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NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang resigns: CFO Colette Kress named interim CEO, Harvey Jones first board chair; what it means for GR00T, Jetson Thor and robot partners

White NVIDIA wordmark under the green NVIDIA eye logo on a black background. NVIDIA's official newsroom image for the CEO transition announcement; not a photo of anyone named in the story.
Image: NVIDIA

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NVIDIA said on Thursday, Nov. 12, 2026, that co-founder Jensen Huang has resigned as president, chief executive and a member of the board, effective immediately. Chief financial officer Colette Kress, 59, is interim CEO and keeps the CFO job while the board searches inside and outside the company for a permanent successor. Harvey C. Jones, 73, a former Synopsys CEO, becomes NVIDIA's first-ever board chair. NVIDIA's 8-K filing shows the board accepted Huang's resignation on Wednesday, Nov. 11, a day before the announcement, and that Jones has sat on the board since 1993. TechCrunch and The Robot Report note that 1993 is NVIDIA's founding year.

Source: NVIDIA Newsroom: NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition (Nov. 12, 2026)

NVIDIA's announcement gives no reason. It follows reports in the Financial Times and The New York Times that Huang had an affair with a former executive of Singapore-based Megaspeed International who, according to those reports, U.S. officials suspect of spying for China. Those are reported allegations, not findings. On Nov. 8 Huang admitted he had been unfaithful, NBC News reported, and said the board had opened an independent investigation that he would cooperate with, according to a statement quoted by The Robot Report. Jones said the board expects operations, customer commitments and the product roadmap to continue without interruption. Shares fell as much as 14% after Thursday's open, Humanoids Daily reported, after closing Wednesday at $173.73. NVIDIA reports fiscal third-quarter results on Tuesday, Nov. 17, as scheduled, and Kress told staff a company meeting is set for Nov. 18, CNBC reported.

Servospace take: robot makers built on one supplier's stack

Servospace analysis: NVIDIA sells robot makers nearly every layer they build on: DGX systems to train models, Isaac Sim and Omniverse to simulate, Jetson Thor computers inside the robot and open GR00T models, and it invests in robot companies too. The CEO transition announcement describes the business only as accelerated computing and AI and never mentions robotics. Huang was the stack's loudest promoter; the stack itself does not change with the CEO.

The dependence shows up in Servospace's own archive. In the 11 days from Nov. 2 to Nov. 12, using UTC posted times, 10 Servospace stories named NVIDIA as a chip supplier, model maker, benchmark host or investor. One of those, Gemini Robotics on Nov. 10, names NVIDIA only in a GR00T 2 comparison. Foxconn's live page displays as Nov. 1, 11:46 p.m. ET. Foxconn, NVIDIA's biggest AI server maker, says more than 10 humanoids already work at its Texas sites. LG is targeting late-2027 sales of a humanoid built with NVIDIA. Pudu's D5 robot dogs run on Jetson AGX Orin. Kearney's driverless-truck cost model assumes an NVIDIA Thor computer. The MetaX and UBTECH chip venture Xixuan says its goal is to surpass Thor. And NVIDIA put money into Agile Robots' $500 million round, announced the same day Huang left.

Several robotics bets are in flight. NVIDIA has said GR00T 2 weights will be released in December, Humanoids Daily reported. The roughly $12.9 billion Hugging Face acquisition, which brings the LeRobot project and Pollen Robotics, is under Justice Department review with a close expected in the first half of 2027, per the same report, which also cites The Information on NVIDIA discussing another $1 billion investment in Figure. TechCrunch notes NVIDIA reported $99 billion of investments and $25 billion of further commitments at the end of its fiscal second quarter, money that partly backs customers who buy its chips.

Who makes money: for now, still NVIDIA. A new CEO does not change what a Jetson Thor module or a GR00T checkpoint does on a robot. The risk for robot makers is slower deal-making and tighter China rules. JPMorgan analysts wrote Thursday that the risk of more restrictive shipment rules into China had risen, NBC News reported, and The Robot Report notes AMD, Qualcomm, Arm and Intel may pitch themselves as more reliable Western suppliers. Watch the Nov. 17 call for whether NVIDIA restates its robotics roadmap and the GR00T 2 release, and whether the Hugging Face timeline holds.

More on Figure AI, Nvidia, JPMorgan, Hugging Face, LeRobot, Pollen Robotics, Arm, Foxconn and robot business and funding.

Sources

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Summarized by Servospace from the sources above, drafted with AI help and checked against those sources before publishing. Claims are the companies' or outlets' unless we say otherwise. How we work.

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