Meet Colette Kress, the finance chief steering Nvidia through its first CEO transition

Meet Colette Kress, the finance chief steering Nvidia through its first CEO transition Colette Kress, chief financial officer of Nvidia, has been named interim CEO. Nvidia Nvidia's longtime finance chief Colette Kress has been named interim CEO as a widening scandal brings Jensen Huang's 33-year tenure to an end.Kress's appointment on Thursday follows Huang's resignation, which the board said was effective immediately. The board said it is initiating a search for a permanent CEO and will "consider internal and external candidates."Nvidia's share price dropped 10% in premarket trading following the announcement. Huang stepped down after Nvidia's board opened an investigation into whether he was the target of a "foreign intelligence effort." He also admitted to being unfaithful to his wife in a memo.The New York Times reported that Huang had romantic relationships with Alice Huang, an executive at Nvidia customer Megaspeed — whom US intelligence officials identified as a suspected Chinese spy — as well as Kimberly Powell, an Nvidia employee who served as vice president of healthcare.Insiders and analysts had previously pointed to Kress as a likely successor to Huang, citing her visibility among shareholders. She has worked at Nvidia for 13 years, joining in September 2013 and helping to lead the company's finances through the AI boom."NVIDIA's strength has always come from its people, and together with our leadership team, I am committed to building on the extraordinary foundation Jensen created over the last 33 years," Kress said in a statement on Thursday. Huang maintained a flat leadership structure with as many as 60 direct reports, and said he wanted to keep working for as long as possible, which complicated succession planning. Prior to joining Nvidia, Kress held finance positions at Cisco and Microsoft. She has also served at Texas Instruments in a variety of finance positions.Kress reported directly to Huang, Business Insider previously reported. Read next Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Geoff Weiss is a senior reporter on Business Insider’s tech team, where he covers Nvidia and AI infrastructure. His reporting focuses on the business of AI compute, emerging startups, and the people and strategies shaping the industry.Previously, Geoff was on the media desk, covering YouTube and Netflix, and themes like the intersection of Hollywood and the creator economy. His work on Netflix’s video podcasting ambitions and Mr Beast’s lessons for Hollywood won second and first prize, respectively, at the 2025 LA Press Club Awards.Prior to joining Business Insider, Geoff was the senior editor of Tubefilter and a staff writer at Entrepreneur. He graduated from New York University with a degree in English Literature.He can be reached at gweiss@businessinsider.com, on Signal @geoffweiss.25, and on LinkedIn. Have a tip? Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely. Rosalie Chan is a senior editor for Business Insider's tech team. Previously, she covered cloud computing and enterprise tech, reporting on companies like Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Intel, Alibaba Cloud, Atlassian, GitHub, VMware, Broadcom, and more. She has written extensively on topics including cloud computing, developer companies, open source, and sexism and sexual harassment in the tech industry. She has received the San Francisco Press Club award for continuing coverage for her reporting on sexism and sexual harassment in Silicon Slopes and the Excellence in Business / Consumer / Tech Reporting award from the Asian American Journalists Association for her investigation into the coding boot camp Holberton School. Most recently, she was an editor on the Business Insider investigative package, The True Cost of Data Centers, which received a George Polk Award and an honorable mention from SABEW.Rosalie joined Business Insider after working as a software engineer and freelance journalist. She studied journalism, computer science, and technology and business law at Northwestern University. Her work has previously appeared in TIME, the Huffington Post, VICE, Pacific Standard, Inverse, Chicago magazine, the Chicago Reporter, and more. She's based in San Francisco. Leadership Careers Big Tech More Tech Technology Breaking