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Chief Financial Officer Kelis took over as Huida’s interim CEO following the turmoil caused by the Huang Zhen-hsun scandal. He led the company’s financial and AI expansion, and also faced circular financing disputes and succession management pressure.
The Wall Street Journal published a special feature on the 12th, introducing the people who recently replaced Huang Renxun and took overHuida (Nvidia, also translated Nvidia) Interim Chief Financial Officer Colette Cress. She was Huang’s longtime deputy and oversaw Huida’s finances as it became one of the world’s most valuable companies.
Kelis, 59, joined Huida in 2013 and previously held finance positions at Cisco, Microsoft and Texas Instruments. During his tenure, he significantly expanded Huida’s balance sheet, and then used the funds in the account to provide financial guarantees to customers in exchange for the purchase of Huida’s artificial intelligence chips.
Corrales issued a statement on the 12th praising Huang Jen-hsun and saying that he would continue to move forward based on “the extraordinary foundation built by Huang Jen-hsun over the past 33 years.”
In a separate letter to employees, he thanked his colleagues for their efforts during an “extremely difficult period” before Huang Renxun’s resignation, adding: “We play a vital role in building the technology that will drive the artificial intelligence revolution, and there is still important work to do.”
Huida this week was hit by the Zhen-Hsun Huang scandal and its market value slipped by more than $600 billion. Jen-Hsun Huang resigned after two extramarital affairs were revealed, one with a suspected Chinese spy and the other with a company employee. His departure is expected to bring continued scrutiny of Huida’s dealings with China and its huge balance sheet.
Huida uses its vast cash reserves to finance the entire artificial intelligence industry, a practice that Corrales has always defended. Critics say Huida’s efforts to boost industry-wide demand have made it more vulnerable to recession, but she calls the deals smart investments.
“We are aware of the scale of this type of support and some would even call it revolving financing,” he said in August. “We see it differently. The equity return on our invested capital will be excellent.”
But she sometimes listens to investors’ concerns. The Wall Street Journal reported that in August it pulled the brakes on a major deal to help OpenAI secure a data center project due to poor market reaction.
In an interview with an Israeli newspaper in 2023, she said that she joined Huida at the insistence of her two sons. At that time, Huida was expanding from the traditional personal computer game market to new businesses such as automotive chips.
He also said that what attracted him to join Huida was Huang Renxun, describing him as a visionary and praising Huida’s “non-individualistic” corporate culture. He said in 2018: “Our organization is quite flat. There’s really no organization chart. Everyone just knows who is responsible to what.”
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal in 2016, she said: “If I had to give one piece of advice to a new chief financial officer, I would say: Don’t spend too much time reviewing past trends, but be clear about how quickly things could change in the future.”
Huida’s corporate governance issues also came to light this week. The company did not prepare a succession plan for Huang Renxun. The Board of Directors did not announce the appointment of senior director Harvey C. Jones as Chairman until the 12th. This post was not available till then.
