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WASHINGTON\/SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 12: Colette Kress spent years as the one Nvidia executive willing to check CEO Jensen Huang\u2019s enormous, \u200boften risky ambitions. As he drove the chipmaker deeper into multibillion-dollar AI investments, she pushed back, according to two people familiar with the matter on Thursday.<\/strong><\/p>\n Now the \u200c59-year-old finance chief has been handed the top job on an interim basis, while Nvidia searches for a permanent successor. Huang on Thursday stepped downfrom the company he co-founded and ran for three decades in a cloud of scandal, leaving Nvidia to navigate its first leadership transition without the architect of its rise.<\/p>\n Through their conflicts, Kress served as an important counterweight to Huang, whose success afforded him great latitude on key decisions, the two sources said. Months before news that \u200bHuang had a relationship with a woman suspected of being a Chinese spy, some on Wall Street were questioning whether his appetite for risk was sound and if the deals he struck \u200bwere feeding an increasingly circular AI economy.<\/p>\n Colette Kress and her staff clashed with Huang and the company\u2019s sales team over the massive and risky financing deals that \u2060fed into what some Wall Street critics deemed a circular AI economy, including investments in OpenAI and AI infrastructure companies such as Lambda, according to one of the people familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n A proposed $250 \u200bbillion plan to support an OpenAI data center project in Ohio was ultimately pared to $120 billion. People who know her describe Kress as a calming contrast to Huang\u2019s often confrontational style. Kress joined Nvidia in 2013 after a long career at other tech industry giants including Microsoft, Cisco and Texas Instruments.<\/p>\n \u201cColette is a pragmatist,\u201d said a fourth source familiar with the matter. She can project calm and help stabilize markets while the search is \u200bongoing, the person said, adding that Kress had been on recent calls to reassure customers and suppliers as the tumult inside the company unfolded.<\/p>\n Under her leadership, Nvidia is likely to \u201capproach DC more like other \u200btech companies do, by trying to build capital and make friends,\u201d instead of picking \u201ca fight over export controls\u201d the way it did under Huang\u2019s leadership, the person said.<\/p>\n But many investors, analysts and industry sources who spoke \u200cto Reuters \u2060questioned whether a finance executive could preserve the technological risk-taking that turned Nvidia into an AI chips powerhouse.<\/p>\n \u201cPutting (Kress) in the interim role makes sense to keep the markets calm, but I don\u2019t think she is the long-term visionary that Nvidia needs to continue its current trajectory,\u201d said Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy.<\/p>\n Nvidia shares slumped 14% to their lowest in nearly 16 months on Thursday after the company said Huang would step down, but pared losses to close down 4.3%.<\/p>\n Whether Kress will keep the CEO role permanently is yet to be decided. But other names have surfaced, including \u200bNvidia executive Ian Buck, who helped launch AI \u200bon Nvidia chips and led development of \u2060the CUDA software system. AMD CEO Lisa Su as well as Arm boss Rene Haas have also been speculated as potential candidates.<\/p>\n Questions are also swirling about how much Kress knew about Nvidia\u2019s chip sales and Huang\u2019s affairs. China has denied the spying allegations. Reuters was not \u200bable to contact Alice Huang for comment.<\/p>\n A fifth source said Kress knew about his relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia\u2019s vice president of healthcare, \u200bwho reported to him. Nvidia \u2060and Powell did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n Sunny Cheung, an analyst at the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation, said Kress could face congressional questions about the company\u2019s oversight of chip sales involving Chinese military-linked institutions and Southeast Asian intermediaries.<\/p>\n In a 2023 interview with an Israeli publication, Kress credited her two young sons with urging her to join Nvidia in 2013 because they knew its chips from their video games.<\/p>\n She \u2060became a billionaire \u200bin 2025 based on the value of her Nvidia equity, according to media reports, and Forbes said her net \u200bworth of $1.2 billion in mid-2026 put her in 32nd place on its list of America\u2019s richest self-made women.<\/p>\n Kress, who holds an undergraduate degree in finance and an MBA, was also named among the 50 most powerful women in business on rankings \u200bcompiled by Fortune and Forbes magazines in recent years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s unlikely anyone but Jensen is going to invest in his own customers as aggressively,\u201d said \u200ba third source, a venture capital investor. Huang has pushed Nvidia to offer financing to startups, the person said.<\/p>\nKRESS THE PRAGMATIST<\/strong><\/h3>\n
WHAT DID KRESS KNOW?<\/strong><\/h3>\n