Good morning. Nvidia is the latest Fortune 500 company to name its CFO interim CEO.
The AI giant appointed CFO Colette Kress interim CEO, replacing Jensen Huang, the company’s co-founder and longtime leader, who resigned Thursday after admitting to an affair that raised national security concerns. Kress will continue serving as finance chief while taking the helm of Nvidia.
Kress is “very much the right interim CEO,” Scott W. Simmons, co-managing partner of executive search firm Crist Kolder Associates, told me. As CFO for 13 years, she knows the company’s story “front and back” and is a highly respected spokesperson with credibility among investors, Simmons said.
Nvidia’s transformation during Kress’s tenure has been extraordinary. Since she joined in 2013, revenue has grown from $4.13 billion in fiscal 2014 to $130.5 billion in fiscal 2025, while its market capitalization has climbed from about $9 billion to nearly $4 trillion today—an increase of roughly 44,000%. Kress ranks No. 49 on the Fortune 2026 Most Powerful Women list.
When I first interviewed Kress in 2022, we discussed her previous roles at Cisco, Microsoft, and Texas Instruments, as well as how Nvidia attracted and retained employees.
“I think my career background did serve me well at Nvidia,” she told me. “When I started at Nvidia, it was the smallest company that I’d ever worked for. It’s gotten quite large, but the focus is on how do you think about the future and make sure we’re ready for it to scale?”
She also discussed her approach to leadership, emphasizing the importance of surrounding herself with “people that you can learn from; people that can help lead.”
The company had no publicly disclosed succession plan. Replacing a founder-CEO is especially challenging, said Simmons, who has worked in executive recruiting for almost 30 years. At Nvidia, whose longtime leader has achieved celebrity status, the task is even more complicated, he said.
“When you’re talking about cutting-edge technology that’s evolving at light speed, you’re trying to find someone who could pick the ball up and carry it down the field, and that’s difficult,” he said.
As interim CEO, Kress must help steer Nvidia through a leadership transition at a pivotal moment for the AI industry. The company plays a crucial role in shaping the technology’s future in the U.S. and beyond.
Whether she could eventually become the company’s permanent leader is another question. Simmons expects Nvidia’s board to look for a technologist to succeed Huang. Meanwhile, Nvidia has named Harvey Jones chair of the board. Jones has worked in technology, including semiconductors, for more than 30 years, Fortune’s Emily Forlini reported.
If the board decides to select a technologist as Huang’s successor, one potential internal contender, Simmons said, is Ian Buck. He joined Nvidia in 2004 and is now vice president of hyperscale and high-performance computing and a key architect of its AI business.
For leading analysts’ picks of potential outside successors to Huang, you can read my article here.
Have a good weekend.
Sheryl Estrada
Sheryl.Estrada@fortune.com
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
