

The board's search has no announced deadline, and the field is undefined — internal and external candidates are both on the table. Kress's dual mandate as CEO and CFO gives the board breathing room, but it also concentrates an unusual amount of responsibility in one executive during the most scrutinized leadership transition in the company's history.

Until a permanent CEO is chosen, the woman who spent more than a decade translating Nvidia's rise for investors will now have to manage the fallout from the founder-era's abrupt end — and keep the market's confidence while she does it.