Jensen Huang resigns as Nvidia CEO, and the questions multiply
Follow-up to Thursday Nov 12: Nvidia's board reportedly prepares to remove Jensen HuangUpdate on yesterday's token: Nvidia's board was preparing to remove Jensen Huang. On Thursday morning, he resigned. He co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and was its only CEO. It was the top story on Hacker News, with 3,556 points and 3,134 comments.
The board had opened an investigation into affairs with a direct report and with Alice Huang, a Megaspeed executive described as an alleged Chinese spy. Reuters now reports a third affair, with another Nvidia employee. Colette Kress is named interim CEO, and Harvey Jones becomes the first Chair of the Board. Democrats in Congress launched a second investigation, into Nvidia's China sales and Huang's dealings with President Trump. Trump floated Apple chairman Tim Cook as the successor.
Not everyone agrees on the spy part. Former US AI czar David Sacks says there is no evidence Alice Huang was a spy, and CNN made a similar argument. Nvidia employees started a petition to bring Huang back. TechCrunch asks if Nvidia will keep backing open source, including its $12.9 billion Hugging Face deal. Huang agreed to testify before Congress on Wednesday, after lawmakers threatened a subpoena.
Nvidia sits at the center of the AI economy, and one man held the keys. His fall shows how little outside oversight there was until a scandal forced it. What comes next shapes chips, China policy and open-source AI.
