Jensen Huang Resigns as Nvidia CEO, With CFO Colette Kress Named Interim Chief

Jensen Huang has resigned as CEO of Nvidia, ending a 33-year tenure at the helm of the chipmaker he co-founded, after reports of affairs with a suspected Chinese spy and a senior company executive.

Huang has stepped down as president, CEO and a member of the board, effective immediately, Nvidia said on Thursday. Colette Kress, Nvidia's chief financial officer since 2013, will serve as interim CEO while remaining CFO, as the board searches for a permanent successor from both inside and outside the company. Nvidia did not give a reason for Huang's resignation, but thanked him for his "immeasurable contributions to the company and the industry."

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.

Kress said she was "committed to building on the extraordinary foundation Jensen created over the last 33 years." Nvidia will report its third-quarter results as scheduled on Tuesday, the company said.

Nvidia shares were down 7.7% at $160.28 shortly after the market opened on Thursday, having fallen as low as $148.80, according to Yahoo! Finance data.

How Huang's departure unfolded

Huang's departure comes four days after he acknowledged in a letter to staff that he had been unfaithful to his wife, prompting Nvidia's board to open an independent investigation. He had told the board that he had been intimate with Alice Huang, an executive at Singapore-based Nvidia customer Megaspeed, The New York Times reported.

The Times had reported in October that U.S. officials had concluded Alice Huang was a Chinese intelligence asset, while the Financial Times later reported that a U.S. government memo said the two had been romantically involved. China has denied the allegations.

On Wednesday, the Times reported that Huang had also had a relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of health care, who reports to him. The Wall Street Journal later reported that the board was preparing to oust him, adding to the pressure on the CEO.

The scandal has wiped hundreds of billions of dollars off Nvidia's market value, with the company losing about $430 billion in two days earlier this week. Nvidia and Huang also face a proposed shareholder class action, and lawmakers had threatened to subpoena him.

What next for Nvidia?

Huang ran Nvidia with about 60 executives reporting directly to him and has said he did not believe in succession planning, leaving the company without an obvious successor.

Prior to the announcement of Huang's resignation, one person inside the company had told the Financial Times that naming Kress as interim CEO would be the simplest option. Other potential candidates cited by the paper's sources include Ian Buck, who runs Nvidia's data center business, and Arm CEO Rene Haas, a former Nvidia executive.

Huang remains Nvidia's largest shareholder, with a stake of about 3.6%, according to the Journal.