Jensen Huang has resigned as president, CEO and board member of Nvidia, effective immediately. Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress leads the company on an interim basis, Harvey C. Jones becomes the first Chair in its history. The spy story linked to Alice Huang and, since Wednesday, a second relationship with a manager subordinate to him weigh heavily. Immediate repercussions on the stock on the stock exchange.
Four days, that’s how long the confidence that Nvidia’s board of directors had declared to last Jensen Huang. On Saturday 8 November the board reiterated it in writing, on Thursday 12 it announced its resignation as president, CEO and member of the board, with immediate effectafter 33 years at the helm of the company he founded in 1993.
A few lines of press release, no explanation of the reasons. The guide moves on to Colette Kresschief financial officer since 2013, who becomes interim CEO without leaving the role of CFO, while the board searches for a permanent successor inside and outside the company.
A charge is also born that Nvidia had never had: the first Chair in its history Harvey C. Jonesformer CEO and executive chairman of Synopsys. “The board has full confidence in Colette and the management team,” says Jones, who expects to see operations, customer engagements and product roadmaps continue without disruption.
From the spy story to the code of conduct
It all starts from October 29th, a story that we had already partly told. That day the New York Times reveals that US intelligence suspects data center company executive Alice Huang (no relation). Megaspeed of Singaporeto pass information to Beijing while cultivating a close relationship with Nvidia’s founder.
The origin is a visit at the end of 2024 to a Malaysian Megaspeed data center, where a Commerce Department official found Nvidia chips still unopened in boxes. Beijing rejects the accusations. No one has been charged.
The betrayal, admitted by Huang in a message to employees on November 8, remains a private matter. Suspicion weighs heavily, everything to provethat the head of the artificial intelligence company passed on sensitive information without knowing it. The same day the board entrusted an internal investigation to a committee of independent advisors, assisted by external lawyers, specifying that they have no reason to believe that national security or corporate secrets have been compromised.
The second shot arrived on Wednesday evening. The New York Times, citing five sources, wrote of a relationship between Huang and Kimberly Powellvice president for healthcare, with Nvidia since 2008 and his direct report. Both married. Here the private sphere ends, because a relationship with those who depend on the CEO calls into question the code of conductand more than one analyst has read that news as the decisive push towards the exit.
The stock market and the accounts on Tuesday
Wall Street reacted immediately. The stock lost about 10%slipping around $156, summer 2025 levels, and dragged the Nasdaq down 1.5%. Bernstein downgraded Nvidia and halved his price target, from $400 to $200, while still judging the fundamentals to be solid.
On this point there are few doubts. Blackwell architectures, the Cuda software platform, contracts with those who build data centers for AI: the Nvidia of 2026 is the bet that Huang set years agowhen graphics chips were mainly used for video games. Kress, in the statement, promises to continue the work “that has made Nvidia a leader in accelerated computing and AI.”
The void after the founder
The aftermath is more complicated, that is, try to imagine a CES keynote without the black leather jacket on stage. Oppenheimer’s Rick Schafer, who downgraded the stock, sees huge shoes to fill, no obvious successor and the risk of a brain drain. Furthermore, Nvidia had already put the danger of depending on a few people in black and white in the 2026 annual budget, among risk factors related to the management team.
The first issues of the Kress era arrive Tuesday 17 Novemberwith the accounts of the third fiscal quarter at 10.20pm Italian time and the conference call at 11pm. For the following day, three Republican chairmen of House committees had asked Huang for a closed-door briefing on the contacts with Alice Huang. Who will go there now, Nvidia hasn’t said.
