Former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told his current successor, Colette Kress, that she was a “reporting CFO” who lacked the ability to help define a strategy for the company’s expansion of credit support for its AI customers. According to reporting from the Wall Street Journal, Huang called Kress a “deer in the headlights” during an August meeting where he pushed for more aggressive financing backstops to maintain GPU sales. One such initiative, a planned $500B financing vehicle intended to provide credit support for customers unable to afford the company’s chips, reportedly failed to result in any actual deals prior to Huang’s exit.
The internal conflict coincided with warnings from Huang that the vast supply of memory and chip wafers Nvidia had committed to buy was becoming an “avalanche,” while major cloud providers were planning to move toward alternative hardware to reduce their reliance on the firm. This turmoil follows a surge in Nvidia’s off-balance-sheet obligations, which grew to $530B in the quarter ending July 26 from $184B three months prior. Kress, now serving as interim CEO, has moved to curb these risks, including reducing the firm’s maximum guarantee for an OpenAI data center in Ohio to $105B from an original $250B.
