‘Due Process, Not Mob Justice’: Petition to Reinstate Jensen Huang Passes 148,000 as Musk Signs On
A petition calling on Nvidia’s board to reinstate former CEO Jensen Huang had more than 148,000 signatures Sunday morning, and Elon Musk is among the tech leaders who say the chipmaker’s co-founder deserves a fair hearing before his exit is made permanent.
The Tesla and SpaceX chief wrote Friday on X that he was adding his name. “A petition is underway to reinstate Jensen and I’m signing it too,” Musk posted.
On Saturday, Musk said Huang’s handshake deals would be hard to replace. “Jensen drove supply chain brilliantly at Nvidia, but many of those deals were a handshake with Jensen, not a written contract,” he wrote. “Without Jensen, at least some of those critical deals will be lost.”
The campaign, called Stand with Jensen, describes itself as an independent open letter and says it is not endorsed by Nvidia or by Huang. Its website showed 148,529 signatures as of 8:04 a.m. ET Sunday, including 7,337 people who identified themselves as current Nvidia employees, 1,368 as former employees and 79,063 as shareholders. Those affiliations are self-reported and have not been independently verified, and organizers have said they are working to remove fake entries, Business Insider reported.
The letter argues that Huang “was removed without meaningful due process” and asks the board to “bring Jensen back while an independent investigation establishes the facts, unless and until you can provide compelling evidence that his removal is in NVIDIA’s best interests.” It also asks directors to disclose the inquiry’s scope and timeline, give Huang a chance to respond, and explain the evidence behind his departure.
“Jensen deserves due process, not mob justice,” the letter says.
Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan struck the same note Saturday. “Jensen deserves due process, not whatever is happening right now. I signed,” he wrote on X. The campaign’s public signer list also includes Replit CEO Amjad Masad and Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney.
Nvidia announced Thursday that Huang had resigned as president, CEO and a member of the board, effective immediately, and named Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress as interim CEO while it searches for a permanent successor, as Conservative Daily News reported. The company has not publicly responded to the petition.
Huang’s resignation came days after he apologized to employees for being “unfaithful” to his wife, following reports of an affair with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed whom U.S. officials have suspected of ties to Chinese intelligence. China has denied the allegation, and no evidence has been made public that Jensen Huang shared confidential information. A second alleged relationship, with an Nvidia executive, was reported later in the week. The board had already opened an outside investigation into whether Huang was targeted by a foreign intelligence effort; that inquiry has not been completed.
The letter says signers “have not been shown evidence substantiating the allegation that the woman at the center of this controversy was a spy,” and that “suspicion or association alone is not a sufficient basis for ending Jensen’s leadership.”
Separately, Altimeter Capital CEO Brad Gerstner and Atreides Management’s Gavin Baker sent the Nvidia board a letter Friday asking directors to “pursue a slow, measured, and deliberate process regarding the future leadership of Nvidia” and to keep open “the potential return of Jensen Huang,” CNBC reported. Their letter did not call for his immediate reinstatement.
The organizers first announced they had passed 100,000 signatures Saturday afternoon, less than 24 hours after the campaign gained wide attention. Nvidia is scheduled to report third-quarter results on Nov. 17.
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