Nvidia said Jensen Huang would relinquish the chief executive role at the company he co-founded, which grew into a $4 trillion company central to the artificial intelligence boom. Colette Kress, the company's chief financial officer, will serve as interim CEO. The announcement included a statement from Kress, and did not quote Huang.
The company will begin the process of naming a permanent CEO and will weigh candidates from inside and outside the organization.
After rising in step with Nvidia's AI surge, Huang faced a sudden downturn when multiple reports surfaced describing his romantic involvement with a woman whom the U.S. intelligence community believes is a Chinese spy. That woman is business executive Alice Huang; her background includes work at a Chinese firm and at Megaspeed, an Nvidia customer. On Sunday, the 63-year-old apologized for being "unfaithful to my wife," offering no further details.
Late Wednesday, The New York Times reported that Huang also had a separate affair with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of health care. Later that afternoon, The Times, along with additional publications, said that Nvidia's board convened to consider the company's future.
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Huang's exit also intersects with Washington, where President Donald Trump built a notably close relationship with him. During that time, Huang became an influential voice on U.S. AI policy while pressing for positions aligned with Nvidia's interests, including preserving access to open-source AI and advocating to allow chip exports to China.
For portfolios, the near term read is continuity. The board's public stance was steady: "The Board has full confidence in Colette and the leadership team, and we expect the company's operations, customer commitments and product roadmap to continue without interruption," Jones said. The longer term comes down to who takes the permanent job and how that choice steers Nvidia's strategy amid U.S. policy scrutiny and China exposure.
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