Rebecca Bellan
Senior reporter at TechCrunch covering business, policy and emerging trends in AI. Her work has also appeared in Forbes, Bloomberg, The Atlantic and The Daily B...
“I think it's always interesting when a CFO steps in to be a CEO. It just means we're going to manage expenses right now. That's the key.”
Equity · Startups & Venture · November 2026
Context
Recapping the news that Huang resigned and CFO Colette Kress became Nvidia's interim CEO, Bellan reads the choice of a finance chief as a signal of the company's priorities.
Transcript
…in national security, Elon. And so it was kind of surprising to me that this actually, I mean, it almost restored my faith in humanity that he resigned. But someone said to me, they were like, if this were like Elon, nothing would happen. Like he would not be resigning. Nothing would be going down.
…Huang’s is NVIDIA in a number of different ways. He's the biggest shareholder. He has family members who work at the company. And I think probably most importantly, there was no succession plan in place. So this was not something that as of you know, a week ago, they were prepared for at all.
Yeah. I think we should actually take a step back because we just launched into this conversation, assuming rightly so, that our listeners will know what the heck we're talking about. But for those who somehow don't, Jensen resigned on Thursday after it came out he was having an affair with a former executive at an NVIDIA customer called MegaSpeed, who's alleged to have ties to Chinese intelligence. And then there was another reported affair with an NVIDIA executive. So he's resigned. NVIDIA CFO Colette Kress is jumping in as the interim CEO. She's a longtime board member. I think it's always interesting when a CFO steps in to be a CEO. It just means like we're going to manage expenses right now. Like that's that's the key.
Yeah, I mean, I think part big part of the message is this is not necessarily someone you should expect to be in this role for the long term. No disrespect to her, but it feels like a very kind of like caretaker appointment while they figure things out. And I think, you know, just to get into that…
Yeah, that's exactly right. So Trump was given, you know, some warnings about Wang's affair with someone who has ties to Chinese intelligence potentially. And it seemed like he didn't really mind. I think what's important here, though, is to note that Jensen Huang’s has been an advocate for…
I completely agree. I think the big turning point seems to happen, what, on November 9th. So that would have been earlier this week, Monday,
More from Equity
