Jensen Huang steps down as Nvidia CEO

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is stepping down, leaving the AI industry without its biggest champion and clouding the future of the chipmaker he built into an AI powerhouse. Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress will take over as interim CEO as Nvidia looks for a permanent successor, the company said on Thursday. Huang, who co-founded Nvidia and is its fourth-largest investor with a stake of about 3.61 percent, will not remain on the board. Pressure has been mounting on Huang in recent days after reports said the 63-year-old, who is married, had an affair with a Chinese businesswoman who US authorities suspect of spying for Beijing. China has dismissed the spying allegations, calling them "baseless". Nvidia's board met on Wednesday to consider his ouster, a person familiar with the matter said, after reports earlier in the day that Huang also had an extramarital affair with a senior company executive who reported to him. Huang's exit plunges the US$4 trillion company into uncertainty and threatens to disrupt an AI ecosystem that he helped bankroll by pouring Nvidia's swelling cash pile back into cloud providers, suppliers and the industry's biggest labs. Edited by Edmond Fong