Nvidia board accepts Jensen Huang’s immediate resignation; Colette Kress named interim CEO as shares fall

Documented: On November 12, 2026, Nvidia’s board announced that co-founder Jensen Huang had resigned as president, chief executive officer, and director, effective immediately. The company named longtime CFO Colette Kress interim CEO while she keeps the finance role, and appointed Harvey C. Jones—a director since 1993 and former Synopsys CEO—as the board’s first chair. The board said it is searching for a permanent CEO among internal and external candidates and stated it expects operations, customer commitments, and the product roadmap to continue without interruption. Multiple outlets, including Reuters, Bloomberg, CNN, and Wired, reported the same sequence, citing the company statement and related filings. Shares fell sharply on the news: reports put the early-session drop in a range of roughly 10% to more than 12%, on top of multi-day losses that some coverage pegged as high as about 19% and hundreds of billions of dollars in market value.

Claimed, not independently established here: The resignation followed days of reporting, principally by The New York Times, that Huang had an extramarital relationship with Alice Huang (no relation), a Chinese executive previously linked to Singapore-based Nvidia customer Megaspeed, whom U.S. officials have described as a possible Ministry of State Security asset; and a second reported relationship with Kimberly Powell, an Nvidia healthcare executive who reported to him. Huang publicly acknowledged being unfaithful in a November 8 letter to employees, and the board opened an investigation. Wired, citing a source familiar with the matter, reported that the subordinate relationship and dealings involving Megaspeed likely weighed more heavily with the board than the espionage allegations. China has rejected the spy characterization as unsubstantiated, according to Business Insider’s account of official responses. Nvidia had previously said it had no reason to believe national security or company secrets were compromised.

Speculated, and not documented as the cause of the resignation: interpretations that the episode is evidence of regulatory capture, an internal institutional collapse, or a structural break in global AI supply chains beyond the loss of a founder-CEO and the associated equity shock. What is documented is narrower: a sudden leadership transition at the dominant AI-accelerator supplier after personal-conduct and national-security reporting, a thin public succession plan, a first-time board chair, and a large, immediate market reaction. Whether export-control exposure, customer concentration, or governance gaps outlast the scandal is not settled by the resignation announcement itself.