The hunt is on for a new Nvidia CEO. It comes after a whirlwind week, which saw the company head and co-founder, Jensen Huang, resign amid multiple allegations of extramarital affairs, including one that involved an alleged Chinese spy and two with company employees.
Nvidia immediately named Colette Kress, the company’s chief financial officer, as the interim CEO. It’s possible she could stay on permanently, but the company could also name another candidate for the full-time role. Names that have been floated include Ian Buck, who manages Nvidia’s AI hardware and software products, and Rene Haas, a former Nvidia employee and the current CEO of Arm Holdings, a UK-based chipmaker.
Whoever takes over from Huang will have tremendous sway in the burgeoning world of artificial intelligence. The entire AI ecosphere relies on Nvidia, which engineers advanced chips used to train AI models and power companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. Nvidia is also a central driver of the US economy and one of the world’s most valuable companies, with a market cap of around $۴tn.
Huang, who co-founded the company in ۱۹۹۳, is known as an ambitious and visionary CEO who had a hand in most all aspects of the business. He led in an unusual management style, having about ۶۰ direct reports, giving him more control over the company’s daily functions. His son and daughter also work at Nvidia, with his daughter seen as his possible proxy, but neither appear to have sufficient experience to take the helm.
Kress, ۵۹, joined Nvidia in ۲۰۱۳ as the CFO after working in finance roles at Texas Instruments, Microsoft and Cisco. She’s a regular contributor to the company’s quarterly earnings calls, and has overseen Nvidia go from a niche firm geared toward video game chips to a trillion-dollar AI juggernaut. People who know her describe Kress as a calming contrast to Huang’s often confrontational style, Reuters reported.
“Colette has helped lead Nvidia through a period of extraordinary growth and has a deep understanding of our business, customers, operations and financial position,” Harvey C Jones, the newly named chair of Nvidia’s board of directors, said in a statement on Thursday. “The board has full confidence in Colette and the leadership team.”
But that sentiment may not be shared by Huang. During a meeting this past summer, the CEO said Kress was “a deer in the headlights” and interrupted her presentation, a person familiar with the comments told the Wall Street Journal. Huang insinuated during that August meeting that Kress was not someone who could help him make decisions.
However, Kress praised Huang in a memo to employees on Thursday, saying she would continue “building on the extraordinary foundation Jensen created over the last ۳۳ years”.
Many investors, analysts and industry sources who spoke to Reuters questioned whether a finance executive could preserve the technological risk-taking that turned Nvidia into an AI chips powerhouse.
“Putting [Kress] in the interim role makes sense to keep the markets calm, but I don’t think she is the long-term visionary that Nvidia needs to continue its current trajectory,” said Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy.
Kress, who said in her memo that Nvidia’s “strength has always come from its people” , will serve as both the CEO and interim CFO until the board names a permanent successor.
The board said it was starting a search for Huang’s permanent replacement and is considering internal and external candidates. Along with Kress, Buck is seen as a possible successor. He has worked at Nvidia since ۲۰۰۴ and in charge of deploying generative AI in partnership with the world’s top AI companies, including Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, OpenAI and more.
Haas, the CEO of Arm Holdings, is also well-known at Nvidia, having worked there for seven years as a vice president and general manager before joining Arm in ۲۰۱۳. Lisa Su, the CEO of chipmaker AMD, is also being named as a possible replacement for Huang. Her company is Nvidia’s most direct and fierce competitor; she’s also a distant cousin to Huang.
Sunny Cheung, an analyst at the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation, said Kress could face congressional questions about the company’s oversight of chip sales involving Chinese military-linked institutions and south-east Asian intermediaries.
In a ۲۰۲۳ interview with an Israeli publication, Kress credited her two young sons with urging her to join Nvidia in ۲۰۱۳ because they knew its chips from their video games.
She became a billionaire in ۲۰۲۵ based on the value of her Nvidia equity, according to media reports, and Forbes said her net worth of $۱.۲ billion in mid-۲۰۲۶ put her in ۳۲nd place on its list of America’s richest self-made women.
Kress, who holds an undergraduate degree in finance and an MBA, was also named among the ۵۰ most powerful women in business on rankings compiled by Fortune and Forbes magazines in recent years.
Nvidia’s CEO turmoil comes as the company is set to report its third-quarter earnings next Tuesday.
Reuters contributed reporting
