Zhidx (WeChat official account: zhidxcom)
Author | ZeR0
Editor | Mo Ying
Zhidx reported on November 12, that the NVIDIA board of directors has announced that Jensen Huang has resigned from the positions of President, CEO, and board member, effective immediately.
According to the announcement, Colette Kress, the current Executive Vice President and CFO of NVIDIA, has agreed to serve as the interim CEO. Colette Kress will continue to serve as Executive Vice President and CFO until a formal successor is appointed.
The NVIDIA board of directors has initiated the formal selection process for the next CEO, considering both internal and external candidates.
Since joining NVIDIA in September 2013, Colette Kress has served as Executive Vice President and CFO. During her tenure, she led the company's finance team and played a key role in NVIDIA's growth and development.
Before joining NVIDIA, Colette Kress had held financial positions at leading technology companies such as Cisco and Microsoft for nearly 25 years.
At the same time, the NVIDIA board of directors appointed Harvey C. Jones as the first chairman. Jones has over 30 years of experience as an entrepreneur, technology executive, and active venture investor, having previously served as CEO and Executive Chairman of Synopsys, an EDA giant.
"Colette has led NVIDIA through an extraordinary period of growth. She has a deep understanding of our business, customers, operations, and financial situation," said Harvey C. Jones, chairman of the NVIDIA board of directors. "She has a highly experienced leadership team that has played a crucial role in executing NVIDIA's strategy and advancing its technology roadmap. The board has confidence in Colette and the leadership team, and we look forward to the continued smooth operation of the company, its commitments to customers, partners, developers, and shareholders."
"NVIDIA's strength has always come from its employees. I will work with our leadership team to continue building on the outstanding foundation that Jensen Huang has established over the past 33 years," said Colette Kress, the interim CEO and CFO of NVIDIA. "We will continue to advance the work that is making NVIDIA a leader in accelerated computing and AI, and seize future opportunities. We will continue to focus on serving our customers, partners, developers, and shareholders."
The NVIDIA announcement stated: "Jensen Huang's contributions to NVIDIA are profound. NVIDIA is one of the most influential technology companies in the world. The board and company sincerely thank Jensen Huang for his outstanding contributions to the company and the industry."
NVIDIA is scheduled to release its Q3 2027 financial results around 1:20 PM PST on Tuesday, November 17, as planned, followed by a conference call at 2:00 PM.
At this point, Jensen Huang, who has taken the big result, has now faced the big consequence.
This week, Jensen Huang admitted to having an affair with a woman, which caused his long-established image of a devoted couple to collapse and had a negative impact on NVIDIA.
As the rumors continue to spread, NVIDIA has been falling continuously. Today, its stock price dropped over 9% in after-hours trading. In two days, NVIDIA's market value has cumulatively evaporated over $420 billion (approximately 280 billion RMB).
Other competitors have tasted the "Jensen blood馒头" (a Chinese idiom meaning to get nothing from a situation). Today, AMD's stock price rose over 7%, Broadcom rose nearly 4%, and Arm rose over 12%.
This incident directly turned Trump into Jensen Huang's spokesperson, with various high情商 (emotional intelligence) statements helping to compensate for the old Huang's situation, saying that Huang "has been bearing great pain."
With this statement, investors were immediately stunned, and a wave of lamentations followed: "The pain I've experienced from this relationship is no less than what Huang has endured." "I'm trapped, old Huang." "What about my financial losses?"
Regarding the next CEO of NVIDIA, from the board of directors to the general public, everyone is worried. Besides the appointed interim CEO, Jensen Huang's son, besides Cook, the former CEO of Apple, Johny Srouji, the chief hardware officer of Apple, Ian Buck, the vice president of NVIDIA, Arm CEO Rene Haas, AMD's chairman and CEO Su ZhiFeng, and Huang's two children have all been put on the list of candidates by media and netizens. There are also netizens who have suggested that Huang should rejoin his former employer AMD after being relieved of his duties. Even Elon Musk, this week, has been actively following the news and replied to a tweet suggesting he hire Huang with "That would be an honor." In the meantime, NVIDIA's management structure is highly flat, with about 60 executives reporting directly to Huang. The company has not yet publicly announced a clear succession plan. Now that Huang has resigned, it casts a huge question mark on NVIDIA's future. Huang was born in 1963 in Taiwan, China. He moved between Thailand and the United States during his childhood. He graduated from a high school in the United States at the age of 16. He holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Oregon State University and a master's degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University. He previously worked at AMD and LSI Logic. In 1993, at the age of 30, he and Chris Malachowsky, Curtis Priem, decided to start a business in a Denny's restaurant in San Jose, USA, to develop graphics chips. The initial business was not smooth. The first chip, NV1, failed. The second chip, NV2, was terminated, dragging the company into financial crisis. "We were only 30 days away from bankruptcy" later became one of Huang's classic quotes. It wasn't until 1997 that NVIDIA returned to the market with the release of RIVA 128. In 1999, NVIDIA launched GeForce 256 and promoted the "GPU" concept. In 2006, Huang insisted on developing CUDA, transforming graphics cards from gaming tools into general-purpose computing platforms. Huang's forward-looking decisions paved the way for NVIDIA's deep learning revolution in 2016. In 2016, AlexNet ignited the modern AI revolution on NVIDIA GPUs. By the end of 2022, the large model training storm sparked by ChatGPT brought a series of AI feasts, rapidly propelling NVIDIA to the peak of a 500 billion dollar market cap. Since 2022, NVIDIA's market cap has soared like a rocket: it broke through $100 billion in June 2023, surpassed $2 trillion and $3 trillion in 2024, and became the first company to reach $4 trillion in July 2025. It then surpassed $5 trillion in October of the same year. Since 1989, Huang Renxun, wearing his iconic black leather jacket, transformed a small graphics card company that was almost sold into a digital crude oil supplier for the AI era. He also became the longest-serving CEO in Silicon Valley's history. But now, Huang Renxun is ending it all with his personal scandals. The storm Huang Renxun is caught in is far more complex than just personal misconduct; it reflects broader issues surrounding NVIDIA, corporate governance, and geopolitics, putting pressure on the entire AI industry's market sentiment. NVIDIA, the second-highest valued global chip giant located at the heart of the global AI industry, is facing a major crisis unprecedented in its 33-year history. Today, it's still unclear where this turmoil will lead—perhaps Kresge will be promoted to the position permanently, or Huang Renxun will be investigated and then cleared to take the reins back, or it might truly be the handover to the next CEO. No matter the outcome, the issue has been put on the table—ultimately, a company whose fate is tied to one individual will inevitably suffer the massive shock when that legend falls.
