A growing chorus of Silicon Valley heavyweights is demanding a second look at one of the most dramatic corporate exits in recent memory.
A petition calling on Nvidia's board to reinstate former CEO Jensen Huang had gathered more than 148,000 signatures by Sunday morning. Elon Musk is among the tech leaders who say the chipmaker's co-founder deserves a fair hearing before his departure is made permanent.
The Tesla and SpaceX chief announced on X that he was adding his name. "A petition is underway to reinstate Jensen and I'm signing it too," Musk posted.
On Saturday, Musk argued that Huang's personal relationships would be hard to replace. "Jensen drove supply chain brilliantly at Nvidia, but many of those deals were a handshake with Jensen, not a written contract," he wrote.
"Without Jensen, at least some of those critical deals will be lost," Musk added. The warning landed days before Nvidia is scheduled to report third-quarter results on Nov. 17.
The campaign, called Stand with Jensen, describes itself as an independent open letter that is not endorsed by Nvidia or by Huang. Its website showed 148,529 signatures as of 8:04 a.m. ET Sunday, including 7,337 people who identified as current Nvidia employees, 1,368 as former employees and 79,063 as shareholders.
Those affiliations are self-reported and have not been independently verified. Organizers have said they are working to remove fake entries, Business Insider reported.
The letter argues that Huang "was removed without meaningful due process." It asks the board to "bring Jensen back while an independent investigation establishes the facts, unless and until you can provide compelling evidence that his removal is in NVIDIA's best interests."
Signers also want directors to disclose the inquiry's scope and timeline, give Huang a chance to respond and explain the evidence behind his departure. "Jensen deserves due process, not mob justice," the letter declares.
Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan struck a similar note on Saturday. "Jensen deserves due process, not whatever is happening right now. I signed," he wrote on X.
The campaign's public signer list also includes Replit CEO Amjad Masad and Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney. Not everyone inside the company is on board, however; Nvidia Vice President Bryan Catanzaro said on X that an online letter purportedly circulating at Nvidia was fake and voiced support for interim CEO Colette Kress, according to Tom's Hardware.
Nvidia announced Thursday that Huang had resigned as president, CEO and board member, effective immediately, and named Chief Financial Officer Kress as interim CEO, as Conservative Daily News reported. The company has not publicly responded to the petition.
Huang's resignation came days after he apologized to employees for being "unfaithful" to his wife, following reports of an affair with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed whom U.S. officials have suspected of ties to Chinese intelligence. China has denied the allegation, and no evidence has been made public that Jensen Huang shared confidential information.
A second alleged relationship, with an Nvidia executive, was reported later in the week. The board had already opened an outside investigation into whether Huang was targeted by a foreign intelligence effort, and that inquiry has not been completed.
The letter says signers "have not been shown evidence substantiating the allegation that the woman at the center of this controversy was a spy." It adds that "suspicion or association alone is not a sufficient basis for ending Jensen's leadership."
Separately, Altimeter Capital CEO Brad Gerstner and Atreides Management's Gavin Baker sent the board a letter Friday urging directors to "pursue a slow, measured, and deliberate process regarding the future leadership of Nvidia." They asked the board to keep open "the potential return of Jensen Huang," CNBC reported, though their letter stopped short of demanding his immediate reinstatement.
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