Jensen Huang Called His Successor "a Deer in the Headlights"

Jensen Huang described Collette Kress, the CFO who has now replaced him as Nvidia's interim CEO, as "a deer in the headlights" during a summer presentation, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing an anonymous source.

The comment came during a meeting with Nvidia's finance team. The agenda covered Nvidia's plan to offer guarantees worth billions of dollars to data center operators that could not afford to buy its chips upfront. Huang reportedly went further. He said Kress was a person who could not help him steer strategy or decision-making.

Who is Collette Kress?

Kress has spent more than 13 years at Nvidia. Before that, she served as SVP and CFO of Cisco's Business Technology Operations Finance. She now holds the top job on an interim basis while the company searches for a permanent chief executive to replace Huang, who ran Nvidia for over 33 years.

The Wall Street Journal report paints a picture of a CFO who pushed back on how the company structured its deals. Kress questioned Nvidia's program-focused, credit-based agreements that involved Huang's son-in-law, Nico Caprez, according to the report. Her questions were practical, not political. She wanted to know how to decide which deals were beneficial, how to value the guarantees, and how to determine returns.

She also acted on those doubts. Earlier in the year, Kress scaled back Nvidia's commitment to OpenAI's ambitious Ohio data center project. Nvidia had been in talks to provide $250 billion in credit to OpenAI. It ended up committing $105 billion — less than half the figure under discussion.

Why did Huang resign?

Huang resigned Thursday after reports of two extramarital affairs. One of them involved Kimberly Powell, the company's VP for healthcare. After the resignation, Reuters reported a third affair with another employee.

The company is also investigating a possible Chinese espionage plot, according to the report.

The timing matters. Nvidia is mid-transition on both leadership and deal strategy. The interim CEO inherits a company that guaranteed billions to data center customers, renegotiated a $250 billion OpenAI credit package down to $105 billion, and must still find its footing after more than three decades under one chief executive.

The friction between Huang and Kress, as described by the Journal's source, frames what comes next. The board must decide whether the executive Huang doubted is the right person to make those calls permanently — or whether her scrutiny of the guarantee program and the Caprez-linked deals signals exactly the discipline Nvidia now needs.