Can Ten Thousand People Petition to Keep Him, and Can Jensen Huang Make a King's Return?

Original | Odaily (@OdailyChina)

Author | Azuma (@azuma_eth)

Who could take the helm of AI chip giant Nvidia after Jensen Huang's departure has become the question the market cares about most.

Just yesterday, Odaily already rounded up Jensen Huang's potential successors based on prediction market odds (see "Who Will Officially Succeed Jensen Huang?"). From Nvidia's internal technical veterans to the heads of external semiconductor giants, and even to former Apple CEO Tim Cook, whom Trump personally named, the candidates for Nvidia's next CEO are truly a matter of much speculation.

However, this sudden transfer of power still seems to hold some uncertainty. Social media is stirring up a massive "retention wave" — from a joint petition by thousands of employees, to Elon Musk's public support, to top tech funds pressuring the board, calls for Jensen Huang's reinstatement are rapidly converging.

A Petition of Ten Thousand: Demanding "Procedural Justice" and Immediate Reinstatement

The core battleground of this support is an independent website called Stand With Jensen, which published an open letter to Nvidia's board of directors, with signatories self-identified as including current and former Nvidia employees, partners, shareholders, and supporters. However, the website does not explicitly disclose the identity of the specific initiators, nor is there evidence that all signatories come from within Nvidia.

As of 10:00 Beijing time on November 14, the open letter had garnered 19,101 signatures.

The open letter's single most core demand — restore Jensen Huang's CEO position before an independent investigation establishes the facts.

The petitioners argue that Jensen Huang devoted a full 33 years to Nvidia, taking a graphics chip startup to the core of the global AI industry. Both the company's technology roadmap and its corporate culture are deeply stamped with Jensen Huang's personal imprint. Therefore, even if he needs to bear responsibility for his actions, he should not lose leadership directly while the investigation is incomplete and the relevant evidence has not been fully disclosed.

The open letter also put forward two other demands:

• First, ensure the investigation is truly independent, disclose the scope, independence, and expected completion time of the investigation, and give Jensen Huang ample opportunity to present his case and defend himself.
• Second, require the board to promptly explain to the public, specifying its specific concerns, the relevant evidence, and how the board weighed the interests of employees and shareholders.

It is worth noting that the petitioners are not asking for Jensen Huang to be exempt from accountability. The open letter also acknowledges that 33 years of leadership experience does not mean anyone can stand above accountability mechanisms. The core point of their opposition is only this: an irreversible decision was made before the investigation had reached a conclusion.

Musk Voices Support, Wall Street Major Shareholders Write to Board

As the petition spread rapidly across social networks, a number of prominent figures from the tech and crypto worlds also joined in.

The most heavyweight support came from Elon Musk — Musk publicly stated on X this morning that he would sign the open letter. Earlier, when a netizen suggested that Musk directly invite Jensen Huang to join his company, he had also responded that "it would be an honor."

• Odaily note: The Stand With Jensen website shows that Musk appears to have completed signing the letter.

In addition to Musk, names of various industry leaders such as ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming, a16z founder Marc Andreessen, Binance founder CZ, and He Yi also appear in the public signature list on the petition website. However, because the petition page currently does not have a strict identity verification mechanism, it cannot yet be determined whether these signatures were personally signed by these individuals.

The other real industry heavyweights that can be more definitively confirmed are Brad Gerstner, CEO of well-known tech investment firm Altimeter Capital Management, and Gavin Baker, managing partner and chief investment officer of Atreides Management.

This is because earlier this morning, Gerstner and Baker, on behalf of their respective institutions, jointly sent an open letter to Nvidia's board of directors as major shareholders, explicitly stating in the letter: "Given Jensen Huang's extraordinary achievements in leading the company over the long term, and the enormous uncertainty surrounding the current departure event, the board should adopt a 'slow, prudent, and deliberate' succession process, keeping all options on the negotiating table, including 'Jensen Huang returning to his post.'"

Gerstner and Baker also emphasized that Nvidia is currently led by interim CEO Colette Kress and her team, who are fully capable of stabilizing the transition period, and that the board has ample time to get things right. They warned against hastily seeking a permanent replacement before all facts come to light, lest it harm shareholders' fundamental interests.

What Are the Odds of Reinstatement? Polymarket Weighs In

Does Jensen Huang still have a chance to come back? Prediction markets have already provided real-time pricing on this possibility.

Polymarket data shows that the odds for the "Jensen Huang reinstated" option briefly surged to around 16% overnight; although it has now fallen back to 9%, it is still significantly higher than yesterday's 4%.

Objectively speaking, whether Jensen Huang can ultimately stage a "return of the king" depends on the contest among multiple forces.

On the favorable side, Jensen Huang is not only a CEO to Nvidia but also an irreplaceable strategic soul and the stabilizing anchor of its ecosystem. His sudden departure has directly put severe pressure on the company's stock price; now that multiple employees and major shareholders such as Altimeter have publicly taken sides, the board will face extremely high internal friction and governance resistance in advancing "de-Jensenization" and selecting a new leader. If an independent investigation by an outside law firm ultimately clears the most sensitive suspicions involving national security and classified matters, leaving only blemishes at the personal life level, the board would indeed have room to go with the flow and reinstate him.

But the practical barriers are equally clear and hard. First, under the governance framework of modern U.S.-listed companies, once the board has forced the CEO to announce an "immediate resignation," it often means that substantive compliance issues involving information disclosure or concealment of facts from the board have already been identified internally, and large public funds and regulators would find it very difficult to tolerate a "zero-cost reinstatement" absent a major reversal. Second, the current geopolitical tech rivalry is highly sensitive, and out of an instinct to avoid systemic risk, the board will most likely choose a clean break.

The 9% market odds aptly reflect this delicate reality — despite the loud calls, in the modern business history of U.S. stocks, cases of founders who made a hasty exit amid crisis ultimately succeeding in returning to their posts remain low-probability events.