Jensen Huang Steps Down as Nvidia CEO After 33 Years at the Helm

Jensen Huang has stepped down as CEO of Nvidia. The company announced that he resigned as president, chief executive officer, and member of the board, effective immediately. The decision comes amid the scandal over his affair with a former Megaspeed executive whom U.S. intelligence suspects of working with Chinese intelligence services.

Colette Kress, Nvidia’s CFO since 2013, has become interim CEO. She will lead the company until the board finds a permanent successor, and she’ll keep her CFO role in the meantime. Before Nvidia, Kress spent more than 25 years at Cisco, Microsoft, and other companies.

The board has already started looking for a new CEO and will consider both internal and external candidates. Nvidia also has a board chair for the first time in its history: Harvey Jones, the former CEO and executive chairman of Synopsys.

Officially, Huang resigned on his own. According to NPR and other outlets, though, the board effectively pushed him out.

The scandal began in late October, when The New York Times published an investigation into Huang’s possible ties to Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed. U.S. intelligence suspects she may have been recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security to keep tabs on Nvidia’s CEO. Megaspeed itself is suspected of smuggling Nvidia AI chips into China around U.S. export controls. On November 8, Huang admitted to the affair with the former Megaspeed executive and publicly apologized to his wife, children, and employees, and the board opened an independent investigation.

The scandal hit the stock hard. Since its October 6 record, Nvidia has lost about $1.7 trillion in market value. Huang wasn’t the only factor: investors also have doubts about whether AI spending will pay off. After the resignation news, Nvidia shares fell more than 10% in early trading.

Jensen Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 with Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem and led the company for all 33 years of its existence. Under him, Nvidia grew from a small graphics chip maker into one of the world’s most valuable companies. It created GeForce graphics cards, which became the standard for gamers, and later became the leading supplier of chips for artificial intelligence. Huang was also instantly recognizable for his signature leather jacket, which he wore at every Nvidia keynote.

The board’s investigation into whether the situation posed a national security threat is still ongoing. Its findings haven’t been released yet.