Before leaving command of Nvidia, Jensen Huang belittled his successor, says newspaper

During a meeting in August, called to discuss the risks of billion-dollar financing deals for companies that buy chips from Nvidia, Huang interrupted Kress's presentation and called her "a deer in the headlights", an expression used to describe someone paralyzed in the face of a difficult situation. The information was published this Friday (13) by the American newspaper The Wall Street Journal.

At the time, Huang had summoned Kress and other financial executives to discuss the risks of Nvidia's billion-dollar deals with companies that might not be able to pay for the company's chips.

Among the deals under discussion were operations involving financial guarantees to cloud computing companies and data center developers. The strategy sought to finance customers to encourage the purchase of Nvidia chips.

During the meeting, Huang also classified Kress as an accountability-oriented CFO rather than someone capable of helping him define strategy or make decisions.

Kress had raised doubts about the agreements, including the choice of benefiting companies, the risks of financial guarantees and the expected return for Nvidia.

One of the main deals involved OpenAI. Nvidia was negotiating to offer financial guarantees to help make a data center project in Ohio possible, which could involve around US$300 billion in the company's chips.

Initially, the financial commitment discussed reached US$250 billion. Afterwards, Kress helped rework the deal and halved the value of Nvidia's commitment.

The company has also begun reviewing other financing arrangements with cloud computing providers.

Kress was named interim CEO on Thursday (12), following Huang's departure from command of Nvidia. According to the WSJ, she will have to lead the company through federal and internal investigations.

The executive has worked at Nvidia for more than a decade. Previously, he held finance roles at Cisco, Microsoft and Texas Instruments.

In a statement to the team, Kress praised Huang's legacy and stated that he intends to continue the work built by him over 33 years.