Elon Musk signed an open letter on November 14 calling on Nvidia’s board to bring back Jensen Huang. According to Sina Finance, citing China Central Television Finance, more than 85,000 people had signed the letter by 9:03 p.m. (UTC+8) on November 14, including current and former Nvidia employees, shareholders, and technology figures. The letter was posted on a volunteer-run website, which said signatories entered their own information and that the platform had not verified their identities.

Analysts and industry experts said Huang’s value extends beyond technology to supplier and customer relationships and his influence across the artificial intelligence industry. Musk had earlier said he would sign the petition in response to a post by a senior engineer in Tesla’s superintelligence division. The engineer, a former Nvidia employee, wrote that skilled GPU engineers are even more sought after than machine-learning engineers and are extremely difficult to replace. He said Nvidia as it is today would not exist without Huang’s vision.

In a repost of another post about Nvidia’s board composition, Musk wrote, “This is the board making decisions for what was once the most valuable company on Earth!?” and added a facepalm emoji. Huang’s resignation has reminded some market participants of technology companies losing key figures. They cited Apple, which they said quickly lost direction after dismissing Steve Jobs and was once close to bankruptcy before his return.