Jensen Huang resigns as Nvidia CEO after 33 years as CFO Colette Kress becomes interim chief and Harvey Jones first chair in $601B wipeout

Nvidia co-founder Jensen Huang resigned immediately as president, chief executive officer, and board director on Thursday, Nov. 12, 2026, ending a historic 33-year tenure as chief financial officer Colette Kress became interim CEO and shares plunged 14%.

Key numbers from Nvidia’s Nov. 12, 2026 Form 8-K filing and market reaction

• Executive departure: Jensen Huang, 63, stepped down immediately as president, CEO, and director after Nvidia’s board formally accepted his resignation on Wednesday, Nov. 11, according to an Item 5.02 Form 8-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission at 8:52 a.m. ET Thursday.
• Interim CEO: Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress, 59, took over immediately as interim chief executive while retaining her CFO responsibilities during an internal and external CEO search.
• First board chair in company history: Longtime director Harvey C. Jones, former Synopsys CEO and an Nvidia board member since 1993, was appointed Nvidia’s first-ever Chair of the Board.
• Opening-bell sell-off: Nvidia shares (NVDA) tumbled between 13% and 14% from Wednesday’s $173.73 close toward the $149–$153 range—their lowest price since June 2025—dragging the Nasdaq Composite down more than 350 points.
• Record valuation loss: The drop knocked Nvidia below a $4 trillion market capitalization for the first time since 2025 and erased up to $601 billion in market value, putting the chipmaker on pace for the largest single-day market-capitalization wipeout in stock market history ahead of its Nov. 17 earnings report.

Why did Jensen Huang resign immediately as Nvidia CEO?

Huang’s abrupt exit caps a turbulent week of corporate governance scrutiny that escalated rapidly from an external compliance review into a boardroom crisis. As Nvidia’s board retained Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to review workplace and disclosure allegations earlier this week, directors had initially weighed contingency plans after Huang acknowledged a past personal relationship with former Singapore-based Megaspeed executive Alice Huang (Huang Le), whom Singapore authorities subsequently barred from re-entering the country amid export-control inquiries.

According to reports Thursday morning, board preparations to replace Huang accelerated on Nov. 11 following fresh disclosures involving a second workplace relationship with an Nvidia executive, alongside ongoing federal scrutiny and shareholder litigation. Rather than prolonging governance uncertainty five days before Nvidia’s fiscal third-quarter earnings release on Tuesday, Nov. 17, the board accepted Huang’s immediate resignation from both executive management and the board of directors.

Huang, who co-founded Nvidia at a San Jose Denny’s restaurant in April 1993 and transformed a graphics-card startup into the indispensable silicon backbone of global artificial intelligence, retains roughly a 3.6% equity stake in the Santa Clara chipmaker.

Who is Colette Kress, Nvidia’s new interim CEO, and who is board chair Harvey C. Jones?

By elevating Colette Kress and creating an independent board chairmanship under Harvey C. Jones, Nvidia moved to separate executive operations from board oversight for the first time in its 33-year history while giving institutional investors two deeply familiar leaders.

Kress, 59, has served as Nvidia’s executive vice president and chief financial officer since September 2013, overseeing the balance-sheet discipline, supply-chain commitments with TSMC, and hyperscaler revenue surge that propelled Nvidia past $4 trillion in valuation. Before joining Nvidia 13 years ago, Kress spent nearly 25 years in senior finance roles across the technology sector, including serving as senior vice president and CFO of Cisco Systems’ Business Technology and Operations Finance organization and holding a 13-year tenure at Microsoft, where she spent four years as CFO of Microsoft’s Server and Tools division.

Nvidia’s Form 8-K confirmed Kress will hold both the interim CEO and CFO titles while a board search committee evaluates internal engineering chiefs and external semiconductor executives for a permanent successor.

Alongside Kress’s appointment, the board named Harvey C. Jones as Nvidia’s first-ever Chair of the Board. Jones, one of Silicon Valley’s veteran electronic design automation pioneers, previously served as CEO and executive chair of Synopsys (SNPS) and has sat on Nvidia’s board since 1993—providing unmatched institutional continuity from Nvidia’s venture-backed founding year through the generative AI boom.

Why did Nvidia lose $601 billion at Thursday’s Wall Street open?

Wall Street’s immediate 14% markdown reflects what equity analysts long termed Nvidia’s “founder premium.” Unlike diversified technology peers, Nvidia operated for more than three decades with an unusually flat management structure in which dozens of hardware, networking, and CUDA software vice presidents reported directly to Huang without a chief operating officer.

Analysts at Bernstein, Oppenheimer, and Baird moved quickly Thursday morning to downgrade or trim price targets on NVDA, warning that Huang’s departure removes the industry’s singular product evangelist and customer negotiator at a delicate moment. Hyperscale cloud customers are actively expanding custom silicon programs, while Washington continues debating tighter export curbs—even as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick recently slowed proposed China AI chip restrictions.

Traders also digested the sell-off against a firmer-than-expected U.S. rate backdrop after weekly initial jobless claims held at 200,000 and the 10-year Treasury yield crossed 5%, amplifying downward pressure across high-multiple semiconductor and AI infrastructure stocks.

All eyes now shift to Tuesday, Nov. 17, when Kress will lead Nvidia’s quarterly earnings call for the first time as interim chief executive—tasked with reassuring Wall Street that Blackwell and next-generation Rubin data-center shipments remain fully on schedule without the co-founder who built the company.