Jensen Huang has resigned as CEO of Nvidia. The company announced on Thursday, November 12, that Huang stepped down as President, CEO and member of the board, “effective immediately”. He co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and led it for more than 30 years.
Chief financial officer Colette Kress becomes interim CEO and keeps her CFO role until a permanent successor is named. Board member Harvey C. Jones, former CEO of Synopsys, becomes Nvidia’s first-ever Chair of the Board. The board says it will look at internal and external candidates (SEC filing).
No reason given
Nvidia’s announcement does not say why Huang left. It thanks him for his “immeasurable contributions to the company and the industry” and says operations, customer commitments and the product roadmap continue “without interruption”. Huang himself has not made a public statement.
The resignation follows a week of reports about his private life. On Sunday, November 8, Huang told staff in a memo that he had an affair, and Nvidia’s board opened an independent investigation. We covered that memo here. Since then, two more relationships have been reported, none of them confirmed by Nvidia:
- The affair Huang admitted to is reportedly with Alice Huang (no relation), an executive at data center company Megaspeed. Reporting cites claims that she is a Chinese spy. That is an allegation: there is no charge or court ruling.
- On Wednesday, The New York Times reported a relationship with a senior Nvidia executive who reports to him.
- On Thursday, Reuters reported a third affair, with another Nvidia employee who was not named (Yahoo Finance).
Nvidia did not respond to requests for comment on these reports (CNBC).
Markets react
Nvidia’s stock fell as much as 13% on Thursday before closing about 4% lower. On Friday it dropped another 2%, closing below a $4 trillion market value for the first time since July 2025. Over the week the stock lost 12.75%, its sixth weekly decline in a row (CNBC). HSBC downgraded the stock to Hold on Friday.
Why this matters for AI
Nvidia makes the chips most of the AI industry trains and runs its models on. Huang was not just its CEO but its public face, on stage at every major launch. The company now goes into its next quarterly results, due Tuesday, November 17, with an interim CEO who is also its CFO.
Our take
The confirmed facts are simple: Huang is out, Kress is in charge for now, and the board is searching. Everything about the reasons comes from press reports, and the spy claim in particular is unproven. The next real data point is Tuesday’s earnings call, where analysts will want to hear about leadership and the board’s investigation. We’ll update this post when Nvidia says more.