NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) is looking for a permanent successor after Jensen Huang’s resignation from the company he helped create in 1993. In the interim, current executive vice president and CFO Colette Kress is CEO.
Here are five things you may not know about Kress.
Long Nvidia Tenure
Huang received most of the attention in recent years for Nvidia’s direction. Still, Kress has appeared on Nvidia conference calls and regularly shares the company’s financials and quarterly results. She joined Nvidia in 2013 in her current role, after serving 13 years at the company before taking over the interim CEO title.
Prior Work Experience
Prior to coming to Nvidia, Kress worked at Cisco, Microsoft and Texas Instruments. According to her LinkedIn profile, Kress served as Senior VP and CFO of Business Technology and Operations Finance at Cisco from November 2010 to September 2013. Kress worked as a Corporate VP at Microsoft from April 2006 to November 2010. She also worked at Texas Instruments in various finance roles, according to Business Insider.
Sons Convinced Her to Join Nvidia
When Kress joined Nvidia, the company was worth less than $10 billion, a far cry from its multi-trillion valuation now. Kress credits her two sons with helping convince her to join Nvidia. According to an interview with Globes, Kress said her sons who were eight and 10 years old at the time, “advised” her to join Nvidia due to the company’s video gaming presence.
Huang Closed the Deal on Hiring
Kress credits Huang for her joining the company. At the time of her hiring, Nvidia was the smallest company by valuation that Kress had ever worked for. In a past interview, Kress noted how Huang went out of his way to recruit her by spelling out his vision of the AI revolution on a whiteboard.
Nvidia Stake Created a Billionaire
In July 2025, Bloomberg estimated that Kress had officially become a billionaire thanks to her stake in the company. At the time, this made Kress one of the few people with the CFO title to become billionaires, a wealth level typically reserved for CEOs and founders of companies. A pre-planned sale of Nvidia stock in September 2026 showed that Kress owned 765,103 NVDA shares directly and more than three million shares owned in annuities and by her family.
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