Why did Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang resign, and who is Colette Kress?

Chief executive and co-founder of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, has announced his resignation after 33 years of leading the company. The decision comes after a tumultuous week, during which Huang apologized for being unfaithful to his wife and pledged cooperation with an independent board inquiry into reports of a foreign intelligence effort targeting him.

Huang also admitted to an extramarital affair with a senior Nvidia executive, in addition to his relationship with a Chinese national, Alice Huang, who allegedly served as an intelligence asset for the Chinese government. As a result of Huang's resignation, the company has appointed CFO Colette Kress as interim CEO, with the board considering both internal and external candidates for a permanent successor.

Kress expressed her commitment to building upon the foundation created by Huang over the past three decades, stating that Nvidia's strength lies in its people. Kress, who joined Nvidia in 2013, previously held finance roles at Cisco and Microsoft. The board recently appointed Harvey C. Jones, former CEO and executive chairman of Synopsys, as its first-ever chair.

Jones expressed confidence in Kress's ability to lead the company, noting that the board has full faith in the leadership team and expects operations, customer commitments, and the product roadmap to proceed without disruption. Huang's apology and the subsequent inquiry into potential intelligence involvement come amid a rapidly growing and competitive AI-chip market.

Founded in 1993 as a graphics-chip maker, Nvidia later adapted its GPUs for parallel computing through software such as CUDA. In its most recent quarter, ending on July 26, the company reported revenue of $96.2 billion, with $89 billion coming from data centers. The next set of results is expected on November 17.