Nvidia employees overwhelmingly want Huang to remain CEO despite spy affair Frank DeMatteo Wed, November 11, 2026 at 10:40 AM EST 3 min read NVDA +4.00% Trade NVIDIA on Coinbase Trading disclosure Trading disclosure The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational.
Investing.com -- NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) employees have delivered a striking message to the company's board: they want Jensen Huang to stay in charge despite admitting to an affair with a suspected Chinese spy.
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A Blind survey of 232 Nvidia employees, conducted November 9–10, found that 88% believe Huang should remain chief executive. Eleven percent said he should voluntarily step down, while just 1% said the board should remove him. The result shows that support for the co-founder remains overwhelming even as the company confronts an extraordinary leadership crisis.
The backing is notably stronger than sentiment among professionals more broadly. For comparison, a Blind poll of 1,689 professionals found that 60% supported Huang remaining CEO, while 18% favored his voluntary departure and 22% wanted the board to remove him. The gap suggests Nvidia employees are more inclined than the wider professional community to prioritize continuity at the top.
There are understandable business reasons for that loyalty. Huang co-founded Nvidia more than three decades ago and has been central to its transformation from a graphics-chip maker into the company supplying much of the computing power behind the artificial-intelligence boom. His company's long-term investment in programmable graphics processors and the CUDA software platform helped position Nvidia to benefit as demand for AI computing exploded.
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That success has also been personally rewarding for many employees. Nvidia's extraordinary share-price gains, combined with stock-based compensation, have helped turn some long-serving staff into millionaires. For workers whose careers and wealth are closely tied to the company, a sudden change at the top could feel like a risk to both its future and their own financial fortunes.
But Huang's leadership is now under scrutiny for reasons that go well beyond ordinary corporate governance. He acknowledged having an intimate relationship with a business executive and apologized to his family and colleagues for being unfaithful. U.S. intelligence officials reportedly believe the woman gathered information for Beijing, prompting Nvidia's board to launch an independent investigation into whether Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort.
The distinction matters: the alleged intelligence operation has not been publicly established, and there is no evidence so far that Nvidia secrets or national security information were compromised. The board has said it has no reason to believe either was compromised. Huang has said he will cooperate with the inquiry, and Nvidia says he will continue as CEO while it proceeds.
Investors, meanwhile, have reacted nervously. Nvidia shares fell 4.3% on Monday and another 5.5% on Tuesday before rebounding as AI stocks recovered on Wednesday. Prediction-market traders have put the odds of Huang being removed before 2027 at roughly 13% to 14%, while analysts have warned that his departure could expose Nvidia's dependence on one unusually influential leader.
The employee survey does not settle the question facing Nvidia's directors. Staff enthusiasm is one consideration; the board must also weigh governance, national-security concerns and shareholder confidence. For now, however, the message from inside Nvidia is clear: most surveyed employees believe the company is better off with Jensen Huang at the helm.
Nvidia employees overwhelmingly want Huang to remain CEO despite spy affair
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