Jensen Huang resigns as Nvidia boss after affair with alleged Chinese spy – Colette Kress takes over

Jensen Huang has resigned as chief executive of Nvidia with immediate effect, days after admitting an affair with a woman US officials believe is a Chinese spy. Finance chief Colette Kress will run the world’s most valuable chipmaker as interim CEO while the board searches for a permanent replacement.

Nvidia announced the news at 8.48am New York time (1.48pm UK) on Thursday. Huang, 63, who co-founded the company in 1993 and led it for more than three decades, has also stepped down from the board.

Nvidia shares were already down 8.5% before the announcement and slid further afterwards, trading almost 10% below Wednesday’s close. Since Friday, the slide has wiped more than $855bn off the company’s value, according to market reports.

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Reuters: Colette Kress to take over as interim CEO

Why did Jensen Huang resign?

Nvidia has not given a reason. The resignation comes days after Huang admitted in an email to staff that he had been unfaithful to his wife. The woman involved, Megaspeed executive Alice Huang, is believed by US intelligence officials to be a Chinese intelligence asset.

Nvidia’s board had already launched an independent investigation. The spying claims have not been proven, and China has called them “groundless speculation”. Read our full story on the affair and the spy claims.

Who is Colette Kress?

Kress has been Nvidia’s chief financial officer since 2013 and will keep that job while she serves as interim chief executive. In a statement she said: “We will continue advancing the work that has made NVIDIA a leader in accelerated computing and AI.”

The board said it “will consider internal and external candidates” for the permanent role. It has also named Harvey C. Jones, a director since the company’s earliest days, as Nvidia’s first-ever board chair.

Jones said the board had “full confidence in Colette and the leadership team”, and expected “the company’s operations, customer commitments and product roadmap to continue without interruption”.

What it means for your pension

Nvidia is one of the biggest companies in the world and a major holding in many tracker funds and workplace pensions. Other AI stocks also fell on Thursday: CoreWeave dropped about 9% and Nebius about 16%.

All eyes now turn to Nvidia’s quarterly results next Tuesday, the company’s first since Huang’s departure.