Jensen Huang has resigned all his positions at Nvidia, effective immediately

Intel is a cautionary tale for Nvidia's board

It's not going to be easy to find a replacement for Jensen Huang, and Intel is a prime example of how jumping between CEOs can lead to stagnation.

Here's Andy on Intel's revolving door of CEOs and how hard it will be to find someone right for Nvidia's top job.

"Whoever leads Nvidia next will step into truly gigantic shoes, and in the face of an AI market that looks increasingly wobbly, they'll need to be the right person for the job. And swapping leaders out on the regular? Well, it's taken its toll on Intel over the years, that's for sure."

Who is Colette Kress, Nvidia interim CEO?

In his quick profile of new interim CEO, Colette Kress, Jacob notes that "you might be excused as a gamer for never hearing about her; an earnings call isn't everybody's cup of tea.

"Colette Kress has been chief financial officer at Nvidia since 2013. That's 13 years sat alongside Jensen in calls with investors and financial institutions to discuss how the company is doing. Kress has been in the role for the record highs of recent years, and the not-so-record lows of others, like the price plummets of '25, '21, and '18.

"Prior to her role at Nvidia, Kress was SVP and CFO at Cisco for a couple of years and Corporate VP at Microsoft for nearly five. She also worked at Texas Instruments—all the big hitters, then."

Just to note, Jensen's departure from Nvidia doesn't mean good things for PC gaming

Our Andy has written a considered take on what Nvidia and Jensen parting ways, and especially a new CEO coming in, will mean for PC gamers. And the short of it is: nothing good. Jensen built the company with his co-founders to create computer graphics accelerators that made all your games look awesome™️and while he and the company have moved towards another road he knew that's what Nvidia was built on.

Anyone else coming into the company isn't going to have that level of attachment to PC gaming. And certainly looking at the bottom of the balance sheet is not going to be paying much attention to it, either. It's AI all the way, and we've got to hope the GeForce team inside Nvidia keeps pushing for attention and resources in this new era.

Chairman of the Select Committee on China, John Moolenaar, is not mincing his words in this latest statement on the resignation of Jensen Huang. He says: "Nvidia must now change its corporate practices and appoint leadership that makes national security its top priority."

If you're after a full breakdown of the timeline surrounding Jensen's departure, our Jacob Ridley has put together an excellent blow-by-blow account of how it all went down.

Trump wants Tim Cook

Donald Trump has spoken up about his buddy Jensen's resignation, stating that there is only one person for the job: former Apple CEO, Tim Cook. Trump has always spoken very positively about Cook in the past, most especially when talking about his first term in office where he was very impressed with himself "to have the head of Apple calling to 'kiss my ass'" after a phonecall from Cook.

CNN correspondent for AI, Hadas Gold, has posted on X what she says are the emails sent out to Nvidia employees today from new CEO, Colette Kress, and its first chair of the board, Harvey Jones. There will apparently be a company meeting on November 18, the same day as Jensen is supposed to visit the US Congress.

Who can replace Jensen?

As interim CEO we have, as many predicted (including our Jacob Fox) the current Nvidia chief financial officer, Colette Kress. As a short term measure it makes sense for the board to go straight for the money person who's been talking with investors at earnings calls for 13 years now. That's the way to help calm a volatile market, and one that is likely to be spooked losing one of the main proponents for AI.

But what about the long term appointment? Nvidia's board has reportedly employed an outside agency to aid in identifying candidates for the CEO position, but who would want that job? We've got some thoughts as to who might make a good fit, but whether any of them would be keen, or whether the board would be keen on them, is another matter.

• Lip-Bu Tan - CEO, Intel
• Lisa Su - CEO, AMD
• Rene Haas - CEO, Arm
• Elon Musk - CEO, Tesla, SpaceX
• Tim Cook - Executive chairman and ex-CEO, Apple

Reaction to his resignation

Tim Sweeney inevitably has something to say on the matter, as does Clement Delangue, co-founder and CEO of Hugging Face.

Jim Cramer, host of Mad Money on CNBC had this to say:

Nvidia's share price has now dropped 13% in pre-market trading.

Tim Sweeney said it "would be an Apple firing Steve Jobs level of idiocy" to fire Jensen Huang from his position as CEO. He suggests it would do grievous harm to the US.

Not holding back, he also said it would be a "ridiculous shitshow... to replace one of the leading technology visionaries of the modern era with the company's money guy."

Elon Musk just said it would be "an honor" to hire Jensen. I'm sure it would, Elon. I'm sure it would.

Here is a brief timeline of events which kicked off last week with a story by the New York times into Jensen's relationship with Alice Huang.

• October 29 - New York Times report comes out covering the relationship with an alleged foreign intelligence asset.
• November 5 - Jensen is called to a meeting with various foreign affairs and national security committee leaders in US Congress, set for November 18.
• November 8 - Jensen sends an email to all Nvidia staff, also published on the company newsroom, admitting to and apologising for an affair. The board also posts a statement on the newsroom saying it was launching an internal investigation.
  • Nvidia share price drops - around 21% since October 28
• November 9 - Donald Trump speaks to press about Jensen, backing the CEO. "He's an amazing guy. I just hope there's no problem. If there is a problem, we'll let you know about it."
• November 10 - Law firms chase investors to sign up for class action lawsuits or 'investigations' into the company. We've seen at least five press releases of lawyers offering their services to investors. Nvidia itself hires law firm Wachtell Lipton to lead the internal investigation.
  • The Information reports Alice Huang facilitated some 240,000 AI GPUs, costing around $7.5B, to be accessed by Chinese companies.
  • Axios reports that Howard Lutnick was sent a classified warning memo over the relationship between Jensen and Alice Huang. Noting that Marco Rubio also warned Trump just before they picked up Jensen en route to the China trip
• November 11 - Reports surface that Jensen had a second affair, with an internal Nvidia employee, Kimberly Powell. An emergency board meeting is convened to determine Jen-Hsun's fate as CEO.
  • Nvidia's share price plumets even further, to lowest value since June 2025.
• November 12 - Jensen Huang resigns from all positions at Nvidia with CFO Colette Kress taking over the role of interim CEO while the company looks for a successor.