Nvidia's $216 Billion Year Faces Its First CEO Transition

By Nathan Brooks

Nvidia reported $216 billion in revenue for the fiscal year ended January 2026, but Colette Kress now faces the company’s first CEO transition. She has become interim chief executive after Jensen Huang resigned, while retaining her chief financial officer job. The dual assignment began without a permanent successor.

At 8:47 a.m. ET, Nvidia announced that Huang had resigned as president, CEO and a member of the board, effective immediately. The announcement followed reports of two relationships, one involving a woman whom U.S. officials suspect of spying for China.

Nvidia shares opened at $151.01 and fell to $148.80, leaving the stock about $2.18 trillion below its October 6 record before rebounding. At 9:42 a.m. ET, shares traded at $161.84, down 6.8% from Wednesday’s close and 13.3% since November 6, roughly $1.87 trillion below the record.

What does Kress bring to the job?

Kress brings nearly 25 years of finance experience accumulated before joining Nvidia, according to the company. Her annual-report résumé lists successive finance roles at Texas Instruments, then Microsoft, where she became CFO of the Server and Tools division in 2006, and later Cisco.

At Cisco, she served as senior vice president and CFO of the Business Technology and Operations Finance organization. She earned a finance degree from the University of Arizona and an MBA from Southern Methodist University.

At Nvidia, Kress has led the finance organization for 13 years and delivered the quarterly earnings-call commentary that Wall Street uses to interpret the numbers. Her task now extends beyond explaining the figures to running the company.

When Nvidia hired Kress as CFO in September 2013, it was still known as a graphics-chip company with $4.13 billion in annual revenue. She came from Cisco, joining the company that would eventually become the world’s most valuable chip designer.

How much changed under her watch?

Revenue rose from $4.13 billion in the fiscal year ended January 2014 to $216 billion in the year ended January 2026, about 52 times as much. Net income advanced from $440 million to $120 billion, leaving Nvidia’s annual profit about 29 times its total sales when Kress arrived.

Adjusted for stock splits, Nvidia closed at roughly 37 cents a share on September 16, 2013. At $161.84, the shares traded about 438 times that level, turning a $10,000 investment from that day into roughly $4.4 million after this week’s decline.

Who is directing the board?

Harvey C. Jones said in Nvidia’s announcement: “Colette has helped lead NVIDIA through a period of extraordinary growth and has a deep understanding of our business, customers, operations and financial position.”

The board named Jones, a former CEO of chip-design software maker Synopsys, as its first-ever chair on the same day. Jones added that Kress had the support of an experienced leadership team.

What changes without Huang?

Before Kress took the interim title, Nvidia had never had a CEO other than its founder. At the time of her appointment, the company was valued at about $3.91 trillion. Huang had served as its public face for 33 years, working with its largest customers, suppliers and governments, and maintaining a regular presence in Washington.

The board’s investigation into Huang’s relationship with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore’s Megaspeed, remains open. China calls the spying claim against her groundless.

Can the dual role hold?

Kress’s advantage is operational familiarity: she knows the numbers, and Wall Street already knows her. Her limit is time. She is doing two jobs at once while the board searches for someone to assume one of them.

Analysts cited by Reuters listed Kress herself and Ian Buck, who runs Nvidia’s hyperscale business, as possible internal candidates. The board is searching both inside and outside Nvidia for a permanent CEO.

What should shareholders watch?

For shareholders, the useful step remains the one identified on Wednesday night: determine how much money is exposed to Nvidia through directly owned shares and index funds. Size that exposure for a leadership search that may take months.

The announcement named no permanent CEO and offered no timetable for the succession. The shares’ move from a $148.80 low to $161.84 did not erase their 6.8% decline from Wednesday’s close.

With the stock still 6.8% below Wednesday’s close and the search potentially lasting months, Nvidia’s next test is whether Kress can stabilize the operation and prepare it for a permanent leader without further damaging investor confidence.