Genuine question: can signing a petition really get Jensen Huang back at NVIDIA?
Musk posted on X in the early hours of the morning that there was a petition to bring Jensen Huang back, and that he’d sign it too.
Millions of views, hundreds of thousands of likes.
There’s plenty of buzz among employees too: WIRED reports that a post in NVIDIA’s suggestion box drew more than 1,600 comments, most of them hoping Jensen Huang would come back.
But NVIDIA is a Delaware corporation. Its CEO is appointed by the board, and shareholders don’t get a vote.
Jensen Huang owns 3.58% of the company and has no supervoting rights.
No matter how many people sign, a petition has no legal force over the board.
The new chairman, Harvey Jones, joined the board back in 1993 and just helped the other directors put CFO Kress in as interim CEO.
The most famous comeback was Altman’s in 2023: the board fired him, but he returned five days later. At the time, more than 700 employees signed a letter saying they would all quit together.
That time, the board fired the CEO and the employees backed him; this time, Huang resigned on his own, with an FBI investigation and congressional hearings looming. The Senate Banking Committee wants him to testify on December 3.
Intel’s Krzanich stepped down in 2018 over an office romance, and McDonald’s Easterbrook was fired in 2019 for the same thing. Neither of them ever returned.
Polymarket even has a market specifically betting on whether he’ll return: 5.55% by the end of November, 9.85% by year-end, and 30.5% by the end of 2027.
That market even counts an advisory role, so the odds of him coming back as CEO are even lower.
The reason for all the heated arguments is simple: three Republican House committee chairs were the first to demand a closed-door briefing from him. After Democrats take control of both chambers, Schumer and Warren will be focused on when the Trump administration found out—and why it did nothing once it knew.
Trump says Huang is going through hell, while recommending Cook to take over.
Both parties are using one CEO’s private affairs as ammunition against each other. The investigation was supposed to be about national security, but so far it hasn’t uncovered a thing related to national security.
Nvidia fell another 2% on Friday, closing at $162.85. It reports earnings on November 17, and Kress will face Wall Street as CEO for the first time.
One sentence from Musk gets millions of views, but it won’t get him that one board vote.
Guys, who’d dare bet on this market?