Nvidia named Colette Kress, its chief financial officer since 2013, as interim chief executive on Thursday, Nov. 12, after co-founder Jensen Huang resigned as CEO and from the board. Kress will keep her post as executive vice president and CFO until the board picks a permanent successor, the company said, and she takes charge five days before Nvidia reports third-quarter fiscal 2027 results on Nov. 17.

For investors in Asia, Kress is now the main point of contact for a company whose orders drive revenue at chip, memory and server suppliers from Hsinchu to Seoul. Her first public test as leader will be that earnings call, which Nvidia said will go ahead as scheduled at 2 p.m. Pacific time on Tuesday (6 a.m. Wednesday in Hong Kong).

Huang's departure followed a board investigation into reports about his relationship with a former executive of Singapore-based customer Megaspeed, which Capital Times reported on earlier this week. Other Capital Times stories cover the resignation and Huang's dealings with Congress.

What the board asked of Kress

Nvidia's statement gave Kress a caretaker mandate rather than a long-term one. The board said it has begun a search for a permanent CEO and will look at both internal and external candidates. It set no timetable.

The same announcement created a new post: director Harvey C. Jones, a former chief executive and executive chairman of chip design software maker Synopsys, became Nvidia's first board chair. Jones said Kress has "a deep understanding of our business, customers, operations and financial position." He added that the board has full confidence in her and the leadership team and expects operations, customer commitments and the product roadmap to continue without interruption.

The release did not name anyone to take over day-to-day CFO work. Kress holds both jobs for now. In her own statement, she said she would build on the foundation Huang created over 33 years and focus on customers, partners, developers and shareholders.

From Texas Instruments to Nvidia's finance chief

Kress joined Nvidia in September 2013. The company's announcement at the time said she came from Cisco, where she had spent three years as senior vice president and CFO of the Business Technology and Operations Finance organization. Before that she spent 13 years at Microsoft, including four as CFO of the Server and Tools division, and earlier held finance roles at Texas Instruments.

Reuters, in a profile carried by The Standard, reported that she spent eight years at Texas Instruments, worked at Microsoft from 1997 to 2010 and moved to Cisco in 2010. She holds a finance degree from the University of Arizona and an MBA from Southern Methodist University, the report said, citing Nvidia's annual report.

Her time as CFO spans Nvidia's shift from a graphics card maker to the main supplier of AI data center chips. Revenue was $4.13 billion in the fiscal year she joined and $215.9 billion in fiscal 2026, Reuters reported. Kress has appeared alongside Huang on the company's quarterly earnings calls, and CNN described her as the executive most visible to investors and the public after Huang.

Nvidia executives are employed at will and have no individual severance or change-in-control agreements, according to the company's proxy statement, as cited by Reuters. Her Nvidia shares were worth about $750 million at Wednesday's close, down from more than $1 billion at the stock's peak last month, Reuters said.

How investors reacted

The choice had been flagged before the announcement. On Tuesday, executive search consultant Shawn Cole of Cowen Partners told CFO Dive that a CFO with Kress's experience "could be a logical choice," particularly if the board prioritized continuity, investor confidence and operational stability.

The market response on Thursday was sharp. Nvidia shares fell 10.3% in premarket trading, putting its market value on course to drop below $4 trillion for the first time since July 2025, Reuters reported. Once trading opened, the stock plunged 14% before halving the loss and was down 5.3% as of about 11:45 a.m. Eastern time, the Associated Press reported. The company had lost about $300 billion in value since the board announced its investigation on Sunday, according to the same report. Nvidia trades at about 12 times forward earnings estimates, its lowest multiple since November 2012, according to LSEG data cited by Reuters.

Selling spread across the AI supply chain in early trading. Micron fell 5.8%, while Marvell Technology, Intel, Arm Holdings and Texas Instruments dropped between 4.5% and 6.3%, Reuters reported. Benchmarks in Japan and South Korea closed about 0.7% lower. AMD and Broadcom rose on expectations that rivals could gain, Reuters said. Jun Bei Liu of Ten Cap told Reuters that Nvidia has financed much of the new cloud data center build-out, so the turmoil has "quite a meaningful ramification" for the sector.

What Kress faces first

Kress inherits a company under scrutiny over sales into China and Southeast Asia, the issue at the center of the Megaspeed reports. Customers and suppliers will also watch for any change in the product roadmap, including the timing of new data center chip generations; the board has said it expects none.

The nearest date is Nov. 17. Nvidia will release results at about 1:20 p.m. Pacific time, before the 2 p.m. call. The release announcing her appointment gave no financial guidance, so the quarterly outlook will be the first numbers investors see under her leadership.