Colette Kress Takes the Helm at Nvidia

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — For 13 years, Colette Kress helped explain Nvidia’s growth to Wall Street, quarter by quarter. On Thursday, the company named its longtime finance chief interim CEO, putting her in charge of the chipmaker whose processors power much of the artificial intelligence boom.

Nvidia’s board accepted co-founder Jensen Huang’s resignation as president, CEO and director on Wednesday, Nov. 11. His departure followed reports of extramarital relationships. Nvidia gave no reason for his resignation. Kress, 59, will continue as chief financial officer while the board considers candidates from inside and outside the company.

When Kress joined Nvidia in September 2013, the company was best known for graphics chips that made video games run faster. She had spent nearly 25 years in finance roles at Texas Instruments, Microsoft and Cisco. She earned a finance degree from the University of Arizona and an MBA from Southern Methodist University.

Nvidia recorded $4.13 billion in revenue in the fiscal year Kress joined. By fiscal 2026, annual revenue had reached $215.9 billion. In its most recently reported quarter, Nvidia took in $96.2 billion, including $89 billion from its data center business.

Nvidia became the first company to reach $5 trillion in stock market value in October 2025. That figure, known as market capitalization, comes from multiplying the price of one share by the total number of shares outstanding. At roughly $207 a share and about 24.3 billion shares, Nvidia was worth just over $5 trillion on the market. The figure moves with the stock price. By Thursday’s close, Nvidia’s market value was about $4 trillion.

Kress helped structure deals that made Nvidia both a supplier to and an investor in some of its customers. One is CoreWeave, which buys Nvidia chips and rents computing power to AI developers. Those deals have helped fund new data centers and raised questions about the financial risk Nvidia takes on when it backs companies that buy its hardware.

“Nvidia’s strength has always come from its people,” Kress said in the company’s announcement, pledging to build on what Huang created over 33 years.

On Tuesday, Nov. 17, Nvidia reports quarterly results and holds its earnings call at 2 p.m. Pacific. Investors will hear from the finance chief they already know, now responsible for the company’s direction as well as its numbers.