Jensen Huang has resigned as president, chief executive and board member of Nvidia, effective immediately, the chipmaker announced on Thursday.
Chief financial officer Colette Kress will serve as interim CEO while keeping her finance role. Harvey C. Jones, a former chief executive of Synopsys, becomes the board’s first-ever chair. The board will consider internal and external candidates for a permanent successor. Nvidia gave no reason for the resignation.
Huang, 63, co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and led it for 33 years, turning a maker of video-game graphics chips into the engine of the artificial intelligence boom and the first company worth $5 trillion.
His exit follows a week of turmoil. On November 8, the board opened an investigation into reports that Huang had been the target of a foreign intelligence effort through his relationship with Alice Huang, a Megaspeed executive whom U.S. officials reportedly suspect of working for Chinese intelligence. Huang admitted being unfaithful to his wife. On Wednesday, reports emerged of a second affair, with Nvidia executive Kimberly Powell, and that the board was preparing to oust him. The spy allegations have not been proven publicly, and Megaspeed denies wrongdoing.
Nvidia’s shares fell about 10 per cent in premarket trading after the announcement, extending a slide that has wiped hundreds of billions of dollars off the company’s value this week.
Nvidia reports quarterly results on November 17.
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