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

Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Huang, has resigned as President, CEO, and member of the board, effective immediately. That is the message which has just been posted on the Nvidia newsroom.

He has been at the centre of a big ol' scandal since last week, which threatened his position at the head of one of the biggest companies in the world. It started with a report over his relationship with a suspected Chinese intelligence asset, which moved into him emailing his entire workforce to say sorry that he's had an affair (though didn't name the person), an invite to talk to national security and foreign affairs officials in US Congress next week, and now reports of potentially a second affair, this time with an Nvidia employee, have come to light.

This is what sparked the emergency board meeting last night which has culminated in his resignation from all sectors of the company.

Nvidia CFO, Colette Kress has taken over as interim CEO, while the company searches for a permanent replacement for Jensen, with Harvey C. Jones appointed the virst ever chair of Nvidia's board of directors.

"Colette Kress, current Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Nvidia, has agreed to serve as Interim Chief Executive Officer," reads the statement on the Nvidia newsroom. "Kress will continue to serve as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer while serving as Interim Chief Executive Officer until a permanent successor has been named. The Board is initiating a search for a permanent Chief Executive Officer and will consider internal and external candidates."

“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,” said Colette Kress, Interim CEO and CFO, Nvidia. “We will continue advancing the work that has made NVIDIA a leader in accelerated computing and AI, and execute on the opportunities ahead. Our focus remains on serving our customers, partners, developers and shareholders.”

There has so far been no statement from Jensen himself on the matter, but the Nvidia statement thanks him for his service...

"Jensen’s contributions to NVIDIA are profound. NVIDIA is one of the most consequential technology companies in the world. The Board and the company thank Jensen for his immeasurable contributions to the company and the industry."

2026-11-12T16:12:16.852Z

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."

Chairman @RepMoolenaar released the following statement in the wake of Jensen Huang's resignation from @NVIDIA: https://t.co/sCJIYnE7WoNovember 12, 2026

2026-11-12T15:56:57.553Z

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.

Jacob's timeline story on Jen-Hsun resignation — (Image credit: Future)

2026-11-12T15:36:01.331Z

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.

2026-11-12T15:31:40.705Z

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.

Here are the emails sent to Nvidia employees: Company meeting Nov 18 https://t.co/9X67XzSOCeNovember 12, 2026

2026-11-12T15:26:52.291Z

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

2026-11-12T15:02:36.910Z

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.

This whole thing sucks, and I wish none of it had happened. It’s a really sad day! But I want to make one thing clear: we’ll keep fighting for open-source AI, harder than ever. This is too important to slow down now. Let’s go!November 12, 2026

A sad day for NVIDIA, developers, America, and all humanity. Jensen founded and ran one of the few companies to reach a massive scale while driving massive continued innovation and ubiquity, while others fell into the trap of ever-increasing extraction.November 12, 2026

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

Jensen we hardly knew yah. Just plain awful....November 11, 2026

2026-11-12T14:30:53.190Z

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

Nvidia's current share price — (Image credit: Google)

2026-11-12T14:26:13.183Z

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.

Save Jensen. This would be an Apple firing Steve Jobs level of idiocy from NVIDIA’s board if they did that, and a grievous harm to the United States of America. The dude truly is the visionary driver of the future of tech from the gaming GPU era to CUDA to AI supercomputers.November 12, 2026

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."

@wallstengine Wow what a ridiculous shitshow it would be to replace one of the leading technology visionaries of the modern era with the company’s money guy. The NVIDIA board would literally be burning the company down at the shareholders expense and grievously harming the USA.November 12, 2026

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

@zerohedge That would be an honorNovember 12, 2026

2026-11-12T14:20:51.713Z

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.