Colette Kress, Nvidia’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, said:
Provided by: NVIDIA
Nvidia CFO Colette Kress, a 13-year veteran of the company, has taken the helm of the world’s most valuable chipmaker on an interim basis following the sudden departure of Jensen Huang.
“She’s the only person in the company who has this much respect,” Yorkville Ives & Company analyst Dan Ives told CNBC before the news became official. “She’s more than just a CFO. I almost see her as a COO.”
Nvidia has not announced a succession plan and said its board is considering internal and external candidates.
Mr. Kress joined Nvidia in September 2013 after serving in finance at Nvidia. Cisco, microsoft and Texas Instruments. At Nvidia, Kress is another big speaker on the earnings call, reporting on the company’s performance and answering questions alongside Huang.
“NVIDIA’s strength has always come from our people, and I am committed to working with our management team to build on the extraordinary foundation that Mr. Jensen has built over the past 33 years,” Kress said in a statement Thursday. “We will continue to advance the efforts that have made NVIDIA a leader in accelerated computing and AI and execute on future opportunities. We remain focused on serving our customers, partners, developers, and shareholders.”
Mr. Huang, who co-founded Nvidia in 1993, ran the company without a clear second-in-command and was known to personally decide which projects were priorities and email engineers with details.
But when it came to Cress, “Jensen wouldn’t do anything without her,” Ives said. “She’s a Swiss Army knife for Nvidia. Customers, partners, technology, everything strategically. She was involved.”
CNBC spoke to nearly a dozen NVIDIA insiders and former colleagues of Kress. They described her as intelligent, knowledgeable, thoughtful, and intelligent.
Cress intervenes at a moment of crisis. Mr. Huang has served as NVIDIA’s spokesperson, the face of the company, and the brand’s signature founder. He also pioneered the AI chip industry, becoming a central figure in the multitrillion-dollar boom that is driving the U.S. economy.
Futurum Group CEO Daniel Newman said in a message to CNBC that Kress “has a deep understanding of the business and has shown fierce loyalty to the company.”
Nvidia stock fell 14% on Thursday following the announcement. Stock prices are expected to decline for the sixth consecutive week, the longest slump since 2012. Stocks have been dragged down by broader concerns about advances in AI, especially after the midterm elections that gave Democrats a landslide victory.
Nvidia is scheduled to report quarterly results on Tuesday.
Hwang’s story was thrust into the public eye on Sunday when the CEO apologized for being unfaithful to his wife. Since then, there have been reports that he was having an affair with Chinese businessman Alice Huang, who U.S. intelligence agencies suspect is a spy. The pressure intensified late Wednesday after the New York Times reported on his second affair with an employee named Kimberly Powell.
Cress was recognized by Fortune as one of the most powerful women in business in May. Her LinkedIn profile lists her location as Saratoga, California, an affluent city 26 miles south of NVIDIA’s Santa Clara headquarters.
Regarding long-term business plans, Ives said Kress will likely serve as interim CEO for about a year, but that his permanent replacement will likely come from outside the company.
“We need people who have been successful on the global stage,” Ives said. “Given the company’s importance not only to the U.S. technology industry but to the global economy.”
— CNBC’s Seema Mody and Jordan Novet contributed to this report
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