Nvidia has lost the chief executive who has led it for 33 years. Jensen Huang resigned as the company's president, chief executive and board member, effective immediately, the company announced on November 12, 2026. Chief financial officer Colette Kress will serve as interim CEO while the board searches for a permanent successor, and the board has named Harvey C. Jones as its first-ever chair. The change comes just days before the company reports quarterly results, and it puts a new leadership structure under the closest investor scrutiny the company has faced in years.
What Nvidia Confirmed
The company's press release is brief. It says Huang stepped down with immediate effect and that Kress, who also remains chief financial officer, agreed to take the interim role. Kress joined Nvidia in 2013 and previously spent nearly 25 years in finance roles at Cisco and Microsoft. Jones, a former chief executive and executive chairman of Synopsys, has spent more than 30 years as an entrepreneur, technology executive and venture investor.
The board said it has "full confidence" in Kress and the leadership team and expects operations to continue "without interruption." It is weighing both internal and external candidates for the permanent role. Nvidia also said it will report third-quarter fiscal 2027 results on November 17, as previously scheduled, with the earnings call at 2 p.m. Pacific time. That date gives investors a first test of the new structure within days.
The release does not explain why Huang left. Coverage by Fortune reports that the company separately announced an investigation into reports that Huang had been targeted by a foreign intelligence effort, and that the board said it had "no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised." Huang acknowledged an extramarital affair, according to that coverage. The link between those events and his departure is reported, not confirmed by the company, so readers should treat it that way.
The Market Reaction
Fortune reported that Nvidia's shares initially fell more than 6% when the news broke. The stock reaction suggests investors are weighing who will set strategy at a company whose chips sit at the center of the data-center buildout. Huang has been the public face of that push for more than three decades, so his departure forces a fresh look at how much of the company's direction depended on one person.
Fortune also reported that Huang holds about 3.6% of the company, a stake valued at roughly $150 billion. Its article cites first-half fiscal 2027 revenue of $96 billion, up 85% year over year, and a company expectation of 70% revenue growth in fiscal 2028. Those figures explain why the next leadership decision matters so much: the financial plan being executed is ambitious, and the person accountable for it is changing.
The Hugging Face Deal Under Review
Leadership is not the only open question. Nvidia agreed in September to acquire Hugging Face, the open-source AI model platform, in a deal worth about $12.9 billion. Nvidia expects to close the transaction in the first half of 2027. Nvidia has said the platform will keep supporting rival processors, cloud platforms and software ecosystems.
Reuters reported on October 28 that the Justice Department is examining the deal as part of a broader, multi-year antitrust investigation into Nvidia's business practices. According to that report, enforcers are looking at whether owning Hugging Face would give Nvidia control of a key distribution channel for AI models and software. The Justice Department declined to comment on specific matters, and the report says Nvidia did not comment on the probe. Michael Useem of the Wharton School told Fortune, "Rarely has a board faced this much pressure."
The board's own statements focus on continuity. Jones praised Kress for having "helped lead NVIDIA through a period of extraordinary growth," and Kress said that "NVIDIA's strength has always come from its people." Those lines signal that the board wants the company's operating rhythm to stay intact while it selects a permanent leader.
Why It Matters
For business readers, the change matters on three levels. First, it tests whether a company built around one founder can keep its strategy and customer relationships steady through a transition. The board's public statements stress continuity, and the next earnings call will show whether that holds. Second, it raises the question of who sets the pace of Nvidia's capital allocation, including its stakes in AI startups and infrastructure partners. Third, it puts a new name at the top of a company whose chips are central to the AI buildout, at a time when governments and rivals are watching closely.
Investors and customers will mostly watch three things: the November 17 results and guidance, the timeline for naming a permanent chief executive, and whether the board selects a leader with a longer operating record in the role. Until then, Nvidia's largest strategic decisions will rest with a finance chief who has spent more than a decade running the company's numbers.
