Silicon Valley Is Still Defending Jensen Huang

WIRED reports that inside Nvidia and across Silicon Valley, many people never believed the company's founder would lose his job, and some still don't accept that he should have. Current and former employees described carrying on with business as usual while trusting the board. Prominent investors publicly defended him on X even as more reports of alleged relationships surfaced.

This matters beyond one company's morale. How an industry reacts when its most powerful figure is tied to an alleged foreign intelligence asset tells us how seriously it takes governance, security and accountability as AI becomes national infrastructure.

We understand the loyalty. Nvidia's roughly 60,000 employees reportedly have one of the lowest turnover rates in tech, and the founder spent 33 years building the company, keeping layoffs rare and red tape light. Staff talk about having "green in your blood." That kind of culture is part of why Nvidia built the hardware the AI boom runs on. It is a real achievement, and we don't dismiss it.

But the defenses WIRED collected are telling. Investor Antonio Gracias wrote that one mistake does not erase a lifetime of leadership. Sarah Guo argued a founder with 30 years of capable leadership had earned the presumption he should keep leading, a few hours before Reuters reported another relationship with an employee. Industry executives told WIRED his biggest mistake, aside from the relationship itself, was admitting the affair in writing. That last line says a lot. It treats candor as the error.

Our read is that this reflex, the idea that a founder is irreplaceable and should be judged by a different standard, is one reason problems linger. WIRED notes that some corners of Nvidia had already been whispering about the relationship with Alice Huang, and one venture capitalist estimated on Monday a less than 10 percent chance of his departure. When everyone assumes the storm will pass, nobody acts early.

To be fair to the defenders, no authority and not Nvidia's board has formally accused him of wrongdoing in his dealings with Alice Huang, China denies she is a spy, and the board says it doesn't believe secrets were compromised. It has hired Wachtell Lipton to investigate, and the FBI is looking into it, per the president. Due process matters. But resigning over policy-violating relationships with staff is not a witch hunt. It is what governance is supposed to look like.

The broader anxiety is economic. One AI company chief told WIRED that Nvidia's habit of bankrolling startups helped prop up chip demand, and a professional CEO might stop. If that is right, it shows how much of the AI trade has leaned on one company's balance sheet and one person's choices. That concentration is the risk we should be talking about.

The founder resigned after admitting an affair with Alice Huang, an executive at Nvidia customer Megaspeed whom US officials suspect of being an asset of China's Ministry of State Security. The New York Times and Reuters then reported additional relationships with Nvidia employees. Nvidia shares recently hit their lowest point in more than a year, and the company reports earnings next week.