Nvidia Employees Petition for Jensen Huang's Return as a Major Shareholder Withholds New Investment
JUST IN: Nvidia $NVDA employees petition to bring back Jensen Huang as CEO.
Context
Open resistance from employees and investors puts pressure on Nvidia's board and interim CEO Colette Kress days before earnings.
Jensen Huang resigned as Nvidia's CEO, president and board member on November 12, and CFO Colette Kress became interim CEO. Within hours, reports spread that employees were organizing to bring him back, and Elon Musk later said he would sign a petition to reinstate Huang. Bryan Catanzaro of Nvidia said a circulating letter that names him is fake, and that he supports the board and Kress, while the board has said it still plans to report third quarter results on November 17.
- Watcher Guru on the employee petition
- Kobeissi Letter citing WIRED on the internal post with 1,600 comments
- WIRED on the internal Nvidia post backing Huang
- Watcher Guru on Leo KoGuan withholding new investment
- Pubity on a survey of Nvidia employees
- Unverified letter image shared by zack_overflow
- Elon Musk says he will sign the petition to reinstate Jensen
- Bryan Catanzaro says a circulating letter naming him is fake
- Polymarket on an open letter from employees, alumni and shareholders
- Stand With Jensen account shares the open letter
- Garry Tan says he signed the letter
- Unverified: Yuchen Jin screenshot shows Dario Amodei listed as a public signer
Deep dive
Watcher Guru posted early on November 13 that Nvidia employees are petitioning to bring back Jensen Huang as CEO. The Kobeissi Letter, citing WIRED, reported that an internal post urging Nvidia's board to reinstate Huang drew more than 1,600 comments, with the majority in "full support" of reinstating him, and that the post asks the board to "consider employee sentiment" about his departure.
Watcher Guru also posted that billionaire Nvidia shareholder Leo KoGuan says he will not invest any more money in the company without Huang. Earlier on November 12, before the resignation was announced, Pubity posted that nearly 90% of Nvidia employees surveyed wanted Huang to stay as CEO; the post did not say who ran the survey.
A separate viral post from the account zack_overflow, with more than one million views, shared an image of what it called an internal letter signed by hundreds of employees demanding Huang's reinstatement and the board's resignation. The letter in the image says the signers may resign and join a SpaceX Terafab initiative under Huang and Elon Musk. That letter is unverified: its wording closely follows the letter OpenAI employees sent their board in November 2023, and no news outlet in the scanned posts confirmed it.
On November 13, Elon Musk replied that a petition is underway to reinstate Jensen and that he is signing it too. Bryan Catanzaro of Nvidia later said a circulating letter that asks the board to reinstate Jensen and claims his involvement is obviously fake, and that even if it were real he would not sign it. Catanzaro said he fully supports Nvidia's board and has confidence in their decisions, and that he has worked with Colette Kress for years and she has his full support.
What to expect next
Watch whether Nvidia's board responds to employee pressure and to Musk's stated support before the November 17 earnings report, and whether other senior executives publicly back Huang's return or, like Catanzaro, back the board and Kress. WIRED or other outlets may confirm the size of the internal campaign. Catanzaro has already called a circulating letter that names him fake. Huang's reported agreement to testify before Congress and the ongoing investigations into his conduct will also shape whether a return is realistic.