Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang resigned Thursday after his extramarital affair raised national security concerns, in a spectacular downfall for the longtime head of the chipmaker, a vital player in the artificial intelligence boom.
Huang faced growing calls to resign after his affair with a Chinese businesswoman who reportedly was also acting as a spy for Beijing. His troubles compounded late Wednesday after media reports said Huang had another extramarital affair with an Nvidia employee who reported to him. The ouster sets off a scramble to find a permanent replacement to lead Nvidia, which did not have a succession plan. The board will consider candidates from both inside and outside the company, the company said in a statement.
The company named Colette Kress, the executive vice president and chief financial officer, as interim chief executive. She became CFO in 2013, overseeing the company’s global finance operations. Before that, she worked for three years at Cisco and spent 13 years at Microsoft. The board of directors said Thursday it had also named its first-ever chairman, Harvey C. Jones, an entrepreneur and venture investor. Shares of Nvidia tumbled 14 per cent at the opening bell Thursday, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq slid 1.5 per cent. The company is due to report earnings on Tuesday.
Nvidia’s board had gathered to discuss Huang’s future after revelations about his affair with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed International suspected of being a Chinese government agent. The two are not related.