From CFO to Interim CEO: Kress Takes Charge at Nvidia

0:00 NVIDIA chief financial officer Colette Kress has largely stayed out of the spotlight during her thirteen years at the company. Now as interim CEO, she's been for us center stage as in... NVIDIA navigates its biggest leadership crisis. Bloomberg's Nina Trentmann joins us with more in, a lot of writing that you've done in the last twenty four hours. Introduce our audience if they're not familiar with Colette Kress to her and, her history, but also the role she's now playing.

0:27 Yeah. Happy to. As you pointed out, Colette Kress has been with the company for the past thirteen years. She joined as executive vice president and CFO and has held this role ever since. She previously worked at Cisco, Microsoft, and Texas Instruments, always in finance roles. And, of course, the interesting thing is that the company she joined in in in 2013 is a very different company to the one that we know today. NVIDIA has evolved from from being a a company focused on chips largely used for computer gaming to this this huge machine of the AI trade. And so, of course, with that also grew the role that she's had. At the same time, also, of course, she was this, the CFO to Jensen Huang, so she hasn't necessarily played as much of a public facing role as other CFOs at companies of that size as you would imagine.

1:17 It's so interesting, the decision to name her CEO on interim basis. I'll never forget a conversation I had with her in August 2025. The idea at the time was about NVIDIA sharing revenue with the US government and her saying, well, I am the CFO, and I will follow Sarbanes Oxley and the laws of this nation. As CEO, it's a different job. Right? It's not just the CFO numbers game. Yeah. Of course. She will have to continue the numbers game. She would... She she will, be the CFO going forward, but at the same time, also, she's the main person now.

1:49 She's the the face of the company, not just to investors, but also in in Washington and, in relations to, to to Trump and other people. Of course, Jensen Huang has a very... Has played a very, visible role there. And I think, of course, that also adds to the challenges that she's facing, plus also the fact that she's now responsible for managing operations, thinking about how the company should invest going forward. And she doesn't necessarily have that operating experience if you look at at her CV and what she's done at NVIDIA so far.

2:20 And, again, to the audience, my understanding is that Tuesday earnings will be normal. There will be an analyst call. The analyst will get questions, and Colette Kress will be there. Nina Trentmann is... Has another must read. And don't forget to check out the CFO briefing newsletter. Subscribe to that at bloomberg.com.