print-icon
print-icon
Add ZeroHedge as a preferred source on Google

Jensen The White? Huang Reportedly Weighs Nvidia Comeback As Silicon Valley "War Room" Of Allies Assembles

Tyler Durden's Photo
by Tyler Durden
Authored...

Days after resigning over his affair with an alleged Chinese spy, Jensen Huang is considering a return as Nvidia's chief executive, according to the Financial Times, as his allies in Silicon Valley lean on the chipmaker's board to reinstate him.

Huang has discussed a potential comeback with confidantes, multiple people familiar with the matter told the paper, even as an independent probe by Nvidia's board digs into the conduct that brought him down. One ally said they were assembling a "war room" of Silicon Valley executives to lobby for his return and would try to win over the White House, and that the effort had Huang's support.

"Everyone that matters in tech outside the frontier labs loves Jensen," the ally told the FT.

That jab at the frontier labs lands on a fight we've been following. On Friday's All-In podcast, David Sacks argued that Huang was the last big defender of open-source AI and that the "safetyist" camp aligned with Anthropic wants the models and the chips under government control, as we reported.

The push comes as the spy case behind his fall looks shakier. According to reports, CIA officials are "not yet convinced" Alice Huang knowingly passed anything to Beijing, and the Washington Post reported that the classified memo naming her a Chinese spy was Secretary of State Marco Rubio's own work - built from a CIA report he recast "in his own more assertive terms." Attorney General Todd Blanche has said neither the DOJ nor the FBI has concluded she was a spy: "nobody said that."

The public side of the campaign is an open letter to Nvidia's board under the banner "Bring Jensen Back." By Saturday morning it carried more than 100,000 names, including 5,248 people who say they currently work at Nvidia and 53,233 who say they are shareholders, according to a Moneywise count of the self-reported list. Signers named on it include Elon Musk, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan, Replit CEO Amjad Masad and investor Gavin Baker.

A day later Musk made the business case: "Without Jensen, at least some of those critical deals will be lost," he wrote, because many of Nvidia's supply-chain deals were "a handshake with Jensen, not a written contract."

On Nov. 12, the day Huang resigned, Sweeney called his removal "an Apple firing Steve Jobs level of idiocy from NVIDIA's board."

Two of Nvidia's big shareholders are in it too: Altimeter Capital's Brad Gerstner and Atreides Management's Gavin Baker sent the board a letter on Friday urging a "slow, measured, and deliberate process" on Nvidia's leadership. Their letter keeps "the potential return of Jensen Huang" on the table. The two funds held about $2.13 billion of Nvidia stock between them as of June 30, according to CNBC.

Even some in the comeback camp concede the obstacle: "Having an affair with a subordinate is a fireable offense," one person involved in the effort told the FT. And unlike founder-CEOs who keep voting control, Huang never held a controlling stake, so he can't overrule the board, now steered by interim CEO Colette Kress ahead of Nvidia's quarterly results on Tuesday.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is pushing the other way: Nvidia needs a "dramatic shakeup" and the board should look outside the company for Huang's successor, he said on Sunday, and he wants answers from the board and its outside counsel within 10 days.

The board has already sounded out Arm CEO Rene Haas, the FT reported on Friday, though Nvidia's board said no "formal" process has begun. Haas has led the betting to replace Huang.

Huang resigned as CEO and left the board on Thursday, and the board named Kress interim chief while it weighs "internal and external candidates," according to Nvidia's filing. His affair with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed whom US officials suspect of spying for China, as we detailed, has put Nvidia's compliance checks on chip sales to Asian buyers with possible links to China under a microscope.

Before any comeback, Huang has agreed to a closed-door interview with three House committees, Rep. John Moolenaar, who chairs the House China committee, said on Sunday.

Is it time?

0