CHICAGO (AP) — Nvidia has appointed a 13-year veteran executive behind some of its biggest financing deals as interim CEO after the abrupt resignation of its longtime leader shook Silicon Valley.
With Jensen Huang stepping down over reports of extramarital affairs, including reportedly with a Chinese spy, Nvidia on Thursday turned to Colette Kress to take control. Kress is a high-ranking financial executive who regularly communicated with Wall Street analysts and investors as the company burgeoned into a $4 trillion linchpin in the artificial intelligence industry.
Kress has been a key architect of Nvidia's strategy of striking partnerships with and investing in companies that are also customers in what are referred to as “circular financing” deals. The arrangements have raised concerns about financial risk.
For example, Nvidia holds a nearly 13% stake in the neocloud company CoreWeave, which purchases Nvidia chips and rents out the computing power to companies developing AI models. When shares of Nvidia slid Thursday, CoreWeave shares plunged 7%.
The company also has financing deals with the AI lab OpenAI and the neocloud Nebius, among others.
Kress joined the California chipmaker in 2013 as executive vice president and chief financial officer. She takes over for Jensen Huang, known for his black-leather jacket, who became something of a global spokesman for the power of AI, whose sudden departure spooked Wall Street.
Shares have fallen more than 30% since the shares hit an all-time high in October, falling another 5% Thursday.
A singular figure in the tech world, Huang faced growing calls to step down after The New York Times reported on his relationship with a woman alleged to be a Chinese spy. Late Wednesday, the paper and other outlets reported on another inappropriate relationship between Huang and another Nvidia executive who reported to him.
In a statement Thursday, Kress said that Nvidia’s “strength has always come from its people" and that she would build on the "extraordinary foundation Jensen created over the last 33 years.”
Nvidia's high-end chips have become the building blocks used to build out AI. And in her CFO role, Kress was a key architect in financing deals with many of Nvidia's biggest customers that include AI titans from Anthropic to CoreWeave.
Yorkville Ives financial analyst Dan Ives said Thursday that he and his team are “big fans” of Kress, though he's not convinced that she will be Huang's permanent replacement.
“Colette Kress has built enormous credibility internally and externally,” Ives wrote, but there's a “good chance Nvidia's board looks to the outside for a CEO.”
Kress has a long resume in the tech world. Prior to joining Nvidia, she worked at Cisco, Microsoft and Texas Instruments in a variety of roles, according to an executive bio on the company’s website. She is a University of Arizona graduate with an MBA from Southern Methodist University.
Thanks to Nvidia’s soaring stock, Kress is one of the world’s wealthiest executives with a personal worth estimated by Forbes in June of over $1 billion dollars, though Nvidia shares have fallen by nearly third since then. She was awarded a pay package worth $14 million for Nvidia's fiscal 2026, according to Nvidia's proxy statement.
Nvidia did not directly address the extramarital affairs in Thursday’s announcement. But over the weekend, the company said it was investigating whether Huang was “the target of a foreign intelligence effort" — and the then-CEO separately apologized for being unfaithful to his wife. China’s Foreign Ministry has dismissed the spying allegations.
FILE - A logo of Nvidia is displayed at at the Computex Taipei exhibition, one of the world's largest computer and technology expos, in Taipei, Taiwan, Wednesday, June 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying, File)
McALESTER, Okla. (AP) — An Oklahoma man was put to death Thursday for the fatal shooting of his girlfriend’s estranged husband as he arrived to pick up his two young children before Thanksgiving. It was the first in a pair of executions in the U.S. scheduled for Thursday.
James Pavatt, 73, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in McAlester. His breathing did not appear labored during the execution, and he was declared unconscious about six minutes before being pronounced dead at 10:12 a.m. CST.
In Texas, John Allen Rubio was set to be put to death Thursday evening. The 46-year-old was convicted of fatally stabbing and beheading three young children in 2003 in Brownsville, a border city with Mexico.
Although the death penalty is getting renewed attention after the failed execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee in September, the U.S. is on track to surpass 40 executions for a second consecutive year — a pace driven by Florida.
Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced he would commute hundreds of death sentences before leaving office, which experts say would be the largest mass clemency in American history.
On Thursday, former Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of being an accessory in a 1997 murder and awaits sentencing in December. Glossip, who had been on the brink of execution three times, was released on bond in May after spending nearly 30 years in prison. The U.S. Supreme Court had overturned his conviction and he was awaiting a retrial.
When Pavatt was asked if he had any last words, he shook his head no. As a chaplain read to him from a Bible, he appeared to be mouthing some words, but they could not be heard.
Pavatt was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the 2001 death of Rob Andrew, a 39-year-old advertising executive. Pavatt attended the same church as the Andrew family and had been having an affair with Rob Andrew's wife, Brenda Andrew. She was convicted at a separate trial and is currently the only woman on death row in Oklahoma.
Weeks before the shooting, Rob Andrew told police someone was trying to kill him after the brake lines on his car were cut. Brenda Andrew told police after her husband was killed that masked intruders shot her in the arm and fatally shot him.
Pavatt and Brenda Andrew went to Mexico with her two children after the shooting and were arrested three months later while reentering the U.S.
At a clemency hearing last month, Pavatt said he was “not guilty of shooting anyone,” and that he'd fallen in love with Brenda Andrew and believed “everything she told me.”
“It was not until my trial that I began to see the extent to which I had been manipulated by Brenda,” Pavatt told the board. “I can see why the jury believed that we were both involved in Rob’s murder.”
Prosecutors have said that Pavatt and Brenda Andrew plotted to kill her husband, and that no matter who fired the shots, both were equally guilty.
No family members of Rob Andrew or Pavatt witnessed the execution, although his daughter and her husband visited him the night before, a prison spokesperson said.
Rubio and his girlfriend, Angela Camacho, were accused in the killings of 3-year-old Julissa Quesada, 14-month-old John E. Rubio and 2-month-old Mary Jane Rubio in the squalid, windowless apartment they shared in Brownsville, located on Texas’ border with Mexico.
Camacho pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence.
Rubio’s first capital murder conviction in the killings was overturned by an appeals court, which ruled that statements by Camacho were wrongly allowed as evidence in his trial. Rubio again pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity for his second trial but he was once again convicted and sentenced to death.
Rubio, according to court records, wasn’t the biological father of the two older children but treated them as if they were his own.
At various points, Rubio claimed the children were possessed and that he was the “chosen one” intended to save the world. Defense experts diagnosed Rubio as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, a determination rejected by prosecution experts.
Defense experts testified his childhood — filled with violence at home, “toxic” parents, drug use and prostitution — damaged him developmentally.
The apartment building where the children were killed was later demolished and the land was turned into a park and a community garden.
Rubio was set to be executed Thursday evening at the state prison in Huntsville.
Graczyk reported from Huntsville, Texas.
This photo provided by the Oklahoma Department of Corrections shows James Pavatt in Feb. 2023. (Oklahoma Department of Corrections via AP)
This photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows John Allen Rubio on Oct. 31, 2022. (Texas Department of Criminal Justice via AP).
