Jensen Huang resigns as Nvidia CEO, CFO Colette Kress named interim chief
In brief
- Jensen Huang stepped down as Nvidia president, CEO and director, effective immediately; the company gave no reason.
- Colette Kress, Nvidia's CFO, becomes interim CEO while the board searches inside and outside the company.
- Harvey Jones, former Synopsys CEO, was named the board's first-ever chair.
- Nvidia shares fell 7.7% to $160.28 shortly after Thursday's open, per Yahoo Finance data.
- Third-quarter results will be reported as scheduled on Tuesday, Nvidia said.
Kress steps in, Jones takes the chair
Colette Kress has been Nvidia's CFO since 2013. She'll serve as interim CEO while remaining CFO as the board looks for a permanent successor from inside and outside the company. Kress said she was committed to building on the foundation Huang created over 33 years.
The board also named Harvey Jones (a former CEO and executive chairman of chip design software company Synopsys) as its first-ever chair.
"The Board has full confidence in Colette and the leadership team, and we expect the company's operations, customer commitments and product roadmap to continue without interruption," Jones said.
Nvidia thanked Huang for his contributions. It said it'll report third-quarter results as scheduled on Tuesday.
The reports that came before the exit
Huang's departure came four days after he admitted in a letter to staff that he'd been unfaithful to his wife, which led the board to open an independent investigation. The New York Times reported that Huang told the board he'd been intimate with Alice Huang, an executive at Megaspeed (a Singapore-based Nvidia customer). The Times had reported in October that U.S. officials concluded Alice Huang was a Chinese intelligence asset, and the Financial Times reported that a U.S. government memo said the two had been romantically involved. China has denied the allegations.
On Wednesday, the Times reported Huang had also had a relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of health care, who reports to him. The Wall Street Journal reported the board was preparing to oust him. Lawmakers had threatened to subpoena Huang.
Nvidia, again, gave no reason for the resignation.
Shares, a lawsuit and an open succession
Nvidia shares were down 7.7% at $160.28 shortly after Thursday's open, having fallen as low as $148.80, according to Yahoo Finance data. Decrypt reported the company lost about $430 billion in market value over two days earlier in the week. Nvidia and Huang also face a proposed shareholder class action.
There's no obvious successor. Huang ran Nvidia with about 60 direct reports and had said he didn't believe in succession planning. Before the announcement, a person inside the company told the FT that naming Kress interim CEO would be the simplest option, and the paper's sources also named Ian Buck (who runs Nvidia's data center business) and Arm CEO Rene Haas, a former Nvidia executive, as possible candidates.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Huang remains Nvidia's largest shareholder, with a stake of about 3.6%.
