Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is stepping down as CEO of the chipmaker he co-founded 33 years ago and built into a $4 trillion company that powered the artificial intelligence boom, the company announced Thursday, CNBS reported.
CFO Colette Kress has been named interim CEO.
“The Board has full confidence in Colette and the leadership team, and we expect the company’s operations, customer commitments and product roadmap to continue without interruption,” said board chair Harvey Jones in a release announcing the news.
The company will begin the search for a permanent CEO to replace Huang and will consider both internal and external candidates, according to the release.
Kress also provided a statement in the release, but Huang was not quoted.
After a meteoric rise to fame due to Nvidia’s central role in AI, Huang’s dramatic fall has been even more rapid, following a series of stinging revelations about his romantic ties to a woman believed by the U.S. intelligence community to be a Chinese spy.
Huang, 63, apologized on Sunday for being “unfaithful to my wife,” though he provided no details about the affair with businesswoman Alice Huang, who has worked for a Chinese company and Nvidia customer called Megaspeed. Late Wednesday, The New York Times reported that the Nvidia CEO also had a separate affair, this one with Kimberly Powell, vice president of health care at the chipmaker. Later that afternoon The Times and other outlets reported that Nvidia’s board met to discuss the company’s future.
