Jensen Huang has resigned as chief executive of Nvidia, the company he co-founded in 1993, and the board has put its chief financial officer, Colette Kress, in charge while it looks for a permanent replacement. The Verge has published the internal emails that announced the change. For the many businesses whose AI plans depend on Nvidia's chips and software, the immediate question is who now makes the decisions that Huang used to make alone.
According to The Verge, the resignation followed a board investigation into several extramarital affairs, including one with a direct report and one with an alleged Chinese spy. Huang has left both the chief executive role and the board. The board's memo, from Harvey Jones, says Jones himself will serve as Nvidia's first-ever chair of the board, and that the search for a successor will consider internal and external candidates. It describes Kress, chief financial officer for more than 13 years, as a key architect of the company's growth and capital strategy.
Kress's first message to staff is short and deliberately steady. She thanks employees for their resilience during what she calls an extraordinarily difficult period, says leadership will say more in the coming days, and announces a company meeting on 18 November at 9am Pacific time. Neither email mentions products, roadmaps or customers in any detail, which is normal for a first internal note but leaves outsiders reading between the lines.
The choice of interim chief matters. A finance chief rather than an engineering leader suggests the board's priority is stability with investors and customers while it searches. As The Verge's separate analysis notes, Huang had around 60 direct reports and no named deputy, so the gap is structural, not just personal. Analysts quoted there expect little short-term change because the product roadmap is set through 2027, but buyers of Nvidia hardware and the open-model and local-AI tools that rely on CUDA will be watching for any slowdown in decisions.
Much is still unknown. The board has not said how long the search will take, whether Kress is a candidate, or how responsibilities have been split below her. The allegations behind the investigation are reported but not publicly detailed by Nvidia, and The Verge corrected its own headline after first suggesting Kress was describing the period ahead rather than the one just past. The 18 November meeting is the next point at which the company may say more.