Nvidia's Huang resigns; Trump backs Tim Cook as successor, Kress named interim CEO

What's the deal? Jensen Huang has resigned as president, chief executive officer, and board member of Nvidia, the $4 trillion chipmaker he co-founded 33 years ago and built into the centrepiece of the AI boom. CFO Colette Kress has been named interim CEO, effective immediately, and longtime board member Harvey Jones, managing partner of Square Wave Ventures, becomes Nvidia's first-ever board chair, according to the company's announcement and an SEC filing. Huang was not quoted in the company's Thursday release.

Why now? The exit follows revelations about Huang's romantic ties to a woman the US intelligence community believes to be a Chinese spy. Huang, 63, apologised on Sunday for being "unfaithful to my wife," referring to businesswoman Alice Huang, who worked for Nvidia customer Megaspeed.

Late Wednesday, The New York Times reported a separate affair with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of health care. The board met that day to discuss the company's future.

What could go wrong? The transition lands days before Nvidia reports quarterly results, and the company has no publicly designated successor. Nvidia's stock fell 10% on the announcement. The board has retained Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & KatzDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → to investigate allegations that Huang compromised national security, claims he has denied.

Who's next? The board is weighing internal and external candidates. Jones backed the interim team: "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."

Israeli tech outlet Calcalist, writing hours before the resignation, listed the names in the frame. Inside Nvidia: Ian Buck, who joined in 2004, helped build CUDA and now runs hyperscale AI products (a favourite on Polymarket, though Bloomberg has reported he lacks the operating experience typical of a CEO), Kress herself, and CTO Michael Kagan, a Mellanox co-founder. Outside: Arm CEO and former Nvidia executive Rene Haas; Apple's Johny Srouji, who led the Mac's move to Apple silicon and was promoted to chief hardware officer in April 2026; and AMD CEO Lisa Su. AWS chief Matt Garman, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra and Google TPU lead Amin Vahdat were also mentioned.

Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire added another outside name: Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora, who has run the cybersecurity company since 2018. Maguire argued that Huang mattered because he was technical, aggressive and credible enough to be aggressive, and that Arora combines those traits with being a "world class deal maker" with the relationships "to keep NVDA at the center of the AI ecosystem". He conceded: "There's no easy choice."

Trump's pick: On Thursday, President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that Huang "has done a fantastic job" and that "there is only one man to take his place - TIM COOK of Apple." He added: "A Legend replaces a Legend!" It was Trump's first public comment on the resignation, according to USA Today. Tim CookDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → stepped down as Apple's CEO in September after 15 years and is now executive chairman, Reuters reported, and Apple and Cook did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Trump did not say whether Cook had expressed interest, and Nvidia's board has not been reported to have formally considered him. Reuters also said traders on Polymarket favored Buck, then Kress, Haas and Cook.

The debate: Not everyone accepts the case against Huang. Writer Brian Chau, in his From the New World newsletter, called the push to remove him a "coup" driven by Washington export-control advocates, arguing that no evidence has been shown that Alice Huang is a spy and that, without the national-security angle, the affair would be a tabloid story. On the other side, US intelligence officials concluded she was a Chinese intelligence asset, according to The New York Times; The Guardian notes that the assessment is classified, so its basis is not public. China has called the allegations "entirely groundless", Megaspeed denies wrongdoing, and Nvidia says it found no evidence of chip diversion. The second relationship, with an executive who reported to Huang, is a governance question in its own right.

Less certain than reported: On 12 November, CNN reported, citing multiple sources, that the intelligence collected on Alice Huang so far does not prove she was spying for Beijing, and that US officials disagree about the strength of the evidence that China's Ministry of State Security recruited her. Attorney General Todd Blanche said there were still "no conclusions reached" by the Justice Department or the FBI "around who she is or is not". Some officials at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence called the spy label "not entirely accurate and over-torqued", and CIA officials are not yet convinced that intercepted communications show she knowingly passed information to Beijing, CNN said. President Trump said: "Was the woman a spy? And I don't know if that's been determined yet." Other administration officials told CNN it strains credulity that she was not acting for the Chinese government, and even officials who doubt she was a recruited asset still regard her as a counterintelligence risk. Singapore's Ministry of Home Affairs has said it investigated her over suspected false declarations linked to Megaspeed, not espionage, according to NDTV Profit. David Sacks wrote on X that "the spy narrative is collapsing".

What's the endgame? Huang made himself inseparable from Nvidia's strategy and the wider AI industry. The company acts as supplier, customer, investor, financier, and partner to scores of AI firms, using its balance sheet to backstop leases and chip sales. His departure removes the industry's most visible spokesperson at the moment the AI trade is already wobbling.

Nvidia's fortunes exploded after OpenAI released ChatGPT in late 2022, sending demand for its GPUs soaring. The stock is up roughly 14-fold since then, even after the recent pullback.

Huang's exit also reshapes Washington, where he built a close relationship with President Donald Trump, lobbying to preserve chip exports to China. In August, Huang put Trump on speakerphone at the All-In Summit, prompting the president to say, "I'm with you all the way."

The signal: One man's fall now ripples across an industry he helped define. "He's Mr. AI. He speaks for the industry," said Jeff Christian, CEO of executive search firm Christian and Timbers. "He's connected financially to everybody." Kress inherits that web, and the task of proving Nvidia is bigger than its founder.

Sources: Nvidia, 12 November
Nvidia Form 8-K
AP, 12 November
CNBC, 12 November
Donald Trump, Truth Social, 12 November
Reuters, 12 November
WSJ, 12 November
Axios, 12 November
USA Today, 12 November
Calcalist, 12 November
The Guardian, 12 November
BBC News, 9 November
Brian Chau, From the New World, 12 November
Shaun Maguire on X, 12 November

Image credit: Office of the President, Taiwan