엔비디아 직원들이 젠슨 황의 복귀를 요구하는 청원을 집단으로 제출했으며, 일론 머스크도 이 청원에 서명했다.

Wow! Nvidia has rapidly staged a 2.0 version of the "Altman palace intrigue." Employees have jointly signed a letter demanding that Lao Huang (Jensen Huang) return!

Even Musk has signed it...

A petition calling for Huang to be reinstated as CEO is underway, and folks, I'm all in.

True brothers indeed! Loyalty shines through in times of crisis (bushi, just kidding).

The board, however, may not get what it wants.

Reports say Nvidia's board has quietly approached Arm CEO Rene Haas about becoming Huang's potential successor.

Haas held executive positions at Nvidia early in his career.

Board versus employees: is this a Steve Jobs saga or an Altman saga? Jensen Huang is standing at the center of the storm.

"Come back, Lao Huang!"

One stone has stirred a thousand waves.

Support for Huang has spread from inside the company across all of Silicon Valley.

His supporters have also launched an independent petition titled "33 Years Deserve an Answer," calling for Huang to return to the CEO role.

More than 60,000 people have signed so far, and the number is still surging.

The signatories include current and former Nvidia employees, partners, and shareholders.

Elon Musk is among them.

The petition makes three main demands:

1. Restore Huang's CEO position until an independent investigation is completed and the relevant facts are confirmed.

2. Make the investigation's framework and timeline public to protect Huang's right to a defense.

3. Fully explain the basis for the board's decision to employees and shareholders.

This also reflects the view of the vast majority of Nvidia's internal staff.

According to WIRED, an internal post urging the board to consider employee opinions, written by a senior engineer before Huang's resignation, has accumulated more than 1,600 comments, most of them supporting Huang's return.

Then, on November 12 local time, Nvidia suddenly announced that Huang had resigned as president, CEO, and director, effective immediately.

Colette Kress, who had long served as CFO, was named interim CEO, and the company began searching for a permanent successor.

Afterward, even more employees flooded the post, calling for the "boss to be brought back." Some sent company-wide emails demanding a more transparent explanation of how Huang's departure came about.

"I'm with Lao Huang! Nobody is perfect. Let's be reasonable. He can't really be 'blocked with one click' after leading us all this way, right?"

Some went even further:

"Nvidia became Nvidia because of Jensen Huang."

Hard to argue with that.

Nvidia's organizational structure is remarkable: dozens of leaders reported directly to him. At one point, more than 60 people reported directly to Huang, spanning memory, CPUs, GPUs, architecture, and algorithms.

He was just as responsive to outsiders.

Alex Cheema, founder of the startup exolabs, shared his experience of being impressed by Huang's speed of action.

In June this year, members of his team emailed Huang with a bold proposal: boost local AI performance on Nvidia hardware tenfold.

Just 7 minutes after the email was sent, Huang replied personally and approved a dedicated project war room at Nvidia's headquarters.

Nvidia also arranged intensive technical exchanges. CUDA and Dynamo developers, along with engineers who had helped build Nvidia in its early days, volunteered to help, and the collaboration ultimately achieved a 9.6x performance speedup.

Frankly, it will be hard to find another CEO willing to bet on small companies like this.

Nvidia's rise to industry leadership also owes much to Huang's decade-long, unwavering commitment to CUDA.

In the early days, applications were scarce and investment took a long time to pay off. Despite the skepticism, he led his team in steadily taking GPUs into the AI era, which is why Nvidia holds its current position in AI computing.

Huang has long been more than Nvidia's CEO. Calling him a technology bellwether and the soul of the company would not be an exaggeration.

Jobs was to Apple what Huang is to Nvidia.

Succession rumors point to the head of Arm

But the board evidently sees things differently.

Whether it is cutting losses to survive or a stalling tactic, the board has already begun looking for "the next Jensen Huang."

The Financial Times reported that while searching for Huang's potential successor, Nvidia's board approached Arm CEO Rene Haas.

This is not baseless speculation.

Haas became Nvidia's vice president and general manager of its compute products business in 2006, moved to Arm in 2013, held management roles in strategic alliances, business, and IP products, and became Arm's CEO in 2022.

In other words, he has Nvidia roots and experience managing another major chip technology company.

For a company that has suddenly lost its long-time leader, that résumé is certainly impressive.

Nvidia has since said:

The company is still choosing the executive search firm that will help find a successor, and speculation about specific candidates is "premature."

Well... why not give Lisa Su a chance? They're all family, after all (doge).

Seriously, though, the industry generally leans toward Colette Kress and Ian Buck. Kress, who has long handled the company's finances, has been formally appointed interim CEO. Buck helped develop the CUDA software ecosystem and oversees the company's hyperscale AI products business.

Both are longtime employees who know Nvidia's day-to-day operations well.

As for where Huang goes from here, that remains a mystery.

He might seek advice from Altman, or he might take up Musk's olive branch.

One more thing

While the outside world is in an uproar, what is Huang doing?

According to foreign media reports:

Huang is currently sitting in his $38 million San Francisco mansion.

He's spending time with family and friends, eating fried chicken and french fries.

What a mess. Eat while it's hot.

References:

[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/arms-haas-approached-by-nvidia-board-part-ceo-search-ft-reports-2026-11-13/

[2] https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2121345211959804234

[3] https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16289029/Huang-family-friends-huddle-Nvidia-crisis-talks-bags-fried-chicken-delivered-38m-San-Francisco-mansion.html

[4] https://www.wired.com/story/nvidia-employees-petition-for-jensen-huangs-return/