Nvidia’s board of directors announced Thursday morning that Jensen Huang, the company’s co-founder and CEO for 33 years, has resigned from his positions as president, CEO and director, effective immediately.
It’s a shocking development for one of the world’s most valuable companies, which designs the chips that will enable the AI boom. Few could have predicted this just a week ago, since Huang has been a central figure at Nvidia throughout the company’s existence and didn’t even have a succession plan in place. However, Huang has now been removed from his position following reports that he had an affair with a suspected Chinese spy and one of his direct reports at Nvidia.
Colette Kress, Nvidia’s CFO and executive vice president, has been named interim CEO while the company conducts a more thorough search for Huang’s successor. But other than her name and title, what do we know about the person who will now lead the approximately $3.8 trillion company?
According to Nvidia’s website, Kress has been with the company since September 2013, and before that spent three years as SVP and CFO of Cisco’s Business Technology Operations Finance division. She also spent 13 years at Microsoft, including four years as CFO of the Servers and Tools division. She holds a degree in finance from the University of Arizona and an MBA from Southern Methodist University.
The California-based 59-year-old has a very limited social media presence. On Linkedin, people congratulate former colleagues on their posts about their retirement. But as CFO, she regularly attends Nvidia’s earnings calls, making her a familiar face to analysts covering the company.
According to Forbes magazine’s list of America’s richest self-made women, Cress’s net worth is estimated at approximately $1.2 billion. Her Forbes profile adds that one of the reasons she joined Nvidia in the first place was because her two sons supported the company’s role in the video game industry, for which it was best known at the time.
“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 Jensen has built over the past 33 years,” Kress said in a statement. “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.”
Nvidia is scheduled to report its quarterly results on Tuesday, and we’ll likely hear more from Kress about the company’s immediate plans then.
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