Jensen Huang is out at Nvidia, the company he founded and built into the backbone of the artificial intelligence boom, after its board moved to oust him and his resignation was announced Wednesday. Huang has acknowledged having an affair with a woman suspected of spying for China, and further allegations emerged this week.
The departure lands amid a broader shift in the technology industry’s standing. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, business columnist Tim Higgins described the ouster as a sign that the industry’s once-diminished sense of inevitability is fading, coming in the same stretch of days in which tech’s titans lost ground politically in Washington, D.C.
Messages of support for Huang poured in from industry leaders late Wednesday, ahead of the official resignation announcement, even as new allegations surfaced. Some argued that Nvidia shareholders should vote on Huang’s future; others urged that any investigation be given time to conclude.
“Seems ill advised for Nvidia’s board to oust Jensen Huang given how central his leadership is to the operations of an engine of our future abundance,” Garry Tan, head of the startup accelerator Y Combinator, posted on X on Wednesday.
Dex Hunter-Torricke, who has worked for both Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and now founded the nonprofit Center for Tomorrow, said the reflexive defense of Huang was telling. “Even after more allegations were coming out…the first instinct of these leaders was to circle the wagons and just defend him—that is not a good set of instincts, and it’s not going to work anymore in the new political reality,” he said.
Huang has acknowledged having an affair with a woman suspected of spying for China, according to the Journal account. To some observers cited in that account, rallying to his side was evidence of a culture in the technology industry that has become obsessed with winning at any cost.
The defense is also understandable on business grounds, Higgins wrote: for certain technology leaders, Huang’s exit means losing a personal relationship with a man capable of making or breaking their artificial-intelligence ambitions. Access to computing power provided by Nvidia is widely treated by investors as a signal of a company’s relevance and potential, so a reshuffling adds uncertainty.
Huang’s quick resignation also strikes at a durable Silicon Valley article of faith about the importance of the founder. “You’d think we’d have learned from Steve Jobs and Travis Kalanick that one does not just simply replace the founder…” Naval Ravikant, co-founder of AngelList, posted on X. Musk replied: “True words.”
Kalanick, who was ousted from Uber Technologies amid his own scandals, posted advice on Monday on “practical principles to counter a modern-day coup/psyop/struggle session.” A growing chorus of technology voices has cast Huang’s problems not as his own missteps but as “psyops” driven by his enemies in government, in the industry, or in China.
“China wants Jensen out, so I want him in,” tweeted Palmer Luckey, co-founder of Anduril Industries and a veteran of corporate battles from his time at Meta Platforms. Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia Capital, posted: “This has nothing to do with money. This is about America winning in AI.”
That race dynamic, whether between the U.S. and China or among rival AI labs, has fueled enormous spending on Nvidia chips and on AI investments more broadly, Higgins wrote. It has also produced uneasy alliances and questionable deals, and Huang’s departure has intensified worries that a painful market correction could follow.
The political terrain is changing alongside the corporate one. AI data centers were a major campaign issue in the midterm elections, and after riding a blue wave into power, Democrats are signaling that the technology sector will face greater scrutiny come January. For the past two years, Musk, Huang and the broader AI leadership flourished under President Trump, who looked to them for advice and attention.
“Despite Jensen Huang’s resignation, Congress must demand answers from Mr. Huang and others at Nvidia about how they may have put U.S. national security at risk,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, who is poised to become Senate majority leader, said on X. “Americans deserve to know that those at the highest levels of power are putting America first, not their bottom line or their personal friendships,” the Democrat added.
Some in the industry have suggested Huang’s days in technology are not over. Musk, who has his own chip ambitions, said Wednesday it “would be an honor” to hire Huang. Dick Costolo, the former Twitter CEO, offered a prediction on X: “Prediction: 3-4 years from now, NVDA will miss a quarter or two, and they will bring Jensen back to run the company,” he tweeted. “Like fame, everybody is outraged for 15 minutes, and there is nothing Americans love more than the comeback story.”
Others in tech read the episode as a governance story rather than a judgment story, according to the Journal account: Huang lacked the corporate control that gives Musk the final say at SpaceX, Zuckerberg at Meta, and Anthropic’s founders largely the same once the company goes public, likely next week. The imperial CEO era endures, Higgins wrote, but Huang’s exit is a reminder that there are limits to that power.