Jensen Huang, the co-founder who led Nvidia for 33 years and built it into the chipmaker at the heart of the global AI boom, has resigned as president, chief executive and board member.
Nvidia’s board announced on Thursday, November 12, that Huang’s resignation was effective immediately and that Colette Kress, executive vice president and chief financial officer, had agreed to serve as interim CEO while keeping her CFO role. The board said it is searching for a permanent CEO and will consider internal and external candidates, according to the company’s filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Director Harvey C. Jones was named the company’s first-ever board chair.
“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,” Jones said (ABC News).
Why he left
The resignation followed reports about Huang’s personal relationships. The New York Times reported that Huang admitted to an extramarital affair with a businesswoman whom US intelligence agencies believe to be a spy for China (The New York Times). NBC News reported that the reports also involved a relationship with an executive who reported to him, and that a company spokesperson said Huang will not work with Nvidia in any capacity going forward (NBC News).
Market shock
Nvidia closed below a $4 trillion market capitalisation on Friday for the first time since July 2025 (CNBC). The S&P 500 and Nasdaq fell as tech stocks struggled, and the turmoil spilled into crypto, where traders cited the Nvidia fallout as one reason bitcoin dropped below $69,000 (The Block).
It is the first CEO transition in Nvidia’s history. Analysts say the November 17 earnings call and the succession search are the next things to watch, rather than any immediate disruption to chip shipments (Tech Current).
Rivals keep moving
The industry did not pause. On the same day, AMD announced its Instinct MI450X accelerator with 288 GB of HBM4 memory, SpaceX outlined more than $74 billion in proposed AI supercomputing campuses in Texas and Arizona, and a new SGLang Consortium brought Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Google, Meta and Cloudflare together around open-source AI inference software (Tech Current).
Why Africa should care
Nvidia’s GPUs power the AI data centres now being planned across Africa, from Lagos and Nairobi to Johannesburg and Casablanca. At the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in Doha this week, the African Union called for energy and digital infrastructure to be planned together to support the continent’s AI ambitions (Tech Review Africa). Any shift in Nvidia’s strategy, pricing or export posture under new leadership will be felt by every African company trying to secure AI computing power.
