Jensen Huang resigns as NVIDIA's CEO and Colette Kress becomes interim CEO

What the board did

NVIDIA's board accepted Jensen Huang's resignation as president, chief executive and director on November 11, 2026, effective immediately, and named Harvey C. Jones, a former Synopsys chief executive, as the company's first chair the same day. NVIDIA announced the change on November 12. [2][1]

Colette Kress, the chief financial officer, became interim chief executive while keeping her finance role, and the board began a search for a permanent chief executive that would consider internal and external candidates. NVIDIA's announcement gave no reason for the resignation. Al Jazeera reported that the board had met on the night of November 11, and the company's market value fell below $4 trillion when trading opened. [1][4]

The reports that preceded it

On November 6 and 7, The New York Times and the Financial Times reported on a memo, said to be based on US intelligence, which claimed that Alice Huang, an executive at the Singapore cloud company Megaspeed, had been recruited by China's Ministry of State Security to cultivate Jensen Huang. The Financial Times reported that the memo also described a romantic relationship between them. An NVIDIA spokesperson told the Times that his interactions with her were not unusual and that the company does not share classified information with customers. [6]

On November 8, Huang admitted the affair in a memo to employees, and NVIDIA's board opened an independent investigation, overseen by independent directors with outside counsel, into reports that he had been the target of a foreign intelligence effort. The board said then that it had no reason to believe national security or NVIDIA secrets had been compromised, and that it had confidence in Huang. On November 11, The New York Times reported a second extramarital relationship, with an NVIDIA vice president who reported to him. [7][5][3][4]

What remains unproven

The memo has not been published. That Alice Huang worked for Chinese intelligence is an allegation attributed to US officials, and none of these sources establish that she obtained any NVIDIA information. Inquiries into whether Megaspeed helped Chinese companies obtain restricted NVIDIA chips were still open. The sources do not say whether the board's investigation had reached findings when Huang resigned. [6][5][4]