Nvidia's turmoil did not end with Jensen Huang's resignation on Thursday — if anything, it deepened. A day after the board announced the exit of the co-founder who ran the company for 33 years, internal backlash is building, new allegations keep surfacing, and the fallout is now touching one of the AI sector's biggest imminent events: Anthropic's IPO.
According to WIRED's reporting on the company's internal channels, an engineer's post in Nvidia's internal "suggestion box" — submitted before the resignation, urging the board to weigh employee sentiment before acting — has drawn more than 1,600 comments, with several explicitly asking directors to bring Huang back. "If you believe in the mission, bring back THE boss," one anonymous commenter wrote. Another pleaded: "We are all humans and can make mistakes. Jensen did so many good things and he needs a second chance."
An Unusual Public Revolt
The dissent is not confined to anonymous threads. WIRED reported that one employee sent a companywide email demanding transparency into how the exit happened, writing "I stand by Jensen" and adding: "Not because I believe any person is infallible, but because I refuse to believe that standing for fairness must mean standing at a distance from someone whose leadership has meant so much to us."
In the hours after the announcement, roughly two dozen employees posted support for Huang on LinkedIn. WIRED said it could not identify any employee posts supporting the resignation. One staffer who spoke to the outlet on condition of anonymity described the desire for reinstatement as widespread, arguing the board acted while its own inquiry had barely begun. "Nvidia is Nvidia because of Jensen," the employee said.
That frustration is aimed at a board composed largely of early Nvidia investors and Huang's longtime confidants. Instead of waiting for the investigation employees expected, the board announced the resignation Thursday morning, named chief financial officer Colette Kress interim CEO, and appointed former Synopsys CEO Harvey Jones as chair — moves that have left staffers demanding answers about what triggered the final decision.
The Scandal Keeps Widening
The revelations that felled Huang are still accumulating. Bloomberg reported the board ousted him after reports of three affairs, a framing that goes beyond the single relationship that started the crisis: an alleged affair with a woman US authorities concluded was a Chinese intelligence asset, first reported by the Financial Times. On Thursday, Reuters cited sources saying Huang had a relationship with a second Nvidia employee who reported directly to him, and Forbes reported allegations of a third affair.
Bloomberg also published a detailed account of Huang's final hours as CEO, while The New York Times reported that President Trump had urged Huang to fight for his job before the exit. Huang himself, in an email to employees on Sunday, admitted he had been "unfaithful to [his] wife," writing there was "no excuse" — the first public acknowledgment in a scandal that now involves investigations by US lawmakers and the FBI, according to WIRED.
Markets: A $1 Trillion Reckoning
Investors have not waited for clarity. The crisis has erased roughly $1 trillion in Nvidia's market value since the allegations surfaced, WIRED reported, with shares falling again after the resignation announcement — Barron's noted the stock was under pressure, and The Wall Street Journal documented a day of tumbling shares as the scandals multiplied.
The convulsion lands at a fragile moment for the wider AI trade. The Economist ran a leader this week arguing readers should "expect an AI crash," and Nvidia — the company whose GPUs underwrite nearly every frontier model training run — is the index heavyweight most exposed to sentiment turning. CNBC quoted management experts warning that Nvidia's unusually flat organizational structure, built around Huang's dozens of direct reports, isn't "built to last" without its founder. Axios reported the succession search now spans around a dozen candidates.
Ripple Effects: Anthropic's IPO
The fallout is already leaking into adjacent deals. Bloomberg reported that Nvidia's $10 billion pledge tied to Anthropic's IPO is now in focus following the CEO exit — days before Anthropic begins trading on November 19 at a confirmed $70-to-$78 price range. Anthropic's offering is reportedly about six times oversubscribed, according to Bloomberg News, but its most prominent corporate backer changing leadership mid-roadshow adds a variable underwriters had not priced.
There is also the congressional dimension. Huang had already been summoned to appear before three House committees for a November 18 closed-door briefing over the alleged spy ties, and the exit does not end that invitation — if anything, lawmakers' questions about what the board knew and when are likely to multiply. The alleged Chinese intelligence angle guarantees national-security scrutiny of Nvidia's China business at a moment when export controls on advanced AI chips are already tightening.
For now, WIRED reported, it has been business as usual inside the company. But the board's bet — that Nvidia can absorb the loss of the founder who defined it, faster than employees expected and with the inquiry unfinished — is now being tested simultaneously by its own workforce, by markets, and by Washington.
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