Jensen Huang has resigned as Nvidia’s president, CEO and board member, effective immediately, the company announced Thursday. Colette Kress, Nvidia’s chief financial officer since 2013, is interim CEO and will keep her CFO job until a permanent successor is named. The board says it will look at internal and external candidates.
The board also named Harvey C. Jones, a former CEO and executive chairman of chip-design software company Synopsys, as its first-ever chair. He said the board expects operations, customer commitments and the product roadmap “to continue without interruption.”
How it got here
Huang co-founded Nvidia and ran it for 33 years. On Sunday he admitted an affair and the board opened an independent investigation, after reports that U.S. officials believe the woman involved is a Chinese intelligence asset. China’s foreign ministry has called the spying allegations “pure fabrication,” MobileSyrup reports. On Wednesday, The New York Times reported a second alleged affair with an Nvidia executive, and The Wall Street Journal reported the board was preparing to oust him, as TechCrunch summarized.
Nvidia shares were down nearly 13% Thursday at the time MobileSyrup published.
What’s still unknown
Who the permanent CEO will be, what the board’s investigation found, and whether the leadership change affects Nvidia’s chip sales to China. The next test is Tuesday, Nov. 17, when Nvidia still plans to report its third-quarter results.
Why it matters: Nvidia’s chips power most of the world’s AI systems, and its spending and investments drive much of the industry. A sudden change at the top adds uncertainty for everyone who depends on its supply, from cloud providers to Canadian AI companies, and for the many investors who own its shares.