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NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang Resigns; Colette Kress Named Interim Chief

The chipmaker says the change is effective immediately, while a separate board investigation and unconfirmed press reports remain open.

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NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang Resigns; Colette Kress Named Interim Chief
fabersam / Pixabay — Pixabay Content License

A silicon wafer held above a work surface

Illustrative photo of a silicon wafer; it is not an Nvidia chip, Nvidia headquarters, or any person named here. Photo: fabersam / Pixabay, Pixabay Content License.

Nvidia said on November 12, 2026 that Jensen Huang has resigned as the company's president, chief executive and a member of its board, effective immediately. The announcement was made in a Form 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and distributed by the company. The move ends the tenure of the executive who co-founded the chipmaker in 1993 and became the most visible face of its growth through the AI boom.

Colette Kress, Nvidia's executive vice president and chief financial officer, will serve as interim chief executive and will keep her CFO role while in that post. The board said it has started a search for a permanent chief executive and will consider internal and external candidates. According to the filing, Kress joined Nvidia in September 2013 and previously spent nearly 25 years in finance roles at technology companies including Cisco and Microsoft.

The board also named Harvey C. Jones as the company's first-ever chair. The filing describes Jones as an entrepreneur, technology executive and venture investor with more than 30 years of experience, and notes that he previously served as chief executive and executive chairman of Synopsys. In a statement included in the filing, Jones praised Kress, saying she has helped lead NVIDIA through a period of extraordinary growth.

What the filing does not say

The portion of the filing reviewed for this article does not give a reason for Huang's departure. Nothing in that material connects the resignation to any other event. The gap matters because of what came before it.

On November 8, Nvidia's board said it had launched an independent investigation after reports linked Huang to a former executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed International. According to an AI Business report, U.S. authorities reportedly suspected that former executive of working for China. The same report says The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have described allegations about the relationship and about suspected Chinese intelligence activity. The coverage reviewed for this article does not report that those allegations have been proven, and Nvidia has not publicly confirmed them. This article does not establish a link between those reports and the resignation.

Why the succession is being watched

Huang's role has been central to how the company is perceived. A 24/7 Wall St analysis published in May 2026 describes him as having narrated Nvidia's shift from gaming graphics into accelerated computing, and as the driving force behind CUDA, the developer software platform that became the company's competitive moat. That analysis, which is commentary rather than reporting, also says his personal relationships with executives at major customers and partners are hard for another executive to replicate.

Those relationships reach across the industry. The May analysis lists partners including Microsoft, Google Cloud, OpenAI and Anthropic among companies with large commitments to Nvidia's platforms. The AI Business report cites analysts who argued that a leadership change would not automatically disrupt those commitments, pointing to Nvidia's engineering organization, its manufacturing relationships and a large executive team. That is an analyst view, not a company statement, and the company has not said whether any supply or partnership terms are affected.

Investors and customers will focus on three questions. The first is who will be named permanent chief executive and when. The second is whether the board's independent investigation produces public findings, and what they say. The third is whether Kress's dual role as interim CEO and CFO changes how the company reports its finances or manages its planned product roadmap. In the material reviewed, Nvidia has not announced any change to product timelines.

Policy attention is a further variable. A Silicon UK headline in its November 2026 archive refers to US lawmakers promising scrutiny of what it calls an Nvidia scandal. That is the only material reviewed on this point, and the article body was not available, so this article does not report the substance of any congressional action.

Nvidia's processors have become a core input for training and running large AI models, and its data-center revenue has been a central driver of its market value. Any leadership transition at a company of that scale is closely watched by the markets, its customers and governments that regulate chip exports.

What to watch

The identity and timing of a permanent chief executive; the outcome of the board's independent investigation and whether it is made public; any further SEC filings that explain the resignation in more detail; whether the interim arrangement is extended; and how major customers and partners describe their commitments in the coming weeks.

How we reported this

Checked against Nvidia's November 12, 2026 Form 8-K and the company announcement "NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition." The resignation, Kress's interim appointment, Jones's appointment as chair, and the effective date come from that filing. The Megaspeed investigation and the reported allegations rest on secondary reporting summarized by AI Business and are not confirmed by Nvidia in the material reviewed. No link between those reports and the resignation is established here. The May 2026 24/7 Wall St piece is analysis, not reporting. The lawmaker-scrutiny point rests on a headline only.

Sources

DailyMech used AI tools to help research and draft this article; it was fact-checked by our editors.

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