Christine Drews Sieger
CFO Colette Kress has been named interim CEO of Nvidia after longtime boss Jensen Huang resigned over a personal scandal.
Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang stepped down immediately on Thursday following a personal scandal involving alleged relationships with a company employee and a Chinese executive suspected of espionage, according to The Guardian.
The sudden departure ends Huang’s decades-long tenure at the helm of the world’s most valuable chipmaker and sends shockwaves through the global artificial intelligence sector.
Nvidia’s board accepted his resignation from all executive and board roles after an emergency meeting Wednesday night, appointing Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress as interim CEO while she retains her current finance duties.
At the center of the controversy are two separate affairs. Reports link Huang to Alice Huang, an executive at the data center company Megaspeed whom officials suspect of spying for China.
News of a second, rumoured relationship with an Nvidia staff member reportedly compounded the pressure on directors to act.
Billions wiped away
Financial markets reacted swiftly to the leadership vacuum. Opening bell sell-offs sent Nvidia’s stock tumbling more than 13%, erasing over $575 billion in market capitalization within minutes, The Guardian reported. Buyers stepped in later in the session to trim the daily drop to 7.7%.
Across the entire week, the turmoil has wiped roughly $888 billion off the chipmaker’s valuation.
Meanwhile, scrutiny in Washington is intensifying. The US trade representative stated that the government “remains concerned” about the company, while the FBI and lawmakers on Capitol Hill investigate the wider fallout.
Uncertain road ahead
Susannah Streeter, chief investment strategist at Wealth Club, told The Guardian that the board “clearly wanted to disassociate with Jensen Huang” to shield the business from reputational harm.
“Even Jensen Huang’s superstar status could not eclipse the deep damage the scandal has wreaked on the Nvidia’s reputation,” Streeter said, adding that high-profile tech founders remain bound by corporate governance standards.
Nvidia has launched a formal recruitment process for a permanent successor, evaluating prospects both inside and outside the firm.
While Streeter described Kress as “a safe pair of hands” brought in “to steady the ship,” she warned that the interim leader lacks Huang’s global clout—a gap that could complicate future supply deals and unsettle the broader AI market.
