‘Irreplaceable’: Silicon Valley’s power players rally around Jensen Huang

Patrick Shyu, who has worked for Google and Meta and goes by TechLead on X (opens in new tab), posted: “Don’t think I have a problem with Jensen Huang. Both his ‘kids’ are full-blown adults in their 30’s. His wife’s 65, he’s 63. I’d say he’s fulfilled 99% of ‘married life’ expectations. Life’s short, he wants to re-experience his youth. At that age, no one even cares, do whatever.”

Huang runs the world’s second-most valuable company, according to The Motley Fool (opens in new tab)— the Santa Clara-based chipmaker has a $4.5 trillion market cap — and like many tech executives, his name has become synonymous with his company. The leaders behind companies benefiting from the AI boom have become household names as their financial and political influence have grown during the Trump administration.

Maguire from Sequoia posted on X (opens in new tab) of Huang’s actions, “my guess is there was no bad intention.” He ended a list of hot takes by saying “two mistakes don’t make a right, and I believe Jensen is irreplaceable for America’s AI leadership.”

Musk chimed in (opens in new tab) by reposting Maguire’s sentiment and saying, “I agree.”

Prolific poster Ackman said (opens in new tab) Huang “is human. And he is an incredible human. Even incredible humans make mistakes.” He followed up to say, “I am not suggesting he gets a free pass. If indeed this is more than an affair, then it is … obviously a real problem.”

Similarly, Jason Calacanis, who cohosts the popular tech podcast “All-In,” defended Huang and Nvidia in the name of national security.

“Jensen and Nvidia’s technology are a critical target, and we need to protect them both,” he wrote on X (opens in new tab).

President Donald Trump weighed in (opens in new tab) Monday during an impromptu press briefing at the White House, saying he had talked to Huang earlier in the day, “just to see if he’s feeling alright.”

“I asked him that question, ‘Did you have any idea that she was a spy?’ He said, ‘I had no idea that she was a spy.’ And I really believe him,” Trump said.

Some posts went after Huang’s wife of more than 40 years, accusing her of not maintaining her appearance and “looksmaxxing.” (opens in new tab)

One of the major drivers of the AI race is an insistence that U.S. labs make superior AI models before China. Some commenters leaned into that and made Huang’s indiscretion into a meme.

“JENSEN! THATS NOT WHAT WE MEANT BY CHINESE MODELS!!!!!!!” one user wrote on X (opens in new tab). Another joked (opens in new tab): “I guess Chinese models really were the biggest threat …”

“The fact he only had one extramarital affair with a state asset after leading the greatest technological revolution in history is what impresses me. For anyone else that number would be double, even triple, digits,” Nikita Bier (opens in new tab), the former head of product at X, posted.

Huang’s bad day even turned into positive PR for Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has been married for 14 years. Users, including Justine Moore, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, dubbed Zuckerberg (opens in new tab) “our last remaining wife guy.”

Not all posts were pro-extramarital affairs. Some ridiculed Huang and lumped him in with Bay Area AI researchers who have been warned about how to distinguish between a human woman’s flirting and a spy seeking company secrets.

“America’s national security rests on the fact that its most important researchers cannot tell when women are flirting with them,” wrote one X user (opens in new tab).

One commenter noted that tech’s run-in with honeypot spies could be everyone’s problem, as the U.S. economy becomes increasingly reliant on the money generated by the AI boom.

“Our 401k is really tied to trusting 7 random men not to fuck foreign spies,” an X user wrote (opens in new tab).

More about the author

• I write about the companies, trends and different ways the AI boom is changing the city and reshaping the lives of the people who live and work in San Francisco.