Colette Kress, the CFO who challenged Huang’s bets, is Nvidia’s interim CEO

WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO: Colette Kress spent years as the one Nvidia executive willing to check CEO Jensen Huang’s enormous, often risky ambitions. As he drove the chipmaker deeper into multibillion-dollar AI investments, she pushed back, according to two people familiar with the matter on Thursday.

Now the 59-year-old finance chief has been handed the top job on an interim basis, while Nvidia searches for a permanent successor. Huang on Thursday stepped downfrom the company he co-founded and ran for three decades in a cloud of scandal, leaving Nvidia to navigate its first leadership transition without the architect of its rise.