Colette Kress Steps Up: NVIDIA's Finance Chief of 13 Years Takes Over as Interim CEO, With Nov. 17 Earnings as First Test

After Jensen Huang's resignation, The Wall Street Journal published a lengthy profile on November 13 of the person succeeding him: Colette Kress. The 59-year-old finance chief has run NVIDIA's books since 2013. She now takes over the company she has served for thirteen years as interim chief executive — the first non-founder to lead NVIDIA since its founding in 1993 — while continuing to serve as chief financial officer.

Her career began in the semiconductor industry: she spent about eight years in finance roles at Texas Instruments before joining Microsoft in 1997, where over thirteen years she rose to chief financial officer of the Server and Tools division, responsible for that division's financial strategy, planning and reporting. In 2010 she moved to networking equipment maker Cisco as senior vice president and chief financial officer of its Business Technology and Operations Finance organization, overseeing finance for all business segments, engineering and operations. She holds a bachelor's degree in finance from the University of Arizona and an MBA from Southern Methodist University.

According to the Journal, her two sons urged her to join NVIDIA in 2013, a story she recounted in a 2023 interview with an Israeli newspaper; she has also said she was drawn by Huang's vision and the company's culture. In the fiscal year she arrived, NVIDIA's revenue was $4.13 billion and its main business was still gaming graphics cards.

Thirteen years on, the company is a different size altogether: revenue reached $215.9 billion in fiscal 2026 (ended January 2026), 52 times the year she joined, and its market value passed $1 trillion in May 2023, then crossed $2 trillion, $3 trillion and $4 trillion over the following two years. The era's big deals all passed through her hands: the $6.9 billion acquisition of Mellanox, announced in 2019 and completed in 2020; the $40 billion acquisition of Arm, announced in 2020 and terminated in 2022; and two stock splits, in 2021 and 2024. For thirteen years, every quarterly earnings call has featured Kress walking Wall Street through the revenue, gross margin and guidance numbers.

According to the Journal, her most closely watched recent move was leading the expansion of NVIDIA's balance sheet, using financial backstops for customers' data-center projects in exchange for purchases of NVIDIA chips; in August, after a negative market reaction, she pushed to pump the brakes, and NVIDIA subsequently paused some of those arrangements. The advance and the retreat together show that she does more than keep the books: she takes part directly in deciding which deals go ahead and which stop.

The Journal, citing a person familiar with the comments, also reported that at a finance team meeting this August, Huang interrupted her presentation, called her "a deer in the headlights" and said she was a "reporting CFO" rather than someone who could help him define strategy. NVIDIA has not confirmed the account, and GSM cannot independently verify it; its publication just as she takes over adds a further note to this handover.

The situation she must steady is not a light one: NVIDIA has shed more than $600 billion in market value within a week, according to the Journal; the independent investigation the board launched on November 8 is still under way; and the formal CEO search has no timetable. Board chairman Harvey C. Jones said in the transition announcement that Kress has led the company through an extraordinary period of growth, that the board has full confidence in her and the leadership team, and that operations, customer commitments and the product roadmap are expected to continue without interruption. Kress said in the announcement that she would keep building on the extraordinary foundation Huang created over 33 years; the day after taking over, she wrote to all employees expressing confidence in the company and its future, and set a company-wide meeting for the morning of November 18.

According to NVIDIA's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), her total compensation for fiscal 2026 was about $14.3 million, mostly in stock. According to the Journal's profile, the NVIDIA shares she holds are still worth more than $800 million; Forbes, in its June list of America's richest self-made women, put her net worth at about $1.2 billion, ranked ahead of the singer Beyoncé.

Her first big test is already scheduled: on November 17, NVIDIA will report its results for the third quarter of fiscal 2027. For thirteen years she has been the one explaining this company's numbers to Wall Street on the earnings call; this time she will sit in the chief executive's seat for the first time, and the questions will not be only about numbers. GSM will continue to follow the board's search and her own future in this role.

Reference: NVIDIA, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings, Reuters

Related: Jensen Huang Resigns as NVIDIA CEO, Effective Immediately: CFO Colette Kress Named Interim CEO as Board Launches Search

Related: Nvidia Interim CEO Kress Writes to Employees Expressing Confidence; Company-Wide Meeting Set for November 18

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)

Photo: 图：英伟达临时首席执行官兼首席财务官 Colette Kress。SiliconANGLE theCUBE 摄，CC BY 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: NVIDIA interim CEO and CFO Colette Kress. Photo by SiliconANGLE theCUBE, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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