What we know after Jensen Huang resigns as Nvidia CEO

Detailed summary

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has resigned from his top post at the chipmaker he co-founded, after reports of the tech titan's extramarital affairs came into the spotlight this week.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has resigned from his top post at the chipmaker he co-founded, after reports of the tech titan’s extramarital affairs came into the spotlight this week.

One of those relationships has raised national security concerns. The New York Times reported that Huang had an affair with a businesswoman U.S. intelligence suspects to be a Chinese spy, which Beijing denies. Separately, the outlet and later others reported that Nvidia employees said Huang had another affair with an executive who reported to him directly — compounding calls for him to step down.

Nvidia announced Huang’s resignation on Thursday, effective immediately. The California-based company said that Colette Kress — who has been Nvidia’s chief financial officer and executive vice president since 2013 — will step into the role of interim CEO.

The scandal marks the most tumultuous chapter yet for Nvidia, whose high-end chips have emerged as the leading building blocks for artificial intelligence. Huang himself has become a key face in the AI race, both across the industry and often on U.S. President Donald Trump’s side in Washington.

Nvidia said Kress is now interim CEO. Prior to joining Nvidia over 13 years ago, Kress worked at Cisco, Microsoft and Texas Instruments.

In a statement about her new post on Thursday, Kress said Nvidia’s “strength has always come from its people” and that she’s “committed to building on the extraordinary foundation Jensen created over the last 33 years.”

Huang co-founded Nvidia, alongside Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem, back in 1993 — and until Thursday had led the company ever since, with no clear successor in sight. Huang’s ouster has led to a scramble for a new permanent CEO, and Nvidia said it’s considering both “internal and external candidates.”

The company’s board of directors also said Thursday that it has named its first-ever chairman, Harvey C. Jones.

Over the weekend, following news reports of Huang’s relationship with a woman identified as former…

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