What we know about Colette Kress, Nvidia's interim CEO

State of play: Kress will serve as acting CEO until a permanent replacement is named. She will also continue as Nvidia's CFO and executive vice president, Nvidia said in an SEC filing.

• "Nvidia's strength has always come from its people, and together with our leadership team, I am committed to building on the extraordinary foundation Jensen created over the last 33 years," Kress said in a statement on Thursday.
• "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," Harvey Jones, chair of the Nvidia board of directors, said in a statement.

Catch up quick: Huang's departure came after The New York Times reported Wednesday that he had an affair with a Nvidia employee who reported to him.

• The new report followed revelations that Huang had a separate extramarital affair with Alice Huang, a former executive at Megaspeed International, a data center and cloud computing company that purchased billions of dollars of Nvidia products.
• Alice Huang has been accused by the U.S. government of being a Chinese intelligence asset. Nvidia's board has launched its own investigation into her.
• Jensen had not publicly identified an immediate successor before his departure.

Read more about Kress below.

Who is Colette Kress?

Flashback: Kress joined Nvidia in September 2013, bringing decades of tech experience with her.

• Kress worked at Microsoft for 13 years, including four as CFO of the company's Server and Tools division, according to her bio on Nvidia's website.
• She also worked at Cisco for nearly three years as senior vice president and CFO for the company's Business Technology and Operations Finance organization, according to her LinkedIn page.
• She began her career at Texas Instruments and has a finance degree from the University of Arizona and an MBA from Southern Methodist University, per her Nvidia bio.

How Nvidia grew under Colette Kress

Kress helped oversee Nvidia's finances as it transformed from a company best known for gaming graphics processors into a dominant supplier of AI chips.

• Her leadership "has been instrumental in Nvidia's success with Wall Street, and is key to Jensen's vision," Dan Ives, managing partner at Wedbush Securities, told Fortune in 2024.
• She most recently reported to Huang, per Business Insider.

By the numbers: Nvidia's annual revenue grew more than 50-fold during the Kress era — from roughly $4.28 billion before she joined to nearly $215.9 billion in its latest completed fiscal year.

What to expect with Kress as interim CEO

Kress is a familiar figure to Nvidia investors, regularly offering quarterly CFO commentary and representing Nvidia on earnings calls and at investor events.

• Because of her tenure at Nvidia and her financial expertise, analysts and experts pointed to Kress as a potential replacement CEO amid the current turbulence.
• "She is supported by an experienced leadership team that has been instrumental in executing NVIDIA's strategy and advancing its technology roadmap," Jones, of the Nvidia board, said in a statement.

Yes, but: Kress hasn't spent much of her career in engineering, raising questions about who will steer Nvidia's technological strategy.

• Huang maintained a heavy hands-on leadership style, with dozens of direct reports and influence over the company's tech development.

The bottom line: Her tenure will be immediately put to the test on Tuesday, Nov. 17, during Nvidia's next earnings call, which will summarize the company's third-quarter fiscal 2027 financial results.