Nvidia CEO and co-founder Jensen Huang has resigned, the company’s board of directors said Thursday, ending a weekslong saga that revealed the executive engaged in several affairs — including one with an alleged Chinese spy — and drove the company’s stock price to eight-month lows over national security concerns.
Colette Kress, Nvidia’s chief financial officer, will serve as interim CEO as the board searches for a permanent replacement. She will remain the company’s CFO during the search, which will include internal and external candidates.
The board of directors also named tech executive Harvey C. Jones, a former CEO of the software company Synopsys and an Nvidia board member since 1993, its first chair of the board.
“Colette has helped lead Nvidia through a period of extraordinary growth and has a deep understanding of our business, customers, operations and financial position,” Jones said in a statement. “She is supported by an experienced leadership team that has been instrumental in executing Nvidia’s strategy and advancing its technology roadmap. The board has full confidence in Colette and the leadership team, and we expect the company’s operations, customer commitments and product roadmap to continue without interruption.”
Nvidia’s stock was down as much as 13% in premarket trading following the announcement. The saga reflects how even the most human of all scandals — those involving sex and spycraft — can impact companies underpinning much of the AI boom capturing the world.
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Nvidia’s board of directors was weighing whether to oust Huang, who has led the company as CEO since he co-founded it in 1993. The decision came days after Nvidia’s board initially said it would launch an independent investigation into Huang’s relationship with Alice Huang, a Chinese tech executive who the New York Times reported was recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security to spy on the executive and learn more about Nvidia’s AI chips. Nvidia hired former acting U.S. Attorney of the Southern District of New York Joon H. Kim’s firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to lead the investigation. The board at the time had said Jensen Huang would continue to lead the company, even as he also faced an FBI investigation over the affair with the alleged spy.
But the hits kept coming. The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Huang had a separate affair with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care who joined the company in 2008. Nvidia’s code of conduct prohibits employees from “situations where our actions might create a conflict — actual or potential—between our personal gain and our obligations” to the company. It also advises that “personal relationships” may pose a potential conflict.
The board said in its statement that Huang’s contributions to Nvidia were “profound.” “The Board and the company thank Jensen for his immeasurable contributions to the company and the industry,” it said.
Kress said she was “committed to building on the extraordinary foundation Jensen created over the last 33 years.”
“We will continue advancing the work that has made Nvidia a leader in accelerated computing and AI, and execute on the opportunities ahead,” she said in a statement. “Our focus remains on serving our customers, partners, developers and shareholders.”
The stakes for what comes next for Nvidia — and the AI world — are massive. Huang co-founded Nvidia as a graphics chip provider for video games, though he later grew it into one of the world’s most valuable companies by producing chips that helped fuel many of the world’s leading AI companies.
Nvidia’s AI grip enveloped the entertainment industry. The company has invested in AI entertainment companies Higgsfield and Runway, and Huang posed with Higgsfield CTO Yerzat Dulat at an event in Kazakhstan last month. Nvidia on Wednesday also expanded its partnership with AI audio startup ElevenLabs, another company investment. The expanded partnership would see ElevenLabs try to make more voice agents available to governments worldwide — powered by Nvidia’s AI architecture.
Disney also announced a partnership with Nvidia and Google DeepMind last year to develop Newton, an open-source physics engine that lets robots learn how to handle complex tasks with greater precision. The robotics project, incorporating physical AI, included real-world robots of Star Wars characters like BDX droids and the “Frozen” snowman Olaf.
Nvidia’s entertainment entanglements also extend to the music industry. The company struck a deal with Universal Music Group in January to marry its AI technology with UMG’s catalog to develop “responsible AI for music discovery, creation, and engagement. The deal included enhancing Nvidia’s Music Flamingo AI audio model with UMG work and creating an artist incubator, an arrangement UMG CEO Lucian Grainge called “a shared mission to harness revolutionary AI technology to dramatically advance the interests of the creative community and the role of music in global culture.”
Nvidia’s heightened status made Huang one of President Donald Trump’s closest tech allies. Trump defended Huang in a news conference on Monday, saying he believed Huang’s assertions that he was unaware of Alice Huang’s affiliations, though the president confirmed the FBI was also investigating the relationship. The Commerce Department had also investigated Nvidia over whether it helped smuggle chips into China before it was moved to the Justice Department.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
