Nvidia’s CEO and cofounder Jensen Huang is officially out, and longtime chief financial officer Colette Kress is in. The chipmaker’s board of directors announced Thursday that Kress, who joined Nvidia in 2013, has been named interim CEO following Huang’s resignation amid a scandal over his extramarital affair with a Chinese businesswoman believed by US officials to be an asset of China’s Ministry of State Security.
Harvey Jones, the newly appointed chair of Nvidia’s board, said in a statement that Kress “has helped lead Nvidia through a period of extraordinary growth and has a deep understanding of our business, customers, operations and financial position.” He added that Kress will be supported by an “experienced leadership team” and that the board has “full confidence” in her.
Kress was among the most obvious candidates to fill the void after Huang’s departure, according to multiple tech executives and industry analysts who follow Nvidia closely, given her long tenure at the company, credibility on Wall Street and across the tech industry, and, perhaps most importantly, her deep familiarity with Nvidia’s business and finances.
“She’s extremely strong-willed, professional, and whip smart. She doesn’t tolerate nonsense. She can be friendly and gracious, too,” says a former Nvidia executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “She obviously has a keen sense for how Jensen thinks.”
“Colette is the logical choice,” says Patrick Moorhead, founder and chief analyst at Moor Insights & Strategies, who has tracked the chip industry for decades. “She has credibility with investors because she answers hard questions directly.”
Moorhead says Kress has operated as much more than a “numbers” CFO. “In my conversations with her, she goes deep on the product roadmap, from rack-scale systems to networking and software,” he says.
Nvidia’s board said on Sunday it was launching an independent investigation into Huang’s activities following a report by The New York Times that he had an affair with a woman named Alice Huang, who US officials suspected of being a Chinese spy. WIRED reported on Monday that Huang quietly hired a crisis communications firm sometime last year to handle matters related to his personal life. By October of that year, the firm was being looped in on all press inquiries involving Huang at Nvidia, around the same time The New York Times reported that US authorities were investigating whether a company linked to Alice Huang had helped Chinese firms evade US chip export controls.