Reasons For Which Jensen Huang Was Not Fired
by Erik on Tech
Friday, Nov 13, 2026 - 19:39
Nvidia’s board of directors has made their judgment
Disclaimer: I’m an information technology and management nerd, not a finance or stock nerd. I don’t hold positions on any company mentioned in this piece. All of the words below are written by an organic meatbag. Yes, I use em and en dashes (⇧⌥-hyphen and ⌥-hyphen on Mac keyboards, respectively)
People endlessly debate and discuss the greatest quotes in literature: William Shakespeare proclaiming “To be, or not to be, that is the question.” Mary Shelley lamenting “I beheld the wretch—the miserable monster whom I had created.” Emily Brontë squirming while penning “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” For me, there is one and only one contender for the greatest literary quote of all time:
The greatest quote in literary history. Fight me.
What We Can All Agree On:
As I wrote on Tuesday (and I think everyone agrees), the official story that Huang is out because he was caught dipping his chips in Alice Huang’s suān méi jiàng (spicy plum sauce), as well as an Nvidia VP is laughable. Nobody cares. We’re expected to believe that the board of directors of world’s second-most valuable corporation, headquartered in the not-so-ultra-tradcon Bay Area, has suddenly and abruptly decided that Victorian-era puritanism is more important to them than oh, say, money. And even in Victorian England it was pretty common for wealthy men to keep a few mistresses around. If it was just this, Jensen Huang could have just posted the contents of this joke meme and everyone would forget about it after a week or two:
Truth, if only it was true.
I mean, it would be darkly funny if the one ultra-wealthy and powerful guy who recently gets caught banging a bunch of women that happen to be of legal age winds up getting nuked for it, but I just don’t see it. All of the pieces of this story—Alice Huang and her extremely suspicious corporate relationships—have been floating around for over a year, and nobody cared until the Wall Street Journal and New York Times suddenly started caring at almost the exact same time. Curious. Something is afoot. As I’ve already published, my wild and unsubstantiated guess is Donald Trump and his cronies. They have the motive, the method, and the opportunity. Glenn Greenwald posted today that he also believes that it was someone with S-tier power:
The Loonies for Loonies Theory:
Some other guesses and clues have surfaced. Let’s start with the one Greenwald was responding to, because I think it’s the funniest: that Anthropic and / or the rest of the Effective Altruists are behind this. Even some people I personally like have latched onto this one and sorry, friends, this isn’t it. If you really want a breakdown of the reasoning (and truly believe that AI can cure the brain cancer that results from reading it), you can dig through this.
Yes, Anthropic and the EA crowd are full of weirdos with weird grudges. Doesn’t matter. First of all, they all know that there is a very, very real probability that they’ll have to beg more money out of Nvidia within the next few months. They may not like Daddy Corebucks, but they’re not going to risk slitting their own financial throats over it. Secondly, no matter how mad they are it explains exactly nothing about why Jensen Huang and his board threw in the towel instantly. This would more or less be the conversation:
Anthropic: “Hey, yo, we’re declaring war on you Nvidia! Fear us!”
Nvidia Board: “Oh wow! That’s wild! Ummmm…. We guess we should immediately fire our top general, for whom we have no replacement, because clearly that makes the most sense and maximizes shareholder value.”
Jensen Huang: “I suddenly hate money and power and GPUs. I’m going to run away and live out my days tending to my anime waifu harem.”
Did Jensen Huang want to give up and go live the anime protagonist life?
That piece ends with a pretty funny and thirsty attention plea to Elon Musk, which really tells you all you need to know about whoever wrote it.
As I wrote on Tuesday (and I think everyone agrees), the official story that Huang is out because he was caught dipping his chips in Alice Huang’s suān méi jiàng (spicy plum sauce), as well as an Nvidia VP is laughable. Nobody cares. We’re expected to believe that the board of directors of world’s second-most valuable corporation, headquartered in the not-so-ultra-tradcon Bay Area, has suddenly and abruptly decided that Victorian-era puritanism is more important to them than oh, say, money. And even in Victorian England it was pretty common for wealthy men to keep a few mistresses around. If it was just this, Jensen Huang could have just posted the contents of this joke meme and everyone would forget about it after a week or two:
Truth, if only it was true.
I mean, it would be darkly funny if the one ultra-wealthy and powerful guy who recently gets caught banging a bunch of women that happen to be of legal age winds up getting nuked for it, but I just don’t see it. All of the pieces of this story—Alice Huang and her extremely suspicious corporate relationships—have been floating around for over a year, and nobody cared until the Wall Street Journal and New York Times suddenly started caring at almost the exact same time. Curious. Something is afoot. As I’ve already published, my wild and unsubstantiated guess is Donald Trump and his cronies. They have the motive, the method, and the opportunity. Glenn Greenwald posted today that he also believes that it was someone with S-tier power:
I don't know who wanted Jensen Huang out but I know that whoever it was wields extreme levels of power.
Nobody actually believes that, in the age of Donald J. Trump, very powerful people rapidly fall due to extramarital affairs, right? Even if accompanied by anonymous Show more
The Loonies for Loonies Theory:
Some other guesses and clues have surfaced. Let’s start with the one Greenwald was responding to, because I think it’s the funniest: that Anthropic and / or the rest of the Effective Altruists are behind this. Even some people I personally like have latched onto this one and sorry, friends, this isn’t it. If you really want a breakdown of the reasoning (and truly believe that AI can cure the brain cancer that results from reading it), you can dig through this.
Yes, Anthropic and the EA crowd are full of weirdos with weird grudges. Doesn’t matter. First of all, they all know that there is a very, very real probability that they’ll have to beg more money out of Nvidia within the next few months. They may not like Daddy Corebucks, but they’re not going to risk slitting their own financial throats over it. Secondly, no matter how mad they are it explains exactly nothing about why Jensen Huang and his board threw in the towel instantly. This would more or less be the conversation:
Anthropic: “Hey, yo, we’re declaring war on you Nvidia! Fear us!”
Nvidia Board: “Oh wow! That’s wild! Ummmm…. We guess we should immediately fire our top general, for whom we have no replacement, because clearly that makes the most sense and maximizes shareholder value.”
Jensen Huang: “I suddenly hate money and power and GPUs. I’m going to run away and live out my days tending to my anime waifu harem.”
Did Jensen Huang want to give up and go live the anime protagonist life?
That piece ends with a pretty funny and thirsty attention plea to Elon Musk, which really tells you all you need to know about whoever wrote it.
The other big theory that’s floating around, endorsed by Ed Zitron and some others, is that the GPU smuggling thing to China is way more than $7 billion (possible) and that Jensen Haung was, ummm, intimately involved with it because he wuvs wuvs wuvs wuvs wuvs Annie Huang so much (apparently he wuvs wuvs wuvs wuvs wuvs her so much that he can only deal with being separated from her by sleeping with a bunch of other women when she’s not available).
As I said in my previous piece, I don’t see it. Jensen Huang loves Jensen Huang first, and having Jensen Huang’s job as CEO of Nvidia second, and wearing Jensen Huang’s leather jackets third. Everything else is a very distant fourth place and beyond (sorry, wife and kids and anime waifu harem, I call ’em like I see ’em).
Does Nvidia have a chip smuggling problem? Almost certainly. And there is one slightly-plausible reason that they would risk the Very Bad Things that could happen if they get caught facilitating it: American AI labs and neoclouds buy chips using equity and IOUs, and both of those are looking sketchier by the minute. China buys GPUs with cold, hard cash. Hyperscalers are eyeing anyone other than Nvidia because Nvidia demands 70% margins. China is (allegedly) a great customer for Nvidia in terms of cash flow and (lack of) price negotiating power (allegedly). It would be completely hilarious if it turned out that a significant chunk of the AI circular financing madness was paid for with cash gleaned from illicit Chinese deals. It would be even crazier if the whole thing was a Chinese plot to create a giant bubble in our economy and deal a mighty blow to the capitalist pigs.
Does Nvidia have a chip smuggling problem? Almost certainly. And there is one slightly-plausible reason that they would risk the Very Bad Things that could happen if they get caught facilitating it: American AI labs and neoclouds buy chips using equity and IOUs, and both of those are looking sketchier by the minute. China buys GPUs with cold, hard cash. Hyperscalers are eyeing anyone other than Nvidia because Nvidia demands 70% margins. China is (allegedly) a great customer for Nvidia in terms of cash flow and (lack of) price negotiating power (allegedly). It would be completely hilarious if it turned out that a significant chunk of the AI circular financing madness was paid for with cash gleaned from illicit Chinese deals. It would be even crazier if the whole thing was a Chinese plot to create a giant bubble in our economy and deal a mighty blow to the capitalist pigs.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think either of these are the case, but they both make me giggle when I think about them. No matter how much money China puts out, and no matter how much Jensen Huang ♡♡♡ Annie Huang, I don’t see Nvidia and Jensen Huang risking prison or worse over it.
They’re Handing Us Part of the Answer:
Which brings us to the giant clue that Nvidia’s board dropped on us today:
2:05 AM · Nov 13, 2026 · 770K Views
167 Replies · 940 Reposts · 24.2K Likes
The one thing Nvidia absolutely, positively cannot take right now is back-to-back scandals, no matter how lame and stupid the first one is (so far). It’s pretty tough to “accidentally” ship many billions of dollars worth of GPUs to China without the CFO being in on it. Not impossible, but extremely unlikely. Colette Kress’s appointment is Nvidia’s board saying “Jensen Huang may be a hot mess, but we’re clean.” Make of that what you will. Meanwhile, all we can do is watch this drama continue to play out. Maybe we all should all do a shot every time another one of Jensen Huang’s side-pieces gets uncovered, and hope that AI can cure total liver failure.
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