Quick answer: Jensen Huang has resigned as NVIDIA’s President, CEO and board member, effective immediately. CFO Colette Kress is interim CEO while the board searches for a permanent replacement, and Harvey C. Jones is NVIDIA’s first-ever board chair. Current as of November 12, 2026.
Jensen Huang is out at NVIDIA. The company’s board of directors announced today that Huang has resigned as President, Chief Executive Officer and a member of the board, effective immediately. He co-founded the company 33 years ago and built it from a graphics chip maker into the company behind GeForce and much of today’s AI hardware.
Colette Kress, NVIDIA’s Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, has agreed to serve as interim CEO. She will keep her EVP and CFO roles until a permanent successor is named. The board also appointed Harvey C. Jones, the former CEO and Executive Chairman of Synopsys, as its first-ever Chair of the Board.
Why Huang is leaving now
NVIDIA’s announcement does not give a reason, and Huang is not quoted in it. The departure follows several days of reports about his personal life. According to CNBC, Huang apologized to employees on Sunday for being “unfaithful to my wife” after reports of an affair with businesswoman Alice Huang, who has worked for Megaspeed, a Chinese company and NVIDIA customer. The two are not related. CNBC reports that Huang denied allegations that he compromised national security or NVIDIA secrets.
The Guardian reports that the board hired law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz earlier this week for a “thorough and independent” investigation. Late Wednesday, The New York Times reported a separate relationship between Huang and NVIDIA healthcare executive Kimberly Powell, according to CNBC and The Guardian, and the board met that night. Game Beacon has not independently verified those reports, and NVIDIA’s statement does not mention any of them.
What NVIDIA says happens next
NVIDIA is trying hard to signal stability. “The Board has full confidence in Colette and the leadership team, and we expect the company’s operations, customer commitments and product roadmap to continue without interruption,” Jones said in the release.
Kress has been NVIDIA’s CFO since September 2013 and spent nearly 25 years in finance at companies including Cisco and Microsoft before that. “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,” she said.
The board is starting a search for a permanent CEO and says it will consider both internal and external candidates. It has not named a shortlist. The statement closes by thanking Huang: “Jensen’s contributions to NVIDIA are profound.”
NVIDIA will still report its third-quarter fiscal 2027 results on Tuesday, November 17, at about 1:20 p.m. PT (3:20 p.m. CT), followed by its earnings call at 2 p.m. PT (4 p.m. CT). That call will be the first public look at the company under Kress.
What it means for gamers
NVIDIA started out making graphics chips for games, and GeForce GPUs still power a huge share of gaming PCs and game development studios. Today’s announcement changes nothing about current GeForce products, drivers or services, and NVIDIA has not announced any roadmap changes. The board’s line that the product roadmap should “continue without interruption” is the company’s official answer for now. The bigger questions, like who leads NVIDIA long term and whether priorities shift between AI and gaming, will take longer to answer. Expect more at next week’s earnings call.
Featured image: official NVIDIA announcement graphic. Credit: NVIDIA.
