Nvidia has lost its chief executive, its share price has come under severe pressure, and the company is now searching for a successor to the man who led it for more than three decades. 

Jensen Huang has resigned as Nvidia CEO after a scandal, leaving CFO Colette Kress to lead the company as interim chief.


Jensen Huang’s departure marks an abrupt change at the top of one of the most important companies in the artificial intelligence industry.

The board accepted Huang’s resignation as president, chief executive and director on November 11, 2026, with immediate effect. The announcement came a day after reports emerged of a second alleged extramarital relationship, adding to an earlier controversy involving a woman whom US officials reportedly suspect of having links to Chinese intelligence. Nvidia has appointed its chief financial officer, Colette Kress, as interim CEO while it searches for a permanent replacement. Nvidia’s SEC filing confirms the leadership change.

The controversy began with reports about Huang’s relationship with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based technology company Megaspeed. US officials reportedly suspected her of working with Chinese intelligence, raising questions about the potential national-security implications of her connection to the head of a company whose processors are central to advanced AI development. Those allegations have not established that Huang was involved in espionage or that he knowingly shared sensitive information.

Huang acknowledged being unfaithful to his wife in a message to Nvidia employees, apologising for the impact of his actions on his family. The admission intensified scrutiny of his position, particularly because the company’s board had to consider whether the controversy could affect Nvidia’s reputation, relationships with customers and investors, or its ability to operate under heightened government attention.

A second report then raised the stakes. The New York Times reported that Huang had also been involved in a relationship with Kimberly Powell, an Nvidia executive. The report described the relationship as another source of concern inside the company. The allegations brought a personal matter directly into questions about workplace conduct and executive oversight, especially given Huang’s position at the top of the organisation. The Wall Street Journal subsequently reported that Huang had resigned following revelations about the two relationships.

The board’s response was not limited to a change in leadership. Nvidia appointed Harvey C. Jones as its first-ever board chair. Jones has served as a director since 1993, the year Nvidia was founded, and brings more than three decades of experience with the company. The appointment gives the board a more clearly defined leadership role as it oversees the transition and begins the search for a permanent CEO.

Kress, meanwhile, will take on the chief executive role without giving up her existing position as CFO. She has led Nvidia’s finance organisation since joining the company in September 2013, and will continue managing that function while serving as interim CEO. The board says it will consider both internal and external candidates for the permanent position. That leaves open the possibility of a longer-term leadership change rather than an immediate appointment from within the existing executive team.

The financial reaction had already begun before Huang’s resignation was announced. Nvidia shares fell after the first reports about his relationship with the woman suspected of having links to Chinese intelligence. On November 9, the stock dropped 4.3%, erasing approximately $192 billion in market value in a single trading session. The shares fell again the following day, with the two-day decline wiping out roughly $430 billion in value. These figures matter because they put the scale of the market reaction in context: the losses accumulated across multiple sessions, rather than the more than $800 billion disappearing in one day as some early accounts suggested. Axios and subsequent market reporting documented the early sell-off.

Huang’s resignation brought another sharp move. Nvidia shares fell as much as 14% after the announcement, before recovering some of those losses. By Thursday’s close, the stock was down 4.3% at $166.19. Nvidia had lost nearly $500 billion in market value since the previous Friday’s close, according to CBS News. The broader decline also reflected concerns about the company’s valuation and the outlook for AI spending, so the share-price movement cannot be attributed entirely to the leadership scandal. Reuters reported that retail investors stepped in to buy shares during Thursday’s sell-off, helping limit the decline from its early-session low.

The distinction is important. Nvidia’s business remains central to the infrastructure behind modern AI systems. Its graphics processing units, or GPUs, are specialised chips designed to handle many calculations simultaneously. That makes them particularly useful for training and running large AI models, which require enormous amounts of computing power. Nvidia also supplies the software and networking systems that help connect those processors inside data centres. Replacing Huang does not immediately replace that technology, its customer relationships or the engineering organisation built around it.

But the transition does create a different kind of uncertainty. Huang was not simply the company’s public face; he was its co-founder and the executive most closely associated with its strategy. Investors now have to assess how Nvidia will make major decisions without him, whether Kress will remain in the role, and how quickly the board can identify a successor capable of maintaining the company’s direction. The board has said it expects operations, customer commitments and the product roadmap to continue without interruption, but that assurance will be tested through execution.

Nvidia’s next major milestone is its third-quarter fiscal 2027 results, scheduled for November 17. The earnings announcement will give investors an opportunity to examine the company’s financial performance and hear how its interim leadership plans to manage the transition. It will also be an early test of whether customers and markets are prepared to treat the change as a governance issue rather than a disruption to Nvidia’s technology business.

For more than 30 years, Huang’s leadership and Nvidia’s growth have been closely linked. The company now has to demonstrate that its next phase can be led by an institution, not just by the individual who built it. The search for a permanent CEO will therefore carry significance beyond filling an executive vacancy: it will show how Nvidia intends to preserve its momentum at a moment when the AI industry is watching its every move.

Sources: AppleInsider, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Nvidia, US Securities and Exchange Commission, Reuters, CBS News, Axios