The Information, citing people familiar with the matter, said that Colette Kress, who has just been pushed into the role of Nvidia's interim CEO, is not an outside emergency hire, but a longtime finance chief steeped in the company. As CFO, she already played the role of a "brakeman," repeatedly voicing reservations about the high-risk deals Jensen Huang pushed hard for, and in recent months she has been busy breaking up the company's financial risk from a small number of customers and spreading it across a broader base.

The cut from $250 billion to $100 billionThe most telling episode was the mega-backstop deal for OpenAI. The original plan was to provide OpenAI with a $250 billion (about RMB 1.67 trillion) credit guarantee so it could fill 8 gigawatts of data centers with Nvidia's latest chips. Kress did not oppose lending to OpenAI, but worried that the sky-high guarantee would alarm investors, and forced the commitment down to about $100 billion (about RMB 668.5 billion)—cutting more than $150 billion.

The market is betting she will cool the big gambleWith data center construction delayed, some cloud orders canceled, and returns on AI infrastructure being questioned, the market is now seeing Kress as a more cautious hand at the helm than Jensen Huang. She tends to tighten guarantees, investment, and customer financing, avoiding a circular-financing snowball in which Nvidia "both sells chips and acts as a financier." The Information thus asks: Now that this brakeman has taken office, will she slow the most aggressive AI capital gamble of the Jensen Huang era?