By Preston Fore
Publication Date: 2026-11-12 15:41:00
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.
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.
Rather, she said, she’s been driven by a curiosity about other people’s jobs—and a desire to keep learning.
“I think honestly, throughout my career, I was just always fascinated by somebody else’s role,” Kress said. “And sometimes that was my boss’ role. So, it worked more in that manner than waking up as a child and saying, ‘I want to be a CFO.’ I just get excited about learning new things.”
Nvidia’s new interim CEO Colette Kress made her first billion in 2025
Kress, who has an estimated net worth of $1.2 billion according to Forbes, holds a bachelor’s in finance from the University of Arizona and an MBA from Southern Methodist University.
After nearly three decades’ worth of financial roles at companies such as Texas Instruments, Cisco, and Microsoft, she joined Nvidia in September 2013.
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.
Nvidia’s revenue has soared during Kress’s tenure, growing from $4.13…