Colette Kress's appointment as Nvidia's interim CEO has brought renewed attention to a 2023 interview in which the longtime finance chief described how closely she worked with the chipmaker's Israeli teams. Nvidia announced on Thursday, Nov. 12, that Kress would take over after co-founder Jensen Huang resigned as CEO, president and board member. She will continue serving as chief financial officer while the board searches for a permanent successor.
"My day starts with Israel meetings, and only then continues to California," Kress told the Israeli business publication Globes in July 2023. She was discussing Nvidia's acquisition of Mellanox Technologies and the role its Israeli engineers played in expanding what Nvidia could offer data-center customers. Kress called the deal "one of the best acquisitions I saw in the industry."
Nvidia completed the $7 billion purchase of Mellanox in April 2020. The deal gave Nvidia high-speed networking technology that helps thousands of chips exchange data and work together inside a data center. That technology has become central to large-scale AI computing. One product developed in Israel, Nvidia's Spectrum-X networking platform, helps move data between the processors that train and run AI models.
Nvidia's presence in Israel has grown since Kress gave the interview. Globes put the company's Israeli workforce at roughly 3,200 in 2023. Recent reporting puts it at around 6,000, with Israel home to Nvidia's largest research and development hub outside the United States. Under Huang, the company also announced plans for a campus in Kiryat Tivon, near Haifa, designed to accommodate up to 10,000 employees.
Kress joined Nvidia in 2013 after holding finance roles at companies including Cisco and Microsoft. In announcing her appointment, board chair Harvey C. Jones said the company expected its operations, customer commitments and product plans to continue through the transition. Nvidia's announcement gave no separate update on the Kiryat Tivon campus. The company is scheduled to report quarterly results on Nov. 17.
