Nearly nine in ten Nvidia employees want Jensen Huang to stay on as chief executive, according to a survey by the anonymous workplace app Blind. Of the 232 Nvidia staff who took part, 88% said Huang should remain in charge, 11% said he should step down voluntarily and just 1% said the board should remove him. The results spread quickly on 12 November, as Nvidia’s directors met to decide his future. They need one important caveat, however, because the poll was taken on 9 and 10 November, before the latest and most damaging report about him.
Blind lets users verify their employer through a work email address, which is why its polls are often treated as a rough guide to staff mood inside big tech companies. A wider Blind poll of 1,689 professionals across the industry was much less forgiving. Only 60% of those respondents wanted Huang to stay, 18% said he should leave voluntarily and 22% wanted the board to push him out. The gap suggests that the people closest to Huang judge him very differently from the rest of Silicon Valley.
The 88% vote came before the second relationship report
When Nvidia staff answered the survey, the scandal was about one relationship. Huang had admitted to an affair in a letter to staff on 8 November, and US intelligence officials reportedly believe the woman involved, Alice Huang, was gathering information for China. The board had opened an investigation, but it had also said it had “no reason to believe” that national security or Nvidia’s secrets were compromised. Huang, meanwhile, had told staff he would cooperate fully.
The picture changed sharply on the afternoon of 11 November, when The New York Times reported that Huang had also had a relationship with a senior executive who reports to him, citing current and former employees. Within hours, the Wall Street Journal said the board was preparing to oust him, and Nvidia shares fell more than 8% in extended trading. A relationship with a direct report raises workplace and governance questions that the first affair did not, so the same employees might answer the Blind poll differently today.
Nvidia’s board had not announced a decision as of 07:30 UTC on 12 November. Its independent directors have already hired former Manhattan prosecutor Joon Kim and the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to lead their inquiry. TalkEsport is not naming the executive in the Times report, who has not commented publicly and has not been accused of wrongdoing.
Nvidia’s workforce has good reason to back the founder
Huang has run Nvidia since he co-founded it with Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem in 1993, and most of its employees have never worked under anyone else. Under his leadership, the company went from making graphics cards for PC gamers to supplying the chips behind the AI boom. That journey made Nvidia one of the most valuable companies in the world, worth more than $4 trillion before this week’s sell-off. Few chief executives in tech are as closely tied to their company’s identity.
Many Nvidia employees are also paid partly in company shares, which ties their wealth directly to the stock price. Investors have already wiped about $452 billion off Nvidia’s value in the first two sessions after Huang’s letter, before the latest fall. For staff watching that number, keeping the founder in place may look like the safer bet. Outsiders in the wider Blind poll carry no such exposure, which helps explain why they were far more willing to see him go.
The scandal has landed during a difficult week for Nvidia’s gamers too. A separate report says the company has cancelled a 24GB version of the RTX 5080 as memory costs rise, and Huang has already pulled out of public appearances, including the ElevenLabs summit in New York. GeForce fans have long seen Huang, with his trademark leather jacket, as the face of PC gaming hardware.
Ian Buck and Colette Kress emerge as the names to watch
Huang has never named a successor, which leaves the board with no obvious handover if it does act. According to Reuters, many analysts and investors see two people as the most likely short-term candidates. The first is Ian Buck, the Nvidia engineer best known for creating CUDA, the software platform that made its chips the standard for AI. The second is chief financial officer Colette Kress, whom Semafor reported some directors favour as an interim chief executive.
Kress has run Nvidia’s finances since 2013, after senior roles at Cisco and Microsoft, and she has become a familiar voice to investors on earnings calls. Buck is better known inside the AI industry than on Wall Street, but his work sits at the heart of Nvidia’s dominance. Either choice would be a holding move rather than a long-term answer. Washington is also watching, with House China committee chair John Moolenaar warning that Huang will likely be subpoenaed if he does not agree to a briefing.
The timing leaves Nvidia’s leadership crisis colliding with its biggest date of the quarter. The board has not said when it will announce its decision, and Huang has not commented on the latest reports. Nvidia is due to report its third-quarter results on 17 November, and Huang has been asked to brief three House committees the following day.
