Tech Executives Join Petition Calling on Nvidia to Reinstate Jensen Huang

SANTA CLARA, California, November 14, 2026 — A public petition calling on Nvidia’s board to reinstate Jensen Huang as chief executive has passed 100,000 signatures, with Tesla and SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk and other well-known technology leaders among those listed as signatories, as reported by TechCrunch.

As of Saturday afternoon, the petition website, Stand with Jensen, said it had attracted more than 115,000 signatures, including 5,965 current Nvidia employees, 1,108 former employees and 63,063 shareholders, TechCrunch reported. Business Insider, writing the same afternoon, put the total above 108,000 and noted that the organisers said they were “actively working” to remove fake names after clearly spurious entries appeared on the list. The counts are those published by the campaign itself and have not been independently audited.

The open letter asks the board to “bring him back while an independent investigation establishes the facts”, to ensure a fair inquiry and a chance for Huang to respond, and to give the public a fuller explanation. “Jensen deserves due process, not mob justice,” it says. Signatories listed by TechCrunch include Replit chief executive Amjad Masad, Epic Games chief executive Tim Sweeney and Y Combinator chief executive Garry Tan. Musk wrote on X on Friday that “a petition is underway to reinstate Jensen and I’m signing it too,” the Washington Post reported.

Huang resigned as Nvidia’s president, chief executive and a director on November 12, ending 33 years at the company he co-founded, as Life News Agency reported. The departure followed his admission of an affair with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based chip firm Megaspeed, whom US officials have linked to suspected efforts to divert restricted Nvidia chips. China has rejected the espionage claims as baseless. News reports have also described other extramarital relationships. Nvidia’s board had already opened an independent investigation after reports that Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort.

Nvidia has appointed its long-time chief financial officer, Colette Kress, as interim chief executive while it searches for a permanent successor, TechCrunch and CNBC reported. Separately, two large shareholders, Altimeter Capital and Atreides Management, which CNBC said together disclosed about US$2.13 billion of Nvidia stock as of June 30, wrote to the board urging a slow, deliberate search that leaves open “the potential return of Jensen Huang”. Their letter did not call for his immediate reinstatement.

On Saturday, Musk added on X that without Huang some “critical deals will be lost,” CNBC reported. TechCrunch said Nvidia’s shares fell 2 per cent on Friday. The petition does not, on its own, change the leadership of the AI chipmaker. The board has not, so far, issued a public response to the campaign. Investors and employees now have two distinct messages in front of them: a public campaign for immediate reinstatement, and a shareholder letter that merely asks the board not to rush. What to watch next is whether Nvidia offers a fuller account of the investigation, whether the signature list holds up after the organisers’ promised clean-up, and whether the search for a permanent chief executive is slowed — or whether Kress’s interim role simply becomes the start of a new chapter.

Sources: TechCrunch, Business Insider, the Washington Post, CNBC and the Stand with Jensen petition. Original post: https://x.com/TechCrunch/status/2121720604520841389.

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