Nvidia employees petition to reinstate Jensen Huang as spy scandal fallout widens

Nvidia employees are pressing the company's board to reinstate Jensen Huang, one day after the CEO resigned amid reports of multiple extramarital affairs, including one with a woman US intelligence agencies reportedly believe was a Chinese intelligence operative.

According to WIRED, which reviewed internal correspondence, a longtime Nvidia engineer posted to an internal suggestion box before Huang's resignation asking the board to weigh employee sentiment before taking any action. The post has since drawn more than 1,600 comments, many of them urging directors to find a way to bring Huang back.

Employees rally behind their ousted CEO

Commenters on the internal post argued that Huang's record at the company outweighed his personal failings. One wrote, "If you believe in the mission, bring back THE boss." Another said Huang had done so many good things that he deserved a second chance.

One staffer went further, sending a companywide email demanding transparency into the circumstances of Huang's exit and writing, "I stand by Jensen." In the hours after the resignation announcement, roughly two dozen employees publicly backed Huang on LinkedIn; WIRED reported it could not identify any posts from Nvidia employees supporting his departure.

One employee who has been at the company a couple of years and was not authorized to speak publicly told WIRED that support for reinstatement is widespread and that the board must bring Huang back, warning the company will suffer without its founder. "Nvidia is Nvidia because of Jensen," the employee said.

Many staff had expected the board's investigation to conclude before any leadership changes, WIRED reported. Instead, Huang departed just as the inquiry was getting underway, leaving employees pressing for answers about why.

A rapid unraveling

Huang, 63, had led Nvidia since founding the company in 1993. According to WIRED, he acknowledged in a Sunday email to staff that he had been unfaithful to his wife and said there was "no excuse." The admission followed reports of an affair with a suspected Chinese intelligence asset. The board announced his resignation Thursday morning after reports of a second alleged affair, this one with a direct report, and Reuters subsequently reported a third alleged affair with another Nvidia employee. Huang has not publicly addressed those later reports.

The board installed CFO Colette Kress as interim CEO and named former Synopsys chief Harvey Jones as chair. WIRED reported that the crisis has cost Nvidia $1 trillion in market value since the allegations surfaced, prompted investigations by US lawmakers and the FBI, and raised the prospect of new export controls on chips. Nvidia and Jones did not respond to requests for comment, according to WIRED.

Trump urged Huang to fight for his job

The New York Times reported that President Trump called Huang on Tuesday, before the resignation, and urged him to keep fighting for his position, citing two people briefed on the conversation. The call continued a pattern of presidential support even as the scandal intensified.

The Times previously reported that Trump was warned at least twice about Huang's relationship with a Chinese citizen identified in the paper's reporting as Alice Huang, whom intelligence agencies concluded had been recruited by China's Ministry of State Security. The first warning came late last year and the second in the spring; Trump took no action either time and brought Huang along on a trip to China in May. After the resignation, Trump publicly praised Huang, calling him a "legend" in a social media post on Thursday. Neither the White House nor a representative for Huang commented to the Times.

Why it matters

Nvidia sits at the center of the AI industry, supplying the advanced chips that underpin most large-scale model training and deployment. A leadership crisis at the company, with an interim CEO, a workforce petitioning for the founder's return, and an unresolved board investigation, lands at a moment when demand for its hardware shapes the plans of every major AI lab and cloud provider.

The fallout also extends beyond corporate governance. With the FBI and US lawmakers investigating and new export controls on the table, the scandal could influence how Nvidia's chips are distributed globally. The reported $1 trillion decline in market value shows how quickly reputational risk at a single company can ripple through the broader AI supply chain.