'This would be an Apple firing Steve Jobs level of idiocy' says Tim Sweeney at the idea of ousting Jensen Huang - while Elon Musk says 'it would be an honor' to hire the Nvidia chief

While the Nvidia board reportedly mulls over the idea of ousting CEO Jensen Huang, after his admission of an affair and suspicions of another have come to light, some powerful figures in the tech industry have taken to X to give comment.

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has put forward perhaps the strongest advocacy for keeping the Nvidia chief in place, beginning with the phrase "Save Jensen."

"This would be an Apple firing Steve Jobs level of idiocy from Nvidia’s board if they did that, and a grievous harm to the United States of America," says Sweeney. "The dude truly is the visionary driver of the future of tech from the gaming GPU era to CUDA to AI supercomputers"

Given Sweeney's well-documented advocacy of the wonders of AI, it's perhaps no surprise that he's leaping to the defence of one of its chief architects. Elon Musk, meanwhile, has responded to an X user asking him to hire Huang, presumably if everything goes south with the Nvidia board.

"That would be an honor," said Musk, before the thread inevitably descends into AI-generated images of what a Huang/Musk teamup might look like.

Would Huang really rehash the old "let that sink in" joke for giggles? I doubt it, but we're living in strange and uncertain times. Allegations of a second affair with an Nvidia executive have cast further doubt on Huang's future at the company, with many already speculating on his potential replacement.

An Nvidia without Jensen Huang seems like a truly bizarre situation to imagine. There's no word yet as to a decision from the Nvidia board of directors, who are reported to have met on Wednesday to decide Huang's fate. The company's share price has slid dramatically since the first allegations, and the company's stock was down 6.3% in premarket trading this morning.

Still, Huang's leadership at Nvidia has been characterised by partnerships with other tech leaders, and it seems some would be reluctant to see him go. Or, in the case of Musk, eager to bring him into the fold within their own organisations. A mere week or two ago, Huang seemed like an unstoppable force within the tech space—time will tell whether that resilience holds.