11 min read
Colette Kress, Nvidia’s CFO since 2013, is now interim CEO, and the stock opened 13.09% lower. Jensen Huang resigned as president, CEO and director with immediate effect on November 12, 2026, according to Nvidia’s press release filed with the SEC. Kress holds both jobs until the board names a permanent successor. Her first test comes on November 17 with quarterly earnings, and if your exposure is a broad index fund, the S&P 500 lost only 0.35% on the day (Yahoo Finance).
Key takeaways
- NVDA opened at $150.99 on November 12, which is 13.09% below the $173.73 close a day earlier (Yahoo Finance).
- Measured from the November 4 close of $200.13, every share is $49.14 lighter, so 100 shares are down $4,914 (Starman math on Yahoo Finance data).
- At the open, a $10,000 NVDA stake was about $1,309 lighter. The same $10,000 in an S&P 500 fund lost about $35 on November 12 (-0.35%, Yahoo Finance).
- Kress’s first earnings report as interim CEO is due Tuesday, November 17, at about 1:20 p.m. PT, with the call at 2 p.m. PT (Nvidia 8-K).
Who is Colette Kress, Nvidia’s new interim CEO?
Kress has been Nvidia’s executive vice president and chief financial officer since September 2013. Under the November 12 release she agreed to serve as interim CEO and stays CFO until a permanent chief executive is named. The board says it is starting a search and will look at internal and external candidates.
Read that last sentence carefully if you hold the stock. The filing doesn’t say Kress is a candidate for the permanent job, and it doesn’t rule her out. Anyone who tells you she’s the obvious heir is guessing.
What did Colette Kress say when she took over?
The release gives her one public line: she will build on “the extraordinary foundation Jensen created over the last 33 years.” That’s a continuity message. The release announces no new strategy, and the new chair says the plan is for day-to-day operations to carry on unchanged (more on him below).
Why is everyone suddenly searching her name?
Most people who own Nvidia through a 401(k) had never heard of their CFO until this week. Benzinga ran a “5 things to know” profile within hours. Coverage has also pointed out that very few women have led a company the size of Nvidia. I’d put more weight on her record in the company’s own filings, which is the next section.
Colette Kress’s career: Texas Instruments, Microsoft, Cisco, Nvidia
The best source here is the executive biography in Nvidia’s annual report (Form 10-K). A company signs that document under securities law, so it carries more weight than a LinkedIn summary. Here is the path, step by step.
Eight years at Texas Instruments, then 13 at Microsoft
Before Microsoft, Kress spent eight years in various finance roles at Texas Instruments. She was at Microsoft from 1997 to 2010 and held several positions. The last was CFO of the Server and Tools division, starting in 2006. That unit sold infrastructure software to big corporate customers, so she was already running finance for a business that depended on data centers more than a decade before Nvidia’s data-center boom.
What did Colette Kress do at Cisco?
Her last job before Nvidia was senior vice president and CFO of the Business Technology and Operations Finance organization at Cisco Systems. The 10-K says she was responsible for financial strategy, planning, reporting and business development across all of Cisco’s business segments, engineering and operations. She left in 2013 to become Nvidia’s CFO, the job she still holds.
Where did Colette Kress go to school?
She has a finance degree from the University of Arizona and an MBA from Southern Methodist University. The filings I checked give no age, family details, salary or share count, so I’m not going to fill those gaps.
My read: every job on that list is a finance job inside a large technology company. That’s a good profile for keeping a company steady through a crisis. Huang, by contrast, set the product vision, which is why the board’s choice of chair matters as much as the interim CEO.
Why did Jensen Huang resign? The eight days before the handover
The sequence explains why the stock was already falling before November 12. Every date below comes from a filing, a company statement or a named outlet. For more on the first days of the story, see our piece on the board’s investigation.
- November 4: NVDA closes at $200.13 (Yahoo Finance).
- November 5: CNBC reported that three House Republican committee chairs wrote to Huang asking him to attend a closed-door briefing on November 18, citing “significant national security concerns.”
- November 8: According to a statement from Nvidia’s board, the board opened an independent investigation after reports that Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort. Huang told employees he had been unfaithful to his wife and apologized.
- November 11: NVDA closes at $173.73.
- November 12: Huang resigns, Kress becomes interim CEO, Harvey C. Jones becomes chair, and the stock opens at $150.99.
Keep facts and reports apart. The investigation, Huang’s apology and his resignation are all confirmed by the company. The foreign-intelligence claim has not been confirmed. Treat it as an open question, and don’t trade on it as if it were proven.
How far did Nvidia stock fall after Jensen Huang resigned?
The stock gapped down, meaning it opened well below the previous close with no trading in between. Here are the numbers side by side.
| Date (2026) | NVDA price | What it marks |
|---|---|---|
| November 4 (close) | $200.13 | One day before the House letter |
| November 11 (close) | $173.73 | Last close with Huang as CEO |
| November 12 (open) | $150.99 | First price with Kress as interim CEO, 13.09% below the prior close |
From the November 4 close to the November 12 open, NVDA lost $49.14 a share, close to a quarter of its value in just over a week. Only part of that fall came on resignation day. The rest built up as the story unfolded, which tells you the market had been pricing in leadership risk for days.
Why does a founder’s exit hit harder than a bad quarter?
Investors call it key-person risk: the danger that a company’s value rests heavily on one person. Huang co-founded Nvidia and ran it for three decades. A weak quarter changes one year’s estimates. Losing the founder makes investors ask who sets direction for the next five years, and that question is harder to price, so the selling tends to be heavier.
What does Colette Kress control at Nvidia now?
In practice, she runs the company and still runs its finances. That combination is unusual, and it’s temporary by design.
One person, two jobs: CEO and CFO
Normally the CEO sets the plan and the CFO is a check on it, signing off the numbers that go to shareholders. Until a permanent CEO is named, Kress does both. I’d be careful about reading that as a red flag. It’s a common stopgap when a CEO leaves suddenly. It does put more weight on the board as the outside check, and the board has just changed shape.
Who is Harvey Jones, Nvidia’s first-ever board chair?
Harvey C. Jones, former CEO and executive chairman of chip-design software maker Synopsys, was named Nvidia’s first-ever Chair of the Board. He said operations, customer commitments and the product roadmap are expected to continue without interruption. Splitting the chair role from the CEO role is a governance change. Separating the person who runs the company from the person who leads its oversight is standard practice at many large companies, and Nvidia now does it for the first time.
For shareholders, “without interruption” is the promise to test. Customers who signed multi-year chip orders want to hear it. On November 17 you’ll get the first numbers that either back it up or don’t.
Does Nvidia’s shake-up hit your 401(k), index fund or crypto?
Less than the headlines suggest, if you’re diversified. On November 12 the S&P 500 slipped 0.35% to 7,592.4, the Nasdaq Composite fell 0.39% and the Dow lost 0.36% (Yahoo Finance). The rest of the market absorbed most of the Nvidia shock.
Why rates make the Nvidia drop sting more
The bigger pressure on tech comes from the bond market. The 10-year Treasury yield stood at 5.1% on November 12 (Yahoo Finance), while the effective fed funds rate was 3.88% on November 10 (Federal Reserve Bank of New York). When a risk-free government bond pays 5.1%, investors pay less today for profits that arrive years from now. High-growth chip stocks are priced on exactly those future profits.
That helps explain why the Nasdaq is down 4.97% over the past month while the Dow is up 1.31% (Yahoo Finance). A CEO crisis is harder to shrug off in that environment.
What moved alongside Nvidia on November 12
| Asset | Level (Nov 12) | 1-day move | 1-month move |
|---|---|---|---|
| S&P 500 | 7,592.4 | -0.35% | -1.64% |
| Nasdaq Composite | 25,366.09 | -0.39% | -4.97% |
| Bitcoin | $71,510.57 | -3.32% | -13.94% |
| Gold | $3,878.50/oz | -3.05% | -5.58% |
| US dollar index | 103.19 | +0.28% | +0.63% |
Bitcoin fell harder than stocks, and gold fell too, while the dollar firmed. That pattern looks like risk-off, meaning investors cut whatever is volatile and hold cash or dollars. If you hold crypto expecting it to hedge tech-stock trouble, this day didn’t support that. If you own an S&P 500 tracker, our explainer on how index funds absorb a single stock’s fall shows why one name rarely sinks the whole fund.
By the numbers
- One NVDA share bought at the November 11 close of $173.73 was worth $22.74 less at the November 12 open of $150.99.
- 100 shares held since the November 4 close of $200.13 were $4,914 lighter at the November 12 open.
- A $10,000 NVDA position at the November 11 close lost about $1,309 to the 13.09% opening gap.
- The same $10,000 in an S&P 500 fund lost about $35 on November 12, when the index fell 0.35%.
How we calculated: NVDA closes of $200.13 (Nov 4, 2026) and $173.73 (Nov 11), the Nov 12 open of $150.99 and its 13.09% gap, and the S&P 500’s -0.35% move on Nov 12, all from Yahoo Finance daily data.
Nvidia earnings November 17: Kress’s first test as interim CEO
Nvidia reports third-quarter fiscal 2027 results on Tuesday, November 17, at about 1:20 p.m. Pacific, with the earnings call at 2 p.m. Pacific, according to its 8-K. It will be Kress’s first report as interim CEO.
In her CFO role she has signed off the company’s numbers for 13 years. This time the strategy questions come to her too.
What questions will investors ask Colette Kress?
- Does guidance (the company’s own forecast for next quarter) change at all after the leadership shock?
- What does she say about China, a market investors have been asking about?
- Is there a timeline for naming a permanent CEO?
- What can she say, if anything, about the board’s independent investigation?
Nobody knows the answers yet. My view: the tone matters almost as much as the numbers. A finance chief who has run the numbers since 2013 knows that one loose word on a call can move a stock this size by billions of dollars.
What are the biggest risks for NVDA shareholders now?
Three open questions hang over the stock, and none has a date when it gets settled.
The investigation and the November 18 briefing request
The board’s independent investigation, opened on November 8, is still running. The November 18 closed-door briefing was requested from Huang personally, according to CNBC’s report on the letter. The sources I checked don’t say whether that briefing goes ahead now that he has left, or who would attend for Nvidia. Lawmakers raising “national security concerns” about the world’s most important chip company is a regulatory risk investors can’t measure yet.
The CEO search
An interim leader can keep a company steady. Big bets are normally left for whoever gets the job permanently. Until the board picks someone from inside or outside, the market will price some uncertainty into the stock.
Common mistakes to avoid this week
I’ve made the first one myself: treating a big gap down as an automatic bargain. A lower price is only cheap if the business underneath is unchanged, and nobody can say that before November 17. The second mistake is selling a diversified fund because of one company’s headlines, which on November 12 would have meant reacting to a 0.35% move. The third is repeating unconfirmed reports about Huang as fact and trading on them. For background on how the resignation itself unfolded, read our report from the day.
FAQ
Is Colette Kress the permanent CEO of Nvidia?
No. She is interim CEO. The board is searching for a permanent successor and has said it will consider internal and external candidates. No source says whether Kress herself is in the running.
Is Colette Kress still Nvidia’s CFO?
Yes. Under the November 12 release she stays executive vice president and CFO while serving as interim CEO. She will hold both roles until a permanent chief executive is named.
Where did Colette Kress work before Nvidia?
According to Nvidia’s 10-K, she spent eight years in finance at Texas Instruments. She was at Microsoft from 1997 to 2010, including as CFO of the Server and Tools division from 2006. She then became senior vice president and CFO of Cisco’s Business Technology and Operations Finance organization before joining Nvidia in September 2013.
Who is Harvey Jones at Nvidia?
Harvey C. Jones is the former CEO and executive chairman of Synopsys. On November 12 he became Nvidia’s first-ever Chair of the Board. He said operations, customer commitments and the product roadmap are expected to continue without interruption.
When does Nvidia report earnings?
Tuesday, November 17, 2026. Results are due at about 1:20 p.m. PT and the call starts at 2 p.m. PT. It is the company’s third quarter of fiscal 2027 and Kress’s first report as interim CEO.
How much did Nvidia stock drop when Huang resigned?
NVDA opened at $150.99 on November 12, which is 13.09% below the November 11 close of $173.73 (Yahoo Finance). From the November 4 close of $200.13, the drop by that open was $49.14 a share.
What I’d watch next with Colette Kress in charge
First, November 17. I’ll be reading the guidance line before the headline revenue figure, then listening to how Kress answers the China and succession questions on the call. Second, November 18: whether the House briefing goes ahead in any form, and who appears for Nvidia. Third, any board announcement on a permanent CEO or on the investigation’s findings.
On price, I’m not making forecasts. I do have two reference points: the $173.73 close from the last day before the handover, and the $150.99 opening print. Whether the stock trades back toward the first or slips below the second after earnings will tell you how much faith the market has in an interim leader. If you’re also watching rates, the 10-year Treasury at 5.1% is the other number that can move tech stocks this month.
This is not financial advice. Do your own research before you change any position.
Related reading
Keep reading
Sources sec.gov · benzinga.com · nvidianews.nvidia.com
This article is for information only and is not financial advice. Crypto assets are volatile; you can lose all of your money.