Nvidia's Colette Kress May Take a More Cautious Deal Approach

People familiar with Nvidia interim CEO Colette Kress's decision-making say she may take a more cautious approach to deals as the company works to reduce its financial exposure to a small group of customers.

They say Kress has at times opposed business arrangements supported by Jensen Huang. One was a proposed $250 billion credit backstop on OpenAI's behalf. Nvidia split the proposal into two parts in August and had guaranteed about $100 billion for the first part.

Kress took the interim CEO role while remaining chief financial officer after Nvidia's leadership transition. As data center projects faced delays and cloud deals were canceled, she worked to diversify Nvidia's exposure to a handful of customers. Nvidia has provided more than $100 billion in financial support to customers and supply-chain partners through investments and credit guarantees.

Several AI investors and founders worried that new investments and other financial support from Nvidia could be harder to obtain after Huang's departure. An executive at a cloud service provider that buys Nvidia chips said uncertainty around Huang's absence prompted the company to reconsider switching to Google or AMD chips. The provider had previously considered switching to diversify its supply, but feared that doing so could offend Huang.