Nvidia shareholders beg for Jensen’s return, as Elon Musk cautions ‘critical deals’ will be lost without him

Nvidia shareholders have begged the AI chipmaker to bring back disgraced CEO Jensen Huang, as his fellow tech bro Elon Musk warns that “critical deals” will be lost without him.Huang built Nvidia into a multi-trillion-dollar company before losing it all to a suspected Chinese spy. Huang resigned as the company’s chief executive Thursday after he admitted to an affair with a woman whom U.S. intelligence reportedly believed was spying for one of America’s biggest adversaries and a major competitor in the race to build out the most sophisticated AI technology. Now, Huang’s supporters are speaking out with a petition that has garnered more than 100,000 signatures. The petition to reinstate Huang as CEO of Nvidia was shared on a website called standwithjesen.com, and included signatures from around 60,000 shareholders, 6,000 current Nvidia employees and 1,000 former employees as of Saturday afternoon, according to reports. The website was not functioning as of Sunday morning, and it wasn’t immediately clear why it was down. Musk, CEO of electric car company Tesla and rocket manufacturer SpaceX, was reportedly one of Huang’s supporters who signed the petition. He has been vocal about what he sees as Nvidia’s grim future without Huang at the helm. A petition to reinstate Jensen Huang as CEO of Nvidia has garnered more than 100,000 signatures, including around 60,000 from shareholders (Getty Images)“Jensen drove supply chain brilliantly at Nvidia, but many of those deals were a handshake with Jensen, not a written contract,” Musk wrote on X Saturday morning. “Without Jensen, at least some of those critical deals will be lost.”Colette Kress, Nvidia’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, will serve as CEO until a permanent replacement is found. “NVIDIA’s strength has always come from its people, and together with our leadership team, I am committed to building on the extraordinary foundation Jensen created over the last 33 years,” Kress said in a press release announcing Huang’s departure. The company had initially backed Huang when he admitted to the affair last week, but said it would conduct an independent investigation given recent reporting that the CEO “has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort.”In late October, the New York Times reported that Huang had formed a close relationship with Alice Huang, a Chinese executive at a Singapore-based data center who was believed to be feeding information to Beijing. Tech billionaire Elon Musk has been a vocal supporter of Huang amid the Nvidia scandal, saying, ‘Jensen drove supply chain brilliantly at Nvidia...without Jensen, at least some of those critical deals will be lost’ (AFP via Getty Images)President Donald Trump, who has close ties to the Nvidia CEO, was briefed on the findings about a year ago and chose not to take action, according to the Times. Trump has denied knowing about Haung’s connection to a suspected Chinese spy when he visited Beijing in May, telling reporters during a White House briefing earlier this week, “No, I didn’t hear about it then.”The president said he had spoken with Haung after the Nvidia scandal broke and the chief executive told him he had “absolutely no idea that the person in question was a spy.”Trump said he was “amazed” by the news “because I view him as a very high quality person. I've known him a long time,” adding, “I believe he's suffering greatly.”