Jensen Huang has resigned as Nvidia’s president, chief executive officer and board member, effective immediately. The company’s board named Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress as interim CEO and launched a search for a permanent successor that will include both internal and external candidates.
Kress will retain her responsibilities as executive vice president and CFO while leading the company during the transition. Nvidia also appointed Harvey C. Jones as its first-ever board chair, placing the leadership of the board and the interim management of the business in separate hands.
The company’s announcement did not give a reason for Huang’s resignation or set a deadline for selecting a permanent chief executive. His departure ends a 33-year tenure that spanned Nvidia’s development from a graphics-chip company into a central supplier of the computing infrastructure used to build and run artificial intelligence systems.
The board said it expects Nvidia’s operations, customer commitments and product roadmap to proceed without interruption. Jones expressed confidence in Kress and the existing leadership team, pointing to her knowledge of the company’s business, customers, operations and finances. Those assurances describe the board’s expectations for the transition, rather than a change to Nvidia’s technology plans.
Kress joined Nvidia in September 2013 as executive vice president and chief financial officer. She has led its finance organization through a period of substantial expansion. Before joining the company, she spent nearly 25 years in technology finance roles, including positions at Cisco and Microsoft. Her interim appointment puts an experienced member of Nvidia’s leadership team in charge while the board evaluates longer-term candidates.
Jones brings experience as a technology executive, entrepreneur and venture investor. His previous roles include chief executive officer and executive chairman of Synopsys, a supplier of software used in semiconductor design. Nvidia described his appointment as the first time it has designated a chair of the board.
The management change comes at a company whose hardware and software are deeply embedded in AI development. Graphics processing units, originally associated with rendering computer graphics, can perform many calculations in parallel. That capability has made them important tools for training neural networks and serving the resulting models. Nvidia’s CUDA software platform also gives developers tools for using its processors beyond graphics workloads.
In outlining her priorities, Kress committed to continuing Nvidia’s work in accelerated computing and AI while serving customers, partners, developers and shareholders. The announcement did not identify changes to individual products or customer agreements.
Nvidia kept its next financial reporting date unchanged. It plans to release third-quarter fiscal 2027 results on November 17 at approximately 1:20 p.m. Pacific time, followed by an earnings call at 2 p.m. The board has not announced when it expects to complete the CEO search.
Sources: NVIDIA Newsroom, Axios, Semafor, Axios