The embattled CEO of AI chip giant Nvidia, Jensen Huang resigned Thursday after his extramarital affair raised national security concerns, in a spectacular downfall for the longtime head of the chipmaker, a vital player in the artificial intelligence boom.
Huang faced growing calls to resign after his affair with a Chinese businesswoman who reportedly was also acting as a spy for Beijing. His troubles compounded late Wednesday after the New York Times reported that Huang had another extramarital affair with an Nvidia employee who reported to him.
The ouster sets off a scramble to find a permanent replacement to lead Nvidia, which did not have a succession plan. The board will consider candidates from both inside and outside the company, the company said in a statement.
The company named Colette Kress, the executive vice president and chief financial officer, as interim chief executive. She became CFO in 2013, overseeing the company’s global finance operations. Before that, she worked for three years at Cisco and spent 13 years at Microsoft.
In a statement Thursday, Kress said that Nvidia’s “strength has always come from its people” and that she was “committed to building on the extraordinary foundation Jensen created over the last 33 years.”
The board of directors said Thursday it had also named its first-ever chairman, Harvey C. Jones, an entrepreneur and venture investor.
Shares of Nvidia tumbled 14% at the opening bell Thursday, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq slid 1.5%. The company is due to report earnings on Tuesday.
Nvidia’s board had gathered to discuss Huang’s future after revelations about his affair with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed International suspected of being a Chinese government agent. The two are not related.
In its first statement since the scandal broke, Megaspeed, a provider of cloud computing services for AI, said Thursday that it takes its obligation to comply with U.S. export control laws “extremely seriously.” The company prominently touts a partnership with Nvidia on its website.
Megaspeed is committed to working constructively and transparently with the U.S. government,” said the statement signed by its chairman and CEO, Tan Yong Pong, who also goes by James Tan.
Nvidia has said it had “no reason to believe” that either national security or its secrets were compromised, but that its inquiry would examine all available information.
Last month, The New York Times reported that U.S. intelligence agencies discovered that Huang had developed a close relationship with Alice Huang — and determined that she was feeding information directly to Beijing. On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the FBI was investigating.
