Many of Silicon Valley’s executives and investors are rallying behind Jensen Huang, who resigned as Nvidia’s chief executive on Thursday after revelations that he had affairs with an employee and with a woman who U.S. officials believed to be a spy for China.
In social media posts and letters to Nvidia’s board of directors, Mr. Huang’s billionaire peers described him as a singular leader who could not be replaced at Nvidia. Mr. Huang’s exit, they argued, would set the United States back in the artificial intelligence race. And they blamed Nvidia’s board for bowing to pressure.
“Jensen drove supply chain brilliantly at Nvidia, but many of those deals were a handshake with Jensen, not a written contract,” Elon Musk, SpaceX’s chief executive and the richest person in the world, said in a social media post on Saturday. “Without Jensen, at least some of those critical deals will be lost.”
The support put a spotlight on Nvidia’s role as the linchpin of the A.I. boom and on Mr. Huang’s leadership as the company grew into one of the most valuable in the world. Nvidia, which started making computer chips for video games, now controls an estimated 90 percent of the market for the advanced chips used in the big A.I. projects that are driving the U.S. economy. Along the way, Mr. Huang became Silicon Valley’s consummate dealmaker, turning Nvidia into a central banker for start-ups that needed chips and funding.
“We believe the board should avoid a rush to replace Jensen that undermines and thwarts the best interests of shareholders,” Brad Gerstner, the chief executive of Altimeter Capital Management, and Gavin Baker, the chief investment officer of Atreides Management, wrote in a letter sent on Friday. The investors, whose firms are Nvidia shareholders, asked the company’s board to consider “all options on the table, including the potential return of Jensen Huang.”
An open letter to Nvidia’s board, titled “Stand With Jensen,” asked the board to reinstall Mr. Huang as chief executive, to conduct an independent investigation and to explain its actions. As of Saturday morning, the letter had nearly 100,000 signatures, including by current and former employees of Nvidia, business partners like Mr. Musk and start-up leaders and shareholders including Garry Tan, the chief executive of the venture capital firm Y Combinator.
Some executives and investors struck a more confrontational tone.
“Jensen made a rookie mistake,” Pavel Durov, the chief executive of the messaging app Telegram, said in a social media post on Friday. “Founders: Don’t have a board. Be the board.” (Mr. Durov’s app has been accused of enabling terrorism, crime and disinformation.)
Tim Sweeney, the chief executive of the video game maker Epic Games, said on Thursday that Nvidia’s board had “serious corporate governance issues” and that it had been “gaslit” into pushing out a “once-in-generation visionary.”
On Wednesday, before Mr. Huang’s resignation, Mr. Sweeney said that if Nvidia’s board removed Mr. Huang, the action would be “an Apple firing Steve Jobs level of idiocy.” Apple’s board ousted Mr. Jobs in 1985, and he returned to the company and became its chief executive again in 1997.
Elad Gil, a venture capitalist, said in a post on Thursday that Mr. Huang’s resignation was a “good reminder for all founders to revisit who is on their board.” He advised founders to “reset your board during good times to avoid sudden action during bad times.”
Among the chorus was Travis Kalanick, Uber’s co-founder and former chief executive. In 2017, Uber’s biggest investors asked Mr. Kalanick to resign from his position as the company faced growing legal and ethical scandals. Mr. Kalanick stepped down and did not return to Uber.
