The South African businessman and CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, has said that it would be “an honor” to bring on Jensen Huang, still CEO and founder of the technology company Nvidia, who faces a possible removal from his post at the semiconductor giant after several extramarital relationships were uncovered, including one with a supposed Chinese spy and another with a direct subordinate.
Musk’s public support has arrived via a message on the social network X, replying to a user’s post suggesting that he hire Huang for one of his companies in the event that Nvidia’s board of directors ultimately decides to remove him from the position.
Both executives have maintained a close relationship for at least ten years and, as the Bloomberg agency has recalled, Nvidia is the main supplier of graphics processing units (GPU) that Tesla uses to train its artificial intelligence models intended for autonomous driving and robotics.
Musk’s gesture coincides with an emergency meeting of Nvidia’s senior management to analyze the company’s future without its founder. According to the aforementioned outlet, the firm has already turned to an external consultancy to look for possible replacements, after Huang himself acknowledged the past weekend an affair with a woman being investigated for alleged espionage for Beijing and after the newspaper “The New York Times” revealed another relationship with an employee under his direct supervision.
The governance crisis has triggered a strong stock-market punishment and Nvidia shares fell as much as 10% in trading after the close of Wall Street this Wednesday.