Jensen Huang resigns immediately as NVIDIA CEO; CFO Colette Kress steps in as interim chief

NVIDIA's board announced on Nov. 12 that co-founder Jensen Huang has resigned as president, chief executive and a member of the board, effective immediately. Executive vice president and chief financial officer Colette Kress will serve as interim CEO and keep the CFO job until a permanent successor is named. The board said it will consider both internal and external candidates. The official release went out over GlobeNewswire at 8:48 a.m. Eastern time.

This is the first change in the chief executive's office in the company's 33-year history. Huang helped found NVIDIA in 1993 and has been CEO ever since. During the recent artificial-intelligence boom, NVIDIA's graphics processing units, or GPUs — chips that are especially good at running many calculations at once — became essential hardware for training and running large AI models, and the company became one of the world's most closely watched technology firms. Kress has been CFO since September 2013, after nearly 25 years in finance at Cisco and Microsoft. The board also appointed Harvey C. Jones as NVIDIA's first-ever chair. Jones has been a director since 1993 and previously served as CEO and executive chairman of chip-design software company Synopsys.

Jones said Kress "has a deep understanding of our business, customers, operations and financial position," is backed by an experienced leadership team, and that the board expects operations, customer commitments and the product roadmap to continue without interruption. Kress said she would build on "the extraordinary foundation Jensen created over the last 33 years," with the focus still on customers, partners, developers and shareholders. NVIDIA also said it will still report fiscal 2027 third-quarter results on Tuesday, Nov. 17, at about 1:20 p.m. Pacific time, followed by an earnings call at 2 p.m. Pacific.

The official statement does not explain why Huang resigned. TechCrunch reported that the move came a few days after Huang acknowledged an extramarital relationship that had raised national-security questions in U.S. coverage. Those are media reports; NVIDIA's own release does not mention them, and there is no public conclusive finding in the materials cited here.

The market reaction was swift. In a report published at 22:34 Beijing time, Chinese tech site IT Home said NVIDIA's stock once fell about 14% during U.S. trading, with roughly $600 billion of market value erased, and that the company's market capitalization slipped below $4 trillion; by the time of that report, the decline had narrowed to about 7.51%. Those figures reflect the market at the time of the report and can change as trading continues.

For everyday people, the change will not instantly alter a phone or a chatbot, but it sits behind many services people already use. Translation, search, writing and image tools often depend on large numbers of AI chips, and NVIDIA is one of the main suppliers. The board says the product roadmap will continue. Even so, an interim CEO and a public search for a permanent one mean a period of transition. Customers, developers and investors will now watch two things: what the Nov. 17 earnings report says about the outlook, and when a permanent CEO is named — and who it is.

Original sources published: NVIDIA, Nov 12, 2026, 21:48 Beijing time / 8:48 AM EST; IT之家 (IT Home, resignation report), Nov 12, 2026, 21:51 Beijing time / 8:51 AM EST; TechCrunch, Nov 12, 2026, 22:10 Beijing time / 9:10 AM EST; IT之家 (IT Home, market-value report), Nov 12, 2026, 22:34 Beijing time / 9:34 AM EST