November 13, 2026, (Inside AI) — Nvidia has named Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress as interim CEO after Jensen Huang stepped down on Thursday, ending a three-decade run at the company he co-founded. The board's decision installs a 59-year-old finance veteran at the helm of the world's most valuable chipmaker during its first leadership transition without Huang.
Kress, who joined Nvidia in 2013, was often the lone executive willing to challenge Huang's riskier multibillion-dollar AI investments, according to two people familiar with the matter. Her new role is temporary while the board searches for a permanent successor. Nvidia shares fell as much as 14% on Thursday before closing down 4.3%.
The appointment comes at a delicate moment. Wall Street had already begun questioning whether Huang's aggressive financing of AI startups and infrastructure partners was creating a circular economy, where Nvidia funds its own customers to buy its chips. Kress frequently clashed with Huang and Nvidia's sales team over those deals, according to one of the people familiar with the matter. A proposed $250 billion plan to support an OpenAI data center project in Ohio was ultimately pared to $120 billion, a sign of her influence on spending discipline.
Huang's exit follows revelations about a relationship with a woman suspected of being a Chinese spy, a claim China has denied. The scandal has raised governance questions that Kress must now manage, including how much she knew about Huang's personal conduct and the company's chip sales oversight. A fifth source said Kress knew about his relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of healthcare, who reported to him. Nvidia and Powell did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Can A Finance Chief Preserve Nvidia's Risk Appetite?
Kress's promotion is already drawing skepticism from analysts who wonder whether a career finance executive can sustain the technological risk-taking that turned Nvidia into an AI chips powerhouse. "Putting (Kress) in the interim role makes sense to keep the markets calm, but I don't think she is the long-term visionary that Nvidia needs to continue its current trajectory," said Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy.
People who know her describe Kress as a calming contrast to Huang's confrontational style. She joined Nvidia after stints at Microsoft, Cisco, and Texas Instruments. "Colette is a pragmatist," said a fourth source familiar with the matter. The person added that Kress had been on recent calls to reassure customers and suppliers as the tumult unfolded. Under her leadership, Nvidia is likely to approach Washington more like other tech companies do, by building capital and making friends, instead of picking a fight over export controls the way it did under Huang.
Her pragmatism will be tested on multiple fronts. Sunny Cheung, an analyst at the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation, said Kress could face congressional questions about the company's oversight of chip sales involving Chinese military-linked institutions and Southeast Asian intermediaries. Those questions carry weight for a company whose chips are central to the global AI buildout.
The board has not decided whether Kress will keep the job permanently. Other names have surfaced, including Nvidia executive Ian Buck, who helped launch AI on Nvidia chips and led development of the CUDA software system. AMD CEO Lisa Su and Arm boss Rene Haas have also been speculated as potential candidates.
Kress's own trajectory offers a contrast to Huang's founder-led style. In a 2023 interview with an Israeli publication, she credited her two young sons with urging her to join Nvidia because they knew its chips from their video games. She became a billionaire in 2025 based on the value of her Nvidia equity, and Forbes said her net worth of $1.2 billion in mid-2026 put her in 32nd place on its list of America's richest self-made women. She holds an undergraduate degree in finance and an MBA and has been named among the 50 most powerful women in business by Fortune and Forbes.
For now, Kress's task is stabilization. She must reassure investors, customers, and suppliers while the board conducts its search. She must also decide how to handle the financing deals that Huang championed. "I think it's unlikely anyone but Jensen is going to invest in his own customers as aggressively," said a third source, a venture capital investor. That shift could reshape Nvidia's relationship with the AI startup ecosystem it helped create.
Shamil has a low tolerance for AI that only works in controlled demos. He covers agentic systems and generative AI with the skepticism of someone who has seen too many “revolutionary” tools quietly disappear six months after launch.
