The Stand with Jensen petition calling for Nvidia co-founder Jensen Huang to be reinstated as CEO has garnered 147,790 signatures, including more than 7,300 current employees of the chipmaker and prominent tech industry leaders including Elon Musk, Tim Sweeney, and Harry Tan.
The Stand with Jensen petition calling for Nvidia co-founder Jensen Huang to be reinstated as CEO has garnered 147,790 signatures, including more than 7,300 current employees of the chipmaker and prominent tech industry leaders including Elon Musk, Tim Sweeney, and Harry Tan.
The campaign began after Huang resigned on November 12, 2026, amid an extramarital affair scandal and a board investigation into his possible contact with foreign intelligence services. The organizers of the independent initiative emphasize that the leader, who led the company for 33 years, was removed without due process and convincing evidence before the investigation was completed.
As of November 15, the petition on the initiative's website had been signed by 78,772 shareholders, 7,315 current Nvidia employees (about 17.4% of the workforce, including vice presidents and senior engineers), 1,363 former employees, and more than 60,000 supporters. Notable signatories also include Uber founder Travis Kalanick, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, Replit CEO Amjad Massad, and Boom Supersonic CEO Blake Scholl. Some campaigners have compared Huang's resignation to the firing of Steve Jobs from Apple in 1985 and pointed to the company's plummeting market value since his departure.
"We have not been provided with evidence to support the espionage allegations. After thirty-three years of giving his all to Nvidia, Jensen deserves due process, not lynching," the open letter to the board of directors states.
The petitioners made three demands to the board of directors: reinstate Huang for the duration of an independent investigation, ensure transparency in the process with the opportunity for the ex-CEO to respond to the allegations, and provide a public explanation of the reasons for personnel decisions. At the same time, the organizers admitted that in the first days of collecting signatures, fake accounts, including those under the name of "Tom Cruise" and "Xi Jinping", were added to the list, which moderators are currently working to remove.
The reason for Jensen Huang's resignation was media reports about his personal life. In particular, in October, The New York Times reported on the top manager's "close relationship" with Alice Huang, head of the technology division of the Singaporean company Megaspeed, whom American intelligence suspects of working for the Chinese government.
Earlier, the owner of X (Twitter), Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, said that he would be "honored" to employ Jensen Huang if he left NVIDIA.
