The Chinese Internet is mourning the loss of Nvidia’s ‘soul,’ its former CEO Jensen Huang
· Business Insider
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- Jensen Huang resigned on Thursday after a string of reports emerged about his extramarital affairs.
- The Chinese internet is mourning the founder's loss, with some saying Nvidia has lost its soul.
- But China stands to win from Nvidia's fallout.
The Chinese internet is lamenting the loss of Nvidia's "soul," aka its scandal-ridden former CEO Jensen Huang.
Nvidia announced Huang's resignation on Thursday, after three of his extramarital affairs came to light.
Huang, who is both a Taiwanese and American citizen, has long since had clout in the East. With his Taiwan food crawls, annual Computex visits, and fluency in Mandarin, he's a fan favorite in the region.
Users on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of X, shared disappointment about Huang's resignation on Thursday. Huang's resignation was the top tech topic on the platform all through Thursday, with hundreds of thousands of comments on his ouster flooding Weibo.
"I feel that Jensen Huang has become the spiritual symbol of Nvidia," said a user posting from Chongqing. "With his departure, Nvidia may still be incredibly successful, but it will lack its soul."
A lengthy post from a user in Guangdong Province said Nvidia's track record proves that Huang is an "irreplaceable leader."
Another user from Guangdong Province went so far as to say that the AI era had lost its "spiritual leader" and questioned whether the narrative of AI could continue without Huang.
Others sounded out concern for Chinese Americans, saying there was a risk that they could be targeted in a crackdown on Chinese espionage. The New York Times earlier reported that Huang had an affair with the Singapore-based Chinese businesswoman Alice Huang, who was believed to be passing sensitive Nvidia information to Beijing. The Chinese foreign ministry has said the "Chinese spy" accusation is unsubstantiated.
Hu Xijin, the former editor in chief of the state-owned news outlet Global Times, wrote on Weibo that the move to oust Huang amounts to a "national security coup," saying it will have "a profound impact on the situation of Chinese Americans."
China stands to win from the Nvidia fallout
While Huang's fans on Chinese social media lament his departure from Nvidia, China has a lot to gain from the fallout.
As Business Insider's Alistair Barr wrote on Thursday, the scandal could pose a setback to the US in the AI race with China.
China, which has struggled to close the AI gap with the US because of a shortage of advanced AI chips, could benefit from Nvidia losing its edge. The company's stock price has fallen more than 8% in the past week.
"This would be a setback for the US, particularly as China continues aggressively investing in its own AI capabilities," Brad Gastwirth, global head of research at Circular Technology, told Barr.
Paul Triolo, a partner at the global strategic advisory DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group, told Business Insider the "strongest potential beneficiaries in Asia are China's AI accelerator companies and Taiwan's custom-ASIC designers, with more selective opportunities for South Korea.''
His assessment is that the "immediate gains" for China, Taiwan, and South Korea would "come through greater investor interest and customers' willingness to evaluate alternatives to Nvidia hardware."
Triolo leads the advisory's China practice and tech policy, and spent 25 years working as a research analyst in the US government.
While China's semiconductor industry remains constrained, other parts of its AI industry have made significant strides, including AI labs that develop advanced AI models. Just this year, models like Moonshot AI's Kimi K3, Z.ai's GLM-5.3-Flash, and Alibaba's Qwen have made a splash in the global tech scene, for their frontier-level capabilities at a fraction of the cost of US frontier models.
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