Key Notes
- Colette Kress becomes Nvidia’s interim CEO while retaining her executive vice president and CFO responsibilities.
- Her career includes 13 years at Microsoft, three years in a senior Cisco finance role and earlier work at Texas Instruments.
- Nvidia is searching internally and externally for a permanent CEO and will report earnings on November 17.
Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA) has handed its top job to Colette Kress, the executive who has run its finances since September 2013. She becomes interim CEO while keeping her CFO responsibilities, following founder Jensen Huang’s immediate departure.
Kress brings decades of finance experience across the technology industry. Her appointment puts someone with detailed knowledge of Nvidia’s finances and operations in charge while directors look for a permanent chief executive.
*NVIDIA’S JENSEN HUANG OUT AS CEO
– *Walter Bloomberg (@DeItaone) November 12, 2026
A Finance Career Across Big Tech
Before joining Nvidia, Kress spent three years as senior vice president and CFO of Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO)’s Business Technology and Operations Finance organization. The job covered financial strategy, planning, reporting and business development across the company’s business segments, engineering and operations.
Earlier, she worked at Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) for 13 years, including four as CFO of its Server and Tools division. She also held senior corporate planning and finance positions there. Her career included a variety of finance roles at Texas Instruments (Nasdaq: TXN) before Microsoft, according to Nvidia’s executive biography.
Kress holds a bachelor’s degree in finance from the University of Arizona and an MBA from Southern Methodist University. By the time Nvidia hired her, she already had nearly 25 years of experience in technology finance.
Thirteen Years Inside Nvidia
Nvidia announced her hiring in September 2013, when its ambitions centered on visual computing, mobile technology and the cloud. Huang welcomed her financial-management experience and industry knowledge as the company sought to expand those businesses.
She has since led the finance organization through Nvidia’s rise in accelerated computing and AI. In Thursday’s leadership announcement, the board credited her with a key role in that growth. Newly appointed board chair Harvey C. Jones emphasized her understanding of the company’s customers, operations and financial position.
That experience gives Kress a direct view of the spending commitments, customer relationships and profitability behind Nvidia’s expansion. For shareholders, those are central questions as the company manages a leadership change alongside the demands of the AI infrastructure boom.
Two Jobs During the CEO Search
Kress will remain executive vice president and CFO while serving as interim CEO until a permanent successor is named, Nvidia said. Directors will consider candidates from both inside and outside the company. Her temporary appointment does not settle who will hold the job permanently.
Jones said the board expects operations, customer commitments and the product roadmap to continue without interruption. Kress, in her own statement, committed to building on Huang’s work and continuing to serve customers, partners, developers and shareholders.
The next public test comes quickly. Nvidia is still scheduled to report fiscal third-quarter 2027 results on November 17. Kress has long been responsible for explaining the company’s numbers. She now has to explain its direction as chief executive, too.
