Santa Clara, 13 November. Jensen Huang, founder of the US company Nvidia, has resigned as president and chief executive officer and left the board of directors, with the resignation taking effect immediately, the company’s board of directors announced on 12 November.
The statement gives no reasons for his departure.
Colette Kress, Nvidia’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, has agreed to serve as interim chief executive. She will keep her current post until the board names a permanent successor. The board is starting a search and promises to consider candidates both inside and outside the company. Kress has worked at Nvidia since September 2013 and has led its finances throughout that time. Before that she spent nearly 25 years in finance roles at technology companies, including Cisco and Microsoft.
At the same time the board of directors appointed its chair for the first time in the company’s history. The post went to Harvey Jones, an entrepreneur and venture investor who was formerly chief executive officer and executive chairman of Synopsys. “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 what Huang had created over the last 33 years and that the company’s focus remained on customers, partners, developers and shareholders. The board thanked Huang for his contributions to the company and the industry. Nvidia will report its results for the third quarter of fiscal 2027 as previously scheduled, on Tuesday, 17 November.
The resignation was preceded by two statements from the board of directors. First, on 8 November, it announced an independent investigation following reports that Huang had been the target of a foreign intelligence effort. At the time the board wrote that it had no reason to believe that either national security or Nvidia’s secrets had been compromised, and that it had confidence in Huang and his team. Then, on 10 November, the independent directors said they had retained Joon H. Kim, former acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and his law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to conduct the investigation. The statement on the resignation says nothing about the progress of the investigation.
What it means: The company has changed its leader five days before its quarterly report. The board of directors, which on 8 November declared its confidence in Huang, accepted his resignation on 12 November and did not explain the reasons. No results of the investigation launched over the reports about foreign intelligence have been announced.
Background: Huang visited Astana on 23 October. President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev awarded him the Order of Dostyk and accepted his proposal to make Kazakhstan a centre of physical artificial intelligence. Later, on 27 October, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education reported a proposal to create a regional NVIDIA Physical AI Hub in the country. Nvidia’s statement on the resignation does not mention these plans. On 10 November the company’s shareholders filed a lawsuit against Nvidia and Huang in federal court in San Jose.
We have also reported on how Nvidia launched a review over reports of a spy operation against Huang, on how shareholders sued the company and its chief and on the proposal to open a regional NVIDIA physical AI hub in Kazakhstan.
