There’s still a lot we don’t know about disgraced Nvidia ex-CEO Jensen Huang’s professional and personal conduct, and how it may have affected or put at risk the wellbeing of his employees, his investors, and the public. But amid all those unknowns waiting to become known, a movement is afoot to exonerate him.
“We demand the NVIDIA Board Bring Jensen Back,” says the Stand With Jensen website, whose open letter Elon Musk has signed and publicly supported. According to the website, other notable signers include Atoms CEO Travis Kalanick, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, and Garry Tan, President & CEO of Y Combinator.
This is the letter @elonmusk signed, please read it and consider adding your name too. 💚
— Stand With Jensen (@TheJensenLetter) November 14, 2026
One Stand With Jensen organizer told Business Insider they want Nvidia to “provide a clear, evidence-based explanation demonstrating that any removal is in NVIDIA’s best interests.”
There is also now a slightly more subdued effort by two major Nvidia investors to open Nvidia up to “the potential return of Jensen Huang.”
Huang has admitted to one extramarital affair. That relationship was with Chinese businesswoman Alice Huang, who U.S. investigators claim accessed 240,000 banned chips. Some reports, citing anonymous officials who say they read an intelligence memo, also claim (so far without evidence) that Alice Huang may have spied for the Chinese government.
According to Insider, the Stand With Jensen organizer they interviewed said the campaign “does not treat espionage allegations as proven facts or presume the inquiry’s findings.”
The apparent business rationale for ousting Huang appears to stem from the idea that whoever is Nvidia CEO is essentially the lord of the AI chips, and part of that job is to steer U.S.-China policy on chip exports. Commentators say the acknowledged Alice Huang affair, which Jensen Huang initially said was “completely normal and not unusual” has set fire to his trustworthiness on that issue. It has also triggered an independent investigation commissioned by Nvidia, and possibly a forthcoming congressional hearing, along with at least one attempt by a law firm to kick off a class action lawsuit on behalf of shareholders.
There are also now accusations that Huang had affairs with two Nvidia employees. And for what it’s worth, Nvidia’s code of conduct calls “personal relationships” a potential source of conflicts of interest, so there could be an alleged Nvidia HR violation piled on top of everything else being alleged.
Nonetheless, Stand With Jensen is styling itself as essentially a grassroots movement. While its letter calls for due process and says Huang is not “above accountability,” it also professes “gratitude for Jensen Huang,” and says he “poured his heart and soul into building NVIDIA.” At the exact moment I’m writing this, the website claims a total of 154,671 signatures, including over 7,000 current Nvidia employees and 81,893 shareholders.
It’s a lot of signatures, though the Stand With Jensen X account says the campaign is working to cleanse the letter of fake signatures using AI as well as manual moderation, and claims to be working on a way to confirm that signatures are really from Nvidia employees when they say they are. As Business Insider has pointed out, signers have included “Tim Cruise, Hollywood actor” and someone claiming to be named “Xi Jingping.”
Musk, for his part, has not hidden his own financial stake in Jensen Huang’s retention as Nvidia CEO, and has stated outright that he’s worried he’ll lose access to scarce resources he was promised. “Jensen drove supply chain brilliantly at Nvidia, but many of those deals were a handshake with Jensen, not a written contract,” he wrote on X, adding that without him, “at least some of those critical deals will be lost.”
This letter was sent to the Nvidia Board today which we believe outlines the minimum acceptable standards the Board owes shareholders as it manages this difficult situation. Onward. 🫡 pic.twitter.com/fIsyXVQ5tR
— Brad Gerstner (@altcap) November 13, 2026
Meanwhile, investors Brad Gerstner of Altimeter Capital and Gavin Baker of Atreides Management wrote in a separate letter that “the Founder and long time incredible leader of this extraordinary company has earned the right for a deliberate process that avoids any needless rush to replace him before all the facts are known.” They don’t call for him to be brought back necessarily, but ask for that possibility to remain alive. However, it should be noted that Baker also signed the Stand With Jensen letter, according to the campaign website.
And fear of Nvidia going into some sort of decline is a stated motivation for involvement in the campaign—at least for some. Supporters who sign the letter can add memos, most of which contain expressions of admiration for Huang. Only a small minority lay things out in terms of dollars and cents, but it’s clarifying when they do. “I backed Jensen,” writes someone referred to as Richard Skelhorn the CEO of Rise Investments. “I didn’t invest that money to see him removed from the company he spent 33 years building. My position has fallen 40% in recent days, and like many shareholders, I’m furious.”
Gizmodo reached out to the Stand With Jensen organizers for comment, but did not receive a reply.
