Huang's "Key Partner" with a Background at Microsoft: What Is Known About Nvidia's Acting CEO

Nvidia’s board of directors has appointed Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress as the company’s interim CEO. She will succeed founder and longtime CEO Jensen Huang. The board removed him from his position following reports of two extramarital affairs: one with a woman whom U.S. intelligence agencies believe to be a Chinese spy, and another with a top executive at Nvidia itself.

Kress has been with Nvidia since 2013 and has helped ensure its financial success: under her direct leadership, the company has transformed from a graphics card manufacturer into an artificial intelligence giant, according to Yahoo Finance.

“We will continue the work that has made Nvidia a leader in accelerated computing and AI, and we will capitalize on the opportunities ahead of us. Our focus remains on our customers, partners, developers, and shareholders,” Kress said, according to a company statement.

Nvidia shares plummeted 14% at the opening bell on November 12, but then partially recovered their losses: at the time of this writing, they were down 5%.

Kress joined Nvidia in September 2013, taking on the role of executive vice president and chief financial officer immediately. She appeared alongside Huang on conference calls following quarterly earnings reports, according to Reuters. When she joined the company, Nvidia’s revenue stood at $4.13 billion for the fiscal year, and by fiscal year 2026, it had risen to $215.9 billion, the agency noted.

As Nvidia’s chief financial officer, Kress regularly comments on quarterly earnings reports and is therefore well known to analysts and investors, according to Yahoo Finance. Fortune has called her a “key strategic partner” and ranked her 16th on its list of the most influential women in 2024 (in the 2025 and 2026 rankings, she dropped to 44th and 49th place, respectively).

"When I started working at Nvidia, it was the smallest company I had ever worked for," Kress said in an interview with Fortune in 2024.

Immediately prior to joining Nvidia, Kress worked at the telecommunications equipment provider Cisco: from 2010 to 2013, she served as senior vice president and chief financial officer of the Business Technology and Operations Finance (Business Technology and Operations Finance). Prior to that, she spent 13 years at Microsoft, where, among other roles, she rose to the position of Chief Financial Officer of the Server and Tools division. Before that, she worked at Texas Instruments for eight years.

Kress earned a bachelor's degree in finance from the University of Arizona and a master's degree in business administration from Southern Methodist University in Texas, according to Reuters.

Forbes ranked Kress 32nd on its list of the richest self-made women in the U.S. in 2026. Her net worth at the time the list was compiled in March was estimated at $1.2 billion. Her Nvidia shares were worth approximately $750 million as of the close of trading on Wednesday, November 11, Reuters noted.

Huang found himself at the center of a scandal over two alleged affairs — one with Nvidia top executive Kimberly Powell and another with Alice Huang, who, according to media reports, held a senior position at the Singapore-based technology company MegaSpeed and allegedly acted on behalf of Chinese intelligence.

In a statement released on Sunday, November 8, Huang admitted to the infidelity but did not disclose any details. Following this, Nvidia’s board of directors launched an independent investigation into the circumstances of the case, although it stated that it had no reason to believe that the company’s trade secrets or national security had been compromised.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor