- Colette Kress named interim CEO after Jensen Huang's sudden resignation
- Huang resigned following reports of extramarital affairs linked to espionage concerns
- Kress will retain her CFO role while the board searches for a permanent CEO
Colette Kress, Nvidia Corp.'s chief financial officer since 2013, will run the company as interim CEO following the abrupt resignation of co-founder Jensen Huang on Thursday. Huang's exit followed reports of two extramarital affairs, one of them with a woman US officials suspect of being a Chinese intelligence operative.
Kress will stay on as CFO while the board looks for a permanent CEO, a search that will include both internal and external candidates.
“NVIDIA's strength has always come from its people, and together with our leadership team, I am committed to building on the extraordinary foundation Jensen created over the last 33 years,” Kress said in the company's statement.
Harvey C. Jones, newly named as Nvidia's first-ever board chair, said Kress has “a deep understanding of our business, customers, operations and financial position,” and that the board has “full confidence” in her.
The Voice Wall Street Already Knows
Kress joined Nvidia as executive vice president and CFO in September 2013. Since then she has appeared beside Huang on every quarterly earnings call. Huang set out the product vision, and Kress turned it into guidance that investors could model.
Her time as CFO has spanned one of the biggest growth runs in corporate history. Nvidia's revenue was about $4.13 billion in the fiscal year she joined and nearly $216 billion in fiscal 2026.
Huang was clear about why he hired her. “We have searched extensively for the right candidate and are thrilled to have Colette join us,” he said when her appointment was announced in 2013. “She brings fantastic experience, excellent financial management skills and deep industry knowledge to NVIDIA.”
Kress has said joining Nvidia was a leap. “When I started at Nvidia, it was the smallest company that I'd ever worked for,” she told Fortune in 2022. “It's gotten quite large, but the focus is on, how do you think about the future and make sure we're ready for it to scale?”
Kress spent close to 25 years in finance at some of the largest technology companies before joining Nvidia. She started her career at Texas Instruments, where she spent about eight years in finance roles. She moved to Microsoft in 1997, and in 2006 became CFO of its Server and Tools division, in charge of the unit's financial strategy, planning and reporting. In 2010 she joined Cisco as senior vice president and CFO of its Business Technology and Operations Finance organisation, where she handled financial strategy and business development. She left for Nvidia three years later.
She has a bachelor's degree in finance from the University of Arizona and an MBA from Southern Methodist University.
‘Steady the ship'
Analysts and governance experts had named Kress as the most likely stopgap even before the board acted.
“Colette Kress is the obvious choice to steady the ship,” said Josh Gilbert, lead analyst at eToro, calling her “a familiar and trusted voice for the market at a time when it badly needs one.”
Shawn Cole, president of executive search firm Cowen Partners, said a CFO with her experience would be a logical pick “if the board's immediate priorities were continuity, investor confidence, and operational stability.”
Wedbush's Dan Ives has long praised her. “The CFO leadership at Nvidia from Colette Kress has been instrumental in Nvidia's success with Wall Street, and is key to Jensen's vision,” he told Fortune in 2024. “She is extremely well respected both internally at Nvidia and across the tech industry.”
Raymond James struck a similar note in a client note: “Nvidia is more than just its CEO.”
The open question is who will lead Nvidia's technology roadmap, the role Huang filled as both founder and chief architect. Kress is a finance executive, not an engineer.
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