News · 2026-11-13

Jensen Huang resigns as Nvidia CEO effective immediately; CFO Colette Kress takes over as interim chief

Nvidia announced on November 12, 2026 that Jensen Huang "has resigned as President, Chief Executive Officer, and a member of the Board, effective immediately." Chief financial officer Colette Kress is interim CEO while the board searches for a permanent successor, and the company's first-ever board chair is Harvey C. Jones. Nvidia's release gives no cause for the departure and carries no statement from Huang himself.

Key facts

• What happened: Huang resigned on Thursday, November 12, 2026, per Nvidia's own announcement. One CNN line says "Wednesday," which conflicts with the release and the Associated Press, so November 12 is the date to use.
• Who steps in: Kress, Nvidia's CFO since September 2013, is interim CEO; Jones, a venture investor and former Synopsys chief executive, is chair.
• Market reaction: the Associated Press reports the stock fell about 14% at the opening bell, then stabilized and closed down about 4%.
• Next date: earnings are still scheduled for November 17.

What Nvidia actually said

The company's release is short. It thanks Huang for his "immeasurable contributions," says the board will "consider internal and external candidates," and gives investors one operational reassurance. Chair Harvey Jones said "we expect the company's operations, customer commitments and product roadmap to continue without interruption." That sentence is the only official statement about GPU supply. An 8-K filing under items 5.02 and 9.01 accompanied the release.

Nvidia had no named successor. The Associated Press reports the company had no succession plan, which is why the finance chief stepped in rather than a long-groomed deputy.

What is reported, and what is not confirmed

Nvidia gave no reason, so the cause rests on press reporting. The Associated Press ties the resignation to growing calls for Huang to step down after reports of his relationship with a woman alleged to be a Chinese spy, and to a second report, late Wednesday, of a relationship with an Nvidia employee who reports to him. Nvidia's board had announced an investigation on Sunday while saying it remained confident in Huang. Nvidia has said it has "no reason to believe" national security or its secrets were compromised. Wired separately reported that Huang emailed staff saying he was "unfaithful to [his] wife"; that is Wired's reporting and was not independently checked here.

The spy allegation itself is contested. CNN, citing multiple sources, reports that the intelligence gathered so far "does not prove" Alice Huang acted as a spy for Beijing; some officials in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence call the spy label "over-torqued," and CIA officials are "not yet convinced" the intercepts show she knowingly passed information to China. Other Trump administration officials say it "strains credulity" that she was not acting for the Chinese government. The Associated Press, for its part, relays a New York Times report that US officials had concluded she was a Chinese spy. Both pictures are attributed reporting, and neither is established fact. President Trump said on Thursday: "was the woman a spy? And I don't know if that's been determined yet." The FBI has investigated for at least a year, and Attorney General Todd Blanche said "no conclusions reached."

The chip-diversion thread

CNN reports that Alice Huang's Singapore-based company Megaspeed is "a major purchaser of NVIDIA chips," and that the Justice Department and Commerce opened a probe in 2024 as part of a wider look at shell companies suspected of diverting restricted chips to China. That detail comes from one person briefed on the investigation. A former Commerce official told CNN "an intelligence operation wasn't necessary," because diversion already ran through "a regulatory loophole." Larger figures circulating, such as $7.5 billion in shipments to Chinese firms, come from secondary outlets and are unverified.

Why it matters for AI

Nvidia sells the hardware most frontier training runs on, so its leadership is an input to everyone's roadmap. Asa Hiken of eMarketer told the Associated Press that Huang's departure "introduces uncertainty well beyond the company itself," reflecting fears of "a possible AI bubble."

The open-source side is exposed too. Hugging Face chief executive Clement Delangue posted "we'll keep fighting for open-source AI, harder than ever," according to TechCrunch. TechCrunch notes that Nvidia announced a $12.9 billion deal for Hugging Face in September, expected to close in the first half of 2027 and drawing Justice Department competition inquiries (see our earlier coverage of the deal). Neither company has said whether Kress will keep Huang's open-weights line, which included a July letter from 25 companies and an expanded Nemotron open-model family. Reports that Kress pushed back on customer-financing deals, such as the roughly circular arrangements covered in our piece on Nvidia lending against its own chips, rest on a single outlet and should be treated as unconfirmed.

What to watch

Congress is circling. Representative Brian Mast, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Huang would get a subpoena if needed; the committee's interview request dates from November 5. Reports that Huang agreed to testify before Thanksgiving come from CNBC and were not re-checked. The first earnings call under Kress on November 17 is the next hard data point, along with the board's search for a permanent chief.

Caveat

Everything about motive, the intelligence assessments and the second relationship is attributed press reporting; Nvidia's own release says none of it. Any number about lost market value or diverted chips beyond the Associated Press price moves is secondary.

Primary source, verified: read the paper →

Ground Truth. (2026, November 13). Jensen Huang resigns as Nvidia CEO effective immediately; CFO Colette Kress takes over as interim chief. Ground Truth. https://groundtruth.day/news/jensen-huang-resigns-as-nvidia-ceo-colette-kress-interim.html

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  title  = {Jensen Huang resigns as Nvidia CEO effective immediately; CFO Colette Kress takes over as interim chief},
  author = {{Ground Truth}},
  year   = {2026},
  month  = {nov},
  url    = {https://groundtruth.day/news/jensen-huang-resigns-as-nvidia-ceo-colette-kress-interim.html}
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Topics: nvidia · leadership · export-controls · industry · open-source-ai