For 13 years, Colette Kress spoke after Jensen Huang on Nvidia's earnings calls. Huang set out the vision and she walked analysts through the numbers.
This week, Nvidia put her in charge of the whole company.
The board accepted Huang's resignation as president, chief executive and director on 11 November, effective immediately, and appointed Kress, 59, as interim chief executive while it searches for a permanent successor.
She will keep her job as chief financial officer at the same time.
Huang left in the middle of a governance and national-security crisis. The board had been investigating whether he was the target of a foreign-intelligence effort tied to a woman US officials described as a Chinese spy, and Huang separately admitted to an extramarital affair.
Nvidia shares fell more than 10% in premarket trading once the resignation became public. In early afternoon trading, the bloodletting eased (a little), with the stock off around 5%.
Still, this wiped $200 billion from the value of the business, which has lost almost a third of its worth in just five weeks.
Number cruncher
Kress began her career at Texas Instruments, the chipmaker, and has never left technology finance.
She spent 13 years at Microsoft, including four years as chief financial officer of the Server and Tools division, and then three years as chief financial officer of Cisco's Business Technology and Operations Finance organisation.
She has a degree in finance from the University of Arizona and an MBA from Southern Methodist University.
Nvidia hired her in 2013, at the age of 46, after a search for a chief financial officer that had gone on for more than two years. At the time, Huang said she brought "excellent financial management skills".
Her offer letter set her base salary at $500,000, with a sign-on bonus of $1.5 million.
Nvidia was still mainly a maker of gaming graphics chips when she arrived. She later said it was the smallest company she had ever worked for, and that its processes had to change as it grew.
They did. Annual revenue rose from about $4.1 billion in fiscal 2013 to $215.9 billion in fiscal 2026.
Fortune ranked her 49th on its 2026 list of the most powerful women in business. Dan Ives, the tech analyst, called her leadership "instrumental in Nvidia's success with Wall Street".
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Second fiddle
Inside the company, her influence was more limited. People familiar with her told The Information that Kress did not set the agenda on Nvidia's major decisions.
Huang ran the company with total control and never put a clear succession plan in place. One person said he tended to "steamroll" Kress whenever the two disagreed.
First test
The board has not signalled any change in strategy. That leaves Kress to keep operations, financial reporting and customer relationships steady while the search for Huang's successor begins.
She will not be doing it alone at board level. Harvey Jones, a former chief executive of Synopsys, the chip-design software company, has been named Nvidia's first-ever chair. Jones, 73, has been on the board since 1993.
The recruitment team will consider internal and external candidates for the permanent job.
Cress' first public test comes quickly. Nvidia will report third-quarter results on Tuesday 17 November, as previously scheduled.
In a statement, Kress said she was committed to "building on the extraordinary foundation Jensen created over the last 33 years".
