Jensen Huang is out at Nvidia — who is Colette Kress, his interim replacement?

Colette Kress now runs a company TechCrunch puts at roughly $3.8 trillion in value, and she does it without the public persona her predecessor built over 33 years. Most people outside Wall Street have never heard her speak, even though analysts know her well from years of earnings calls.

Who sits in that chair matters well beyond Nvidia. The company designs the chips the AI boom runs on, and TechCrunch notes there was never an established succession plan. The interim leader shapes how customers, regulators and employees experience the next few months.

We think the board made a sensible, conservative call. Kress has been at Nvidia since September 2013. Before that she spent three years as a finance executive at Cisco and 13 years at Microsoft, including four as CFO of its Server and Tools division. That is a career spent close to enterprise infrastructure and the money behind it. She knows the customers who buy data center hardware and the investors who price the stock.

That background fits the moment. Right now Nvidia's biggest risks are trust and governance, not product direction. A finance chief who has stood in front of analysts quarter after quarter, and whose profile is, by TechCrunch's account, almost invisible on social media, offers the opposite of the drama that brought this change. Her statement promises to build on what the founder created and keep serving customers, partners, developers and shareholders. It is careful language, and careful is what the situation calls for.

There are real limits, though. Kress is a finance and operations leader, not a technical visionary in the mold the company has known. Nvidia's position rests on continuous bets years ahead on architecture, software and partnerships. An interim CEO who is also still doing the CFO job is stretched thin, and interim titles invite rivals and partners to wait and see. The longer the search runs, the more that hesitation costs.

There's also a cultural question. TechCrunch's reporting describes a company where so much ran through one person that no successor was groomed. That concentration is part of why this is so disruptive. If Kress uses the interim period to build out a real leadership bench and clearer lines of authority, that may be the most valuable thing she does, whoever ends up with the permanent job.

I'm watching Tuesday's earnings call closely. It will be the first time most of the market hears her speak as CEO, and it will show whether she intends to be a caretaker or to set direction.

The board announced Thursday that the co-founder resigned as president, CEO and board member effective immediately, following reports of affairs with an alleged Chinese spy and a direct report. TechCrunch cites Forbes estimating Kress's net worth at about $1.2 billion; she holds a finance degree from the University of Arizona and an MBA from Southern Methodist University.