“Like a deer in the headlights”... Jensen Huang reportedly blasted Nvidia interim CEO

WSJ: "Kress kept Jensen Huang's son-in-law in check
OpenAI financing cut in half in final deal"

Jensen Huang, the former CEO of Nvidia who resigned after his extramarital relationship with a woman suspected of spying for China came to light, reportedly harshly criticized his successor, interim CEO Colette Kress.

On November 12, U.S. media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), reported on Huang’s assessment of Kress when she was serving as Nvidia’s chief financial officer (CFO).

Colette Kress, interim CEO of Nvidia. Reuters-Yonhap

According to the reports, last summer Huang called a meeting with Kress, then Nvidia’s CFO, and the finance team to discuss the company’s mounting financial obligations. Nvidia had been considering providing billions of dollars in guarantees to companies that could not afford to buy its chips. Huang then began questioning the proposed deals. While listening to Kress’s presentation, he suddenly cut her off and told her she looked like “a deer in the headlights”—meaning she was so startled and confused that she could not respond properly, like a deer frozen in the glare of car headlights.

Huang also called Kress a “reporting CFO,” accusing her of being someone who could only report on matters and was incapable of developing strategy or making decisions.

However, the WSJ described Kress as a key figure who made major financial decisions alongside Huang after joining Nvidia in 2013, helping lead the company as it grew to a valuation of $5.8 trillion as of last October.

For example, the WSJ reported that last spring, when Huang’s son-in-law, Vice President Nico Caprez, and Vice President Raj Mirpuri proposed providing credit support to cloud service providers in exchange for a share of their revenue, Kress scrutinized the criteria for selecting recipients, how to value the guarantees, and how to calculate investment returns. She reportedly sought to keep Caprez, her son-in-law, in check after he was promoted to vice president in January.

Kress was also reportedly involved in reviewing the scale of the financial support Nvidia planned to provide for OpenAI’s proposed large-scale data center project in Ohio, cutting the initial amount under discussion by half. The two companies later signed a deal on the reduced terms.

Although Kress had previously praised Huang as a “pioneer,” she said in a memo to employees shortly after taking office, despite his having belittled her in the past and leaving in disgrace following a devastating scandal, that “we will continue to build on the exceptional foundation Jensen has created over the past 33 years.”

Meanwhile, Stephen Witt, author of Huang’s autobiography, The Thinking Machine, wrote in an opinion piece for The New York Times (NYT) that “Chairman Huang liked to present himself as humble, but all of that was meant to conceal his arrogance.” Witt also claimed that “he rarely tolerated dissent and had little ability to engage in open dialogue.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.