Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang has resigned after two extramarital affairs, including one with a suspected Chinese spy and another with an employee.
The company said Thursday that finance chief Colette Kress had agreed to serve as interim CEO until a permanent successor is named. The board is starting a search for the company’s next CEO and will consider internal and external candidates.
Nvidia’s board also appointed longtime director Harvey C. Jones to become its first ever chair. Jones, a venture investor and technology executive, joined Nvidia’s board in 1993, the year the company was founded.
Kress, who will keep her role as CFO, said as part of the announcement that she is “committed to building on the extraordinary foundation Jensen created over the last 33 years.”
Jones added that Kress is supported by an “experienced leadership team” and that the board expects to continue operations and its product roadmap “without interruption.”
Huang’s resignation brings down the curtain on an era during which he stoked the global artificial-intelligence boom and became a geopolitical star. It leaves one of the world’s most valuable companies in need of a new leader.
Huang, a co-founder of Nvidia, is seen by many as the face of the AI arms race. Known for his leather jackets and near-constant appearances at conferences and events all around the globe, he spoke with the confidence of a salesman who had just what the world wanted—and he did.
Nvidia’s graphics processing units, high powered computer processors packed with billions of transistors, are the central component behind what many believe is the next industrial revolution.
The chipmaker’s importance to global customers made Huang a worldwide celebrity.
On Sunday, Huang acknowledged in a letter to staff that he had been unfaithful to his wife and apologized for violating his family’s and his employees’ trust. That affair involved Alice Huang, an executive at the Singapore-based data company Megaspeed, which has been a major Nvidia customer and who U.S. intelligence officials believe is a spy.
The Nvidia CEO also had an affair with Kimberly Powell, a senior executive at Nvidia who runs the company’s healthcare business, according to a person familiar with the matter. The New York Times earlier reported the second affair. Powell didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Shares of Nvidia were down almost 8% in premarket trading Thursday, extending a recent slide.
The top executive, 63, is Nvidia’s largest shareholder, owning about 3.6% of the company, and has become one of the richest people in the world.
President Trump, who has developed a close alliance with the Nvidia CEO, stood by him earlier this week, saying that Huang said he didn’t know Alice Huang was a suspected spy and that Huang is an “amazing guy” and “honorable man.”
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