Nvidia Employees Petition for Jensen Huang's Return as $1 Trillion Evaporates

More than 1,600 comments have piled up on a single internal Nvidia "suggestion box" post since Jensen Huang resigned, many of them asking the board to find a way to bring him back, according to internal correspondence reviewed by WIRED. The groundswell inside the chipmaker comes one week after the man who led the company since its founding in 1993 admitted he had been "unfaithful to [his] wife" and stepped down amid a cascade of affair allegations.

The numbers framing the employee revolt are stark. Nvidia has lost $1 trillion in market value since the allegations surfaced. US lawmakers and the FBI have opened investigations. The prospect of new export controls on chips — the regulatory mechanism that governs which American semiconductors can be sold abroad — has risen as a direct consequence of the scandal.

And yet, inside the company, a significant number of staffers want their ousted chief executive restored.

What are employees actually saying?

The original suggestion box post, submitted before Huang's resignation by a longtime Nvidia engineer, urged the board to weigh employee sentiment before taking any action against him. The engineer declined to comment when contacted.

The comment thread tells its own story.

• "If you believe in the mission, bring back THE boss," wrote one anonymous commenter.
• "We are all humans and can make mistakes. Jensen did so many good things and he needs a second chance," wrote another.

One employee went further, sending a companywide email demanding transparency into the circumstances of Huang's exit. "I stand by Jensen," the staffer wrote. "Not because I believe any person is infallible, but because I refuse to believe that standing for fairness must mean standing at a distance from someone whose leadership has meant so much to us."

The employee could not be reached for comment.

The same staffer closed the email on an apocalyptic note that captures the depth of feeling among Huang loyalists: "If America fails the man who helped build its future, then this world does not deserve Jensen Huang."

Why did the resignation blindside the workforce?

Timing, according to multiple accounts, is the core grievance.

Many employees had expected the board's investigation to run its course before any leadership change. The suggestion box post explicitly called on the board to share its findings with employees and formally solicit their sentiment "about Jensen's continuing as our CEO."

That never happened. Huang departed just as the inquiry had begun. Staffers are now seeking to understand why the process collapsed so quickly, and the companywide email demanding transparency into the exit is the most visible expression of that frustration.

Nvidia and its new board chair, investor Harvey Jones, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

What is the sequence of allegations?

The chronology matters for understanding both the board's speed and the employees' anger.

Huang, 63, had led Nvidia since co-founding it in 1993. On Sunday, he emailed employees admitting he had been "unfaithful to [his] wife" and stating there was "no excuse." That acknowledgement followed reports of an affair with a suspected Chinese intelligence asset — the detail that ultimately drew the FBI and US lawmakers into the matter, given the national-security sensitivity of Nvidia's position in the global chip supply chain.

On Thursday morning, the board announced Huang's resignation. The announcement followed reports of an alleged second affair, this time with a direct report. That employee has not commented on the matter.

Since then, Reuters has reported an alleged affair with yet another Nvidia employee. Huang has not publicly commented on any of the reports since his Sunday email.

Three alleged affairs, one intelligence-asset connection, and a resignation that arrived before the internal investigation concluded: the compression of events explains why the workforce reacted with disbelief rather than relief.

Who now runs Nvidia?

The board — described as largely composed of early Nvidia investors and Huang's longtime confidants — moved quickly to install a leadership team.

• Colette Kress, Nvidia's chief financial officer, is now interim CEO.
• Harvey Jones, former CEO of Synopsys, is chair of the board.

Kress inherits a company where, by WIRED's account, it has been "business as usual" operationally throughout the week, even as $1 trillion in market value has evaporated and federal scrutiny intensifies.

The composition of the board itself raises its own question. A body dominated by early investors and the departed CEO's confidants acted within days of the second affair report, before concluding its investigation and against the explicit request of an employee faction that it first survey the workforce. Whether that speed reads as decisive governance or as a body insulating itself from liability is precisely the transparency gap employees are demanding be closed.

How visible is the pro-Huang faction?

The internal sentiment has spilled into public view.

In the hours after the resignation, roughly two dozen Nvidia employees posted on LinkedIn in support of Huang, with one describing their faith in his leadership as unwavering. Over the same period, WIRED could not identify a single post from an Nvidia employee supporting his resignation.

That asymmetry is the clearest available measure of where the workforce stands. It does not establish unanimity — public LinkedIn posts are self-selected, and employees critical of Huang have obvious reasons to stay silent while the FBI and Congress circle — but it does undercut any assumption that the workforce views the resignation as a clean housecleaning.

Why does the internal revolt matter beyond Nvidia?

Nvidia sits at the center of the AI hardware market, and the stakes of its governance crisis extend past one company's org chart.

The $1 trillion market-value loss reflects investor anxiety about the firm's stability at the exact moment its chips anchor the global buildout of AI infrastructure. The FBI investigation and congressional probes touch on the alleged connection between the company's former chief executive and a suspected Chinese intelligence asset, which is why US lawmakers are now discussing new export controls on chips — restrictions that would reshape which semiconductors American firms can sell, and to whom.

An interim CEO, a board of longtime insiders, a workforce petitioning for the ousted founder's return, and a regulatory regime possibly tightening around the company's core product: Nvidia is managing all four simultaneously.

The employees demanding Huang's return have the comments and the LinkedIn posts, but they do not control the investigation timelines, the market, or the export-control debate. Until the board answers the transparency demand — or the federal inquiries publish findings — the question the suggestion box post raised, "about Jensen's continuing as our CEO," will keep collecting replies the company cannot moderate away.