It's an earthquake in tech. The Nvidia board announced this Thursday that Jensen Huang has resigned from his positions as president, CEO, and board member, effective immediately.

The co-founder was therefore pushed out after revelations about two alleged relationships, one of which involved a woman suspected of spying for China.

To replace him, the board chose Colette Kress, the woman who has managed Nvidia's finances for thirteen years. A manager rather than an engineer, who has accompanied the entire explosion of the company driven by AI. Her mission is however temporary: according to the statement, the board has launched the recruitment of a permanent CEO and will consider both internal and external candidates.

A first in 33 years

Since its creation in 1993, Nvidia had only known one leader. Jensen Huang held the positions of president and CEO since the company's founding. Colette Kress therefore becomes the first person after him to lead Nvidia, and the first woman, thus.

In the same statement, the board also appointed Harvey C. Jones to a position that did not exist until now: chairman of the board. According to Harvey Jones, cited in the statement, Colette Kress helped lead Nvidia " through an extraordinary period of growth ".

Colette Kress is not an engineer: she has spent her entire career in the finance of tech giants. According to the official document published upon her recruitment, she first spent eight years at Texas Instruments, in various financial positions.

She then joined Microsoft, where she stayed from 1997 to 2010. Since 2006, she served as the financial director of the Servers and Tools division, responsible for financial strategy, planning, and reporting. In 2010, she moved to Cisco as vice president and financial director of one of its divisions. In terms of education, she holds a degree in finance from the University of Arizona and an MBA from Southern Methodist University in Texas.

The guardian of the AI boom's finances

Colette Kress joined Nvidia in September 2013 at the age of 46 as executive vice president and chief financial officer. Her recruitment ended more than two years of searching: the position had been held on an interim basis since her predecessor left in 2011. At the time, Nvidia mainly sold graphics cards for PCs.

In thirteen years, she managed the finances during the company's transformation into a giant in AI chips. According to the official results published by the company, for the fiscal year 2025 (February 2024 to January 2025), Nvidia's revenue surged by 114%, reaching $130.5 billion.

This rise also made her wealthy. Her participation in Nvidia was worth 977 million dollars as of October 31, 2026, according to Zonebourse.

An interim role, not (yet) a succession

Colette Kress does not fully replace Jensen Huang. The statement presents her as interim CEO and CFO: she holds both positions. She promised to build on « the extraordinary foundations » laid by Jensen Huang in 33 years. « We will continue to develop the technologies that made NVIDIA a leader in accelerated computing and AI, and to seize the opportunities that are available to us. Our priority remains serving our customers, partners, developers, and shareholders. », she also assured.

« Colette has contributed to guiding NVIDIA through an exceptional period of growth and has in-depth knowledge of our business, our customers, our operations, and our financial situation », said Harvey Jones, chairman of NVIDIA's board of directors.

The search for a permanent CEO has already begun. According to Bloomberg, Nvidia is working with an external recruitment firm. A significant challenge: before this crisis, the board had no clear succession plan. It remains to be seen whether Colette Kress will be a candidate for the position.

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