Meet Nvidia’s billionaire interim CEO, Colette Kress—she helped turn the chipmaker into a nearly $4 trillion giant and took home $16 million last year
Nvidia just named longtime chief financial officer Colette Kress as its interim chief executive officer on Thursday following the resignation of embattled leader Jensen Huang.
Key points
- Nvidia’s longtime chief financial officer helped transform the company into an AI powerhouse.
- Now she’s taking the reins following Jensen Huang’s resignation on Thursday.
- “The CFO leadership at Nvidia from Colette Kress has been instrumental in Nvidia’s success with Wall Street, and is key to Jensen’s vision,” Ives said.
She also holds more than 4 million Nvidia shares, the second-largest stake among the company’s executives, behind Huang, who owns roughly 870 million shares.
After nearly three decades’ worth of financial roles at companies such as Texas Instruments, Cisco, and Microsoft, she joined Nvidia in September 2013.
Additional details
- Its market capitalization has climbed roughly 44,000%, from about $9 billion when she joined in 2013 to nearly $4 trillion today.
- Since then, she guided the company’s finances through a significant transformation, from a business largely focused on video game hardware to a chipmaking powerhouse at the center of the AI boom.
- “She is extremely well respected both internally at Nvidia and across the tech industry.” This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.
- Kress, 59, wasn’t publicly positioned as Huang’s successor, and in a rare interview in 2022, Kress told Fortune that becoming a C-suite leader was never necessarily her career goal.
- Adjusted for stock splits, Nvidia shares traded at roughly 40 cents apiece when Kress arrived, compared with more than $160 today.
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