Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang resigns amid spy, affair scandals

After a late Wednesday night meeting, Nvidia's board accepted Jensen Huang's resignation as CEO, president and director, effective immediately. CFO Colette Kress, at the company since 2013, is interim CEO. Former Synopsys CEO Harvey C. Jones becomes Nvidia's first-ever board chair, and the board says it will search inside and outside the company for a permanent chief.

This is the founder who has run Nvidia since 1993, leaving the company that sells the chips most of the AI industry runs on. According to The Verge, as recently as Monday analysts, investors and even the President expected him to survive the scandal. Two days later, he was gone.

Our read is that the speed tells the story. The first allegation, a relationship with a Megaspeed executive whom U.S. intelligence reportedly considers a Chinese state operative, was a national-security problem, and the industry largely rallied around him. The second, a reported relationship with an executive who reported directly to him, was a governance problem the board could not wave away. Boards can argue about geopolitics. They cannot argue with their own conduct rules.

We think the chair appointment matters more than the interim name. For 33 years, Nvidia's power was concentrated in one person who ran the company, sat on the board and famously kept dozens of direct reports. Splitting the roles and installing an outside chair is the board saying, quietly, that it should have had more independence all along. That is the right lesson, and it is arriving late.

Kress is a steady, credible choice to keep the machine running. She knows the numbers, the customers and the investors. But the interim job is not the hard part. Nvidia's next leader inherits a company with enormous leverage over the AI economy, an investment portfolio The Verge puts at about $99 billion, a close relationship with the White House, and open questions about whether the first affair shaped Huang's push to sell advanced chips to China. Those questions do not leave with him.

The downside here is real. Huang's instinct and speed helped make accelerated computing the backbone of modern AI, and a more cautious, committee-run Nvidia may move slower. Still, a company this central to how AI gets built should not depend on the private judgment of one person. If this transition produces a more accountable Nvidia, the industry ends up sturdier for it. If it produces paralysis, every lab waiting on chips will feel it.

Kress previously worked at Cisco and Microsoft. Reports have floated Kress, Apple hardware chief Johny Srouji, Nvidia VP Ian Buck, AMD CEO Lisa Su and Arm CEO Rene Haas as possible permanent picks. Nvidia's announcement included a statement from Kress pledging continuity, and none from Huang.