Nvidia named finance chief Colette Kress interim CEO on Thursday after Jensen Huang resigned as president, chief executive and board member, ending a 33-year tenure at the company he built into a $4 trillion chipmaker.
The board’s message to customers and partners was continuity. In its release, new board chair Harvey Jones said the board expects “the company’s operations, customer commitments and product roadmap to continue without interruption.” Nvidia will report third-quarter results Nov. 17 as scheduled. Investors reacted immediately: the stock fell more than 13% at the open, CNBC reported, after closing Wednesday at $173.73. It had pared the drop to about 6% by 10:15 a.m. ET, CNBC market data showed.
Kress has been Nvidia’s executive vice president and CFO since September 2013, after nearly 25 years in finance roles at Cisco, Microsoft and other technology companies. She will keep the CFO job while serving as interim CEO. The board is searching for a permanent chief executive and will consider internal and external candidates. Dan Ives of Yorkville Ives & Co. told CNBC before the announcement: “To steady the ship, she’s the one. But longer term, probably someone from the outside.”
Jones, a board member since 1993 and a former CEO and executive chairman of Synopsys, becomes the first person to hold the chair. Nvidia’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission says the board accepted Huang’s resignation Wednesday, effective immediately. The release thanked him for “immeasurable contributions” and called Nvidia “one of the most consequential technology companies in the world.” Kress said she is committed to building on “the extraordinary foundation Jensen created over the last 33 years.” The release gave no reason for the resignation. The board had opened an independent review on Nov. 8.
The change reaches Nvidia’s customers, including SpaceXSI. Elon Musk said on SpaceXSI’s August earnings call, “we’ve decided to build exclusively on NVIDIA,” and on Oct. 26 SpaceXSI said it had a binding commitment to a roughly $40 billion lease of GPUs and related equipment that will deliver Nvidia’s next-generation Vera Rubin chips, with the leases expected to begin in the first half of 2027. Rivals moved the other way on Thursday. As of 10:15 a.m. ET, Broadcom was up more than 5% and AMD about 2%, according to CNBC market data.
Kress’s first test comes Nov. 17, when Nvidia reports quarterly results and holds its earnings call with her as interim CEO. The board has not said when it expects to name a permanent successor.
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